“There’s a time limit on these things,” he said, but she didn’t answer. She thought of after the accident, after the doctor had told her that she might not be able to safely carry a pregnancy to term. The way Nathan’s face had crumpled, and for the next week he slept with his back to her, could hardly meet her eyes. But she’d healed. Better than anyone had expected. He’d been the one to cry when they got the news, pressing his face to the crook of her neck.
He let out a frustrated sigh. “I just hate having to wonder how many more secrets you’re keeping. It’s like you’ve been putting on an act the whole time we’ve been married,” he said.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked. For once, she couldn’t tell. Should she cry? Should she plead? Should she shout at him in turn? Did he want her anger, or her confession?
“I don’t know, Emma. The truth, maybe?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t even know what the truth is. If I did, I would tell you, and we could be done with this.”
“Come on. That’s bullshit,” Nathan said, slamming his palm on the table so hard she jumped. “You know plenty. You still haven’t told me what happened. Why? Are you hiding something that would make you look guilty?”
She remembered, suddenly, standing in front of her father in the study while he sat in that huge chair with its oak arms and dark upholstery, a glass of amber liquid sweating in his hand. Remembered her silence, and all her meaningless noise as she tried to explain and justify and apologize, to find the secret code, the combination of contrition and logic that would spare her the punishment she had never once managed to evade.
Nathan’s face was red, his jaw clenched. He wouldn’t hit her. He’d never hit her. He was not like her father.
But there was nothing she could say to apologize, she knew that. He would push and push and push and she would have no answer, and this precarious balance of theirs would topple at last, and it would be her fault.
She couldn’t stop it. But she could make it so that it wasn’t her fault. Not only her fault.
She looked up at him, and her lips parted to speak. His face was ruddy with anger, lines deep at the corners of his mouth. I know, she could have told him.
She stood instead. She walked to the hall, plucking her purse from its place on the credenza.
“Where are you going?” Nathan asked.
“Out,” she said. Because if she stayed, they would break. She would lose him.
“Emma.” He put himself in her path.
“I just need some air,” she said. She started to step around him. He grabbed her arm, jerking her to a stop. She looked down at his hand, fingers dimpling the skin of her upper arm. Tight enough to balance on the edge of pain.
He let her go.
She was afraid of so many things; he had never been one of them, and he wasn’t now. But she couldn’t be here.
“When are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked.
Never, she thought. “Soon,” she said.
This time, he let her leave.
23
EMMA
Now
Wilson’s was a bar utterly without personality; it didn’t slouch into dive bar territory or manage the gloss necessary to be trendy. It was a bar you only ever ended up at because it was the only one open or the only one close by.
As soon as she opened the door she spotted the man she was looking for down at the end of the bar, pulling a pint. At forty, Logan Ellis had a few flecks of gray in his hair and more definition to his jaw, but little else about him had changed. Still good-looking in that slightly off-putting way, still with those pale eyes. His attention flicked up to her, and he raised a few fingers in a perfunctory greeting, not showing a glimmer of recognition. She made her way down to the other end of the bar and sat, watching as he delivered the beer to the only other patron in the bar before coming back her way.
Logan approached. A puzzled smile crossed his features, and he rested his hands on the bar. “Emma Palmer. My dad mentioned you were back in town.”
“I’m sure he’s thrilled,” Emma said.
He laughed, not unpleasantly. “Yeah, he’s not exactly your biggest fan. What can I get you? Club soda and lime?”
“Sure.” His father must have told him that, too. He set the drink in front of her. There were tattoos climbing up his arms, smudged with age. Clumsy images of demons and dice, an anchor with an unreadable banner. She caught the edge of the smell of him, musk and soap.
She took a sip, remembering that she hated club soda. Studied him while he studied her. Her ice clinked in her glass as she tipped it back and forth in her hand idly.
“Why are you here, Emma Palmer?” he asked. “It’s not for the drink and it’s not for the ambience, so what is it?”
“You and my sister,” she said.
“Me and your sister,” he replied with a half grin. “So you heard about that.”
“I was kind of hoping it wasn’t true,” she said.
“Can’t imagine someone like me with the perfect princess of Arden Hills?” he asked, and laughed. It was an unkind sound, like a crow’s warning call.
“Is that why you slept with her? You wanted to ruin the pretty princess?” Emma asked.
His face darkened. “No. Look. I liked her. I did. A lot more than she liked me, I think.”
Emma considered him. She’d met Logan a handful of times as a kid. Her dad wasn’t close to Ellis like he was with Hadley, but they were friendly. When Logan was a teenager, he’d been around the house a few times when they had dinner with the Ellises. She remembered a boy who couldn’t seem to hold still, constant motion and a tension in the air that made her nervous. He seemed more settled now, but there was still a taut feeling to the air. Something getting ready to snap.
“Were you at the Saracen house the night my parents died?” she asked.
He set his weight back a bit, surprised. “Jesus, you don’t beat around the bush.”
“Were you?”
“Playing detective?”
“Just asking questions,” she told him. “Please. Help me out?” she asked, and she didn’t have to fake the desperate plea in her voice.
Something shifted in his face—a look of sympathy or maybe pity appearing briefly in his eyes before he nodded reluctantly. He glanced over at the guy with the beer at the end of the bar. Dropped his voice. “Sure, I was there at some point.”
“And Juliette?”
He didn’t answer right away. She just waited, eyes locked with his. “She was with me for a while. She took off,” he said at last.
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, irritation roughening his voice. “She wasn’t in a talking mood. We had an argument, sort of. She ran off on me.”
“And you didn’t see her again? You don’t know where she went?” Emma asked.
“No,” he insisted, but his eyes dodged away from her. He was lying, Emma thought—or hiding something.
“Did you give my sister anything?” Emma asked.
“Oh, that’s low-hanging fruit,” he said with a lewd chuckle she thought was a bit performative.
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“She partook on occasion,” he acknowledged.
“That night?”
“Probably.”
“What?”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “Would’ve been oxy. Benzos, maybe. Look. Juliette was a good kid who wanted to be bad for a while. She would’ve gotten bored with me pretty soon, if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”
“But she took something, and she ran off. That’s why you were looking for her,” Emma said. She was still struggling to imagine Juliette out in the woods. Juliette high. Juliette having sex. In her memory, Juliette was a white cardigan and fingers resting lightly on ivory keys.
If Juliette had been on something and came back to the house, could she have lost it? Done something?
Logan folded his arms. “I wanted her to have a good time, that’s all. I wouldn’t have given her much. And she was a lightweight. Didn’t take after her mother in that respect.”
Emma jerked in surprise, her mouth dropping open. The flash of satisfaction on his face told her the effect was intentional. “You’re saying my mother was a client?” she asked. She ought to have been offended, incredulous, but it made a certain amount of sense. The “migraine pills” Emma didn’t remember her ever going to the pharmacy for, the way she would just seem to vanish from herself from time to time.
“Yeah. Now and then,” Logan said with an easy shrug.