“I was just listening to Juliette play,” her father says.
“She is a wonder, our Juliette,” her mother replies. She clasps her hands together. “Why don’t you take a break, dear? You’ve been working so hard. Go get yourself a lemonade, and then we’ll get back to it.”
Juliette murmurs her thanks. She slides out from under her father’s hand and crosses quickly to the kitchen. She pauses at the refrigerator, her hand out to open the door.
“Everything all right with Emma?” her father asks.
“Someone needs to get that girl under control. And apparently I can’t manage it,” her mother says sourly. “She was in the park with some older boy. Marilyn says she’s seen the two of them together several times.”
“What boy?” Dad asks. Juliette forces herself to open the fridge, get out the lemonade, but her attention is trained on the conversation in the next room.
“Gabriel Mahoney,” her mother says, like this means something important.
What is Emma doing hanging around with Gabriel? She knows Gabriel, sort of—she sees him talking to Logan sometimes. He’s soft-spoken, good-looking in an unusual sort of way. Has he seen her? Does he know who she is? Has he told Emma about her and Logan?
She tells herself to calm down. Emma doesn’t know anything, because if she did, she wouldn’t have been able to go ten minutes without crowing about it to Juliette.
It’s still quiet. Juliette’s skin grows cold. It has been too quiet too long, and her father speaks at last, but the cold is still there. “I’ll handle it.”
“I told you it was a mistake letting her spend time at that house.”
“I said that I’d handle it.”
“The last thing we need—”
“Irene.” Randolph Palmer never uses his wife’s name unless he’s unhappy with her. And Irene Palmer knows that life is better for all of them when Randolph is happy. She makes a dismissive sound, not quite ceding the argument, and her footsteps click toward the kitchen.
Juliette springs into motion, pouring a splash of lemonade so it looks like she’s already had most of it. When her mother comes in, she is downing a dainty sip.
“Let’s get back to it,” her mother says.
Juliette smiles. “I’ll just clean up first,” she chirps. Her mother nods. Juliette picks up the pitcher of lemonade with its heavy glass base. She imagines smashing it into her mother’s perfect teeth.
She puts it away. She walks back to the piano.
She begins, once more, to play.
13
EMMA
Now
Emma went to bed alone. Nathan never came back, but she woke to find a plate with plain toast beside the bed. The doctor had suggested she try to eat something the moment she woke up, before even sitting up, to combat the nausea. Its presence seemed like a good omen, at least. She nibbled on the edge, nose twitching at the scent of coffee downstairs. Nathan didn’t want her drinking coffee. The morning after she’d told him about the baby, he’d taken her mug out of her hand and dumped it down the drain. He’d memorized the lists of forbidden substances and was meticulous in checking that she wasn’t eating soft cheeses or glancing too intently at deli meats. The bottle of white wine she’d bought for toasting was in the kitchen trash, unopened.
She’d at least convinced him a cup or two of coffee a day was fine, but that didn’t stop the dark looks. If he’d made her some, maybe he was trying to apologize for last night.
Her stomach settled for now, she showered and dressed. In the bathroom, she looked through drawers still filled with her mother’s makeup—a dozen nearly identical shades of subdued lipstick, foundation, blush, nothing that might be construed as gaudy or showy or, God forbid, fun.
There must have been good things about Irene Palmer. People had loved her, after all. But when Emma thought back all she could remember was her anger, and the feeling of being trapped. Juliette had been everything their parents wanted; Daphne had survived by smothering the parts of her that weren’t, growing small enough that she didn’t stray outside the lines. Emma couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. She didn’t know which it was, only that every time her mother told her to sit still she wanted to run, every time she said to sing, Emma clamped her mouth shut.
Now she was going to be a mother. Theoretically. The chance of miscarriage still loomed. She wasn’t out of the first trimester yet, and her brief foray into reading online pregnancy forums had been a deluge of horror stories and tragedy. She’d been pregnant once before, after a broken condom incident with a guy she’d been seeing for a couple of months. She hadn’t even had the chance to make the appointment when she started bleeding. A pregnancy wasn’t a promise.