Now
When Emma was next aware, she was sitting on the couch in the living room, holding a glass of water. Her mouth tasted of vomit. Her hands were red and pockmarked with the impressions of gravel, grit clinging to her skin. She was alone, though she felt like she hadn’t been a moment ago, had the vague memory of a woman’s voice and gentle hands steering her inside.
Because she’d fainted. Because …
Because Nathan was dead. She drew in a long, steadying breath. Her stomach heaved again, but this time she gritted her teeth and kept it down, and took a slug of water as soon as it settled.
Nathan was dead. He had been shot, and she needed to do something. But for all of her what-ifs, she had no plan now, only the yawning impossibility of what she was facing.
She needed to call the police. Except that here, Hadley and Ellis were the police. And this was all too familiar. But what was the alternative? Pretend she hadn’t seen? Hide the body? That was ridiculous. A notion born entirely of panic, of her sixteen-year-old self in the interrogation room.
Where was the woman who had helped her? Emma looked around, but the room was empty.
The room was empty, and Nathan was dead.
It still didn’t feel true. She took her phone out. Nathan was dead and she needed to call the police. They’ll think you did it.
The doorbell rang. The sound was so incongruous, the cheerful three-tone chime ringing out through the house, that for a moment she didn’t process it at all. She stared through the doorway to the foyer, mouth slightly open. After a long pause, the bell rang again.
Now Emma forced herself to move. She stood, walking jerkily to the front door.
JJ was standing on her front steps. Her mouth was pulled into a frown when Emma opened the door, and her hands were jammed in her back pockets. When she saw Emma, she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Emma. Hey,” she said, not quite meeting Emma’s eyes.
“JJ,” Emma said, and then wobbled alarmingly. JJ made as if to reach out and then snatched her hand back, rethinking it. Emma grabbed the doorframe. She needed to sit down. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you. To tell you—shit,” JJ said, and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know how to—”
“Nathan is dead,” Emma said, cutting her off, because it was suddenly unbearable that JJ could be talking and not know. That anyone could be talking about anything other than that fact.
“What?” It wasn’t a question but a statement of shock. Emma gestured behind her.
“He’s in the carriage house. He’s been shot. My husband’s been shot and I haven’t called the police yet because they’re going to think that I did it, because why shouldn’t they? I’m the girl who killed her parents in this house, and now my husband is dead.”
JJ looked back at the carriage house. Then at Emma, eyes wide with shock. “But you didn’t,” she said slowly.
Emma stared past her at nothing in particular. “It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll just tell them I did it. That way it’ll be over with faster.”
Her vision strobed at the edges. Her shirt was stuck to her chest, soaked through with sweat. JJ reached for her arm again. Emma wrenched it away.
“My husband is dead. I need to—I need to—” Her voice cut off in a sob, and this time when she swayed, she let her sister catch her.
JJ was the one who called the police in the end. They arrived with lights and sirens, filling the courtyard, along with paramedics who came purely to confirm they weren’t needed. They’d have to wait for the coroner now. Emma sat in the kitchen, feeling so disconnected she could barely feel the weight of her own body.
“Emma. Emma,” Rick Hadley was saying. He snapped his fingers, and she jolted. “You need to tell us what happened, Emma.”
When he’d come to the house fourteen years ago, his face had been full of sympathy. There was none of that, now. His expression was hard, with an edge of something like vindication, maybe even a touch of excitement.
“Emma. Who shot your husband?” Hadley asked.
“Hey,” JJ snapped. She was standing over at the side of the room, talking to the uniformed officer who’d come about the fireworks. “She’s in shock. Leave her alone.”
“Get her out of the room,” Hadley said, jerking his head, and the woman put her hand out to usher JJ away. Then Emma was alone with Hadley, who pulled a chair around and sat so close his knees nearly knocked into hers. He braced his elbows on his legs as he leaned in to look at her. “Okay, Emma. Let’s try this again.”
She tried to keep track of what he was saying. She tried to answer, as best she could, but her words kept getting tangled up, and it was like his voice was dipping in and out. She’d seen Nathan in the carriage house last night around eleven. No, she wasn’t sure it was him, but she’d assumed it was. She went out this morning and found him there. No, she hadn’t gone in more than a few feet. No, she hadn’t touched him. Yes, she had the key to the gun case. In the pocket of her other pants, probably.
Her words felt slushy in her mouth, like their edges had gone soft, and she kept losing the ends and beginnings of sentences.
She tried to tell him about the woman, the dog, but she couldn’t make him understand. He kept asking her where the gun was; she kept shaking her head. Which gun? There were so many of them, and none of them had ever saved anyone.
“Rick,” Ellis said. He was standing in the doorway, hand on his belt. “Look at her. She’s barely conscious. Have the paramedics looked at her?”
I’m fine, she tried to say, but no sound came out. Her vision was bright with spots. She bent forward, covering her face with her hands. Then there was a new voice speaking to her, and when she opened her eyes it was not a cop but an EMT crouching in front of her and telling her very kindly that they were taking her to the hospital, which seemed all of a sudden like a very good idea.
A couple of hours later, she’d gotten treatment for shock, dehydration, and mild malnutrition. She lay in a hospital bed in the ER, listening to a child crying two rooms down. Her hand hurt faintly where the IV went in.
JJ was outside on the phone. Emma could just hear the conversation filtering through the door. “I know. But I need to be here. I need to find out what she knows. I have to—Vic, I’m being careful. I promise. Okay. I love you.”
She stepped back inside, hanging up the phone. There were dark circles under her eyes, lines at the corners of her mouth where she’d been frowning.
“Boyfriend?” Emma asked.
“Girlfriend. Fiancée, actually,” JJ said.
Emma’s brow furrowed. “You’re gay?”
“Yup. Huge lesbian, turns out,” JJ said with a little awkward chuckle. She rubbed the back of her neck.
“Huh,” Emma managed. Maybe she should have been more surprised, but it wasn’t like she’d known anything about her sister’s life to contradict it. Whatever image Dad projected outside the house, Emma had known he was a raging bigot when it came to his family. Juliette had always been so perfect, so eager to please. JJ, with her tattoos and wild hair, was a stranger. But maybe this helped explain how she’d gotten from one to the other.
JJ sat in the chair beside the bed. “She didn’t want me to come down here. She thought it would just cause more trouble.”
“Smart lady,” Emma said, and JJ grunted agreement. “You don’t have to stay, you know.”
“I can’t leave you here on your own,” JJ said.
“Since when?” Emma asked.
JJ looked away. “Is there anyone I can call? Someone to take care of you?”
Nathan, she thought. She remembered when she’d been in the accident last year. A drunk kid in a borrowed pickup slamming into her in an intersection. Her head clipping the window, glass raining around her, a world suddenly defined by pain. She’d been on the phone with Nathan when it happened, and she could hear him shouting her name. He had gotten there while they were loading her into the ambulance, and followed behind. He’d never left her side. Concussion, broken pelvis. It had taken her several months to recover. She’d had to lean on him for help the whole time.
It had been draining, but he hadn’t complained.
But Nathan was gone. She needed to call his parents, she realized. They were in Virginia. Retired, Mom on disability. He was their only child, and she was going to have to tell them he was dead.
Her husband was dead and she didn’t have time for grief, because she was going to be a suspect. Maybe the suspect. She couldn’t be lost in sorrow, but she would have to perform it, because thinking clearly was both essential and would be seen as a sign of guilt.
Innocent until proven guilty was for judges and juries. Right now she was dealing with reality, and she didn’t have the luxury of sitting around hoping the truth prevailed. She needed to protect herself.
“I need to call my lawyer,” she said.
“Uncle Chris?” JJ asked, voice dripping with distaste that Emma didn’t understand. “Hadley’s best buddy? That lawyer?”
“What are you talking about?” Emma asked, giving her a bewildered look. “They were friends in high school, so everything he did for me doesn’t matter?”
“It’s nothing,” JJ said, shaking her head.
Emma sighed, leaning her head back against the pillow. “That woman. I can’t remember what she looked like.” She was a witness. She might have seen Emma coming out of the house, which could at least confirm her story for the police. She’d tried to remember details, but they just weren’t there. Brown hair. Teal shirt. A dog barking. And nothing. “Everything’s hazy. Or just missing.”
“It’s not unusual. Extreme emotional distress can cause blackouts,” JJ said. “And you’re already pretty physically trashed.”
“Like amnesia?” Emma asked skeptically.
JJ shook her head. “Not amnesia. That would be when you lose a memory. When you black out, you’re not forming memories in the first place. There’s nothing to get back, because it was never there.”
“Then I won’t ever remember.”
“Maybe some of it. But if it’s not there, trying won’t do anything.”
Emma considered her. “It sounds like you have experience.”
“Remember that thing about doing stupid amounts of drugs?” JJ asked. She sat on the bed across from Emma, raking her hair back from her face.
“Oxy. Benzos, maybe,” Logan had said.
“What do you remember about that night?” Emma asked softly. “We never talked about it.”
JJ looked at her steadily, but there was the flicker in her eye, the fear. “I remember plenty. I remember you telling us what to do. How to lie.”
“You were at the Saracen house with Logan Ellis,” Emma said. “But you took off. Where did you go?”
“We’re not doing this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t feel like being interrogated by my sister,” JJ said.
“I’ve learned more about you from ten minutes talking to Logan than I ever did living with you,” Emma said, a little sadly.
“Logan doesn’t know anything about me,” JJ shot back.
“But he was with you that night. He said he never saw you after the Saracen house, but he was lying, I could tell,” Emma said. It wasn’t a question. She wasn’t sure if she wanted an answer. “You know, I could never figure out if you turned your back on me because you thought I did it, or because you had.”
JJ sucked in a breath, her eyelids flaring briefly before her face settled back into a calm expression.
“You’re the one who said you wanted to kill them. You’re the one who fought with them constantly,” JJ said.
“You had a whole secret life.”
“And I never got caught, did I? Things were working, and I knew all I had to do was wait,” JJ said.
“Unless they found out,” Emma pointed out. “What happened to the clothes you were wearing?”
“You’re the one that hid them,” JJ said.
“Those weren’t yours,” Emma said. “You were wearing someone else’s clothes.”
“If you’re going to accuse me of something—”
“Why did you tell Vic you needed to find out what I knew?” Emma asked sharply.
JJ shoved to her feet.
“What were you doing at the house this morning?” Emma pressed, and JJ blanched.
“—going in there, so if you’ll excuse me,” came a voice from the hall.
Emma pushed herself up, brow furrowing. JJ’s head twisted around toward the noise as Gabriel pushed his way into the room. A nurse appeared behind him, not at all happy.
“Sir, I told you, you cannot come in here.”
“It’s okay,” Emma said, puzzled. “He’s a friend.” The nurse looked between them. Sighed. Walked away.
“I heard what happened. Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Emma said.
“I was worried about you. I’ve been thinking ever since you came over. Thinking about how I fucked up, not talking to you, blaming you for what happened. I was on my way to talk to you and I saw all the cops and one of them told me you were here,” Gabriel said.
Her heart thumped in her chest. Gabriel was here. All these years later and she still felt safe when he was around, even if it had never been true. “I’m fine. Just dehydration, mostly. They’re about to discharge me.”
“Where will you go?” Gabriel asked. She hadn’t thought about that yet.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Then I’ll take you to the house,” Gabriel said.
JJ snorted. “Yeah, that’ll look great. Going straight from your husband’s murder scene to your boyfriend’s house.”
“He’s not—”
“I know,” JJ said sharply. “But that’s what it’s going to look like. Come on, Emma. You’re the smart one. Be smart.”
Emma’s jaw clenched so tightly her back teeth hurt. Like she was going to take advice from JJ right now? “Just get me out of here, will you?” she said to Gabriel pleadingly. He nodded.
“Fine,” JJ said. “Just—don’t say anything. To anyone.”
“I never did,” Emma said quietly.
JJ hesitated a moment, and then strode out the door.