Now
Arden Hills was like a dead tree in a forest. Even as it rotted, new life had sprung up, feeding off the decay. Real estate agents and New York transplants took the place of beetles and fungi, that was all, and in a few years all that would be left of the version of the town Emma had grown up in would be a heap of rich loam beneath the new growth.
Outside of town, hobby farms cluttered the landscape, their chicken roosts decorated with faux-distressed signs reading LADIES ONLY or THE HEN HOUSE, decorated with shutters and windowsill planters.
“We could get chickens,” Nathan said, startling Emma. This whole trip, they’d ridden in silence, thin as the skin on a cup of milk left out on the counter and yet never broken.
“You want chickens?” she asked, trying to imagine Nathan scattering feed to a quartet of clucking hens.
He nodded thoughtfully, thumbs tapping the steering wheel. “You said the house is on a bit of land, right?”
“A little over two acres out back,” she said absently.
“We could do chickens, a vegetable garden. Hell, maybe we could get goats,” he said. She didn’t point out that he didn’t even own a pair of boots, or that his one nonnegotiable expense when they moved into the duplex was hiring a landscaping company to handle the postage stamp of a yard.
She didn’t point out that this was supposed to be temporary.
“Fresh eggs would be nice,” she said instead.
He grinned widely at her, and her heart thumped once behind her ribs, hard. This was going to work out. Wasn’t it? He wasn’t angry anymore. He was talking about chickens.
“Are you sure you know what you’re getting into, going back there?” Christopher Best had asked her. She’d called him three days ago, in the middle of packing up. It had been years since they’d seen each other, but she still called every once in a while. Kind of pathetic, that her lawyer was the closest thing she had to family.
“People in Arden don’t forget,” he’d said. But maybe he was wrong.
A few miles from the house, Emma directed Nathan toward the gas station and grocery store by the roadside. They’d need food, and she didn’t know if there would be basic supplies like toilet paper at the house.
They got out of the car, stretching limbs that had started to calcify on the long drive. Nathan laced his hands over his head and arched his back. His shirt rode up, baring a lightly furred belly, lean but without definition. Emma watched him from the other side of the car, falling without meaning to into a game she often played—imagining she was seeing her husband for the first time, as a stranger. What would she make of the scruff of beard on his jaw, his unusually long and elegant fingers? If they met again, would they ever have a second conversation?
She turned the game on herself, imagining what he would see. Thirty years old, with auburn brown hair she kept in a low ponytail. Skin that tanned easily and broke out in freckles every summer, a wardrobe of jeans and T-shirts and slouchy sweaters to throw over them in the colder months. She always thought of herself as nondescript, which was why it had puzzled her so much when Nathan showed such ardent and consistent interest in the beginning. She was soft-spoken, sometimes quiet to the point of paralysis. She had always been more comfortable talking to clients through the anonymity of the internet. She wasn’t good face-to-face.
“You’re a hard one to get to know,” Nathan had told her once, two months in. She wished that he had told her when he figured her out. So he could explain to her who she was, what she was like.
“Penny for your thoughts?” he said.
“Just looking at you,” she said, and he smiled, pleased at the attention. She tipped her face up to his to kiss him, and they walked into the store together hand in hand, the touch tender, as if each was afraid the other would pull away.
Inside, Nathan drifted off to peruse the shelves of novelty mugs. She grabbed a basket from beside the door and headed toward the groceries. Her stomach roiling, she shopped like a picky toddler—graham crackers and peanut butter, a bag of cashews, a loaf of bread, raspberry jam, cereal. She spotted a tub of candied ginger and scooped some into a bag, remembering vaguely it was supposed to help with the nausea, which had arrived with calamitous intensity, as if making up for lost time. She hadn’t been able to keep a proper meal down in days.
She added some frozen meals, disposable plates, and cutlery to the basket. At the last minute, she grabbed a bottle of white wine from a rack. It wasn’t champagne, but this wasn’t the housewarming they’d planned, either. Still, it felt wrong not to have something to toast with, even if she couldn’t have more than a sip. Nathan was waiting at the register, a pack of toilet paper brandished like a prize.
As the woman at the counter rang up the groceries, Nathan chatted with her, his usual patter of friendliness. He liked to talk to people. Strangers in line, on the bus, sitting next to them at the movie theater. People opened up to him. Told him about sick grandparents and empty bank accounts and cancer scares before they even knew his name. It was nice, having him around. No one ever thought to talk to Emma when he was right there beside her.
“ID?” the cashier asked brightly, cheeks rounded in a smile, still looking at Nathan. Emma handed it over. The woman’s eyes flicked down, up, down again, and the smile creased into a frown. “Emma Palmer?” she said, voice pitched too high.
“Can I have my ID back?” Emma asked. She tried to keep her voice level, but it hitched. Not this. Not again. Surely it had been long enough.
The cashier jerked, then shoved the ID back in Emma’s hand. She finished ringing up the rest of the food without making eye contact. As soon as the groceries were bagged, Emma snatched them and strode quickly for the exit, ignoring Nathan’s hand reaching to help with the load. She didn’t slow down until they’d reached the car and she’d shoved the food into the back seat. She stopped then, hand on top of the sunbaked roof, a breeze making the frizz at the edges of her vision dance.
She drew in a deep breath and only then realized that Nathan was asking if she was okay.
“Fine.” Gravel crunched under her feet. The scent of gasoline from the nearby pumps made her gut churn.
“She knew who you were,” he noted neutrally.
“Seemed like it,” she said.
“Is that going to happen a lot?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she snapped.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, okay. I’m just asking,” he said. “I want to know what we’re in for here.”
“Let’s just get to the house,” she said.
He seemed for a moment like he was going to object. But then he nodded and got into the driver’s seat. She slid bonelessly into the passenger side.
The house lay on the eastern edge of Arden Hills proper. Here the streets were narrower, with a tendency to loop and wind around blind curves. At the turn leading up to the river, Emma made a warning sound to get Nathan to slow, and he cast her an annoyed look—then slammed on the brakes as the road twisted sharply, leading up to a narrow wooden bridge with steep slopes to either side. A broken guardrail showed where someone else had made the same mistake. Rattled, Nathan crossed the bridge at a crawl.
“Thanks for the warning,” he muttered. She pressed her lips together, let it go.
In contrast to the farmhouses and scrubby pastures they’d driven by earlier, there was a manicured uniformity to everything on this side of the river. The cars were new; the houses loomed behind gates and ruthlessly trimmed hedges. Nathan wore a small frown, and Emma realized she hadn’t prepared him for this.
The turn to the drive was easy to miss, concealed among the trees. “Here,” she said softly, and Nathan braked, pulled in. He stopped in front of the cast-iron gates with their gaudy calligraphic P emblazoned on each.
Beyond was a long drive leading up to a circular driveway, an empty fountain in the center, and rolling lawns to either side, with sparse woods beyond the house. Hedges lined the lawns and their walkways. On one side of the drive stood a carriage house, its white sides and open wooden shutters exactly matching the house that stood in front of them. The house itself was a towering Colonial, a solid block of white two stories high—three, if you included the attic—with columns standing straight and proud out front. The door was black, and from this distance it looked like an absence, a void. Except for the gleam of the brass knocker at its center.
Emma’s breath caught in her throat. Home, she thought, and wished it didn’t feel true.
“That is the house?” Nathan said, gaping.
“Not what you were expecting?” Emma asked, unfairly, because she hadn’t told him, had she? She’d pretended she was surrendering the truth, but it wasn’t even close, and this was only the beginning of it.
“I thought…”
He had thought that this house would be like the others they passed. The cute little farmhouses and past-their-prime Colonials that dotted the landscape between the heart of Arden and here, at its outer reaches.
“Your parents were wealthy,” he said, neither statement nor question. There was a tiny gap between the last two words, like he wasn’t entirely sure which was the more polite thing to say. Like rich could somehow be a bad thing, rude to mention. Which she supposed it was, once you actually qualified. It was weird how often people got offended when you pointed out they had money.
“We were, yes,” she said. “I mean…” And she gestured at the house. All the proof that was necessary.
“Okay.” He wiped his lower face with his palm. “Okay.”
“I’ll get the gate open,” she said.
“Right.” He nodded reflexively, calculations running behind his eyes. She didn’t know what the house was worth these days. Not that it mattered, if Daphne and Juliette didn’t agree to sell.
She’d sent them each a message, telling them that she and Nathan would be staying at the house for a while. She’d left it at that, for now. Daphne hadn’t responded at all. Juliette had sent one word—ok. She had no idea what they’d think about selling the house. She had no idea what they thought about anything.
She walked up to the cast-iron gates. There was a thick chain wrapped around them, secured with a heavy padlock. She tugged the gate uselessly anyway, making the chain rattle.
“Don’t you have a key?” Nathan called. He’d gotten out of the car but stood behind the open door, like he needed it as a shield. She understood the impulse. She looked past him. The trees kept them mostly out of sight, but she could see the house across the street, and the curtain twitching aside in one window there.
“Nope,” she said ruefully. “I’ve got the house key, but that’s it.”
“Seriously, Emma?” Nathan said. The spot between her shoulders tensed up. “Who does have one, then? Someone’s getting in there to take care of it.” He gestured behind her at the well-manicured lawns.
“We pay for a service. And there’s someone who comes out to check around every few months. I’m sure we can get the key from him,” she said quickly, soothingly. “We’ll deal with the gate tomorrow. Just leave the car here and we can go around. It’ll be fine.”
“The whole thing isn’t fenced off?”
“Just the front here, for cars,” she assured him chirpily. She popped open the trunk, hauling out the bag that held her essentials.
“I’ve got that,” he said, moving to intercept.
“I’m not an invalid,” she protested, even though her limbs felt like rubber after the drive and all she wanted to do was curl up in a bed—any bed—and sleep for a week.
“Don’t be so stubborn,” he chided her, reaching to take the bag from her. This time she let him, standing back uselessly as he grabbed his own suitcase as well.
With Emma carrying some of the lighter groceries, they tromped off to the right of the gates. The imposing height of the cast iron gave way to a chest-high wall farther along, and then even that fell away, leaving only the rows of trees that provided privacy from the road. They trudged toward the house, Nathan dragging his rolling suitcase across the grass with limited success.
“Is that an actual carriage house?” Nathan asked, looking askance at the extra building.
“It is. Not that it’s seen an actual carriage for a century,” Emma said. “The hitching post is original, too.” She nodded toward the feature in question, metal trending toward rust.
“What about the house?” Nathan asked.
Her breath was coming fast, her heart galloping. She told herself it was just the exertion. That sickly-sweet trickle at the back of her throat, the lurching in her stomach, was just the inaptly named morning sickness. The way her vision narrowed as those steps grew closer …
“Hey.” Nathan’s fingertips bumped her shoulder. She jumped, twisting away from him, and his lips parted in surprise.
Crazy, you look crazy, she thought, imagined her hair gone to frizz and wild from the drive, her eyes wide, pupils panic-blown. She shut her eyes, drew a steadying breath through her nose. “The house. The house is—it was built in the 1980s. The original house burned down.”
“You okay?” Nathan asked quietly.
“Let’s just get inside,” she said.
Up the steps. Suitcases off to the side. Find the key. Get the key to the lock, hands shaking—“I’ve got it,” Nathan said, taking it from her. He turned the key. Pushed open the door. He looked at her, asking wordlessly if she wanted to go in first. She shook her head. She couldn’t. But then he started forward and she grabbed his arm, fingers dimpling the fabric of his sleeve, a breath hissing between her teeth. He couldn’t go in there. No one should go in there.
“Emma?” he asked.
“No, no,” she said, dimly aware that it didn’t make sense as an answer, that he hadn’t asked a question, really. “Sorry. Go ahead.” She eased her grip on him.
Still looking at her more than ahead, he stepped across the threshold.
“Jesus,” he said. She stiffened and strode in after him, a wild anger filling her she couldn’t explain, but when she stepped past the threshold she stumbled to a stop.
The grand foyer, her mother had called it, though it wasn’t particularly grand. A staircase led up to the bedrooms. The drawing room was to the right, the formal dining room to the left, and straight ahead the hall that branched off to the kitchen, the “great room” that hosted her mother’s prize possession—her piano—and what had been her father’s study. The gun case, which had been in the foyer for as long as Emma could remember, still sat in its place of honor. In its heyday it had displayed a little over half of her father’s collection of rifles, handguns, and shotguns, an inartful combination of antiques and whatever new weapon caught his fancy, but now it was empty.
That wasn’t what Nathan was staring at. His gaze was fixed on the wall to the right, and the bright red graffiti scrawled there.
HAIL SATAN, it said, and beneath it, MURDER HOUSE. She could see the tail end of another phrase scrawled in the dining room. Numb, she drifted toward it.
The dining room, with its blue striped wallpaper and wide-open space, had been an easier target. MURDERER and KILLER and PSYCHO and a sloppy pentacle, an attempt at what might have been a gallows that had been crossed out. It was all done in the same color, but a few different styles of writing, like they’d passed the can around.
“This is seriously fucked-up,” Nathan said. “We should get out of here. If there’s someone dangerous in here—”
She looked at him blankly, then laughed, surprising them both. “‘Hail Satan’? They weren’t even that creative,” she said, voice devoid of amusement. “Gabriel said something about kids trying to break in,” she remembered. When had that been? Last year, the year before?
She hadn’t told him they were coming, she realized, anticipation and anxiety twisting through her gut at the thought of seeing him again. He’d never left Arden Hills. Not even after everything that had happened.
“Who’s Gabriel?” Nathan asked. “Why would someone write this shit? You said—people think—” He looked lost. On the verge of panic. But she wasn’t anymore. She reached out and took Nathan’s hand, and didn’t drop it when he flinched.
“Come with me,” she said. She drew him away from the scrawled graffiti, the old oak dining table covered in plastic, the china still neatly stacked inside the antique hutch in the corner. She led him back into the foyer and then down the hall, past the great room and the dust-choked piano, toward her father’s study.
It was still there, a few steps from the study door: a dark blotch on the oak hardwood flooring. By the time she had seen it, the blood was no longer a vivid splash of red. There was no chance to imagine, even for a moment, that there was anything she could do to help her mother.
“This is where I found her,” Emma said.
“Who?” Nathan asked.
“My mother. This is where she was killed,” Emma said, meeting his eyes, because she needed to see every moment of his reaction. She needed to know where she stood.
His face creased with discomfort. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Right,” he said. A syllable to fill the silence. “And your father…”
She nodded past him. Nathan twisted, as if there was something lurking behind him, but it was only the empty hall. The study door was closed. “He was in his study, in his chair. He was shot in the head.” These were facts. They were cruel but clear, and she could speak them without breaking.
“They thought you did it,” Nathan said.
“The theory was that I had an older boyfriend my parents didn’t approve of, and we conspired to murder them. To get them out of the way, or for the money, or just because,” Emma said. Facts.
“Obviously it wasn’t true,” Nathan said.
“Obviously.” Endless rooms, alternately freezing and sweltering. Adults who tried to comfort her, frighten her, befriend her, threaten her. By the end they had given up on asking her any questions except, when they were done explaining to her what they were so sure had happened, to ask “Isn’t that right?”
But she’d never confessed.
And she’d never told.