They’d even tracked down the guy who took them. He thought he was going to get a shot of Randolph Palmer and some twenty-five-year-old mistress. He’d gotten the fright of his life instead.
So this is the theory the police suggested: Rick Hadley finds out about the flash drive. He knows that one of the Palmer girls has seen the evidence. He knows Randolph isn’t going to let him do what needs to be done. Maybe they argue, maybe there’s other bad blood already—maybe Hadley’s taking the opportunity to eliminate his mistress’s husband. Whatever the reason, he goes over to the Palmer house and puts a bullet in Randolph’s head. But he can’t find the drive. He can’t find the girls. Irene finds him instead. He doesn’t mean to kill her, probably, and when they struggle with the gun, when it goes off, he drops the gun in horror. He flees.
But Juliette picks up the gun. Daphne makes a logical conclusion. They all conspire to silence, thinking they are protecting themselves and one another.
Perhaps they could be forgiven.
For years, they all stay quiet. Hadley knows that one of them has seen the drive, but he doesn’t know which. He sends his threatening letters, he hounds Emma so she knows she’ll never be safe. Life goes on.
But then Nathan finds the drive. He calls Ellis. And the past isn’t the past anymore, and Hadley has to do something. He drives to the house where his lover and his best friend died. Nathan has seen the photos, of course, but he wouldn’t recognize Hadley, not steeped in shadow. He has no reason to be afraid. Let me see what you found, he says, and Nathan hands him the gun.
It explained why he came after Emma and JJ, afraid of what they knew. Or perhaps he was beyond all reason by then, and that was why he attacked them, threatened them, was certainly going to kill them if Daphne hadn’t intervened. If she didn’t bring that rock down as hard as she could, until she was sure he wouldn’t get up.
It was a good story. People need stories to make sense of things, after all.
So they were safe. And they were free.
And it was time to go home.
53
JJ
Now
They went back to the house. They always ended up back at the house. It was like a gravity well, a black hole from which nothing could escape, not even light. JJ hadn’t been back here since the river. The accident. Hadley. She’d stayed at the hotel or the hospital. With Christopher Best at her side, she’d sat again in a cold room and recounted what had happened the night her parents died.
Most of it, at least.
She’d told them about the pills and the drinking, Logan Ellis and the Saracen house, the strange state she’d been in when she wandered back into the house. She’d told them about the gunshots and picking up the gun from the ground. She hadn’t killed her parents.
It should have been a relief.
Remembering that night was like seeing light bend through water. The angle kept changing when she moved her head. She remembered the water, the bridge, the blood, the gunshots, the gun. And if she held still, and tilted her head just the right way, she remembered the moment she turned toward the hallway.
Her mother is holding a gun. Juliette sees her, but despite the fact that she is standing only a few feet away, her mother doesn’t seem to see Juliette. She doesn’t seem to see anything at all.
Irene Palmer lifts the gun, turning her hand to rest the barrel against her sternum. Juliette steps forward. Reaches out for her, letting out a wordless cry. Her mother pulls the trigger. Hot flecks of blood burst across Juliette’s cheeks.
Like a glimmer of light, it fractured as the water rippled. She couldn’t be sure of it.
But she knew.
She sat in her childhood bedroom. The yellow wallpaper was the color of pus.
She had watched her mother shoot herself in the chest. Part of her had preferred her own guilt.
Irene had told Hadley she was afraid of Randolph. That she was getting ready to leave him. And then he’d found out she was preparing to turn him in. She must have thought she had no choice but to kill him.
Or maybe he had told her that one of the girls knew. Maybe she had realized she had to act, to protect her daughters.
JJ wished fervently that she could believe that was why.
Maybe she couldn’t face what she’d done afterward. Maybe it had always been the plan—maybe she had always known that there was no true escape.
It was strange to realize that she hadn’t known her parents enough to even guess why they’d done what they’d done. She’d spent so long trying to map her parents’ moods, but in the end they were mysteries to her.
She knew one thing for sure. All these years, she had struggled to tease apart her guilt and her grief, unable to tell one from the other. Only now that her guilt had been lifted away did she realize that there was nothing else there.
She might have grieved once. But there were no more ghosts in this house.
JJ was done being haunted.
54
EMMA
Now
“We need to talk,” Emma said.
“Do we?” Daphne asked, not quite pleading.
They were gathered together in the living room. Daphne sat; Juliette perched on the arm of a chair; Emma crossed her arms and stood near the doorway.
They hadn’t had a moment properly alone since the river.
“We’re not doing this again,” Emma said. “Here, with the three of us, we tell the truth. All of it. We’re not spending another fourteen years hiding from each other.”
“The truth,” Daphne echoed, and Emma saw something flicker behind her eyes. She was deciding how much to reveal—or how much she had to.
“Hadley didn’t kill Mom,” JJ said. Emma’s eyes cut to her. JJ blew out a ragged breath. “She killed herself. I was standing right in front of her.”
“You can’t be certain of your own memories,” Daphne pointed out.
“I know. But I think I’m right,” JJ said. “But I don’t understand why she would do it.”
Emma’s arms were crossed so tightly across her body that her ribs ached. “Dad knew that she’d collected that evidence, right? He had to guess it was her. Which meant she was in danger. She told Hadley she was afraid of him. If she was the one who shot him, and then she wasn’t able to face what she’d done…”
“We said it was Hadley,” JJ said.
“The police said it was Hadley. We just told them what we knew,” Daphne replied.
“But we have to—”
“Tell them what, exactly? That you’ve recovered a new drug-addled memory, and unlike the previous two things you were absolutely sure of, this one is definitely correct?” Daphne asked sharply, and Emma held out a restraining hand.
“JJ, you’re right. We should tell the police. But we can’t,” Emma said steadily. JJ gave her a wild look, uncomprehending.
“Why not?” JJ asked.
“It complicates things,” Daphne said. “And right now, we don’t need anyone asking questions they think they know the answers to. It’s safer this way.”
“He still came after us. He still murdered Nathan,” JJ said.
Emma didn’t answer. She looked at Daphne, and Daphne looked at her.
“Emma,” Daphne said. Her voice was tender, soft. “Rick Hadley is a very bad man.”
“Yes. He is,” Emma said. Her heart was beating fast, but she could hardly feel it. She felt outside of her own body, like she was watching the whole scene from above. “But he didn’t kill our parents. And he didn’t kill Nathan.”
JJ looked at her blankly. “Of course he did. He had the gun. He had the drive.”
“No. He didn’t,” Emma said. “He tried to get us to tell him where it was. Which means he didn’t have it.” JJ’s eyes widened. In all the chaos, she must not have remembered. Must not have put it together the way Emma had.
“Emma,” Daphne said again, almost chiding, almost pleading.
“No more secrets. Not between us,” Emma said. Not this time. “Tell me.”
55
DAPHNE
Now