“Did you know that someone was sending threatening messages to Addison James?” Hadley asked, and Emma startled.
“Threatening messages? No. About what?” She couldn’t help the edge of hysteria that crept into her voice. What now? she thought. What new thing was going to become her fault?
“About leaving Nathan alone,” Hadley said, which she supposed should have been self-evident, given that he was asking her about it. He scratched his jaw with the side of his thumb. “Not you, then.”
Emma gave him an appalled look. “No. Not me. I wouldn’t have.”
“No, from what I can tell, you have never once managed to stand up for yourself,” Hadley said.
She rocked back in her chair as if physically struck. “Excuse me?”
He spread his hands. “You’ve been lying since the night your parents died, but if you didn’t kill them, that means you were covering for someone else. Even when it destroyed your life, you kept lying. Then you know about your husband’s affair for how long, and you don’t say a word to him? That person doesn’t go threatening the mistress. But then I have to ask, who would be sending Ms. James those notes? And I’m wondering, who is Emma Palmer going to lie for? And the only thing I can think is how close you three were. So why did you stop talking to each other? You know something about one of your sisters, don’t you?”
He was almost right, she thought. Except that they hadn’t been close, really. They’d been utter strangers to one another. All that loyalty had been an invention of her own mind, in the end. A wish for a sisterhood she didn’t really have.
“So which of my sisters are you suggesting is a murderer, then?” she asked. She thought of Daphne. Daphne, so quiet and serious and strange. Daphne with blood on her clothes, Daphne who had been in town for God knows how long and hadn’t said a thing.
“What do you know about what Juliette’s been up to since she left?” he asked.
“A bit,” she allowed. If he thought she would give him anything now just because he was treating her with a modicum of civility, he was wrong.
He dipped his head, all deep consideration, taking his time about speaking again. “Did you know she has an arrest record? Possession. Assault,” he said. She twitched, chin tilting slightly with interest, and his gaze sharpened in answer as he confirmed he knew something she didn’t. “Seems she had a fondness for getting into fights.”
“Recently?” Emma asked, and she knew from the silence that it wasn’t. Old news. “What happened messed me up for a while, too. I’m not here to talk about my sister. I’m here because—”
“Because you want to know why Nathan called Ellis,” Hadley finished for her, and once again she had the sensation that she was standing on a beach with the waves stealing the sand out from under her feet. Nothing was solid. “But that’s what we’re talking about, Emma. Nathan called the station because he found something. Something to do with your parents’ murders.”
Emma’s fingers curled into tight fists in her lap. She could hear her own pulse thudding in her temples. The dog at her feet looked up and whined, as if he could sense the tension. “What was on the drive?” she asked.
Something flashed in Hadley’s eyes. He sat back. “He only said he’d found something, not what it was,” Hadley said. “He was going to bring it by the station the next morning. But we got your call instead.”
Emma said nothing. The dog sat up, tucked its chin in her lap. She buried her fingers in its curly hair. It was small and wiry under all that fur, vibrating like a plucked string.
“Emma, I know you didn’t want anything to happen to your sisters back then. But you have to consider your own well-being,” Hadley said.
Emma was looking off to the side, her fingers loosely splayed over her mouth as she thought. “Juliette wouldn’t have threatened Addison James,” she said, letting her hand drop. “She doesn’t know a fucking thing about my life. She wouldn’t have cared enough to bother.”
“Who would?” Hadley asked.
“No one,” Emma said. Hadley gave her a pitying look, but she felt none for herself. She’d chosen her own life. “Juliette was the one who gave Nathan the keys to the carriage house. If there was something in there she didn’t want him to find, she wouldn’t have done that.”
“If she even knew it was in there.” He thumped the side of his thumb idly against the table. “The threats against Addison James might not be connected.”
“Maybe none of it is,” Emma said. “Did you ever think of that? Maybe we’re just cursed. Maybe it’s all just random and none of it means anything at all.”
“Do you think you’re cursed, Emma? Because I don’t,” Hadley said. “I think that you’ve been dealt a shit hand in life, sure. But I think that’s someone’s fault. And I think you know who it is. Even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself.”
“You know what’s funny?” Emma asked. She tipped her chin up as she looked at him. “You aren’t really admitting that you were wrong, are you? You’re just saying your aim was a little off-center. You want one of my sisters because then you didn’t really get it wrong.”
“I just want the truth,” Hadley said.
“It wasn’t Juliette,” Emma said, and tried to believe it. Doubt made her voice shake.
“Nathan found something, and he was dead within hours,” Hadley said. “I saw the video footage. Juliette was there earlier that night. All three of you lied back then, Emma, but Juliette is the only other one in town.”
Emma froze for a moment, not answering, and by the time she collected herself it was too late—Hadley’s brow furrowed.
“Is Daphne in Arden Hills?” he asked.
“I haven’t spoken to Daphne in years,” Emma said, but the hitch in her voice betrayed her. She stood abruptly, startling the dog to its feet.
It had been a mistake coming here.
“I can help you, Emma,” Hadley said.
“That’s what you said back then, too,” Emma reminded him. She turned to go, feeling sick. Juliette had swooped in to help. Daphne had been at the house. Were they checking up on her?
Or were they watching her?
40
EMMA
Then
Emma sits on the bed in Gabriel’s room. Her bag is packed on the floor next to her, but she hasn’t touched it. Eventually, the front door opens; his footsteps approach down the hall, and he looks in on her.
“Emma,” he says.
“Don’t,” she says, stopping him, though she doesn’t know what he might have said. She doesn’t want to know.
He sits near her but not too near. He bows his head, and for a moment they sit like that, without saying anything, and Emma knows it’s because the moment they do, something will fracture. So she doesn’t ask where he went. He doesn’t ask where she has been. He lets out a long breath, as if he is in pain.
Then he straightens up. The light from the street catches his eyes, makes them gleam.
“You can’t stay here,” he says softly.
“I know.”
“If my grandmother were here, that would be different, but I can’t—”
“I know,” she says sharply, shutting him up. Because it can’t just be that she needed somewhere to go and he was there for her, a friend. It’s dangerous for both of them, her being here. People will talk. They already talk. If things get back to her parents, they’ll both suffer for it.
“Is there anywhere you could go?” he asks.
“I was going to leave,” she says.
“Leave?”
“I could take a bus somewhere.” Where, she doesn’t know.
“You’re not eighteen. You can’t just leave,” he says.
“I have money.”
“Do you have a way to rent an apartment? Get a job? Go to school? Do you know what happens to runaways?” he asks.
“I can figure it out,” she says, but she’s smart enough to know he’s right. She blinks away tears, furiously staring at the carpet.
“Hey,” he says. “You’ve got what, one year of high school left? Ten, eleven months. After that, you’re eighteen, you’ve got a diploma, things get easier.”
“They won’t let me go,” Emma says. “They’ll never let me go.”