“Who?” he asks, confusion written on his features. “What happened, Emma?”
“I can’t go back,” she manages. “I can’t go back. They’ll kill me. Please, Gabriel, I can’t—you have to—”
He hushes her. He shifts to the couch and gathers her in his arms and she sobs against his chest as he murmurs meaningless things and strokes her back. She can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong within the cage of his ribs.
“Nana’s still in the hospital, but you can stay here as long as you need to,” he says. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
When she is done crying, he takes her to his bed. It’s a bed in Lorelei Mahoney’s house, and so it is firm and has fresh sheets and smells of fabric softener, and he draws a blanket up over her. He sits on the end of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. She shuts her eyes. Eventually, she drifts into a sleep unencumbered by dreams.
She doesn’t know how much later his weight shifting on the bed wakes her. She keeps her eyes closed and her breathing even, letting him think she is asleep as he draws near.
“It’s going to be okay,” he tells her. She wonders if he knows he’s lying. “You’re safe here.” He bends over her and brushes a kiss lightly at her temple.
He leaves. She holds still, fearing he’ll know she’s awake, that it will somehow ruin this moment. The front door opens, closes. Outside, a car starts. She pulls the blanket aside and pads out to the front room in time to watch his headlights disappearing. She stands alone in the house, shivering despite the warm night.
Gabriel is wrong. He is kind, but he is wrong—nothing will be okay. Nowhere is safe. Not unless she does something.
She slips on her shoes and heads out.
She leaves Lorelei’s house with half a plan wrapped in fierce conviction. She can’t go back home. She has to get away. And so she has to go back home, because she ran out of the door with nothing and she has nowhere to go. She needs clothes, needs supplies. Most of all, she needs money.
And she knows where she can find it.
It’s after eleven o’clock as Emma walks up Grant Lane, then cuts through the woods past the Saracen house. There are flashlights and lanterns on inside and a couple of kids out front trying to stoke a sad-looking fire. One of them looks her way as she walks, but at this distance she’s sure she’s nothing but a dim silhouette. There is a light in the tree house as well, at the edge of the lawn. She skirts around it, giving it plenty of room so she won’t be spotted.
Emma creeps her way through the house without turning on any lights and takes the stairs silently, well practiced. She looks behind her once at the sliver of light at the bottom of the study door, barely visible at the end of the hall. There’s no sign of movement. At the top of the stairs she hooks a right to go to her parents’ door. Here she hesitates. If she’s wrong, and her mother is awake, the whole plan will fall apart.
But when she opens the door her mother is, as usual, sleeping soundly. The glass on her bedside table still has half an inch of white wine in it, and beside it is one of her migraine pills. Irene is sleeping half-twisted, the side of her face pressed against the pillow and one hand up next to it, the other flung behind her. It does not look restful, her face contorted as if she is having a bad dream. Emma stands watching her for a moment as her mother’s eyes roll under her lids. She has thought many times about killing her parents. Finding a way to get a gun from the case or a knife from the kitchen, pressing a pillow to her mother’s sleeping face. Irene Palmer is a slim woman who has stayed that way through deprivation; there is no substance or strength to her. If Emma wrapped her hands around that thin neck—
But every time, that’s where it ends. There is no after to that fantasy.
Using only the tips of her fingers she opens the drawer in the nightstand and reaches all the way to the back, snagging the loop of a single small key. She draws it out and retreats. She doesn’t glance back; she doesn’t realize this is the last time she will see her mother alive, that their last words to each other have already been spoken.
The lockbox is where she remembers, nestled beneath layers and layers of pink and yellow sweaters and caps. Their mother keeps all of their baby clothes in spotless condition, though it became clear long ago that their father was never going to agree to have another child. Irene Palmer loved having babies. Loved their cooing and laughter and smiles, loved how she alone could soothe their cries.
She wanted more than anything to have that version of motherhood back. The one where she was the world, and she understood every need.
Emma claws aside the clothes and pulls out the lockbox. It opens readily to the key. Inside is a small envelope, a thick roll of bills, and the flash drive.
Emma peers inside the envelope. It contains her mother’s passport, Social Security card, and birth certificate. There is also a green Post-it note with a phone number scrawled on it in an unfamiliar hand. Emma doesn’t recognize the number.
None of this is particularly interesting, except that her mother is hiding it. Emma picks up the USB drive, frowning. If these were just important documents, her mother would keep them in the safe in the study. But she’s taken them out, hidden them here. Why?
Downstairs, the study door opens. Emma swears under her breath. She shoves her mother’s documents back in the box and puts the money into her pocket. On instinct, she grabs the flash drive, too, then piles clothes back on top of the lockbox, not bothering to leave them neat, and pushes the whole thing back into the closet.
In her own room, she throws clothes and everything she can think of into her backpack, zips it shut. The toilet downstairs flushes. Footsteps make their way back to the study, and Emma lets herself relax. She steals back down the stairs, heart hammering, and out through the kitchen.
She shoves her feet into her shoes hastily. She doesn’t realize that one of them has come untied until she takes off running, until the lace gets caught under her foot and she sprawls at the edge of the yard with a grunt she’s certain will be heard from the house. She scrambles back up and runs flat out, her backpack slapping against her back, the thick bulk of the roll of bills comforting in her jacket pocket. She knows the money is still there, and so she does not think to check for a small, undistinctive flash drive. She does not notice the face in the tree house window, watching her run. Watching her fall.
She does not see the small form climbing down the ladder and walking to where she stumbled to examine the glint of metal in the dirt.
28
EMMA
Now
She slept lightly, expecting Nathan’s weight on the mattress to wake her at any moment, but it didn’t. When she did wake, she didn’t remember what had stirred her from her sleep; she had only the sense that she’d heard something. She made her way to the window. The courtyard was quiet. Still. There was a light on in the carriage house.
She looked at the alarm clock beside her bed, blaring out its glowing blue numbers. It was past midnight. Nathan had always been a night owl. She glimpsed him briefly, walking past the lit window on the ground level of the carriage house, and then drew the curtains closed.
If he was avoiding her, she wouldn’t push. He would stay. Surely he would stay.