So yes, she’d reached for the gun. And then he definitely had been intent on shooting her, and then it was less a matter of fault and more a matter of who was stronger, wasn’t it?
No one expects a fat woman in a paisley tunic and Crocs to be strong, but she spent her days moving patients and she’d always stayed fit, lifting weights so she could tend to her clients’ needs without strain. She liked lifting weights—getting strong, without all that obsession about looks and thinness.
Anyway, Nathan wasn’t a strong man.
She hadn’t planned for it to happen, but it wasn’t like much good would come from getting caught, so she took the drive and the gun. She thought about placing an anonymous call—she hated the idea of Emma finding him, but she couldn’t think of a way around it. She’d walked by several times that morning, anxious to see if there were police cars out front, if Emma would be okay. When she’d seen Emma in the driveway, she knew she should have walked on, but she couldn’t bear to leave Emma alone like that.
It had been stupid, of course. Just like it had been stupid to assume that Nathan was done with the carriage house for the night. She’d known it at the time, and when she got home, shaking and crying and generally panicking, she had made herself sit and think. Think about what Emma would do.
Someone was going to have to take the blame for Nathan’s death. Daphne. Emma. Maybe even Juliette.
Emma had protected them once. Now Daphne was going to have to do the same. It wasn’t enough to not be discovered. She had learned that the hard way. For fourteen years, the lack of an answer had haunted all of them in different ways. It had driven them apart. There needed to be an answer. One that wouldn’t harm anyone who didn’t deserve to be harmed.
And wouldn’t it be lovely if Nathan could do this last thing for Emma? Maybe the only really good thing he would ever do for her. Provide her the answer, the exorcism, that she needed. Yes, that was the thing. Let the new problem solve the old one. It’s not like she hadn’t prepared, though she hadn’t been entirely sure what she was preparing for. She texted Rick Hadley’s new wife to ask if Tigger needed a walk today.
He did. He always did, and she was always busy, and had no idea what to do with a rambunctious goldendoodle her husband despised and which she’d mostly bought for the Instagram boost of getting a new puppy. Daphne had made sure to walk by when she was struggling with the pup, her own three client dogs trotting obediently beside her—her only three, which she’d had to do some wrangling to schedule for the same time of day, but it was about the optics. A sympathetic noise and a quick chat later and Mrs. Hadley had a new dog walker. Daphne had given her a false name, of course. Mrs. Hadley, who should have been less trusting given her husband’s profession, had given her a spare key. She was so busy, and so tired of coming home to puddles on the floor, you see.
They found the gun in Hadley’s garage workshop. White grip. Three bullets missing. As a place to hide a gun, it wasn’t bad. Not like anyone suspected the man investigating the murders, after all, and no one else went out there, not even his wife. Though if a neighbor had glanced outside a few days before Rick Hadley took a rock to the skull, they might have seen the new dog walker letting herself in.
The harder trick had been getting them to look in the first place. She’d known she couldn’t come out and accuse him, but she’d thought she might be able to nudge her sisters into figuring out enough to point the finger, and Christopher Best was bold enough to follow through. It had almost taken too long, though. It had almost gotten Emma and JJ killed.
But it hadn’t. They were all alive and safe and healthy—the baby was healthy. It wouldn’t grow up with a mother in prison. It wouldn’t grow up with Nathan Gates as a father, and thank God for that. Could you imagine if he had a daughter? Could you imagine if he had a son?
It was better this way. They were all together after so long. And the man who’d threatened them, kept them apart, was no longer a danger to them. It wasn’t like he was innocent. He’d helped kill Kenneth Mahoney, hadn’t he? He’d tried to pin the Palmers’ deaths on Emma, to stop people looking where he didn’t want them to. He’d destroyed the lives they should have had.
Maybe he didn’t deserve to die. Hardly anyone did, really. But some deserved it more than others.
And something had to be done.
56
EMMA
Now
Gabriel met her by the river. It looked less peaceful, now that she’d been in it, she reflected. The rush of it was less a pleasant ambience and more a demand for her return. But she sat on the old picnic table, wearing a jacket despite the summer heat, and watched the water tumble by. Gabriel approached quietly and stood next to her, hands in his pockets. He scuffed a foot against the ground.