Page 41 of No One Can Know

“I made another stop,” Emma said.

“Whose house was that?” he asked, voice dark with suspicion. “Is it Gabriel’s house?”

She turned back to the bag, started taking things out in jerky, angry motions. She had her anxieties. Nathan had his. They’d argued about the tracking apps a lot, over the years. He claimed he wanted them in case of an emergency—what if one of them ended up crashed into a ditch? But he only ever brought them up at times like these. “I thought you were staying in today,” he’d say casually, or inquire about how Susan was doing when she hadn’t told him she was visiting Susan that day at all.

She hated it. Hated the feeling of being watched, her every movement monitored, and feeling like she couldn’t make a spontaneous trip to the new bakery in town without it being treated as suspicious.

“I take it that’s a yes,” Nathan said sardonically. Grime streaked his knuckles. There was a smudge on his cheek.

“I went to talk to Gabriel,” she confirmed. That elicited another grunt, this one curled with satisfaction.

“What is it with this guy? It’s like you’re obsessed with him,” he said.

“I don’t think I’ve mentioned him more than three times since we got here,” she said, temper beginning to simmer. What did he think, that she’d managed to fit a torrid affair into the five minutes she’d spent at the house?

“All that not-mentioning is pretty loud,” he said.

She gritted her teeth. Talk about a thing too much, you’re obsessed. Talk about it too little, you’re hiding something. And no such thing as a middle ground. She could never get it right. That perfect balancing act of therightway to speak, to be, to look, to feel, so your innocence could be confirmed. Once you were tainted you could never get clean.

“Is it a first-love thing?” he asked. “The guy who got away?”

“It’s not that,” she said. She busied herself sorting out the cameras and mounting equipment. With only two, they wouldn’t be able to cover the carriage house. They hadn’t even been in there yet. There could be a whole family of serial killers nesting inside.

“Then what is it? Why are you hung up on this guy?” Nathan demanded.

“I’m not hung up on him. I was never…” She ran both her hands through her hair, looking up at the ceiling.

“Who is he to you?” Nathan asked, and she couldn’t escape the feeling that he wanted her to tell him she was still in love with Gabriel. That hewantedthere to be something between them. He couldn’t be angry about her parents because that would imply he thought she might have something to do with it, so give him some other sin to hang around her neck, a reason for her to grovel and plead.

“Gabriel wasn’t my boyfriend. His grandmother was my mentor—my art teacher, and she gave me private painting lessons. His dad took offand his grandma was sick, so Gabriel was living with her that year, and we hit it off. I had a schoolgirl crush on him.”

“But he and you never…?” Nathan prompted.

She sighed. “No. I was too young for him, and he wasn’t that kind of guy.” She didn’t want to have to explain how that had been part of the point. Gabriel wasn’t just kind and handsome and funny—he wassafe.

“You’re not too young for him now.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I’m not cheating on you, Nathan.”

“I didn’t say you were. You know I trust you.”

She looked away before she said something she regretted.

“Why didn’t your parents want you spending time with him?” Nathan asked. “That was what the police said, right? They didn’t like him.”

“They wouldn’t have wanted me to date him, no,” Emma said. “But it’s not relevant, since we weren’t dating.”

“He was cleared. Gabriel.”

“Yeah,” Emma said.

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know?” Nathan asked. “They thought you did it together, so don’t you know how they cleared you?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Emma said. “It wasn’t like they gave me a certified letter sayingCongrats, you’re innocent. They were just investigating me until at some point they weren’t. Chris stopped hearing from them and eventually the case wasn’t being actively pursued anymore, and that was it.” It had been a long, agonizing period of ambiguity. Every time Chris called, she’d assumed he was telling her she was going to be arrested. But the call never came.

---