Emma didn’t believe in luck or fate. But she understood, deep within her heart, that there were people who could be a curse on those around them. Their rot infected others and it spread and spread, it got into the blood, the marrow, the lungs.
Nathan was a good man, she told herself. His flaws were modest ones, suited to a modest life. He had grown up loved by two middle-class parents and gone to school and gotten good grades and a decent job, and if the last few years had been hard, had given those small flaws the chance to gain purchase, surely it was because of the dark seam at the center of her she had worked so hard to cover over. But it was like foul water seeping through layer after layer of wallpaper, revealing the shape of the damage.
If it weren’t for her, she was certain he would still be alive.
“Emma.” She didn’t startle at Gabriel’s voice as he stepped out onto the back porch. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”
She hadn’t had a single sip. She lifted it to her lips. It was lukewarm and bitter. “JJ is right, you know. Me being here—it’s going to cause you trouble.”
“I’m not worried,” Gabriel says. “I was at a jobsite most of the night. Cameras everywhere.”
“Jobsite?” Emma echoed. “You know, I don’t even know what it is you do.”
“Carpentry,” he told her, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m leading a renovation for this historic B and B. We had some delays with the supply chain issues, so I was up there with one of my guys trying to finish in time for their grand opening. The owner’s paranoid about theft, so she records everything.”
Gabriel was a carpenter. That felt right, somehow. She couldn’t imagine him cooped up in an office doing IT work.
“Emma. Why didn’t you want to go with Juliette? What’s going on between you?” Gabriel asked.
Emma took another sip. “I don’t know that woman. I don’t know if I even knew Juliette, but this is someone else entirely,” Emma said. Her words sounded pockmarked, pitted by the acid that seemed to always be burning away at her throat. “After my parents died, everyone I knew disappeared. They wouldn’t talk to me. Didn’t want anything to do with me, really. I figured if everyone hated me that much, they couldn’t all be wrong. I decided I had to start over. Take myself apart and build someone new. Someone who had nothing in common with the old Emma Palmer. I made myself into a stranger and I found someone who could love her, but I couldn’t ever let him find out who I was. And then he did, and he died.”
“I’m sorry. Emma. I should have talked to you,” Gabriel said.
“You had every reason to hate me,” she replied. The sun, angled low among the trees, burned her eyes, half blinding her. She didn’t look away. There was nothing she wanted to see.
“It wasn’t entirely your fault,” he said, and his voice cracked. “That night, when I left? I drove to your house.” Now she did startle, looking at him with wide eyes. He rocked his weight back on his heels.
“Why?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“You showed up on my porch with a black eye. Didn’t take much to figure out who’d given it to you,” Gabriel said. “And I knew it wasn’t the first time. I was angry. I went there to—I don’t know. I parked across the street. Tried to talk myself into going up to the door, tried to talk myself out of it. In the end I guess I came to my senses. I left. Came out here to clear my head.”
“But you didn’t do anything,” she said.
He shook his head. “The thing is, someone saw me. They gave a description. A shitty one, but close enough. It wasn’t just the alibi that made them fixate on me. It wasn’t just your fault. It was my own terrible judgment.”
“Why would you do that?” Emma demanded.
“Because I cared about you. I was angry,” he said. “And I was young and hotheaded and I wanted to be a hero.”
“You cared about me,” she repeated.
“Of course I did,” he said.
She set her coffee cup down on the small metal table beside her, the movement slow to give her time to think. “You put up with me,” Emma said. “I followed you around like an annoying little sister and you were nice enough not to tell me to get lost.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Gabriel replied. “You know it wasn’t. I liked having you around. I liked talking to you, hearing about your art. You were never imposing. And I never spent time with you because I felt sorry for you.”
She made a noise in the back of her throat. “I had such a crush on you.”
He laughed a little, softly, kindly. “I know.”
“It wasn’t exactly subtle. I hope it wasn’t too awkward,” she said.
“No. I mean, you were too young for me, obviously,” he said, and a half smile hooked the corner of his mouth. “But if you’d stuck around another few years? I don’t know. But I definitely never thought of you as a sister. I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch after, Emma. I’m sorry you were alone. But it wasn’t because no one cared about you.”
She’d wanted to hear those words for so long, but hearing them now, she struggled to feel anything at all.
A bird, small and brown, lit on the lawn in front of them, and both of them watched it, so they wouldn’t have to look at each other. Its head twitched, examining them with one eye and then the other. Apparently unimpressed, it flitted away again.
“I’m sorry. It’s a shitty time to be bringing this up,” Gabriel said. “I don’t mean anything by it. Your husband just died. I’m not trying to suggest anything, I’m just—”
“I know,” she said. “Please, God, don’t go away just because we liked each other over a decade ago. You’re the only friend I have out here. Or at all.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Gabriel said.
She wiped tears from her eyes with her thumb. “We weren’t happy, you know. I don’t think we had been for a long time. I tried to stay the person he married, but she was always a lie. And I think he could tell.”
Gabriel didn’t respond; she supposed there wasn’t a way to respond to that.
“Gabriel, I need to ask you something,” she said. She sat forward, elbows braced on her knees. She didn’t know what to do with the weight of loss inside her. But she could get answers. She could do something. “Maybe it’s nothing—maybe it’s irrelevant. But your dad, when he got fired. Can you remember anything else about what he thought was going on there?”
“I wouldn’t put much stock in anything he said,” Gabriel replied. He put his hands in his pockets, squinting off into the distance. “Dad was a useless drunk before he got fired. He’d been through a half-dozen jobs in half as many years. He’d always claim he was getting his act together and then fall apart again. When your dad fired him, he kept insisting he hadn’t stolen anything. That your dad was the one stealing. Nana believed him.”
“You don’t?”
“Addicts have been known to lie,” Gabriel said. His weight shifted like he wanted to pace. “He was borderline functional before that. After, he went off the deep end. Kept saying he was going to find a way to make your dad pay for humiliating him, but the only people he ever made suffer were his family.”
“And you don’t have any idea where he is now,” Emma said.
He was silent a moment. “Emma, Nana says that he came back right before … right when your parents died. Then he took off for good.”
“What are you saying?” Emma asked.
He rubbed his shoulder with his opposite hand. “He was never violent. But I’d never seen him as angry as he was at your dad. What if…” He didn’t finish the thought.
“What if he killed them,” Emma said. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but she couldn’t deny it fit. A grudge. A disappearance. If Kenneth Mahoney had come to the house demanding some kind of justice, and things got out of hand … But her father had been shot in the back of the head. No demands. Just an ambush.
“It would explain why he never came back,” Gabriel said, and she made a noise of consideration, noncommittal.
Her phone was ringing in her bag, and she pulled it out to check the ID. Chris. “It’s my lawyer,” she said. “I have to—”
“Yeah,” Gabriel said, bobbing his head. “I’ll be inside if you need anything.”
Gabriel ducked inside, and Emma caught the call right before it got kicked to voice mail.