“ID?” the cashier asked brightly, cheeks rounded in a smile, still looking at Nathan. Emma handed it over. The woman’s eyes flicked down, up, down again, and the smile creased into a frown. “Emma Palmer?” she said, voice pitched too high.
“Can I have my ID back?” Emma asked. She tried to keep her voice level, but it hitched. Not this. Not again. Surely it had been long enough.
The cashier jerked, then shoved the ID back in Emma’s hand. She finished ringing up the rest of the food without making eye contact. As soon as the groceries were bagged, Emma snatched them and strode quickly for the exit, ignoring Nathan’s hand reaching to help with the load. She didn’t slow down until they’d reached the car and she’d shoved the food into the back seat. She stopped then, hand on top of the sunbaked roof, a breeze making the frizz at the edges of her vision dance.
She drew in a deep breath and only then realized that Nathan was asking if she was okay.
“Fine.” Gravel crunched under her feet. The scent of gasoline from the nearby pumps made her gut churn.
“She knew who you were,” he noted neutrally.
“Seemed like it,” she said.
“Is that going to happen a lot?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she snapped.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, okay. I’m just asking,” he said. “I want to know what we’re in for here.”
“Let’s just get to the house,” she said.
He seemed for a moment like he was going to object. But then he nodded and got into the driver’s seat. She slid bonelessly into the passenger side.
The house lay on the eastern edge of Arden Hills proper. Here the streets were narrower, with a tendency to loop and wind around blind curves. At the turn leading up to the river, Emma made a warning sound to get Nathan to slow, and he cast her an annoyed look—then slammed on the brakes as the road twisted sharply, leading up to a narrow wooden bridge with steep slopes to either side. A broken guardrail showed where someone else had made the same mistake. Rattled, Nathan crossed the bridge at a crawl.
“Thanks for the warning,” he muttered. She pressed her lips together, let it go.
In contrast to the farmhouses and scrubby pastures they’d driven by earlier, there was a manicured uniformity to everything on this side of the river. The cars were new; the houses loomed behind gates and ruthlessly trimmed hedges. Nathan wore a small frown, and Emma realized she hadn’t prepared him for this.
The turn to the drive was easy to miss, concealed among the trees. “Here,” she said softly, and Nathan braked, pulled in. He stopped in front of the cast-iron gates with their gaudy calligraphic P emblazoned on each.
Beyond was a long drive leading up to a circular driveway, an empty fountain in the center, and rolling lawns to either side, with sparse woods beyond the house. Hedges lined the lawns and their walkways. On one side of the drive stood a carriage house, its white sides and open wooden shutters exactly matching the house that stood in front of them. The house itself was a towering Colonial, a solid block of white two stories high—three, if you included the attic—with columns standing straight and proud out front. The door was black, and from this distance it looked like an absence, a void. Except for the gleam of the brass knocker at its center.
Emma’s breath caught in her throat. Home, she thought, and wished it didn’t feel true.
“That is the house?” Nathan said, gaping.
“Not what you were expecting?” Emma asked, unfairly, because she hadn’t told him, had she? She’d pretended she was surrendering the truth, but it wasn’t even close, and this was only the beginning of it.
“I thought…”
He had thought that this house would be like the others they passed. The cute little farmhouses and past-their-prime Colonials that dotted the landscape between the heart of Arden and here, at its outer reaches.
“Your parents were wealthy,” he said, neither statement nor question. There was a tiny gap between the last two words, like he wasn’t entirely sure which was the more polite thing to say. Like rich could somehow be a bad thing, rude to mention. Which she supposed it was, once you actually qualified. It was weird how often people got offended when you pointed out they had money.
“We were, yes,” she said. “I mean…” And she gestured at the house. All the proof that was necessary.
“Okay.” He wiped his lower face with his palm. “Okay.”
“I’ll get the gate open,” she said.