“Selling drugs?” Daphne said mildly. At JJ’s look of surprise, she shrugged. “I overheard him talking to someone on the phone one time when we were over at the Ellis house.”
“You always were a little eavesdrop,” JJ said, without acrimony, and Daphne grimaced.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” JJ said. “I treated you like shit back then. Both of you.”
“Is that how you remember it?” Daphne asked. “Because I remember all three of us doing whatever we had to so we could come out the other side alive. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then neither did you,” JJ reminded her, and Daphne gave a strained chuckle.
“Funny how easy it is to forgive everyone else,” she said.
JJ looked away. There was so much she didn’t remember about that night, obliterated by a haze of alcohol and pills.
How she’d gotten from the woods to the house.
What had happened after she left.
There were only those splintered moments in between, memories she had tried for years to convince herself were nothing but a nightmare.
Yellow wallpaper.
She’d sat in her room, crumpled on the floor by her bed, her mind swirling with panic and anger. She understood at last that Emma had always been right. There was no waiting it out, biding her time. She couldn’t keep doing this—hiding herself behind a mask, surviving by destroying herself. She had to get out. She would die if she didn’t get out.
But she would be leaving Daphne behind. Six years where Daphne would have no Emma to draw their ire and no Juliette to placate them. Just Daphne alone, and she was so small and so strange and so unsuited for the games this house required of you.
There is no way out. There is only one way out. You’re trapped. You have to escape.
White grip.
She remembered the weight of it in her hand. It was a revolver with a white grip. A good size for a woman’s hand. She’d held it before. Logan telling her how to set her shoulders and point her hips.
“I know how to shoot a gun, Logan,” she’d told him, and nailed every shot. Cans in the woods, nothing fancy. She was better than him. A lot better. It made him laugh like a hyena, and he’d given her a playful bow, admitting defeat. “Rematch? Winner keeps the gun,” she’d joked.
Red hand.
“They deserved it,” Daphne said, and JJ’s head jerked up. She realized she’d been drifting, silent for long seconds. “They deserved to die.” Daphne’s lower lip trembled faintly, as if she was waiting for JJ to contradict her. “You always thought you were protecting me. You and Emma. But you couldn’t always be around. Dad was always soft with me, but Mom … She was happy with you and I think she was afraid of Emma. But I was always there, and she knew I wouldn’t tell. I never told anyone’s secrets.”
“What did she do to you?” JJ asked hollowly.
When Daphne spoke it was with a frank, factual tone. “She wanted me to admit that I wasn’t really sick. That my asthma was all in my head—panic attacks. She was right that I didn’t have asthma. But a panic attack—it feels like you’re dying. There’s nothing fake about it. She was convinced that if she could prove to me that it was psychological, I would get over it. So she would try to trigger a panic attack and then try to get me to stop. With all the malicious creativity she was capable of, as I’m sure you remember.”
“I had no idea.”
“Like I said. I’m good at secrets,” Daphne said, her lips bent in the faintest of smiles. Then she shifted, and JJ braced herself. “JJ. What happened after I called you?” Daphne asked, gentle but probing.
“You mean after you casually dropped that you’d hidden a murder weapon in the carriage house, and I’d just given the keys to our overly nosy brother-in-law?” JJ said with empty humor. “I panicked.”
“That much I figured from the way you hung up on me,” Daphne said.
“Can you blame me?” JJ asked. She raked a hand through her thick hair. Once upon a time she’d spent so much effort trying to tame these curls. “I went over there last night. I thought I’d make peace with Emma, talk to her about getting a few things from the carriage house. But she was gone. It was just Nathan. And I figured—this will still work. We opened the bottle of wine I brought. We talked.”
“And then?” Daphne asked, eyes hard.
“I left,” JJ said, as if nothing at all had happened in between. She thought of the splash of red wine, the rasp of insincere laughter in her throat.