No One Can Know(76)

Pressure in her bladder forces her to move. She nudges Emma until her sister sleepily scoots out of the way of the ladder, and Daphne scurries down. She runs barefoot across the lawn and slips in the back door.

There’s a set of boots in the mud room. Men’s boots, covered in gray dust. A shirt is draped over the edge of the utility sink. Her curiosity is like silt at the bottom of a stream, stirred up by a probing stick. Her needs forgotten, she drifts deeper into the house. There’s someone standing in the great room, hands on his hips, looking down at the piano.

A floorboard creaks under her and the man turns. Dim light falls over his face, illuminating the eyes as blue as hers.

“Hello, Daphne. You’re up late,” he tells her, as if she doesn’t know. He doesn’t look at her any differently from how he looks at her sisters, though he’s smart enough to add up forty weeks and wonder. That’s all right with Daphne. Having one father is bad enough.

“I needed to use the bathroom,” Daphne says. He’s wearing his boots, dusty like the ones by the door. Her mother would be angry. Past him, in the hall, the bathroom door is shut; light spills out beneath it. She can hear the water running beyond it.

“You might need to go upstairs,” he says, but then the water shuts off and the door opens.

Her father steps out, drying his hands on a blue hand towel, working it over his knuckles again and again. The skin on his hands is red, chapped. He sees her and an expression she can’t read falls over his face, unhappy in a way that makes her want to shrink down until she can’t be seen at all.

“Go on, then,” the man says, nodding toward the bathroom. She swallows and steps past them. Both men are silent, watching. She closes the door. Feeling like their eyes are still on her, she pushes down her pajamas and underwear and sits. Her cheeks are hot at the thought that they can hear her peeing, but she bites her lip and does it anyway, and then hurries to pull her pajama bottoms up again and wash her hands. When she steps out, they’re still standing there. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle and rise.

“Back to bed, Daphne,” her father says. There is a warning in his voice. She drops her eyes. More gray dust clings to the cuffs of his jeans. He rubs the towel against his palm absently, as if trying to scrape something off.

She walks back to the door. She can feel their eyes on her the whole way. She can feel that something has happened here she shouldn’t know about.

She lies down between her sisters. Here, with Juliette and Emma beside her, she’s safe, she tells herself.

As long as she has this, she will be okay.





39

EMMA




Now



Emma jammed her thumb against the button to end the call and practically flung the phone away from herself. She sat back in the chair, staring straight ahead.

What the hell had Nathan been doing calling Hadley in the middle of the night?

Why had he even had Hadley’s number?

Emma’s unfocused gaze went to the wall. She could imagine it perfectly. Hadley sidling up to Nathan. Hadley offering an apology for that scene in the hardware store, Nathan insisting that no, it was Hadley who was owed the apology. A business card slipped into Nathan’s hand. In case you need anything.

In case you notice anything.

In case you wise up to the fact that your wife is a nutcase who probably murdered two people.

Nathan had found a flash drive—the flash drive?—in the carriage house. He’d checked what was on it and immediately called Hadley.

Now Nathan was dead. And Hadley hadn’t mentioned getting a call from him.

There was one place she was certain she could find Hadley alone. His house.

She took an Uber. She sat at the bus stop down the street for almost three hours before Hadley’s SUV pulled up in front of the meticulously maintained two-story Craftsman. Emma waited another few minutes before she stood and crossed the street.

The doorbell had a camera in it. She pretended not to see it as she rang and stared straight ahead at the door, schooling her face into neutrality. Inside, a dog barked wildly, and she heard Hadley’s gruff voice telling it to shut up.

Chris would be incandescently angry if he knew she was here. Gabriel would call her an idiot, and she couldn’t deny it. But she wasn’t waiting around for the police to find the wrong answers to the wrong questions again. This was on her.

The frantic barking approached at high-speed, accompanied by the skitter of dog claws on hardwood. She heard the dog smack paws-first into the door and start scrabbling, followed by heavy footsteps and Hadley’s voice again.

“Goddammit, get off,” he said, and then he opened the door, using his body to block a caramel-colored, curly-haired dog that appeared to be constructed from springs by the way it was bouncing up and down. Despite herself, Emma had to suppress a smile.

Hadley was dressed in his off-duty uniform of a black T-shirt and jeans. He looked her up and down, then scowled at the dog. “I said off. Sit. For fuck’s sake,” he told it. The dog, which looked like something between a teddy bear and a muppet, finally sank down on its wiggling haunches. The strain of holding in its boundless enthusiasm made it quiver. Hadley took a steadying breath through his nose and turned his attention back to Emma. “What are you doing here?” he asked. He sounded genuinely baffled.

She steadied herself, planting her feet. “Nathan called you,” she said. “Last night. Why?”