The One I Trust by L.N. Cronk Read Free Book Online

don’t have a grave I can visit or anything.”
    “They never found him?”
    I shook my head.
    We rode in silence for a moment.
    “How do you know he’s dead?” she asked. “I mean, if they never found his body . . .”
    “Oh, trust me,” I said with a humorless laugh. “I wanted more than anything to believe that she’d faked the whole thing to try and set me up, but . . .”
    Emily looked at me with her eyebrows raised.
    “Most of the blood they found was his,” I explained. “The coroner said there was too much. He said someone that age never could have survived losing that much blood.”
    She thought on that.
    “Plus,” I said, “she gave him an entire bottle of cough syrup before she stabbed him. Just that alone was enough to kill him.”
    “How do you know she did that?”
    “She stopped at a store near Swansboro on her way down here and bought it. They found the empty bottle.”
    “But how do you know he drank it?”
    “His DNA was on it,” I said.
    “But—”
    “And the medicine was in his blood,” I said, cutting her off. “He didn’t live long enough to absorb all of it, but if he had, he would have died from an overdose.”
    “Why would she give him cough syrup first?” Emily wondered.
    “So he wouldn’t feel anything,” I said. “The coroner said with the amount they found in his blood, he was definitely unconscious.”
    At least there was that.
    “We should find a place for you to go,” Emily said after a moment of silence.
    “Huh?”
    “Someplace where you can go to remember Noah,” she said. “Like a marker or something.”
    “I remember Noah all the time.”
    “Oh, I know,” she said quickly and she put that hand on my shoulder again. “I didn’t mean that, but you said . . .”
    “I know.”
    “Where’s some place that he liked?” she asked.
    “He was happy everywhere.”
    “But where’s some place he especially liked to go?”
    “Well, as a matter of fact,” I said, pointing at a sign we were nearing. “There.”
    The sign was large and brown with white lettering that read “North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores” and had a picture of a fish on it.
    “Turn,” Emily said quickly, so I did.
    We parked, got out of the car, and started walking across a footbridge that led to the entrance.
    “Look,” Emily said, pointing to the decking. “See?”
    Embedded into the decking were dozens of fish, made out of some sort of polished blue stone. Each one had names or messages engraved into them—many “In Honor of” or “In Memory of.”
    I looked at Emily and then back down at the fish. I had to admit that it would be nice to be able to come here and to see Noah’s name. Fort Macon probably had something similar, but even though Noah had enjoyed going there, too, it was too closely tied to horrible memories. This aquarium held nothing but happy memories—it was where Noah and Molly had spent hours chasing each other, tapping on aquarium glass and holding starfish.
    I looked back at Emily.
    “You’re right,” I said.
    She smiled at me.
    “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go find out about it.”
    We walked the rest of the way over the footbridge and past the fish sculpture fountain where Noah had always begged me for coins to throw. At the main window we asked about the fish on the bridge and were given a brochure. We stepped back and took a look at it.
    “$300?”
    “That’s not so bad,” Emily said.
    “I can’t even afford the admission. Much less this.”
    “You don’t have to do it right this second,” Emily said. “It’s something to work toward if you’re interested.”
    She looked at me for a moment.
    “Are you interested?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” I admitted. “He had a lot of good times here.”
    “Then keep this,” she said, touching the brochure. “One day you’ll do it.”
    I nodded and folded the brochure, tucking it into my back pocket.
    “Do you want to go in?” Emily asked, and before I could answer