“Oh, I’m fine,” Daphne said, with a determined kind of pleasantness. She set her purse down next to her on the floor as she took a seat in one of the armchairs. JJ walked to the other but perched on the arm instead of sitting in it, shoulders stooped inward defensively.
“So,” JJ said.
“So,” Emma echoed. She had tried to plan this moment, but every time she imagined it, the pieces fell apart in her mind. Her imagined conversations were braided fragments of words and anger and blame and confusion that didn’t add up to anything. “Where have you been?” she asked.
“You’re the one who took off,” JJ pointed out.
“I didn’t trust you,” Emma said.
JJ’s chin dipped sharply. “Yeah. I got that.”
“Let’s not start out being angry at each other,” Daphne said. She fidgeted with her sleeve.
“How long have you been in town?” Emma asked, looking to Daphne. “I know it’s been at least a week.”
“About that long,” Daphne acknowledged.
“You were spying on me.”
“Checking on you,” Daphne corrected. “I didn’t know if you’d want to see me. Or if I was ready to see you.”
Emma grunted. JJ’s rejection she’d always understood, in a way. Daphne’s was the one that broke her. She’d thought that the two of them understood each other. They didn’t like to get noticed, didn’t know how to play along. She’d been able to bear it, knowing that Daphne and Juliette had been estranged from each other, too. That all three of them had cut themselves adrift—or been cut. She’d been able to convince herself this was just the way that things were always going to be.
But now they were here together. They’d been talking. Sharing secrets. She was in the dark, and maybe she always had been.
“And was that what you were doing here?” she said, looking at JJ. “When you brought a bottle of wine to the house, were you checking up on me?”
JJ’s throat bobbed. “No,” she said.
“Then what?” Emma demanded.
“I didn’t know you wouldn’t be home,” JJ said. “I came to talk.” But she couldn’t look Emma in the eye.
“She went because we needed to get into the carriage house,” Daphne said.
“You needed to get the flash drive,” Emma guessed. Daphne looked almost pleased that Emma had figured it out.
“You dropped it that night—it was you, wasn’t it? I picked it up,” Daphne said. “Dad found me with it. I hadn’t seen much—at least nothing I understood—but he was angry, in that quiet way of his. The dangerous way. I overheard him talking on the phone, afterward. He told someone that one of us had seen, and that he’d take care of it. I didn’t know who he was talking to, but I knew it sounded dangerous, so after I found the bodies, I took it. And I hid it.”
“In the carriage house,” Emma said, and Daphne nodded.
“What was Dad up to?” JJ asked.
“I think I know. Some of it, at least,” Emma said. They looked at her quizzically. “He was involved in some kind of cargo robbery scheme. Moving the stolen goods. Mom knew about it. She was going to turn him in, I think. Or use it as leverage to get away from him.”
“I guess she finally got tired of him cheating on her,” JJ said.
“She was cheating on him, too,” Daphne said flatly.
“Are you sure?” JJ asked.
Daphne laughed a little. “Trust me. I’m sure.”
Emma thought of the bracelet. The makeup hidden away in her private drawer. Forever yours.
“Wait—Dad said one of us had seen. Did you look at what was on the drive?” JJ asked.
“Yeah. It was mostly numbers—ledgers, I think. It looked like two sets, maybe one real one and one fake? I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but there were photos, too.”
“What kind of photos?” Emma asked.
“I only saw one. It was taken from a distance, like through a car window. There were three men. One of them was facing away and it was dark, so you couldn’t make him out at all. But Dad was there. He had a gun. I think it was at the old quarry,” Daphne said.
“What about the other man? You said there were three,” Emma asked.
Daphne shook her head. “I didn’t recognize him. All I remember was that he was white. Dark hair, I think? And he had a birthmark. Like a port-wine stain,” she said, pointing to her jaw.