“That’s not true. He came back,” Lorelei said.
Gabriel looked surprised. “What? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She put a hand on his arm. “He didn’t stay, honey. It was while I was in the hospital. By the time I got the chance to tell you—well, you had a lot going on, and I didn’t want to trouble you with it.”
“Right,” Gabriel said, carefully not looking in Emma’s direction. Because she was the reason for that. It was after Lorelei got out of the hospital that Gabriel had been arrested.
It all came back to her family. To her.
Whatever her father had been involved in, it had cost Kenneth his job. Had driven him away, and so cost Gabriel his father. She shouldn’t be here, dredging up the past.
“I should go,” Emma said. Part of her wished that one of them would say No, stay. She’d wanted so badly to belong here, once upon a time. But neither of them said anything, and she walked back to her car alone.
18
EMMA
Then
Nine hours before she tells the 911 operator that her parents are dead, Emma sits in the sunroom, sketchbook balanced on her knees. The evening sun slants through the glass. The page in front of her is empty. Lorelei says one doesn’t wait for inspiration but hunts it down, lays a trap for it, lures it in, whatever is necessary. But Emma is mired, her mind’s eye producing only a faint gray haze.
She needs one more piece. Not another oil painting, she thinks, not charcoal, something else, something new to show her range.
Her applications are going out across the country, but she has her eyes and her heart set on UCLA. She’s never been to California. She doesn’t really care about California, actually, except that it is all the way on the other side of the country, and she can look at a map and imagine all that space between her and her parents. Lorelei tells her that their program is impressive, and that she is impressive enough for it. The distance and Lorelei’s words are all she needs.
Her parents can’t know that she is looking at schools beyond the one-hour radius permitted to the Palmer girls. She wants her applications completed and sent early, to avoid any chance that her guidance counselor or one of her teachers might slip up and mention the recommendation letters she’s asked for, her requests for help on writing essays.
Daphne steps into the room. Her expression is, as usual, focused and hard to read. She is twelve but looks younger, bird-boned. Emma has always enjoyed her company. She’s good at listening and she never talks about normal, boring things. Last month she became interested in poisons. She learned about something called a poison garden, where all the plants could kill you, and asked for one of Emma’s sketchbooks so that she could plan it out. Emma had listened to the descriptions of how each flower and root could kill, and imagined slipping them into her father’s glass of bourbon, her mother’s iced tea or evening wine.
Daphne says, “Mom and Dad want to talk to you. In the study,” and all the blood drains from Emma’s face. No girl is allowed inside the study unless invited, and this occurs in only two instances.
The first is when their father decides that it is time for them to be educated in some way. Then he will summon them in, sit them on a stool near his left hand as he sits back in his chair, and instruct them on some aspect of life. The last time it was about men. Boys. What they wanted from her. It somehow managed to simultaneously imply that she was a sheltered fool who had no idea what sex was and that she was selling herself to the whole school on the weekends.
But Mom is there, too, and that means it’s the second thing.
“Do you know…？” she whispers, but Daphne shakes her head. Delaying will only make things worse, so Emma walks quickly past her sister. She tries to think of what she has done that might merit this kind of punishment. Not the snap of Mom’s temper or one of Dad’s corrections but the both of them, together.
“Come in,” her father’s voice says. She pushes the door open and steps in, lingering just inside the door. Her father sits in his armchair, back to her. Her mother stands next to it, facing the door, one hand on the back of the chair. Without turning, her father crooks two fingers in a beckoning gesture.
Obediently, sick anticipation curdling in her gut, Emma makes her way around the chair to stand in front of him. He leans back in his chair, regarding her steadily. He is a plain man, with pale hair that was nearly colorless even before it turned gray. His eyes are deep-set, his nose hawkish. Emma inherited that nose from him, and he likes to point it out, laughing about how he’s spoiled her having any chance at being a beauty, but at least he knows she’s his.