Now
Emma and Nathan lurched from one task to another in the house. They found a broom and some old rags and started to attack the dust and grime. Nathan made a go at cleaning off the spray paint. It quickly became apparent that it was a losing battle, but he kept scrubbing away, trying one cleaning product after another. As if by erasing the words he could erase what they meant.
Or maybe he was just avoiding her.
She wiped the dust off the lid of the grand piano in the great room. She lifted the fallboard and ran her fingers lightly over the keys.
“Do you play?” Nathan asked. She startled at his approach, turning.
“Not well. And I’m sure it’s horrifically out of tune,” she said. She’d sat at this bench for so many hours, mangling one song after another. Sometimes because her fingers never seemed to move correctly, tangling and tripping over the simplest scales. Sometimes for the vicious pleasure of seeing her mother’s face twist in anger. “Juliette was the prodigy.”
She reached to shut the fallboard. It slipped free of her fingers and fell with a resounding crack, and she jumped back, hand against her throat and heart thudding wildly. Her fingers ached, a sudden pulse of pain that vanished just as quickly. She rubbed them against the thigh of her jeans. Nathan was watching her with an uncertain look. He was nothing but uncertain looks.
“I need to go into town,” she said, speaking the words even before she’d consciously made the decision. “I’ll go by the hardware store. I can pick up cleaning supplies that aren’t over a decade old and something to deal with the graffiti.” They needed to look into renting a dumpster, too. Nathan’s black bag hoard was getting out of hand.
“I’ll go with you,” Nathan said immediately.
“Cool. Good,” she said, though the point had been not just to get away from the house, but also from him and his nervous energy. Like I’m the only one with secrets, she thought.
They took a few minutes to unhitch the trailer from the car, leaving it in the drive in front of the still-locked gates. She checked her email again. Still no response from Gabriel about the key.
At the hardware store, Nathan split off immediately to go look for bolt cutters, to get through the chain on the gate. Emma wandered, staring at aisles of doorknobs and hinges, sinks and countertops, lamps and painting supplies. There was so much to do at the house, so much to repair, and neither of them had a handy bone in their bodies. They should just sell it. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to make the suggestion to her sisters yet. Not after the utter nonresponse she’d gotten when she’d told them about moving in.
All she had wanted back then was to have them with her. She didn’t know what had happened and it hadn’t mattered—the only thing she had cared about was keeping them safe. Keeping them together.
But Juliette had left the day after the funeral and hadn’t ever come back. Emma and Daphne had been split up. Then Emma aged out of foster care.
She’d had money from her parents—lots of it. That was, after all, one of the reasons the cops—and later the DA—had thought she killed them. The money was in trust until she turned eighteen, and on her birthday she donated all of it, choosing a charity almost at random. She’d thought that maybe that would finally convince everyone, but it hadn’t made a difference. It just became evidence of a guilty conscience.
She’d fallen apart. She hadn’t been able to take care of herself, much less anyone else, for months. Chris stepped in again, giving her a place to crash, finding her a job and an apartment. She put herself together piece by piece, and when she was close enough to whole, she went to find Daphne.
Daphne didn’t want to see her.
She hadn’t even come to the door.
Emma had gone to see Juliette after that, but the look on her face when she found Emma at her doorstep was enough to send Emma running back to the train station.
Her sisters had made it clear that they didn’t want or need her in their lives. Only the house still connected them. She thought with a pathetic, desperate kind of hope about calling them one last time, asking them to come, just to get the house ready to sell. To make peace.
To say goodbye.
But it was too late for that.
“Emma Palmer. I didn’t realize you were in town,” a voice said, low and alarmingly close to her ear. Emma spun. A man stood only a couple of feet away, a good six inches taller than her and broad in the shoulders. It took her a moment to place the crude angles of his face, now half-hidden beneath a thick gray beard.
“Officer Hadley,” she said. Her voice sounded scratchy. Her hand at her throat, she could feel the pulse in her neck, galloping.
“Emma,” he said, giving her an almost imperceptible nod. He wasn’t in uniform, just wearing a faded gray T-shirt and jeans. The memory of a cold gray room sprang up in her mind. Hadley’s hand smacking the table, making her jump. His voice raised to shout as she curled in on herself, tears running down her cheeks.
“What brings you back here?” he asked. She’d last heard that voice nine years ago. It had taken him that long to stop calling her on the anniversary and on her mother’s birthday, telling her that she would never be safe. He’d sent her letters, too. Unsigned, just vague enough that she couldn’t claim they were actually threatening.
She refused to quail in front of him as if she were sixteen again. She straightened up, lifted her chin. “We’re staying at the house for a while. Me and my husband.”
Hadley scratched the side of his neck. “That so? Well, it is your house. Though you ought to know—people around here still talk,” he said, like he wasn’t the reason for that.
“People can say what they want to. It doesn’t bother me,” Emma said, and realized that she was quoting her mother. It was something Irene Palmer had said many times, chin tipped up just like this, and it had been every bit as much a lie. “And if you have a problem with me being here, you should just say so.”
“It’s your house,” Hadley repeated with a shrug. “A nice early inheritance. Must be worth a pretty penny.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
A grunt. “Just saying. If you wanted to sell, it wouldn’t be a bad time for it.”
“It needs a lot of work,” Emma said darkly.
Hadley leaned in toward her, voice dropping. “You’ve really got no problem sleeping in the house where your parents were murdered?” he asked. “Where your mother bled out on the floor?”
Emma wrapped her hands around the handles of the basket she was carrying, heavy with paint remover and glass cleaner and other odds and ends. “Stop,” she said. It was barely audible at all.
“Your dad was my best friend. I swore I would bring the person who killed him to justice. You should know I still intend to keep that promise.”
He’d never let it go. All these years later, he was still sure it was her. She felt the frantic need rise up in her, the urge to speak. She’d said so much back then, so many ways. She had started out trying to protect her sisters, but at some point fear had taken over. All that had mattered was convincing him that she wasn’t to blame, but she couldn’t absolve herself—not without condemning someone else. And so in the end she’d only been able to repeat the same things again and again. I didn’t do it. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.
“Hey there,” Nathan said, coming up behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder, his standard affable smile affixed to his face.
“You’re the husband, I take it?” Hadley asked.
“Nathan Gates,” he said. He put out his hand to shake. Hadley reached out, his own smile sharp.
“Rick Hadley. Officer Hadley, when I’m working,” he said. “Welcome to Arden Hills, Mr. Gates. Your wife and I were just chatting. I’ve known her since she was a baby, you know. Her father was a good friend of mine.”
“Stop,” Emma snapped, wound close to breaking. Nathan gave her a startled look. She glared at Hadley, jaw clenched. “It’s our house and we’ve got a right to live in it. Just leave us alone.”
“Emma,” Nathan said, giving her a baffled and embarrassed look.
“That’s all right, Mr. Gates. Emma and I have some history. No hard feelings, Emma—and I’m happy to leave you and yours alone, as long as you don’t make your business my business. Oh, and Emma? Say hi to Gabriel for me.” He gave Nathan a nod—nothing for Emma—and ambled away casually.
Emma’s skin felt flushed. Her grip on the basket was so tight her fingers hurt and she wanted to shout after Hadley, but she had no idea what she would say—what words could possibly turn the fear and hurt inside her back on him as she wanted to.
“What the hell was that?” Nathan asked.
She looked up at him. “He … Back when my parents died, he…” Her throat tightened.
“I know you have history, but you were coming across a little Karen-y there,” Nathan said with infuriating cautiousness and an edge of humor she wanted to cut him with.
“You didn’t hear what he said,” she ground out.
“Look, you’re not exactly in a good frame of mind,” he said. He reached for the basket. “Why don’t I check out. You can wait in the car.”
“I’m fine, Nathan,” she said—and realized she sounded like she was about to cry. Which was ridiculous, since she hadn’t cried once—not finding out about the layoff, the offer, the baby, confessing her deep dark secrets to him. Except as soon as she’d thought it, it was like all of it hit her at once.
“Fuck,” she said loudly. A man at the other end of the aisle looked her way.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. That ever-present nausea was surging again, and the store felt unbearably hot. She wanted to get outside under the sky and take a breath that didn’t stink of paint fumes.
Nathan rubbed a soothing hand along her upper arm. “Hey, it’s okay. Go wait in the car, turn the air-conditioning on. I’ll go pay, and we can get out of here.”
She nodded mutely. She walked out into the sun, a hand over her stomach. Still flat enough she could forget she was pregnant at all—except for the sickness and the sore boobs and the fatigue that walloped her by seven every night.
She stalked over to the car and clambered in. They’d parked in the sun and the heat inside was like a solid thing. She got the AC going and leaned her head back.
If she were smart, she’d leave. It wasn’t like Hadley actually had anything on her. Let Arden Hills talk; she didn’t need to listen.
Except that she couldn’t put the genie back in the jar, could she? Nathan knew. And he knew that she’d lied about it, by omission if nothing else, which meant he had good reason to wonder why. Good reason to wonder what if.
Nathan arrived. He put the bags in the trunk and came around to the front. He opened the driver’s-side door, leaned down. “Want me to drive?” he asked.
They swapped places, and Nathan reached for the key to start up the engine, then paused. “That guy, Hadley. He said to say hello to Gabriel? You mentioned a Gabriel earlier,” Nathan said. Not making it a question—quite.
Emma looked over at him steadily. “He’s a friend. Or he was. He looks in on the house sometimes. Deals with the maintenance people, since he’s local.”
“What’s Hadley’s issue with him?” Nathan asked.
“Can we not do this right now?” she asked. Her voice cracked.
Nathan frowned. “Fine,” he said.
As they pulled away, Emma let her head drop back against the seat once again. She’d thought that they were well matched, she and Nathan. Her flaws balanced against his. But that was when she’d thought she would never have to come back to Arden Hills, or tell him about her parents. Or about Gabriel, for that matter.
Now the scales would tip, and tip, and tip, with each doubt-filled glance he cast her way.
Whether they stayed or left, it was only a matter of time.
“Crap,” Nathan said, just as they were turning onto Royal Avenue, toward the house. He smacked his palm against the steering wheel. “We forgot the bolt cutters.”
“It’s fine. We can leave the car on the road for another day,” Emma murmured. She just wanted to get inside the house. A strange sanctuary, but at least it was hers.
“What the hell? Someone’s parked in the driveway,” Nathan said, and now Emma straightened up. There was an unassuming silver car parked behind the trailer, but no driver. Nathan rolled to a stop with plenty of room to spare. Emma unbuckled and reached for the door handle. “Let me check it out,” Nathan said, motioning for her to stay.
“Hon,” Emma said, giving him a look, and he chuckled.
“Let me be noble and protective of my pregnant wife?”
“I’ll stand behind you,” she offered with a quirk of a smile. They both got out of the car and made their way toward the gate and the parked vehicle. True to her word, Emma let Nathan take the lead, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there. Then she looked past him. The gate was open—and walking toward them from the house was the lanky form of Gabriel Mahoney. He raised a hand in greeting from a distance, picking up his pace to a loping jog to reach them. A smile broke across Emma’s face, warm and unexpected, but Gabriel’s expression was neutral as he approached.
“Got your email,” he said, nodding to her, then looked immediately at Nathan, sticking out his hand. “Gabriel Mahoney.”
Nathan seemed to hitch for a moment before taking the offered hand and giving his own name. He snuck Emma a glance that she was pretty sure she knew the meaning of. Gabriel was, no way around it, gorgeous, with tousled brown curls that fall to his jaw and deep brown eyes. The cheeks that had been soft and boyish at twenty-one had given way to a sharp jaw and sharper cheekbones, accentuated by a close-trimmed beard. His eyes were hooded, somewhere between soulful and mysterious; she’d teased him for it, once upon a time.
“Sorry I wasn’t out here sooner. My grandmother’s been in the hospital, so I was with her,” he said, still talking more to Nathan than to her. The smile that had curled her lips faded.
What had she expected? That he’d be happy to see her?
“No worries,” Nathan said immediately, bobbing his head.
“Is your grandmother okay?” Emma asked. “It’s not—”
“Nothing to worry about, just a routine procedure,” Gabriel said, looking at her at last. “Still cancer-free.”
Emma let out a breath, nodding in relief. Lorelei Mahoney had been at her sickest the weeks before Emma’s parents died, but even weak from chemo she’d been unfailingly kind to Emma.
“So you two are old friends?” Nathan asked, breaking the awkward silence and looking between them. Emma adjusted her purse strap, shifting her weight.
“Sure. Friends. You could say that,” Gabriel said, staring straight at her. Then he turned back to Nathan, slapping a ring of keys into his hand. “Here. Keys to the front, back, garage, gate. Only thing missing is the carriage house—I don’t have a key to that. Daphne or Juliette might. I’ve already let the landscape company know you’re in residence, so they’ll get in touch next time they’re scheduled to come out. Sorry about the graffiti. I was going to get around to cleaning it, but it’s not like there’s been a rush without anyone living there.”
“Does that happen a lot? Kids breaking in?” Emma asked. Gabriel seemed to resent every time he was forced to acknowledge her presence. His jaw worked before he answered.
“Early on, just about every week. Nowadays it’s pretty quiet. Old news. Though with you being back, who knows? Lock your doors at night.”
“I always do,” Emma said, a little sharper than she’d intended.
“Well. I’ll leave you to it,” he said. He started past Nathan. Emma turned, staring after him.
“Gabriel,” she said. He stopped, looked slowly over his shoulder.
“Yes, Emma?” he asked, wearily neutral.
“I just…” she stammered. “It’s good to see you again.”
He was silent for another beat. Then he offered a single nod. “Sure,” he said. He opened the car door and slid into the front seat. Emma and Nathan backed away to give him room to turn, rolling over the grass and dirt as he squeezed past their car. And then he was driving away, the car vanishing around the bend.
“A friend,” Nathan said, voice choked with skepticism.
“Yes. A friend. Isn’t that what I said?”
“You weren’t looking at him like he was just a friend,” Nathan said. “Didn’t seem like he was being very friendly, either. What are you leaving out? Is he the boyfriend? The one who you were seeing that your parents didn’t like? The one they thought—”
“You mean the evil older boyfriend who seduced me—or wait, maybe it was the other way around—and helped me murder my parents so we could run away together?” Emma asked, venom dripping from her voice.
“That’s not what I said,” Nathan objected.
“It’s what you were thinking,” Emma said.
He was silent a moment. “He’s older than you.”
“Five years older,” Emma acknowledged. She rubbed the back of her neck. How could she have been so foolish as to hope that things would be sunshine and roses between her and Gabriel? After everything that had happened?
“So he’s my age, then,” Nathan said. She raised an eyebrow at him. He raised one back. “Just saying. Maybe you have a thing for older guys.”
“Five years is not ‘older guys’ once you hit your midtwenties,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“No, no, I like where this is going. I could be your silver fox,” Nathan said. She knew he was trying to lighten the mood, but that old frustration and fear wouldn’t ease. No matter how many times she said it, they never believed her.
“We weren’t together,” she insisted, voice rising. Nathan’s smile fell. His face clouded over. She stalked past him. Grabbed hold of the gate to pull it all the way open so they could drive through.
First Ellis and then Hadley had tried and tried to make her admit it. Hadley with threats and bluster, Ellis with understanding and sympathy. They’d tried to get her to say she was sleeping with Gabriel. That her parents had found out. That they had plotted the murders to get rid of the obstacle to their relationship.
She didn’t know how they’d gotten the idea that she and Gabriel were involved. She had been, naively, convinced that the truth would be its own defense. Eventually, they would realize they were wrong, and look elsewhere.
She had been horribly mistaken.
And Gabriel had paid the price.