Page 81 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

She frowned. “Oh, those really shouldn’t be touched until they’re dry.” She reached for it, carefully taking it by the edges.

“It’s the series you’re working on,” I said.

“It is. A never-ending work in progress, I’m afraid.”

I stared at the photo in her hands, but the shapes were distorting now, my vision beginning to warp and fragment. Slowly, my eyes traveled across the room to Autumn’s series that hung on the wall. Olivia followed my gaze, falling quiet, and before I could manage tokeep the thread on the spool, the air around us shifted. It was almost as if she could see me thinking it. Like she could see it playing out behind my eyes.

I couldn’t keep the words from finding my lips. “You were with her that morning, weren’t you?”

Olivia didn’t move. She didn’t speak.

I picked up the calendar, holding it out to her, and she took it, eyes running over the notes.

“You were with her the morning she was leaving for Byron.”

Olivia sucked in her bottom lip and her bright, round eyes instantly turned glassy. Her entire appearance, even the way she was standing, withered, almost like a frightened child’s. She pushed the glasses up her nose, mouth twisting to the side. It looked like she was about to cry.

“I admit, I didn’t think about that,” she said. “The calendar.”

Instinctively, I reached to my back pocket for my phone.

“I hadn’t thought about the Instagram account, either.”

She’d already tracked my thoughts to the conclusion I’d made. She set the calendar down slowly as one tear striped her cheek. “What I need you to understand is that I really cared about Autumn.”

My pulse quickened, making me feel light-headed. I glanced down at my phone, unlocking it.

“She was just so…” Olivia bit her lip again. “Special.”

She walked past me, crossing the room to the mounted photographs of Autumn’s series, and I stared at her, unable to speak.

“And lucky. That was the thing.” She sniffed. “Some people are justlucky,you know? People notice them. Open doors and create opportunities. Autumn was just one of those people, like everyone just wanted to help her get where she was going.”

She wasn’t just talking about Autumn anymore. She was talking about herself. About the young budding artist in a rural town who no one had noticed. Who no one had thought to open the door for.

“I know it’s because of her talent. I mean, you’d have to be blindnot to see it, right? And she just had this confidence about her that made it seem like everywhere she went, there was a spotlight moving to follow.” Tandem tears fell down her cheeks as she spoke, her eyes full of awe. “She was like you, James. Johnny thought so, too.”

“What happened, Olivia?” I whispered.

Her mouth twitched as she looked up. She searched my face, as if trying to decide whether she could trust me with it.

“I know it wasn’t exactly aboveboard to spend time with a student outside of school, but we were both working on our series. And Autumn, she really loved the work I was doing. Once, she even told me it wasdistinguished.” She sniffed. “We started going out on shoots together her senior year, and we’d planned to go one last time that morning. Then I was going to drop her off at the bus stop.” She pulled at her lip with her fingers over and over, like a tick. “It was an accident,” she stammered, turning to face me again.

My lips parted, but my lungs wouldn’t inflate. It suddenly felt like there was no air in the room.

“There was a tree up on the cliffs she wanted to photograph again. It had been struck by lightning.”

I blinked, remembering it. I’d seen it when I went there with Micah.

“We had to hike down from the ridge above to get the right angle, and she was just standing there with the camera up.” Olivia pantomimed it, her face blank as she acted it out, her voice hollow. “And then she was justfalling.Screaming. And when she hit the bottom…”

My stomach lurched. I took a slow step backward, toward the door.

“Itwasan accident,” Olivia repeated.

Her hands lifted before her and she shook them manically. She was breathing hard now, like she might hyperventilate. Her eyes moved all over the room, as if she couldn’t see me anymore.

Immediately, my mind plucked that sentence from the air, summoning the memory.It was an accident.How many times had we saidthose very words that night, standing over Griffin Walker’s body? How many times had its echo chased us, reframed us, into something else?