Now
The dusty silence of the tree house wrapped around Emma like a blanket. She couldn’t decide if it was comforting or smothering.
She had expected the space to seem smaller than it had felt back then, but it was almost more disorienting that it didn’t. The planks were leached of color, and moss grew in the cracks, but it was the same room, the same scent, the same sensation of isolation. You couldn’t see the house from up here. The window faced east and the door west, the house hidden behind a solid wall.
The sound of someone clambering up the ladder made Emma stiffen. Daphne appeared, levering herself carefully up over the lip of the platform. She looked around the small room with an expression of fondness.
“I’m surprised this thing is still standing,” she said, scooting inward. The floor creaked but held.
“Careful. It might not last,” Emma said.
“It would be kind of funny if we plummeted to our deaths at this particular moment,” Daphne said, and Emma’s lip twitched in what was very nearly a smile. “Are you okay?”
That was an impossible question to answer. “You knew the whole time. About Juliette.”
Daphne bit her lip. “I saw her with the gun, but I didn’t know exactly what had happened.”
“You never asked.”
“Neither did you.”
Emma dug her fingernail against the soft wood of the wall, inhaling the half-rotten scent of it. “I missed you. So much.”
“I missed you, too,” Daphne said quietly. “I wondered all the time if it was a mistake, staying away.”
“What do you think now?” Emma asked.
“That depends on what happens next,” Daphne said, and Emma nodded, understanding. “I’m sorry about Nathan.”
“Yeah,” Emma said raggedly. “I don’t like being spied on, you know. I wish you’d just told me you were in town.”
Daphne’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Emma, I should tell you. I dropped by once when you were asleep. I authorized myself to track your location.”
“Jesus, Daphne,” Emma said, eyes wide.
“I was worried. I wanted to make sure I could find you if anything happened,” Daphne said. She didn’t quite meet Emma’s eyes, but she didn’t sound apologetic, either. “I realize that you may be angry.”
“Angry? You broke into the house, you took my phone, you—I don’t like to be watched. Followed. Everything I do under a microscope.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Daphne said. Her voice was steady. “Everything I’ve done was to protect us. Protect you. All I’ve ever wanted is for my sisters to be safe.”
“Nathan tracked everything I did,” Emma said. “He was always so fucking suspicious, and he was the one cheating.”
“He was an asshole,” Daphne said. “He didn’t deserve you.”
“You don’t get to say that. I don’t get to…” Emma said, but she couldn’t finish.
“He’s dead. He doesn’t care what you say about him,” Daphne said. “I knew at the wedding he wasn’t good enough for you. You don’t have to pretend he was better than he was just because he died.”
“He was my husband, not some kind of villain,” Emma objected.
Daphne sighed. “I see a lot of death. Sometimes my clients are lovely people. Sometimes they’re terrible. Usually, they’re a bit of both. But the thing with the terrible ones is that there’s always some family member who wants to revise history. Make them a saint even if it means pretending all the hurt they caused doesn’t exist and doesn’t need space to heal. He was a bad husband, Emma.”
“So he deserved to die?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Emma’s head lolled back against the wooden wall. She felt sick, and for once she didn’t think she could blame it on the baby. “You know the worst part? Every awful thing he did is just another reason they’re going to think I killed him.”
“But you didn’t. We know that, and we’ll prove it,” Daphne said. “It all comes back to the flash drive, right?”
“But no one else even knew it was in there,” Emma said.
“Nathan called Ellis, you said,” Daphne replied.
“But he didn’t say that he’d found the flash drive. Just that he’d found evidence,” Emma said.
“According to who?” Daphne asked.
“Ellis, I guess,” Emma said, and frowned. Daphne raised her brows. “You think he was lying?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense,” Daphne said. “Someone had to know Nathan had it, right? And had to know what was on it.”
“You think it was Ellis Dad was talking to that night, on the phone?” Emma asked.
“Maybe,” Daphne said slowly, considering it.
“The third man in the photos. Could it have been Ellis?” Emma asked.
“I couldn’t see anything more than a shadow,” Daphne said. “Do you really think he could have been involved in a murder?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said.
“Emma?” JJ’s voice came from a distance. Emma frowned.
“Shall we?” Daphne said. At Emma’s nod she exited, and Emma followed at a somewhat ungainly scramble. She reached the base of the precarious ladder to find JJ walking across the lawn toward them, her phone in her hand.
“What’s going on?” Emma asked, getting a look at JJ’s face and knowing it was nothing good.
“Chris has been trying to reach you. He says he has bad news,” JJ said. “He said he needs to talk to you in person.”
Emma’s heart sank.
There was only one thing she could think of that he might mean.