“What do you mean, go? You just got here. I just met you. And you have to help me find my sister,” I protest. A heavy feeling starts to knot up in my stomach. I’m not sad that she’s leaving, exactly. But I don’t want her to go either.
A strange look comes over Becky’s face. A few minutes earlier it might have looked sinister to me, but now that I’m really looking I can see that my mother just looks shattered. Heartbroken. It’s the look of someone who has already lost everything.
“I’m sick,” she says slowly. “I’m okay right now, but I can feel it coming on. Another episode.” Her body shudders again, as if the very thought is repellent. “I can’t be there for you. I’m so sorry. You’ll never know how sorry. But that’s why I gave you up. I thought you’d be safe with your grandparents, have a shot at a normal life.” She wraps her thin arms around her body. “You know, I tried to come back for you once, when you were a few years old, but Dad wouldn’t give you up. You were his daughter by then. He could finally have a daughter he was proud of. I never gave him that. But you? Sutton, you’re my second chance.”
She smiles, and for just a moment she looks almost pretty again, almost young. The lines in her face relax and in the moonlight she seems smooth and innocent. Pure.
Then she turns, and without another word, she disappears into the night.
32
HELLO, AND GOOD-BYE
Becky’s hand lingered on Emma’s arm, as if it were hard for her to let go. Then she released her and took a step back. “Sutton,” she said softly.
Emma’s muscles were tense, ready to bolt. Even to fight, if it came to that. But something held her back. This was her chance to get answers. This was her chance to find out what had really happened that night between Sutton and Becky. She whirled around to face her mother, planting her legs firmly on the ground and crossing her arms over her chest.
Becky had changed out of her hospital clothes and into a pair of jeans and a secondhand T-shirt that said SOMEBODY IN VIRGINIA LOVES ME. Her face was still too thin, shadows collecting in its pits and hollows, but something about it had softened. Her eyes were clear, and the rictus had left her lips. She looked almost like the young, beautiful mother Emma remembered from thirteen years before, a little older, a little more weathered, but recognizable. Tears and makeup had dried on her face. She looked Emma up and down.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, coming back here. To the canyon,” Emma said. Her pulse throbbed in her neck. A charge of fear swept over her skin like a light fingertip, sending the hair on her arms straight up. She couldn’t see the girls’ bonfire at all anymore. Down in the subdivision she heard a motorcycle accelerate and then disappear. It echoed strangely off the canyon rock.
“I know,” Becky said. She hung her head, wringing her hands in front of her body. “But I wanted to see you before I left.”
“Before you leave?” Emma’s voice was sharp. She narrowed her eyes. She wasn’t letting Becky leave until she’d paid for what she’d done.
“Emma,” I protested. I tried to clutch at her, knowing even as I did that it was hopeless.
But this time, something was different. My touch didn’t move through her. It rested lightly on the surface of her skin, as soft as a kiss. I could feel her heartbeat, so warm, so alive.
Emma was still staring at our mother, a determined look on her face. She didn’t seem to have felt anything. But I had. Even if it only happened once, I had touched my sister.
“She didn’t do it,” I said, summoning up all my strength. Emma needed to know this, to stop following Becky’s trail so that she could find my real murderer. I concentrated everything I could on making her believe me. “Emma, she didn’t do it!”
Then Emma realized something: Becky had called her Sutton. Not Emma. Either she was a very good actress, or she truly didn’t know Sutton was gone.
Relief and suspicion mingled inside of her. Maybe Becky was innocent, or maybe Emma was just lying to herself again, wanting to believe in her mother despite the evidence to the contrary. She bit her lip.
“Where are you going this time?” she asked.
Becky shrugged. “I don’t know. I just need to get out of Tucson. This place has a lot of bad memories for me. There are too many people here that I can hurt. That I do hurt,” she said, swallowing hard.
Emma tensed again. “People you hurt?”
Becky looked up at her, her long lashes still damp with tears. She took a deep breath.