Now
Emma jolted awake that night to the sound of gunshots, impacts against the house. Nathan had his phone in his hand and called 911 before the fifth and final shot faded, and they sat huddled in bed until the police knocked on the door. Not Hadley or Ellis this time; a younger, female officer, blond. She was sympathetic as she showed them the bursts of soot against the siding and windows, the discarded scraps of cardboard and plastic. Fireworks, not bullets.
The next morning, Nathan installed the cameras.
Emma knelt in the garden bed midmorning, pulling up weeds and tossing them into the bucket at her side. Sweat trickled down her neck, slipping beneath the collar of her shirt. Above the front door, the blank black eye of the camera stared down at her. She kept glancing at it. Ever since Nathan had pulled his little trick with the phone tracker, she’d felt like she was being watched at all times. It should have been easy to feel swallowed up in that big house, but she imagined him monitoring the sound of her footsteps and felt his attention on her, inescapable.
The sound of a car turning into the drive brought her twisting around. It was a blue hybrid, nearly new. JJ was behind the wheel. She parked ten feet from Emma and got out, shading her eyes. Emma stayed where she was, kneeling in the dirt.
“I come in peace,” she said. She pulled something from her pocket and held it up pinched between her thumb and forefinger. A key. “Nathan asked if I had keys to the carriage house. Asked me to bring them by.”
“He’s not here,” Emma said. It seemed like he never was anymore. She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. As she rose, spots appeared in her vision. She wobbled.
“Whoa,” JJ said, striding quickly over to her and reaching to take her arm. Emma yanked it away, which only made her almost topple over again, dizziness sweeping over her. JJ reached for her arm again and this time snagged it, keeping her steady. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Emma snapped, except that her vision wasn’t clearing.
“Come here. Put your head between your legs,” JJ said, guiding her firmly over to the steps. Emma sank down in the shade, not out of obedience but because if she didn’t, she was going to fall over anyway. JJ left her there, reappearing moments later with a glass of water. JJ hovered awkwardly as Emma took a sip, then handed it back.
“Thanks.”
“You should be careful. Sunstroke’s no joke,” JJ said with the fleeting edge of a smile. Emma grunted. She levered herself up to her feet, but it was a mistake—her knees went rubbery immediately.
“Help me inside, will you?” she asked.
JJ looped an arm around Emma’s waist, silently helping her up the steps and through the door. With the window AC they’d bought on credit, the house was slightly more tolerable than the outside, and JJ helped her into the living room and onto the couch.
A headache pounded behind Emma’s eyes. She tried to sip the water, but it only turned her stomach again. She hated that JJ was here, seeing her like this.
“This is your fault,” she muttered, splaying her hand against her abdomen.
“How is this my fault?” JJ asked, affronted.
Emma waved a hand. “Not you. The spawn.”
It still felt more like a flu than a future. A collection of symptoms that would fade. Nathan didn’t talk about the baby or the future, either. He used to—lying awake at night, fantasizing about the children they would have and the lives they would live. But as soon as it became real, he’d gone quiet.
“Nathan mentioned,” JJ said. “Congratulations.”
“Yeah. Well. I can’t possibly be a worse parent than ours were, right?” Emma asked. JJ snorted, and their eyes met in a brief moment of understanding. Then JJ’s expression shuttered again.
“When’s the last time you ate anything?” JJ asked.
“Toast when I woke up. Nibbled on some crackers,” Emma said. “Haven’t managed anything else.” It wasn’t even that she felt sick, exactly, just that her body seemed physically incapable of allowing her to bring food to her mouth. Like it could tell that she was somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere unsafe.
She eased herself upright. JJ stiffened, but the wooziness had passed. Emma moved gingerly deeper into the house. “Did you need anything else?” she asked.
“Just dropping off the keys,” JJ said, trailing behind. In the great room she halted, looking around. “I didn’t really stop to see anything the other day. It’s weird, being in here again.”
“Did you ever come back?” Emma asked.
“Hell no,” JJ said. “Did you?”
Emma shook her head. “No reason to.”
JJ drifted toward the right-hand hallway, which led to the living room and their father’s study. The hall where they’d found their mother. “It was here,” she said, looking down at the stain.
Emma joined her, setting her glass on the closed lid of the piano as she passed. “We tried to get the stain out, but it looks like we’re going to have to patch the whole section of floor,” she said.
Juliette rubbed a toe idly against the edge of the dark blotch. “And Dad was…” She moved forward with an unhurried kind of purpose. She pushed open the office door but stayed back. Emma joined her.
The room was arranged around that spot, now bare, from which he ruled his kingdom. They hadn’t been allowed in here without explicit invitation. Now JJ stepped cautiously over the threshold.
“He was facing away from the door,” she said. She lifted her hand, almost as if she were holding a gun. Barrel to the back of the head, boom. She seemed to realize what she was doing and dropped her hand, then walked quickly over to the wall and set her fingers against a gouge in the wainscotting. “This must be where the bullet lodged.”
“I—I don’t know,” Emma stammered. She’d never thought about where the bullet had gone, when its work was done.
JJ looked back at her, expression unreadable. “It entered the back left side of his head and exited at the front right near the temple, then lodged in the wall.”
“I never wanted to know the details,” Emma said. The more she knew, the more she worried she would find out. And she hadn’t wanted the truth. As soon as she was sure, it would stop being a matter of protecting her sisters. It would start to be a question of protecting just one. The equation stopped balancing.
“He didn’t see it coming,” JJ said. There was a strange mix of challenge and compassion in her voice. Her eyes were locked on Emma. “It would have been instantaneous, for him.”
“But not Mom?”
“She was shot in the chest,” JJ said. “Close range. The bullet only nicked the heart, so it took a minute or two for her to bleed out. A minute or two isn’t that long, though.” She sounded like she’d thought about it a lot. She sounded like she didn’t quite believe that part.
“She must have heard the gunshot and come downstairs,” Emma said.
“Must have,” JJ said, not breaking eye contact. Must have, as if she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t.
“You sneaked out to meet Logan that night, didn’t you?” Emma asked. JJ startled.
“Who told you that?”
“So it’s true.”
Car tires crunched on gravel. JJ didn’t answer, looking at her steadily. “Sounds like your husband’s home,” JJ said.
“Were you at the Saracen house that night? Where did you go?” Emma asked.
Juliette let out a breath between her teeth. “It’s ancient history. It doesn’t matter.”
The front door opened. “Why are you so worried about people asking questions, Juliette?” Emma asked.
Nathan stepped into the doorway. He was carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder that Emma hadn’t seen before. He looked between the two of them, clearly taken aback. “Oh. Hey, JJ,” he said.
“She brought the carriage house keys. Like you asked,” Emma said, words clipped.
Nathan smiled. “Great! Thanks for that. It’s been driving me crazy, not being able to see what’s out there.”
“Probably just Dad’s tools and a good way to get tetanus,” JJ said with a shrug. She glanced at Emma. “There wouldn’t be anything interesting out there.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Emma said. Not in the carriage house.
“Still. Could be buried treasure,” Nathan said cheerfully.
“Have at it.” JJ tossed Nathan the keys.
He caught them deftly in the air and stepped aside to let her pass. As her footsteps moved off down the hall, he brandished the key at Emma. “Now we don’t have to break down the door.”
“You called JJ about the key?” Emma said quietly.
His affable expression darkened. “Yes. Gabriel—your good friend Gabriel, remember him?—did say she might have one, so yes, I called her.”
“You didn’t tell me you were going to, that’s all,” Emma said.
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“You didn’t think it was worth mentioning that you were in touch with my estranged sister? My estranged sister who I just told you I was having trouble with,” Emma said calmly, teeth clenched.
“It’s not like we were conspiring against you,” Nathan said. “I just want to get into the fucking carriage house.”
“It’s not a big deal, except that you didn’t tell me you were doing it.”
“Because I thought you’d be pissed,” Nathan said.
“Yeah. I would. I am,” Emma said. “Jesus, Nathan, come on. I pour out my heart to you about how horrible things have been since she took off and you, what, go onto my phone to find her number?”
“You’re acting like I was sneaking around on you,” Nathan said, rolling his eyes, “when you’re making secret visits to your ex.”
“Gabriel is not my ex, and it wasn’t a secret, I just—”
“Just didn’t happen to mention it,” Nathan said.
“I’m not the only one with secrets,” Emma said quietly.
“You can’t hold the mortgage thing over me forever,” he said. “I screwed up. I haven’t kept lying to you about it.”
“I wasn’t talking about the mortgage,” she replied, voice barely audible. He went quiet. His hand tightened at his side, knuckles flexing.
Only then did she hear the front door shut and realize that JJ hadn’t left yet.
Nathan looked over his shoulder, realizing the same thing, and looked back at her with anger in his eyes. “You couldn’t have waited two minutes to lay into me?” he asked.
“I didn’t think I was laying into you,” Emma said. His anger was like a pressure in the air, making it hard to breathe.
“I’m trying to do what’s best for us. Trying to deal with this shitty hand you’ve left us with,” Nathan said. “This fucking house, this fucking town.” He took the satchel off his shoulder and slammed it down on the kitchen table.
“What is that?” Emma asked.
“Protection. Since a couple of dinky little cameras aren’t going to do shit,” Nathan said. He opened the satchel and pulled out a small zippered pouch. He unzipped it to reveal a handgun, black and angular—a Glock, her memory supplied.
“Where did you get that?” Emma asked, not moving or taking her eyes off the gun, feeling like an eel was sliding around in her guts.
“I found the bill for a storage place the trust has been paying for. It turns out that’s where they stored your dad’s guns. Plus some other stuff that could be valuable,” Nathan said. “I’ve got the rest out in the car.”
“You—” She took a breath. Tried to stay calm. “What exactly are you planning to do? Shoot at the next couple of kids to throw rocks at the windows?” Emma asked, thinking of Abraham and Travis, of shadowy forms in the dark and a trigger pulled in haste and panic.
“What if it isn’t just kids and fireworks next time?” Nathan asked.
Bullet to the back of the head. She tasted something unpleasant in the back of her mouth. “You don’t have a permit.”
“I’ll get one,” Nathan said with a shrug.
“No,” Emma said.
“They’re our property,” Nathan said, as if that was her objection.
“Nathan, I do not want those things in this house.”
“I’m not going to sit here defenseless,” Nathan said.
“Get rid of them,” she said, voice flat and angry. And before Nathan could argue, she turned and marched out of the room.