No One Can Know(37)

“I won’t let my child grow up thinking I killed my parents,” Emma said.

“You’re pregnant,” Gabriel said. He ran both hands over his lower face. “Emma. Listen to me. Sell the house. Go live somewhere else. Have your baby, live a happy life with your husband.”

“I’m done protecting my sister. I need to protect my family, and she made it clear years ago that doesn’t mean her.”

“Exactly. You need to protect your family,” Gabriel said. “Maybe Juliette had something to do with your parents’ death. Maybe she didn’t. Either way, do you really think that whoever killed two people in cold blood is going to want you digging up the past? It could be dangerous.”

“Why does it sound like you know something?” Emma asked. They’d never spoken after the murders; their lawyers wouldn’t allow it.

“I know that two people died, and that if you’d been in that house, you’d probably be dead, too,” Gabriel replied. “I know no one in this town lets go of a grudge.”

“Ellis told me just about the same thing,” Emma said musingly. “He thought that’s why you helped me kill my dad. Because he fired yours, and called him a thief.”

“I’ve barely got the energy for my own grudges. Besides, he probably did steal something.”

“I never actually heard that whole story,” Emma admitted. “Just the version my parents told.”

Gabriel looked lost in thought. “Kenneth was always spending more money than he had, and it wouldn’t be the dumbest thing he ever did for quick cash.”

“Your father wasn’t a thief,” Lorelei said. Emma turned; she hadn’t heard the older woman enter. Lorelei’s hair was white, puffed out like a cloud around her face, but she stood as straight as ever.

“Nana,” Gabriel said. He sounded tired. Lorelei ignored him, looking at Emma. Her hand gripped the back of a kitchen chair.

“Kenneth was always a bit up and down with life. Struggled with his drink. Gabriel’s mother, God rest her soul, had about enough of him before she even started showing, and I don’t blame her a bit for kicking him out. He’d get on the wagon and get a job for a while, and then he’d fall off the wagon and we wouldn’t see him for a few months—”

“Or a few years,” Gabriel added.

“But he’d been sober for almost a year.”

“Seven months,” Gabriel corrected.

“He found something off in the numbers. He thought it was a mistake, brought it to your father. The next day, Randolph accuses him of stealing and fires him.”

“Something off in the numbers? Like embezzling, or something?” Emma asked.

“No, it was something about the weights. The weights on the trucks. I don’t know the details,” Lorelei said, shaking her head.

“Did he ever report it?” Emma asked.

“He certainly did,” Lorelei said.

“After getting hammered. He burst into Ellis’s office still drunk,” Gabriel said. “It’s not exactly a surprise Ellis didn’t take him seriously.”

“He could have at least looked into it,” Lorelei huffed.

But, of course, he wouldn’t have. Randolph Palmer was a pillar of the community, after all.

“Where is he now? Kenneth, I mean?” Emma asked.

“Probably dead,” Gabriel said. “He took off not long after that. He did that a lot. This time he didn’t come back.”

“That’s not true. He came back,” Lorelei said.

Gabriel looked surprised. “What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

She put a hand on his arm. “He didn’t stay, honey. It was while I was in the hospital. By the time I got the chance to tell you—well, you had a lot going on, and I didn’t want to trouble you with it.”

“Right,” Gabriel said, carefully not looking in Emma’s direction. Because she was the reason for that. It was after Lorelei got out of the hospital that Gabriel had been arrested.

It all came back to her family. To her.

Whatever her father had been involved in, it had cost Kenneth his job. Had driven him away, and so cost Gabriel his father. She shouldn’t be here, dredging up the past.

“I should go,” Emma said. Part of her wished that one of them would say No, stay. She’d wanted so badly to belong here, once upon a time. But neither of them said anything, and she walked back to her car alone.





18

EMMA




Then



Nine hours before she tells the 911 operator that her parents are dead, Emma sits in the sunroom, sketchbook balanced on her knees. The evening sun slants through the glass. The page in front of her is empty. Lorelei says one doesn’t wait for inspiration but hunts it down, lays a trap for it, lures it in, whatever is necessary. But Emma is mired, her mind’s eye producing only a faint gray haze.

She needs one more piece. Not another oil painting, she thinks, not charcoal, something else, something new to show her range.

Her applications are going out across the country, but she has her eyes and her heart set on UCLA. She’s never been to California. She doesn’t really care about California, actually, except that it is all the way on the other side of the country, and she can look at a map and imagine all that space between her and her parents. Lorelei tells her that their program is impressive, and that she is impressive enough for it. The distance and Lorelei’s words are all she needs.