The house wasn’t haunted, she was forced to admit. She was.
“Mind if I sit?” Emma asked. JJ startled; she hadn’t heard her come in. She waved to the other chairs in an I won’t stop you gesture, and Emma settled in. She glanced at JJ’s drink on the side table and leaned forward, nudging a coaster across the coffee table in her direction.
JJ winced. “Sorry. Vic hates how much of a slob I am.”
“It’s fine,” Emma replied. She regarded JJ, a knuckle set against her teeth. “You were such a neat freak when we were kids.”
“I had to be,” JJ reminded her. Irene Palmer had very much been of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” school of thought. Your hands weren’t clean until you’d scrubbed under your fingernails and left your skin red. Owning anything you didn’t actually need was an invitation for a lecture on clutter.
“You never knew how to pick your battles,” Emma said.
JJ laughed. “Isn’t it the other way around? You made everything a fight.” It had frustrated her to no end, watching Emma turn every tiny thing into a war. The instant their mother suggested she do something, Emma had to do the opposite, even if she’d meant to in the first place.
“You broke yourself avoiding the smallest reprimand,” Emma pointed out.
“Yeah. And then I overcorrected,” JJ said, wincing. “One of the hardest things Vic and I did was figure out how to fight without hurting each other.”
Emma made a noise in the back of her throat. She looked out the window, her hands limp in her lap. “Nathan and I never fought.”
JJ bit back her immediate response. That maybe a fight was what they’d needed. Emma had mentioned the affair like it didn’t even faze her. The Emma JJ had known would have been absolutely feral if someone treated her like that. The slap had been the first glimmer of the old Emma that JJ had seen from her so far.
And that was her fault, wasn’t it? She was the reason that Emma had to learn silence. Learn how to hide. Emma had never bent a millimeter to protect herself from their parents, but to cover for JJ she’d broken herself completely. And JJ had done nothing to earn it.
“Guess we were both fucked-up in our own special ways. Turns out yours was healthier, though. It didn’t turn you homicidal.” She looked down at the glass in her hand. “I never said I was sorry. Or thanked you.”
“Was it worth it?” Emma asked. It wasn’t the question JJ had expected. Emma sat with her body pinched forward, elbows on knees and hands tightly pressed against each other. “I don’t mean you lying. I mean what I did. Tell me it was worth it.”
“I like my life,” JJ said. “Did my best to fuck it up for a long time, but now—Vic, and the apartment, and even my job … I’ve been happy, Emma. More than I thought I ever could be. Yeah. It was worth it.”
“Then I’m glad I did it,” Emma said.
JJ looked at her in disbelief. “How can you say that, after everything you went through?”
They’d all hid. And so none of them had been able to help one another. Each wrapped up in their own tale of survival, their own dream of escape. It had taken disaster for them to offer anything to one another, and by then the only thing they had to give was silence. No wonder they had scattered.
“What if I’d told them the truth? We could have told people what they were like. Maybe…”
“They wouldn’t have believed us,” Emma said. “It wasn’t the simple kind of evil that you can understand. They were mean to us. So what. Dad hit us every once in a while. There wasn’t any sexual abuse—right?” She looked carefully at JJ.
“No. Not me. I don’t think Daphne,” JJ said, revulsion making her voice strained. At least they’d been spared that much.
“He was obsessed with us being virgins,” Emma said. “Remember how he used to make us sit in front of him and he’d hold our chins and look us in the eye and make us swear we’d never done anything with a boy?”
“Yeah. That was when I realized I was way better at lying than I thought,” JJ said. She’d been terrified the first time she’d had to go through that little ritual after her interlude in the car. But he’d looked at Emma with far more suspicion than at her.
“When did you…？” Emma asked.
“Long before Logan,” JJ allowed. She wasn’t embarrassed by her past, but it was different talking to someone who had known her before—who had known the mask she wore.