Page 93 of No One Can Know

“Nathan called Ellis that night. Told him he’d found something,” Emma said.

“That’s good, isn’t it? If Ellis knows what was on the drive—” JJ began, but Emma shook her head.

“He didn’t saywhathe’d found, apparently. Which makes it seem just as likely that it was something that would implicate me. Or one of you two, and either way, they’ll think I eliminated the threat. Or they could just ignore that and say I killed him over the affair. The woman he was sleeping with got threatening emails from someone trying to break them up. I’m sure they assume it was me.”

“Nathan was cheating on you?” JJ said, eyebrows raising. “Fuck that guy.”

Emma’s hand cracked across JJ’s cheek. JJ reeled, grabbing at her face. Emma reared back, mouth dropping open. “Shit,” she said. “JJ—”

“It’s fine,” JJ said, clipped. She rubbed her jaw. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

Emma cradled her hand in the opposite one, looking appalled at her own violence. “You’re right, though,” she said. “He was—he cheated on me. It started after I was in an accident. I couldn’t—it wasmonths before he and I…” Her cheeks colored. “There was a lot on his shoulders. It was hard on him,” she finished.

“If I say anything, I’m going to get slapped again,” JJ said, unable to keep the disgust from her voice.

Emma winced. “Hell of a family reunion,” she said.

“We’re out of practice,” Daphne replied generously, and Emma laughed.

“It’s not like we ever got along,” Emma said.

But that wasn’t true, was it? There had always been those few stolen moments, when they escaped their parents’ world and found their own. Those nights in the tree house, shoulder to shoulder, whispering their secrets to the night.

Emma stood.

“Where are you going?” Daphne asked.

“I need to think,” Emma said.

“Emma. No one can know about this,” Daphne said.

Emma’s eyes tracked from her to JJ. JJ’s lips pressed together, but she said nothing. “We’ll see,” Emma said, and turned away.

JJ sat in the sunroom, watching fireflies appear and vanish again, lazy in their luminescence. She was breaking Vic’s rules again, on her second drink, Dad’s decanter on the side table next to her.

The house was so strange without them in it—her parents. She’d expected to find it haunted—not literally, of course, she didn’t believe in ghosts. But for all that things were largely the way she’d left them, the most curious thing was how absent her parents really were. All these years she’d had the sense that they were still out here, just hidden away inside these walls, only for her to discover that the house had been nothing but an empty box all along.

The house wasn’t haunted, she was forced to admit. She was.

“Mind if I sit?” Emma asked. JJ startled; she hadn’t heard her come in. She waved to the other chairs in anI won’t stop yougesture, andEmma settled in. She glanced at JJ’s drink on the side table and leaned forward, nudging a coaster across the coffee table in her direction.

JJ winced. “Sorry. Vic hates how much of a slob I am.”

“It’s fine,” Emma replied. She regarded JJ, a knuckle set against her teeth. “You were such a neat freak when we were kids.”

“I had to be,” JJ reminded her. Irene Palmer had very much been of the “cleanliness is next to godliness” school of thought. Your hands weren’t clean until you’d scrubbed under your fingernails and left your skin red. Owning anything you didn’t actually need was an invitation for a lecture on clutter.

“You never knew how to pick your battles,” Emma said.

JJ laughed. “Isn’t it the other way around? You made everything a fight.” It had frustrated her to no end, watching Emma turn every tiny thing into a war. The instant their mother suggested she do something, Emma had to do the opposite, even if she’d meant to in the first place.

“You broke yourself avoiding the smallest reprimand,” Emma pointed out.

“Yeah. And then I overcorrected,” JJ said, wincing. “One of the hardest things Vic and I did was figure out how to fight without hurting each other.”

Emma made a noise in the back of her throat. She looked out the window, her hands limp in her lap. “Nathan and I never fought.”

JJ bit back her immediate response. That maybe a fight was what they’d needed. Emma had mentioned the affair like it didn’t even faze her. The Emma JJ had known would have been absolutely feral if someone treated her like that. The slap had been the first glimmer of the old Emma that JJ had seen from her so far.

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