No One Can Know(62)

“I’m sorry. Emma. I should have talked to you,” Gabriel said.

“You had every reason to hate me,” she replied. The sun, angled low among the trees, burned her eyes, half blinding her. She didn’t look away. There was nothing she wanted to see.

“It wasn’t entirely your fault,” he said, and his voice cracked. “That night, when I left? I drove to your house.” Now she did startle, looking at him with wide eyes. He rocked his weight back on his heels.

“Why?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

“You showed up on my porch with a black eye. Didn’t take much to figure out who’d given it to you,” Gabriel said. “And I knew it wasn’t the first time. I was angry. I went there to—I don’t know. I parked across the street. Tried to talk myself into going up to the door, tried to talk myself out of it. In the end I guess I came to my senses. I left. Came out here to clear my head.”

“But you didn’t do anything,” she said.

He shook his head. “The thing is, someone saw me. They gave a description. A shitty one, but close enough. It wasn’t just the alibi that made them fixate on me. It wasn’t just your fault. It was my own terrible judgment.”

“Why would you do that?” Emma demanded.

“Because I cared about you. I was angry,” he said. “And I was young and hotheaded and I wanted to be a hero.”

“You cared about me,” she repeated.

“Of course I did,” he said.

She set her coffee cup down on the small metal table beside her, the movement slow to give her time to think. “You put up with me,” Emma said. “I followed you around like an annoying little sister and you were nice enough not to tell me to get lost.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Gabriel replied. “You know it wasn’t. I liked having you around. I liked talking to you, hearing about your art. You were never imposing. And I never spent time with you because I felt sorry for you.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat. “I had such a crush on you.”

He laughed a little, softly, kindly. “I know.”

“It wasn’t exactly subtle. I hope it wasn’t too awkward,” she said.

“No. I mean, you were too young for me, obviously,” he said, and a half smile hooked the corner of his mouth. “But if you’d stuck around another few years? I don’t know. But I definitely never thought of you as a sister. I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch after, Emma. I’m sorry you were alone. But it wasn’t because no one cared about you.”

She’d wanted to hear those words for so long, but hearing them now, she struggled to feel anything at all.

A bird, small and brown, lit on the lawn in front of them, and both of them watched it, so they wouldn’t have to look at each other. Its head twitched, examining them with one eye and then the other. Apparently unimpressed, it flitted away again.

“I’m sorry. It’s a shitty time to be bringing this up,” Gabriel said. “I don’t mean anything by it. Your husband just died. I’m not trying to suggest anything, I’m just—”

“I know,” she said. “Please, God, don’t go away just because we liked each other over a decade ago. You’re the only friend I have out here. Or at all.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Gabriel said.

She wiped tears from her eyes with her thumb. “We weren’t happy, you know. I don’t think we had been for a long time. I tried to stay the person he married, but she was always a lie. And I think he could tell.”

Gabriel didn’t respond; she supposed there wasn’t a way to respond to that.

“Gabriel, I need to ask you something,” she said. She sat forward, elbows braced on her knees. She didn’t know what to do with the weight of loss inside her. But she could get answers. She could do something. “Maybe it’s nothing—maybe it’s irrelevant. But your dad, when he got fired. Can you remember anything else about what he thought was going on there?”

“I wouldn’t put much stock in anything he said,” Gabriel replied. He put his hands in his pockets, squinting off into the distance. “Dad was a useless drunk before he got fired. He’d been through a half-dozen jobs in half as many years. He’d always claim he was getting his act together and then fall apart again. When your dad fired him, he kept insisting he hadn’t stolen anything. That your dad was the one stealing. Nana believed him.”

“You don’t?”

“Addicts have been known to lie,” Gabriel said. His weight shifted like he wanted to pace. “He was borderline functional before that. After, he went off the deep end. Kept saying he was going to find a way to make your dad pay for humiliating him, but the only people he ever made suffer were his family.”

“And you don’t have any idea where he is now,” Emma said.

He was silent a moment. “Emma, Nana says that he came back right before … right when your parents died. Then he took off for good.”

“What are you saying?” Emma asked.

He rubbed his shoulder with his opposite hand. “He was never violent. But I’d never seen him as angry as he was at your dad. What if…” He didn’t finish the thought.

“What if he killed them,” Emma said. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but she couldn’t deny it fit. A grudge. A disappearance. If Kenneth Mahoney had come to the house demanding some kind of justice, and things got out of hand … But her father had been shot in the back of the head. No demands. Just an ambush.