“You’re saying that like you want absolution,” Lorelei said. “You’re not going to get it from me. I’m not going to tell you you’re a horrible person, either, if that’s what you’re looking for. You share some blame for what happened, but hardly all of it.”
“I never intended anything to happen to Gabriel. I didn’t think—”
“That much was clear,” Lorelei said. She pursed her lips, then gestured over her shoulder. “He’s inside, if you want to talk to him.” Emma nodded gratefully and scaled the porch. Lorelei turned back to her phone.
Gabriel was in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. He looked up when Emma entered, but he didn’t look surprised, exactly. More like resigned. “I told you I didn’t want to talk to you again,” he said.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Emma said. Seeing him was like a fist around her heart. She had missed him, even while she’d convinced herself she didn’t.
He shut the dishwasher and wiped his hands on a dish towel, leaning back against the counter. “What do you want?”
“I just have a couple of questions. Then I swear, I will leave you alone and never bother you again,” she said.
“All right.” He crossed his arms. “What do you want to know, Emma Palmer?”
“You used to go out to the Saracen house,” she said.
“Now and then. Not really my scene, though,” he said. “You said this was about Juliette.”
She nodded. “Did you ever see her there?” He hesitated. “It’s important,” she pressed.
“I didn’t know who she was at the time,” he said. “But yeah. I saw her there once or twice. I got the impression…” He trailed off. Rubbed a hand along his jaw. “I got the impression she and Logan Ellis were hooking up.”
“Hooking up?” Emma said, incredulous. It wasn’t a phrase she could imagine applying to her prim and proper sister. The Juliette who had been in her kitchen two days ago, maybe, but the one who practiced her concertos two hours a day and never missed a day of Sunday school?
She tried to picture Logan Ellis in her mind. He’d had the good fortune to take after his mother; he had always been good-looking, if a bit generic. He had long blond hair and eyes that looked both lazy and interested, and he always held himself in a relaxed way, disengaged and cooler for it. He’d been out of high school by the time Juliette started. Twenty-four, twenty-five the year of the murders.
“Do you and Logan still talk?” Emma asked.
He made a dryly amused sound. “No, Emma. After his father tried to have me arrested for double murder, a certain distance arose between us.” He shook his head. “We were never friends. He provided goods, I paid for them.”
Emma glanced back toward the front porch. Lorelei was visible through the window, the cloud of her gray hair lit by the midday sun. “Is your grandmother still…？”
He gave a sniff, shook his head. “Nah. The pain went away when she went into remission. We weaned her off. It was bullshit, though. One doctor decides she’s drug-seeking, dependent—of course she was fucking dependent, it was keeping her from being in constant pain. And then the only way to get her the medicine she needs is to pay off some lowlife like Logan.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You say that a lot,” he pointed out.
She lifted one shoulder in acknowledgment. “Is Logan still in town?”
“He’s bartending at Wilson’s.”
“That hole-in-the-wall on Tenth?” she asked. He nodded, and she grunted in dull surprise. “Can’t believe that place is still open.”
“It has its devotees,” Gabriel said. “Emma, why are you asking about this stuff now?”
“I’m just trying to put it all together.”
“Put what together, exactly?” Gabriel asked, brow furrowed.
“Juliette. I don’t know where she was that night, but she came back wearing someone else’s clothes, and there are other things.… It’s just, maybe if I can figure out what happened, I can clear my name,” Emma said, gesturing helplessly. “But I don’t know where to start. Apparently I didn’t even know my own sister.”
He stared at her. His thumb moved over his mouth slowly, and gradually she realized what that look meant. Her lips parted.
“Oh,” she said softly, reality rearranging itself around her. How had she not realized?
“Emma.”