“You saved me,” JJ said. Emma’s eyes lifted to hers. “They never pushed me too hard. And when they tried to make you sound bad, I didn’t fight them. I let them suspect you so that they wouldn’t suspect me. I’m sorry.”
“It’s what I chose,” Emma said, her voice a croak.
“I was the oldest. I was supposed to protect you,” JJ said. And she never had. All those years in this house, she’d told herself she was being smart, that she was keeping her parents happy and that it mattered. But she’d never stepped in to take a punishment for Emma. She’d never told her parents off for the way they treated Daphne.
Emma looked away. Tears shone in her eyes, but she blinked them clear. “Did you kill Nathan?” she asked.
JJ’s throat constricted. “No,” she said, as clearly and fiercely as she could, and Emma turned to look at her. “No,” she repeated. Emma’s chin dipped once, almost imperceptibly, and she felt something knit itself together between them.
“What happened?” Emma asked.
She hesitated. “I brought over a bottle of wine. He invited me in. We had a glass. We talked. I figured we’d chat and I’d find a way to mention the carriage house and ask if I could poke around. But I—it didn’t work out.”
She didn’t mention the second glass. The way he’d leaned in toward her and the way she hadn’t leaned away, because it was useful, and she’d laughed brightly and let her hair spill to the side the way guys always liked. She hadn’t realized things were going too far until he put his hand on her knee, in that way perfectly calibrated to be excused as innocent if she reacted badly. And she had reacted badly. His expression shuttered. He all but kicked her out.
She couldn’t pretend she hadn’t known what she was doing. But she hadn’t expected him to be so eager to cross that line.
“I left. Nothing happened,” JJ said.
“Nathan called Ellis that night. Told him he’d found something,” Emma said.
“That’s good, isn’t it? If Ellis knows what was on the drive—” JJ began, but Emma shook her head.
“He didn’t say what he’d found, apparently. Which makes it seem just as likely that it was something that would implicate me. Or one of you two, and either way, they’ll think I eliminated the threat. Or they could just ignore that and say I killed him over the affair. The woman he was sleeping with got threatening emails from someone trying to break them up. I’m sure they assume it was me.”
“Nathan was cheating on you?” JJ said, eyebrows raising. “Fuck that guy.”
Emma’s hand cracked across JJ’s cheek. JJ reeled, grabbing at her face. Emma reared back, mouth dropping open. “Shit,” she said. “JJ—”
“It’s fine,” JJ said, clipped. She rubbed her jaw. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
Emma cradled her hand in the opposite one, looking appalled at her own violence. “You’re right, though,” she said. “He was—he cheated on me. It started after I was in an accident. I couldn’t—it was months before he and I…” Her cheeks colored. “There was a lot on his shoulders. It was hard on him,” she finished.
“If I say anything, I’m going to get slapped again,” JJ said, unable to keep the disgust from her voice.
Emma winced. “Hell of a family reunion,” she said.
“We’re out of practice,” Daphne replied generously, and Emma laughed.
“It’s not like we ever got along,” Emma said.
But that wasn’t true, was it? There had always been those few stolen moments, when they escaped their parents’ world and found their own. Those nights in the tree house, shoulder to shoulder, whispering their secrets to the night.
Emma stood.
“Where are you going?” Daphne asked.
“I need to think,” Emma said.
“Emma. No one can know about this,” Daphne said.
Emma’s eyes tracked from her to JJ. JJ’s lips pressed together, but she said nothing. “We’ll see,” Emma said, and turned away.
* * *
JJ sat in the sunroom, watching fireflies appear and vanish again, lazy in their luminescence. She was breaking Vic’s rules again, on her second drink, Dad’s decanter on the side table next to her.
The house was so strange without them in it—her parents. She’d expected to find it haunted—not literally, of course, she didn’t believe in ghosts. But for all that things were largely the way she’d left them, the most curious thing was how absent her parents really were. All these years she’d had the sense that they were still out here, just hidden away inside these walls, only for her to discover that the house had been nothing but an empty box all along.