Page 94 of No One Can Know

And that was her fault, wasn’t it? She was the reason that Emma had to learn silence. Learn how to hide. Emma had never bent a millimeter to protect herself from their parents, but to cover for JJ she’d broken herself completely. And JJ had done nothing to earn it.

“Guess we were both fucked-up in our own special ways. Turns out yours was healthier, though. It didn’t turn you homicidal.” She lookeddown at the glass in her hand. “I never said I was sorry. Or thanked you.”

“Was it worth it?” Emma asked. It wasn’t the question JJ had expected. Emma sat with her body pinched forward, elbows on knees and hands tightly pressed against each other. “I don’t mean you lying. I mean what I did. Tell me it was worth it.”

“I like my life,” JJ said. “Did my best to fuck it up for a long time, but now—Vic, and the apartment, and even my job… I’ve been happy, Emma. More than I thought I ever could be. Yeah. It was worth it.”

“Then I’m glad I did it,” Emma said.

JJ looked at her in disbelief. “How can you say that, after everything you went through?”

They’d all hid. And so none of them had been able to help one another. Each wrapped up in their own tale of survival, their own dream of escape. It had taken disaster for them to offer anything to one another, and by then the only thing they had to give was silence. No wonder they had scattered.

“What if I’d told them the truth? We could have told people what they were like. Maybe…”

“They wouldn’t have believed us,” Emma said. “It wasn’t the simple kind of evil that you can understand. They were mean to us. So what. Dad hit us every once in a while. There wasn’t any sexual abuse—right?” She looked carefully at JJ.

“No. Not me. I don’t think Daphne,” JJ said, revulsion making her voice strained. At least they’d been spared that much.

“He was obsessed with us being virgins,” Emma said. “Remember how he used to make us sit in front of him and he’d hold our chins and look us in the eye and make us swear we’d never done anything with a boy?”

“Yeah. That was when I realized I was way better at lying than I thought,” JJ said. She’d been terrified the first time she’d had to go through that little ritual after her interlude in the car. But he’d looked at Emma with far more suspicion than at her.

“When did you…?” Emma asked.

“Long before Logan,” JJ allowed. She wasn’t embarrassed by her past, but it was different talking to someone who had known her before—who had known the mask she wore.

“It never got back to Dad?”

“I was careful only to fuck guys who also had something to lose,” JJ said. “Or guys who weren’t from town.”

“But you’re gay,” Emma said, and JJ gave a bray of laughter.

“Yeah, but I also wasn’t that self-aware,” JJ said. “It was never about the guys anyway. It was about doing something for myself—something forbidden. Less fucking, more a ‘fuck you.’ Did you…?”

“No. I was actually—I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was twenty-two. He was the first,” Emma said, cheeks coloring. “Took six months to work up to it. It’s not like I’m a prude, it’s just—it always felt dangerous, to be that vulnerable.”

Sex had never made JJ feel vulnerable. Not even when it was stupid and risky. It had made her feel invincible.

“I slept with Nathan on the first date,” Emma went on. “I knew that I would mess things up. Run away. Find a reason not to trust him, not to stay, not to care about him. So I decided that I would never be the one to leave. That I would choose him, starting then, and never waver.”

“Even when he cheated on you.”

“That was his choice. I made mine,” Emma said, defiant.

“You don’t think you deserved better than that?” JJ asked.

“No one has ever loved me more than Nathan did,” Emma replied, and JJ couldn’t say anything to that. Emma stood up. She walked around the coffee table and then perched on its edge, only a couple of feet separating her and JJ. She reached out and took the tumbler out of JJ’s hands, and JJ offered no resistance. Emma swirled the whiskey in the bottom of the glass, inhaled.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” JJ said fiercely. “I won’t let you go through that again.”

“We’ll get through it,” Emma said. “It’s not going to be okay. It’s already not okay. But we’re going to survive it.”

“That’s not good enough,” JJ said. She looked away, blinking back tears. “You’ve got a baby coming. You’ve suffered enough for what I did already. If it helps you at all, we have to tell the truth.” She’d been given fourteen years; she couldn’t ask for more, not at this cost.

“They’re not after me for our parents. They think I killed Nathan, and you didn’t do that.”

“You have to—”

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