Then
On a Saturday afternoon less than twelve hours before their parents will be shot to death twenty feet from where she sits, Juliette plays the piano.
The notes spill out, liquid and elegant. Juliette’s hands dance along the keys. Her eyes flick across the sheet music. She feels like she is racing along ahead of some great galloping beast, always one stumble from being trampled into the ground. She hears people talk about being lost in music. She is not lost in the music but she is lost to it. It is dragging her hands across the keys in that runaway sprint of sound that is always, always, on the precipice of utter disaster, until she crashes to the ending and lets the last note linger.
Perfect. Every note perfect. She would gasp for breath, except of course her breathing is as controlled as everything else, because her mother watches for that. She watches for everything.
Her mother beams at her, eyes dark and sharp as a hawk’s. “Wonderful,” she says. Her hands come together, almost as if she is about to clap, but they only stay that way, palms touching lightly.
Juliette smiles demurely. “I thought I was a bit rushed in the middle,” she says softly. She doesn’t think anything of the sort, but she must not appear boastful or overconfident.
“Yes, I think you’re right. Let’s start again from the…” Her mother trails off. Juliette looks over her shoulder, following her mother’s gaze to see Emma in the foyer, taking her shoes off. “Run through your scales for now,” her mother instructs and walks toward Emma.
Even walking through her own house she glides, every step choreographed. On days like this, when they aren’t expecting to see someone, she still puts on her full face of makeup.
Juliette’s maternal grandparents died when she was very young, but she visited them once. They had a nice house and a rowdy dog. The carpets needed vacuuming. They spoke loudly, and Grandpa swore at the TV when his football team was losing. They had this bizarre way of always touching each other—hands on shoulders, quick hugs, casually putting an arm around someone. The whole time her mother sat stiffly on the couch with a look of deep embarrassment on her face. Juliette didn’t understand then, but she thinks she does now—how her mother is so controlled because she is afraid that if she relaxes, she will slip up, and the friends she plays tennis with will somehow sense the electrician’s daughter under all that cashmere and silk.
Juliette’s hands move along the scales by rote. Her mother and Emma are speaking quietly; she can’t make out the words. Then Emma’s voice lifts—“You’re a complete fucking hypocrite!”—and footsteps stomp up the stairs.
“Emma Palmer, get back down here!” her mother shouts, but then she follows, her footsteps quieter but no less angry. A door slams. Juliette lets her fingers go still on the keys, frustration rising in her chest. Emma is always fighting with Mom. It would be one thing if she were the only one to bear the consequences, but it all comes crashing down on the rest of them—because if Emma isn’t perfect, Juliette had better be twice as perfect.
She hears the murmured tones of another voice down the hall. Her father, in his study. Who is he talking to?
She ought to keep playing, but her hands ache, and so does her head. She’s running on only a few hours of sleep. She knows she’s stretching herself too thin, but what choice does she have? At least with the end of school, she has a few weeks before she has to worry about keeping her grades up again. Soon enough, though, college will start. She’ll be commuting in—no way would Irene Palmer let her eldest daughter move away for college, out of reach. Which means nothing will change. She will be watched every moment.
She stands, stretching her fingers, shaking out her wrists. Dad is still talking. Curious, knowing she shouldn’t, she pads over toward the study door.
“That’s not what we agreed to. I can’t just leave this stuff sitting on my trucks. I’m taking a big risk here,” he says. A pause, as if the other person is talking. “Fine. One week. But it’s going to cost you.”
She hurries away before he hangs up. Her stomach feels pinched. She knows she’s heard something she shouldn’t have.
She starts the scales again. The study door opens. In his house slippers, her father walks down the hall without hurry. She forces her mind to remain fixed on the movements of her fingers. His hand falls to her shoulder.
“Beautiful,” he says. She doesn’t stop.
A scent twines around her, escaping from his clothes. Jasmine and amber. She knows the woman the scent belongs to. She’s seen her, in the passenger seat of her father’s car. At the office. At a restaurant in the next town over. Kissing his neck. Sliding her hands over his chest. Laughing like he’s the most brilliant man in the world. She’s young. Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Not much older than Juliette, Emma pointed out, when she whispered the secret to her, side by side in the tree house as Daphne slept soundly beside them.
Juliette keeps thinking of how beautiful the girl was, with her shining hair and her dark eyeliner and the laugh that bared her long throat. Juliette’s mother isn’t beautiful. She’s the kind of person you call beautiful because she is thin and has good teeth and an expensive haircut.
Everyone always says Juliette looks just like her mother.
Her father tucks her hair behind her ear. “You look nice, with your hair down like that. You should wear it that way more often,” he says.
“You should remember to take a shower after you go into the office on the weekend,” she says softly.
He goes quiet. She freezes. She knows that quiet. His hand drops to her shoulder again, his fingers tightening. She breathes quietly, not moving, not making a sound, and curses herself. She knows better than to provoke her father.
“Keep your nose out of my business,” he says. She relaxes a fraction, though not so he can see. When he gets truly angry, there aren’t any words or warnings.
“Randolph.” Her mother comes back into the room. Her hair looks mussed, like she’s been raking her hand through it.
“I was just listening to Juliette play,” her father says.
“She is a wonder, our Juliette,” her mother replies. She clasps her hands together. “Why don’t you take a break, dear? You’ve been working so hard. Go get yourself a lemonade, and then we’ll get back to it.”
Juliette murmurs her thanks. She slides out from under her father’s hand and crosses quickly to the kitchen. She pauses at the refrigerator, her hand out to open the door.
“Everything all right with Emma?” her father asks.
“Someone needs to get that girl under control. And apparently I can’t manage it,” her mother says sourly. “She was in the park with some older boy. Marilyn says she’s seen the two of them together several times.”
“What boy?” Dad asks. Juliette forces herself to open the fridge, get out the lemonade, but her attention is trained on the conversation in the next room.
“Gabriel Mahoney,” her mother says, like this means something important.
What is Emma doing hanging around with Gabriel? She knows Gabriel, sort of—she sees him talking to Logan sometimes. He’s soft-spoken, good-looking in an unusual sort of way. Has he seen her? Does he know who she is? Has he told Emma about her and Logan?
She tells herself to calm down. Emma doesn’t know anything, because if she did, she wouldn’t have been able to go ten minutes without crowing about it to Juliette.
It’s still quiet. Juliette’s skin grows cold. It has been too quiet too long, and her father speaks at last, but the cold is still there. “I’ll handle it.”
“I told you it was a mistake letting her spend time at that house.”
“I said that I’d handle it.”
“The last thing we need—”
“Irene.” Randolph Palmer never uses his wife’s name unless he’s unhappy with her. And Irene Palmer knows that life is better for all of them when Randolph is happy. She makes a dismissive sound, not quite ceding the argument, and her footsteps click toward the kitchen.
Juliette springs into motion, pouring a splash of lemonade so it looks like she’s already had most of it. When her mother comes in, she is downing a dainty sip.
“Let’s get back to it,” her mother says.
Juliette smiles. “I’ll just clean up first,” she chirps. Her mother nods. Juliette picks up the pitcher of lemonade with its heavy glass base. She imagines smashing it into her mother’s perfect teeth.
She puts it away. She walks back to the piano.
She begins, once more, to play.