Page 27 of No One Can Know

Are you free to talk? I have some questions about back then.

She assumed she didn’t have to tell him what she meant.

The sound of car tires on the gravel outside drew her attention. She closed her laptop quickly, not quite sure why she had the instinct to hide what she was looking at from her husband.

A moment later the doorbell rang. Frowning, Emma made her way to the door, wondering if Nathan had forgotten his keys—but when she opened it, she found a stranger standing on the front steps. The woman had masses of dark, wavy hair that fell to her shoulders and tattoos of flowered vines wrapping up her arms, a snake twining among them on the left. She wore a loose, sleeveless black top with gaping armholes that showed off the turquoise bra underneath and a glimpse of pale ribs decorated with more inked-on flowers.

“Hey, Emma,” the woman said. Her voice was low and rough and entirely wrong, but suddenly the half-familiar features clicked into place.

“Juliette?” Emma asked, gaping at her older sister. “What are you doing here?”

Juliette raked her thick hair back from her face. It flopped forwardagain as soon as she released it. Her gaze was wary and almost arrogant. “Can I come in?”

“It’s your house, too,” Emma said flatly. She turned and walked back inside. There was a moment of silence, and then Juliette followed her, shoes squeaking on the hardwood. Their mother would have killed them for wearing shoes in the house, but Emma didn’t say anything as Juliette followed her back down the hall and through the great room, pausing momentarily to look at the piano before traipsing back into the kitchen.

“Coffee?” Emma asked.

“Sure,” Juliette said, hands in her back pockets.

Emma waved at the coffeepot. “Help yourself.”

Juliette’s mouth pursed, but she walked past Emma, getting a dust-rimed mug down from the cupboard where they’d always been. She poured herself the dregs of the morning coffee.

Juliette held the mug in both hands without drinking. Emma stood across the table from her, arms crossed. “So,” Juliette said. She raised an eyebrow. “This is awkward.”

“Really?” Emma said, scoffing. “It’s been a decade and a half, and you haven’t spoken a single word to me. Yeah, that’s awkward.”

“Do you want me to say I’m sorry?” Juliette asked, eyebrow still cocked.

Emma choked on a laugh. “Which sorry would that be, exactly? ‘Sorry I haven’t called you anytime in the last fourteen years, nothing personal’? ‘Sorry I never said a word to help when you were the top suspect in our parents’ murders’? ‘Sorry I left you in foster care, skipped your wedding, never so much as wrote you a birthday card’?”

Juliette had the decency to look away. “I was just a kid.”

“So was I. So was Daphne. We needed you,” Emma said, her voice raw. Pain she’d thought she’d left behind her long ago raked nails down her spine.

“I know. But I was a complete mess,” Juliette said. “I wouldn’t have been any good to you. I couldn’t look after myself, much less you.”

“That didn’t mean you had to disappear,” Emma said.

“Jesus, Emma. What was I supposed to do? Mom and Dad were dead, and you—” Juliette faltered.

Emma’s lip curled. “And I what?”

“You told us what to do. We hid things. We lied,” Juliette said in a whisper, as if there were anyone alive in this house to hear. “Then Gabriel Mahoney gets arrested and everyone’s saying you two killed them. What the fuck was I supposed to think?”

“I don’t know. What wasIsupposed to think when you came in the door wearing someone else’s clothes, when you were supposed to be asleep in bed?” Emma shot back. “I never told anyone. I didn’t say a goddamn word, but you were happy to sell me out.”

“All I told Hadley was that you were seeing Gabriel.”

“And that I wasn’t in the tree house. But you let him keep thinkingyouwere,” Emma said.

“He knew we were lying. I was doing damage control,” Juliette protested. Emma stared at her. Juliette wasn’t like Nathan. She’d always been hard to read. She would arrange her features into demure smiles and simpering adoration for their parents, shoot poisonous glares at her sisters. And if you caught her when she thought no one was looking, she always had a peculiarly blank expression. Like she was waiting to be informed of what performance was required of her. Now her expression was wounded, defensive. But there might have been anything underneath.

“Juliette,” Emma began.

“JJ,” her sister said, with the tone of a correction. She set the mug on the counter beside her, the coffee untouched. “I go by JJ now.”

“Fine. JJ,” Emma amended, the name sounding false to her ears. “Did you come all this way to rehash the past?”

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