“Kenneth had a temper on him. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have tried to hurt your father for what he did, but he wasn’t a killer. He’d have decked him, but he wouldn’t have shot him in the head. And he certainly wouldn’t have shot a woman,” Lorelei said. “I see why you’d wonder, but you’re wrong.”
“Then why was he in town? What did he say about it?” Gabriel asked.
“I don’t know. I never saw him,” Lorelei said.
Emma frowned. “Then how do you know he came back?”
“Because he left me money,” Lorelei said. “He always left me money in my emergency stash, because he knew I wouldn’t take it from him if he offered. When I got out of the hospital it was there, so I knew he must have come by. He was a good man. He was, Gabriel, even if his demons got the better of him more often than not.”
Emma felt dizzy. Kenneth Mahoney had never been home at all. She’d been the one who left that money, and Lorelei had imagined her son coming home all these years when he never had.
“Look, honey. This is my Kenneth.” Lorelei held out her phone, and Emma took it gingerly. She studied the photo Lorelei had pulled up: a man about her age, with Gabriel’s hooded eyes and wide mouth, his chin up, mugging for the camera. She took in his smile, his short curls, the denim jacket he wore. There was a port-wine stain splashed across his jaw.
He didn’t look violent or angry. He looked like his son. “I need to go,” Emma said.
“What exactly is all of this about, Emma?” Lorelei asked.
Emma reached for the words to answer, but they slipped through her fingers like sand. Kenneth Mahoney had never come home. Lorelei had held on to the idea that he had returned, that he had wanted to take care of her, but it had been Emma all along giving her that false hope.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you about any of this,” Emma said. She stood. As happened so often these days, she wobbled. Gabriel immediately rose and took hold of her hand, steadying her gently.
Lorelei made a hm sound, looking up at them with a discerning expression. “You both be careful, now,” she said.
“Nana,” Gabriel said, and nothing more. His hand touched the back of Emma’s arm, ushering her into the house, and the contact made little zips of sheer awareness travel across her skin. Inside the house his hand dropped but the sense of touch remained. “Sorry about that.”
“She didn’t say anything,” Emma said.
“She said plenty,” Gabriel replied.
“I left that money for Lorelei,” Emma said. She could feel the shift in the air when he worked out what that meant.
“I came to the conclusion a long time ago that he had to be dead,” Gabriel said. “Figured he’d done it to himself, one way or another.”
“I wanted it to be him,” Emma said. “It’s terrible, but I did.”
“It’s not terrible. If my father was responsible, your sisters weren’t.”
Her throat closed up. She turned away from him, stepping deeper into the house.
“Emma,” he said, and there were fourteen years of things left unsaid hidden in those two syllables.
All the lights were off inside, and here in the narrow hallway between the back door and the living room, it was dark, all the doors closed. One step in front of her, sunlight slit open the shadows, a hard line of light she didn’t cross.
“I wish…” Emma began, but she couldn’t finish it. She thought of her parents, his father. Of Nathan, and how quickly he was vanishing into her past, along with all her other ghosts. How easy it was to let him.
Gabriel stood close enough that she could feel the warmth of him. Strange how strong the feeling was of him not touching her. If she didn’t look at him, they could have this intimacy.
“I know. Me, too,” Gabriel said.
“I should have left him a long time ago,” Emma said softly. “None of this would have happened if I’d just left him when I should have.”
“Why didn’t you?” Gabriel asked, in a tone that said he knew it was intrusive to ask.
“He chose me. He stayed,” Emma said. “And I chose him. So I had to stay.”
“Did you even love him?” Gabriel asked.
“Of course. Yes,” she said. It wasn’t the kind of love in books and movies. But it was the kind of love that she could have, in her castaway life. It was all she was capable of. It was all she had earned.
Gabriel’s hand touched her back. A soft touch, a whisper of pressure between her shoulder blades, as if he was ready to steady her if her balance faltered. “You deserve better,” he said.