CHAPTER 28
That was the number scratched into the stone wall just outside the old chapel at Blackwood. Crude, jagged. Like someone had used a nail or a piece of broken glass, maybe even their fingernail, to carve it in. The numbers glared at me in the dim light, shallow but stubborn.
313
The exact number of days since Brianna had drowned.
The exact number of days since I had “come back.”
I didn’t remember carving it. I didn’t remember anyone talking about it. But there it was—burrowed into the limestone like a secret begging to be unearthed. I stood still, my breath catching in my throat, like something inside me recognized it before my brain could.
Was someone keeping count?
Was it me?
I touched the number with the tip of my finger. Cold stone, colder meaning.
There was something
