Emma sat with her hands wrapped around the mug, staring at the tumble of green and bright flowers.
Emma didn’t believe in luck or fate. But she understood, deep within her heart, that there were people who could be a curse on those around them. Their rot infected others and it spread and spread, it got into the blood, the marrow, the lungs.
Nathan was a good man, she told herself. His flaws were modest ones, suited to a modest life. He had grown up loved by two middle-class parents and gone to school and gotten good grades and a decent job, and if the last few years had been hard, had given those small flaws the chance to gain purchase, surely it was because of the dark seam at the center of her she had worked so hard to cover over. But it was like foul water seeping through layer after layer of wallpaper, revealing the shape of the damage.
If it weren’t for her, she was certain he would still be alive.
“Emma.” She didn’t startle at Gabriel’s voice as he stepped out onto the back porch. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”
She hadn’t had a single sip. She lifted it to her lips. It was lukewarm and bitter. “JJ is right, you know. Me being here—it’s going to cause you trouble.”
“I’m not worried,” Gabriel says. “I was at a jobsite most of the night. Cameras everywhere.”
“Jobsite?” Emma echoed. “You know, I don’t even know what it is you do.”
“Carpentry,” he told her, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m leading a renovation for this historic B and B. We had some delays with the supply chain issues, so I was up there with one of my guys trying to finish in time for their grand opening. The owner’s paranoid about theft, so she records everything.”
Gabriel was a carpenter. That felt right, somehow. She couldn’t imagine him cooped up in an office doing IT work.
“Emma. Why didn’t you want to go with Juliette? What’s going on between you?” Gabriel asked.
Emma took another sip. “I don’t know that woman. I don’t know if I even knew Juliette, but this is someone else entirely,” Emma said. Her words sounded pockmarked, pitted by the acid that seemed to always be burning away at her throat. “After my parents died, everyone I knew disappeared. They wouldn’t talk to me. Didn’t want anything to do with me, really. I figured if everyone hated me that much, they couldn’t all be wrong. I decided I had to start over. Take myself apart and build someone new. Someone who had nothing in common with the old Emma Palmer. I made myself into a stranger and I found someone who could love her, but I couldn’t ever let him find out who I was. And then he did, and he died.”
“I’m sorry. Emma. I should have talked to you,” Gabriel said.
“You had every reason to hate me,” she replied. The sun, angled low among the trees, burned her eyes, half blinding her. She didn’t look away. There was nothing she wanted to see.
“It wasn’t entirely your fault,” he said, and his voice cracked. “That night, when I left? I drove to your house.” Now she did startle, looking at him with wide eyes. He rocked his weight back on his heels.
“Why?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“You showed up on my porch with a black eye. Didn’t take much to figure out who’d given it to you,” Gabriel said. “And I knew it wasn’t the first time. I was angry. I went there to—I don’t know. I parked across the street. Tried to talk myself into going up to the door, tried to talk myself out of it. In the end I guess I came to my senses. I left. Came out here to clear my head.”
“But you didn’t do anything,” she said.
He shook his head. “The thing is, someone saw me. They gave a description. A shitty one, but close enough. It wasn’t just the alibi that made them fixate on me. It wasn’t just your fault. It was my own terrible judgment.”
“Why would you do that?” Emma demanded.
“Because I cared about you. I was angry,” he said. “And I was young and hotheaded and I wanted to be a hero.”
“You cared about me,” she repeated.
“Of course I did,” he said.
She set her coffee cup down on the small metal table beside her, the movement slow to give her time to think. “You put up with me,” Emma said. “I followed you around like an annoying little sister and you were nice enough not to tell me to get lost.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Gabriel replied. “You know it wasn’t. I liked having you around. I liked talking to you, hearing about your art. You were never imposing. And I never spent time with you because I felt sorry for you.”