There was a pot of flowers hanging from the eave over the porch. The curtains were tucked back. And when I reached the side of the house and cupped my hands around the glass, I could see a mug left out on the counter.
I took the key from my pocket, with the purple-and-green plastic woven into a patterned chain. A child’s key. My hand shook as I slid it into the front door, and it clicked. It turned.
Open this door, and something opens inside of me. The scent of vanilla. A candle left burning.
I stood at the threshold, but I didn’t step inside at first. After all this time, I felt a boundary here that I didn’t think I should cross. I remained on the other side, squinting at the photos on the mantel, just barely visible in the distance. The faces obscured, as they were intended to remain. “Hello?” I called.
I tried to picture her here, walking from down the hall, curled up on that sofa in front of the fireplace.
My hand was on the knob when I heard the noise from a distance—a car coming up the road. I fumbled in my purse. I could dart into the woods, make it back to my car, watch from a distance—watch and decide what to do. But something else, whatever thing grew deep inside me, for better or for worse, made me step over that threshold, locking the door behind me.
The scent of vanilla. A wisp of smoke. The floor creaking under my steps. Heavy curtains coated with dust, pulled back. The ghost of Emmy in this house, beside me.
I watched from the front window as the car pulled into the drive. The car was green, but I couldn’t see the driver from this angle. I held my breath. I could see her only in the reflection of the window as she exited the car. She’d let her hair grow. She was in a blue parka, tan boots. I closed my eyes and could see her just as clearly.
* * *
KYLE ONCE ASKED ME, when I told him, how I knew it was Aaron. Not if but how. He already knew all the details, the connections that could tie one case to the other. But that wasn’t what he meant.
Couldn’t Bridget have gotten the pills elsewhere? Couldn’t she have taken them herself? Well, sure, all of this was possible. Those slivers of doubt that it’s best to ignore.
It’s hard to trust someone’s memory. Especially after time. It’s all bogged down in what the person wants to remember and the narrative they’ve constructed. Sometimes, and I know this is where my old colleagues and I disagree, the facts don’t really matter.
Sometimes I don’t remember if I saw the pills in the medicine cabinet before I fell. If the water was running before or after. I don’t really remember if I tried to fight the darkness, if I was able to draw any blood, make any sound. Maybe I didn’t. And this is where things get murky, because what does it mean if I didn’t do either of those things?
I am sure of nothing.
But what I do remember is the hot fear, the simmering rage, the anger that coursed through me eight years later at the prickle of his name. His face in the mirror—that’s the clearest image I have. The moment I knew I was in trouble, before his words, before anything at all.
His face was how I knew.
* * *
THIS WAS WHY I stood at the window. For this moment. Of course she’d be coming home now. This was always her schedule—a creature of the night, returning in the early morning when the rest of us were just beginning our day. I heard her steps up the porch. Heard when they paused. The sound of metal on metal as she reached the doorknob; I imagined the links sliding through her fingers. She ran back down the steps, and I could finally see her clearly. She had John Hickelman’s watch in her hand, and she was scanning the road, then turning toward the woods, looking into the trees off to the side of the house—her face in profile. And that’s when I saw it, the moment I was sure.
I snapped a picture of her with my phone as her face was in motion. Her head darted back and forth, and she balled the watch tightly in her fist. She called my name tentatively into the trees, standing perfectly still, the breeze moving her hair. My name sounded foreign on her lips. Laced with something else. Fear, I thought.
She stepped back, and then again, watching the tree line as she moved. And then her hand found the railing and she backed slowly up the steps, as if she could see the world stretched before her. As if she could see the danger coming.
Not realizing she’d already welcomed it inside.
CHAPTER 38
When the door opened, I saw Emmy. For a moment, she was the Emmy I had always known. And then, suddenly, she was not. Or she was exactly who she’d always been, and finally, I was the one who could see it.
I caught her in profile. I saw Ammi, and Melissa, and Leah. All the versions of her and the parts I didn’t want to see. I saw her, truly, for the first time.
Her steps faltered when she noticed me standing beside the window; like her, I abruptly didn’t know what I was doing here. But then she switched on, nudging the door shut with her hip, smiling her practiced smile, like this was all still a joke, roles we were playing.
“Leah,” she said, my name rising and falling from her lips in feigned delight. So different from the way she’d said it outside, as someone else. She dropped her parka to the nearby chair, slid the watch around her wrist, the links jangling up her arm. She shook them again, making music. Her laughter was both familiar and foreign.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, stepping closer, like this was what she had planned all along. “You know what happened, right? I couldn’t go back.” She shook her head, the ends of her hair longer now, brushing over her shoulders. “But I knew you would find me,” she said.
I wanted it to be true, but I could also taste the lie on her, the desperation, see the many faces of her as she set out to frame her story. “Well, here I am,” I said, waiting, for once, to see where she would take this. If she would tell me what had happened. If she would wait to see what I knew.
She rubbed her hands together, fighting the chill, and glanced out the window. “Did you walk?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. Held the house key out to her, the childish woven key chain. “You left this.”
Her fingers, I noticed, were shaking as she took it. She must’ve known what else I had found in that box. I wondered if she realized I’d traced both her crimes, then and now.
“Are you staying?” she asked, as if I would be welcome.
“No, I’m just passing through town, here with my boyfriend.”
Her eyes lit up. “Boyfriend, huh? Who is it?” Slipping closer, so effortlessly working around my edges.