Now
Emma slunk back in the door feeling like a teenager sneaking in after curfew. The window air conditioner was doing its best to keep up with the heat, but the inside of the house was still sweltering. Gabriel was in the living room, and when she entered he stood abruptly, concern creasing his features. “Where have you been?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
She couldn’t help the diseased laugh that emerged from her lips. “Not remotely, but I don’t think they’ve gotten much worse,” she told him. “I talked to Hadley.”
“Is that a good idea?” Gabriel asked.
“Probably not,” she admitted. She scraped her hair back from her forehead. “Nathan called Ellis the night he died, right before he called Addison. He said he found something that had to do with my parents’ death.”
“The flash drive,” Gabriel supplied.
“The only thing I can think, the only thing that makes sense, is that it had evidence on it,” Emma said. “My mom had it, and I know she told Chris she had something on my dad. Which your dad knew about, too.”
Gabriel’s hands were in his pockets, his stance seemingly relaxed, but his eyes were hard. “Emma. We know my dad came back right around when your parents died. He hated your dad. Had some choice words for your mom, too,” Gabriel said. “He had a temper. A violent one, sometimes, when he was drunk. Which he usually was. If he killed your parents…”
“We don’t know that,” Emma said. “We don’t know anything for sure.”
“We should talk to Lorelei.”
Emma hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“He might have told her something, when he came back. She might not have realized it was important. Just don’t tell her that he might have…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.
She thought suddenly and vividly of the portrait she had painted of him all those years ago. The question on his lips; the weight of responsibility already in his gaze; the raw youth of him. She wished she could paint him again the way he was now. Those two paintings, side by side—
But of course, there was no painting of Gabriel at twenty-one any longer. And she hadn’t put a brush to canvas in over a decade.
He gestured toward the back of the house, beckoning her to follow him.
The garden out front was orderly and formal, but out back Lorelei had always let things run a bit wild. Ivy snaked along the fence, sweet peas clambered up trellises, daylilies jostled with peonies for space. Lorelei sat on a cushioned bench out back with a sun hat on, squinting at a text on her phone.
“Your cousin is attempting to communicate with me through a strange runic language,” she said as Gabriel stepped out.
“Those are emojis, Nana,” Gabriel said.
“I’m aware of that. I’m not stupid, just old. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s gobbledygook,” Lorelei said. Her eyes tracked to Emma. “Emma. Goodness, you look terrible.”
Emma darted a look at Gabriel. His expression flickered with brief embarrassment, which she took to mean he’d thought the same thing, just hadn’t said it out loud. “It’s been kind of a terrible week,” Emma said.
“Gabriel’s been keeping me apprised,” Lorelei said. Her lips pursed. “I’ve made it clear that I don’t think it’s a good idea for either one of you to be spending time together right now, but you’re grown adults and I can’t control you. Now, I assume you didn’t come over to admire my garden, Emma Palmer.” Emma thought she detected a hint of a warning in those words.
“She wants to talk about Dad,” Gabriel said. Lorelei’s brows rose.
“Seems like you’ve been very interested in my son lately,” she said.
Emma shifted uncomfortably. “Kenneth was right. My dad was involved in some really bad stuff. And I’ve been wondering if it had something to do with why my parents were killed.”
Lorelei sighed. “If I’m going to talk about this, I’m not doing it craning my neck. Get us a couple of chairs, Gabriel,” she commanded. Gabriel ducked his head and emerged a few minutes later with two light kitchen chairs, which he positioned on the back deck so they could face each other. Emma sat at the edge of her seat, not wanting to look like she was settling in.
“Your grandfather, he was a stern man, but fair,” Lorelei said, looking off into the distance. “Hard, but not cruel.”
“I don’t really have fond memories of my grandfather,” Emma said. “I don’t think he knew what to do with three granddaughters. He gave us presents. Pink, frilly things he thought girls must like.” His wife had died young—when her father was a child. Her grandfather had raised her father on his own. Their relationship had always seemed more like that of an employer and employee, or maybe a senior officer and one of his men, than a father and son.
“I don’t think that every child needs one father and one mother to come out right, but they do need love. And your grandfather, whatever his skills, had no idea how to show that,” Lorelei said. “In any case, I don’t have to tell you who your father was.”
Emma nodded mutely, and Lorelei hmm-ed.
“Kenneth and your father were in school together. Them and Rick Hadley, and that other young man—your lawyer.”
“Christopher Best,” Emma supplied.
“Now, he couldn’t draw a stick figure to save his life, but anyone could see he was the smartest out of the four of them. Kenneth was the clown of the group.”
“Wait, the group?” Gabriel asked, surprise in his voice. “They were all friends?”
“Back then, sure,” Lorelei said. “But then the other three left for college, and Kenneth didn’t have the grades for it. When they came home, he expected things to go back to the way they were, but the others had moved on. He’s always resented that. I think that’s why Randolph offered him the job in the first place. He felt bad for the way things had fallen apart. And that’s why it stung Kenneth so much. It wasn’t just that his boss fired him, it was that his friends turned on him. Randolph fired him. Rick wouldn’t listen to him. And, of course, Christopher caused all that trouble for him.”
Emma’s stomach twisted. “Chris?”
“Oh, he sent those letters, full of ‘desist’ this and ‘severe penalties’ that. Convinced Kenneth the best thing to do was to shut up and move on,” Lorelei said. “Then the things he said about Gabriel.”
“He was doing his job, Nana,” Gabriel told her, looking uncomfortable. To Emma he said, “He and my lawyer had some sit-downs. He never suggested I did anything, but he was pretty skeptical about our relationship.”
“He didn’t tell me about that,” Emma said, lacing her words with as much apology as she could muster.
“You say you’re wondering if what Kenneth found got your parents killed,” Lorelei said. She gave Emma a shrewd look. “But you know perfectly well I don’t know anything that could tell you about your father’s business. You want to know about Kenneth. Whether he might have done it.”
Emma swallowed. “You said he came back while you were in the hospital. That means he was in town right around then, right?”
“Kenneth had a temper on him. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have tried to hurt your father for what he did, but he wasn’t a killer. He’d have decked him, but he wouldn’t have shot him in the head. And he certainly wouldn’t have shot a woman,” Lorelei said. “I see why you’d wonder, but you’re wrong.”
“Then why was he in town? What did he say about it?” Gabriel asked.
“I don’t know. I never saw him,” Lorelei said.
Emma frowned. “Then how do you know he came back?”
“Because he left me money,” Lorelei said. “He always left me money in my emergency stash, because he knew I wouldn’t take it from him if he offered. When I got out of the hospital it was there, so I knew he must have come by. He was a good man. He was, Gabriel, even if his demons got the better of him more often than not.”
Emma felt dizzy. Kenneth Mahoney had never been home at all. She’d been the one who left that money, and Lorelei had imagined her son coming home all these years when he never had.
“Look, honey. This is my Kenneth.” Lorelei held out her phone, and Emma took it gingerly. She studied the photo Lorelei had pulled up: a man about her age, with Gabriel’s hooded eyes and wide mouth, his chin up, mugging for the camera. She took in his smile, his short curls, the denim jacket he wore. There was a port-wine stain splashed across his jaw.
He didn’t look violent or angry. He looked like his son. “I need to go,” Emma said.
“What exactly is all of this about, Emma?” Lorelei asked.
Emma reached for the words to answer, but they slipped through her fingers like sand. Kenneth Mahoney had never come home. Lorelei had held on to the idea that he had returned, that he had wanted to take care of her, but it had been Emma all along giving her that false hope.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you about any of this,” Emma said. She stood. As happened so often these days, she wobbled. Gabriel immediately rose and took hold of her hand, steadying her gently.
Lorelei made a hm sound, looking up at them with a discerning expression. “You both be careful, now,” she said.
“Nana,” Gabriel said, and nothing more. His hand touched the back of Emma’s arm, ushering her into the house, and the contact made little zips of sheer awareness travel across her skin. Inside the house his hand dropped but the sense of touch remained. “Sorry about that.”
“She didn’t say anything,” Emma said.
“She said plenty,” Gabriel replied.
“I left that money for Lorelei,” Emma said. She could feel the shift in the air when he worked out what that meant.
“I came to the conclusion a long time ago that he had to be dead,” Gabriel said. “Figured he’d done it to himself, one way or another.”
“I wanted it to be him,” Emma said. “It’s terrible, but I did.”
“It’s not terrible. If my father was responsible, your sisters weren’t.”
Her throat closed up. She turned away from him, stepping deeper into the house.
“Emma,” he said, and there were fourteen years of things left unsaid hidden in those two syllables.
All the lights were off inside, and here in the narrow hallway between the back door and the living room, it was dark, all the doors closed. One step in front of her, sunlight slit open the shadows, a hard line of light she didn’t cross.
“I wish…” Emma began, but she couldn’t finish it. She thought of her parents, his father. Of Nathan, and how quickly he was vanishing into her past, along with all her other ghosts. How easy it was to let him.
Gabriel stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. Strange how strong the feeling was of him not touching her. If she didn’t look at him, they could have this intimacy.
“I know. Me, too,” Gabriel said.
“I should have left him a long time ago,” Emma said softly. “None of this would have happened if I’d just left him when I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?” Gabriel asked, in a tone that said he knew it was intrusive to ask.
“He chose me. He stayed,” Emma said. “And I chose him. So I had to stay.”
“Did you even love him?” Gabriel asked.
“Of course. Yes,” she said. It wasn’t the kind of love in books and movies. But it was the kind of love that she could have, in her castaway life. It was all she was capable of. It was all she had earned.
Gabriel’s hand touched her back. A soft touch, a whisper of pressure between her shoulder blades, as if he was ready to steady her if her balance faltered. “You deserve better,” he said.
“You can’t say that. Not when he’s dead,” Emma said, swallowing against something hard and painful in her throat. What was wrong with her, that she wanted to hear those words? What was wrong with her, that she wanted more than that ghost of a touch? But it was gone already, Gabriel’s hand withdrawing.
She turned toward him, breaking the fragile moment of intimacy. The shadows across his face made his expression difficult to read.
She thought for a moment of stepping forward. Of putting her hand against his chest, of kissing him—here in the dark where no one could see, no one would ever know. Where for the space of a few seconds it wouldn’t matter that her husband was dead, that she should be—was—grieving. If Nathan had been alive, she would have. But with Nathan dead, the betrayal was more stark, more unthinkable, than it ever could have been if he had lived.
“We can’t,” she said instead, and took a step backward, out of the shelter of the shadows and into the light.