My mother had been upset when she heard about the necklace being found, so you can imagine her reaction now. She did not want to believe Emma had really been with me on the island. She wanted to believe I was crazy, even though I was the only person in her life who could still tell her she was beautiful and smart and perfect.
I started to wonder if I was out of my mind. But then, finally, after all these days of waiting, she went out of hers.
She waited for them to leave, and then she ran upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door. Mr. Martin told me that she was angry because if this story was true, then Emma was avoiding coming home, and that was very hard for my mother to accept.
That was all a lie. But I pretended it wasn’t. I pretended to believe him. And I held my breath.
Dr. Winter
It was the view from the window that gave Cass away. She had been so careful with her stories, with the details and descriptions. Every emotion, every reaction and interaction that she described was exactly as it would have been if her story had been true.
But the view from the window—that had been Cass’s only mistake.
She told them about that first night on the island with precision. The fight over the necklace. Hiding in Emma’s car. The headlights shining on Emma, lighting up her face as she stood in the sand under the moonlight.
Then the long car ride, the music playing. Parking by a small dock in the woods. Feeling powerful and clean like they could start over. And then Rick, the boatman, and the ride to the island. Lucy being so kind, but keeping her apart from Emma. She said she could see Emma through the window, across the courtyard. The same window Abby had looked out after they’d found the island.
She described what she saw on Emma’s face: She looked like she knew exactly what she was doing and like she was certain that what she was doing was the best thing anyone could ever do.
The problem was, Emma’s room was at the end of the second hallway. And all the windows faced east to the ocean. The window that faced the courtyard came from the hallway.
Cass could not have seen her sister from her bedroom window.
When Abby told this to Leo, he nodded silently and let her continue.
“There were other things, little things.” She explained about the counting, how Cass had not been in Emma’s car that night—if she had, she would have counted the time, she would have told them the minutes that passed while she waited. And the same was true of the birth. And the boat ride to meet the truck.
Then there was the affair between Jonathan Martin and the school counselor. She needed them to help rattle her mother. Because she knew what Abby had realized in that bar as she pictured the layout of the upstairs bedrooms.
Emma had never been on that island.
Cass
Hunter left for Hamilton College in the late summer. He left five weeks before Emma and I disappeared. He’d broken up with that pretty girl and apparently was enjoying his freedom, and the access he now had to women wanting sex. We heard all this through Mr. Martin, who spoke about his son with pride again. This made Mrs. Martin very angry.
Something had shifted in our mother after the incident in St. Barts with the suntan lotion that one spring over two years before. It wasn’t that she was suddenly attracted to Hunter, but rather that she became attached to the thought of him being attracted to her. This thought must have eased her mind when she felt jealous of Emma for being so beautiful and for just being Emma, the girl every man hungered for. I think her need to think of Hunter this way grew into an unruly monster after Hunter confessed that Mr. Martin had taken those pictures of Emma.
It was very subtle, but I saw it. I saw everything. When Emma and I came back from Europe that July before we disappeared, me from England and Emma from Paris, Hunter and Mrs. Martin had become very close. They had inside jokes and they watched TV shows together. Mrs. Martin was always waiting on him, getting him food and doing his laundry, and he was thanking her politely and she was saying things like Oh, it’s no trouble! As annoying as this was to watch, and as angry as it made Emma, it was otherwise harmless. It felt like one of those movie relationships where an older grandma blushes when a young man notices her as a sexy woman. People usually think that’s cute, but if the grandmother were Mrs. Martin, they would also find it annoying. Emma talked to me about it one night in my room.
It’s pathetic, Cass. She can’t even see that he’s just being nice to her to make me angry and to piss off Jonathan. You know she says things to him like “Why can’t you be as nice to me as your own son!” Hunter is an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole. He’s making us hate her and he’s making his father hate her and she can’t even see it! When he leaves and doesn’t give her the time of day anymore, she’ll have nothing.
Hunter had started college that August, but he came home one weekend in late September. It was starting to get cold; the leaves were beginning to change. I remember it very well because it was the weekend before we disappeared.
My mother was beside herself to see him, but he was doing what Emma predicted and not giving her any attention. You could see the confusion and disappointment swirling around like a cyclone when it hits the plains and gathers power. Dishes were slammed on the counter. Huffing and puffing came from her mouth. And she sat with her legs crossed and her arms folded so her chin could rest in one palm and she could look away with pouty lips and indifference as he told us all about college.
On Saturday night, Emma went out in her car to meet her friends at the teen center. Mrs. Martin made her take me with her, which Emma was not happy about. Mr. Martin had gone to play poker at the club. That left Hunter and Mrs. Martin alone downstairs.
He’d said he had plans to meet friends from high school around ten, so he could stay and help her with the dishes from dinner. Before we left, Hunter whispered to Emma, How many deli managers will you fuck tonight, whore? Emma whispered back, As many as I want, loser. Emma had stopped dating Gil months before, but she would never live it down, how she’d been with the deli manager.
The teen center was crowded. I found some friends and pretended to enjoy hanging out, talking about our teachers and movies and boys. But my mind was stuck on Hunter and Mrs. Martin. Hunter and Emma. I felt extremely irritated.