Page 106 of No One Can Know

“The police said it was Hadley. We just told them what we knew,” Daphne replied.

“But we have to—”

“Tell them what, exactly? That you’ve recovered a new drug-addled memory, and unlike the previous two things you were absolutely sure of, this one is definitely correct?” Daphne asked sharply, and Emma held out a restraining hand.

“JJ, you’re right. We should tell the police. But we can’t,” Emma said steadily. JJ gave her a wild look, uncomprehending.

“Why not?” JJ asked.

“It complicates things,” Daphne said. “And right now, we don’t need anyone asking questions they think they know the answers to. It’s safer this way.”

“He still came after us. He still murdered Nathan,” JJ said.

Emma didn’t answer. She looked at Daphne, and Daphne looked at her.

“Emma,” Daphne said. Her voice was tender, soft. “Rick Hadley is a very bad man.”

“Yes. He is,” Emma said. Her heart was beating fast, but she could hardly feel it. She felt outside of her own body, like she was watching the whole scene from above. “But he didn’t kill our parents. And he didn’t kill Nathan.”

JJ looked at her blankly. “Of course he did. He had the gun. He had the drive.”

“No. He didn’t,” Emma said. “He tried to get us to tell him where it was. Which means he didn’t have it.” JJ’s eyes widened. In all the chaos, she must not have remembered. Must not have put it together the way Emma had.

“Emma,” Daphne said again, almost chiding, almost pleading.

“No more secrets. Not between us,” Emma said. Not this time. “Tell me.”

55DAPHNE

Now

She didn’t intend for Nathan to die. She wanted to make that clear. It was obvious that he didn’t deserve Emma, of course. He was strangling her by degrees. She wouldn’t survive staying and she wouldn’t ever leave, but no, Daphne hadn’tplannedto kill him. She’d gone into the carriage house to find the drive, that was all. The drive and the gun; once she had those, he could tear the place apart for all she cared.

She hadn’tintendedfor him to find her on her knees, pawing around in the now-empty toolbox that should have contained the flash drive. She certainly hadn’t intended for him to grab the gun from the table and point it right at her. She’d even tried to talk to him, but she didn’t like the way his finger was on that trigger, clamped right over it, and all of him shaking with adrenaline, and she’d started thinking about that phone call she’d just overheard, all the things he’d been saying about her sister to that woman he was sleeping with, about how he was going to try to get full custody from his crazy, probably murderous wife with her criminal family, about how he was going to take her money and run. And Daphne started thinking, was that the man she wanted raising her little niece or nephew? Was that a man who ought to be in a child’s life at all?

So yes, she’d reached for the gun. And then he definitelyhadbeen intent on shooting her, and then it was less a matter of fault and more a matter of who was stronger, wasn’t it?

No one expects a fat woman in a paisley tunic and Crocs to be strong, but she spent her days moving patients and she’d always stayed fit, lifting weights so she could tend to her clients’ needs without strain. She liked lifting weights—getting strong, without all that obsession about looks and thinness.

Anyway, Nathan wasn’t a strong man.

She hadn’t planned for it to happen, but it wasn’t like much good would come from getting caught, so she took the drive and the gun. She thought about placing an anonymous call—she hated the idea of Emma finding him, but she couldn’t think of a way around it. She’d walked by several times that morning, anxious to see if there were police cars out front, if Emma would be okay. When she’d seen Emma in the driveway, she knew she should have walked on, but she couldn’t bear to leave Emma alone like that.

It had been stupid, of course. Just like it had been stupid to assume that Nathan was done with the carriage house for the night. She’d known it at the time, and when she got home, shaking and crying and generally panicking, she had made herself sit and think. Think about what Emma would do.

Someone was going to have to take the blame for Nathan’s death. Daphne. Emma. Maybe even Juliette.

Emma had protected them once. Now Daphne was going to have to do the same. It wasn’t enough to not be discovered. She had learned that the hard way. For fourteen years, the lack of an answer had haunted all of them in different ways. It had driven them apart. There needed to be an answer. One that wouldn’t harm anyone who didn’t deserve to be harmed.

And wouldn’t it be lovely if Nathan could do this last thing for Emma? Maybe the only really good thing he would ever do for her. Provide her the answer, the exorcism, that she needed. Yes, that was the thing. Let the new problem solve the old one. It’s not like she hadn’t prepared, though she hadn’t been entirely sure what she was preparingfor. She texted Rick Hadley’s new wife to ask if Tigger needed a walk today.

He did. He always did, and she was always busy, and had no idea what to do with a rambunctious goldendoodle her husband despised and which she’d mostly bought for the Instagram boost of getting a new puppy. Daphne had made sure to walk by when she was struggling with the pup, her own three client dogs trotting obediently beside her—her only three, which she’d had to do some wrangling to schedule for the same time of day, but it was about the optics. A sympathetic noise and a quick chat later and Mrs. Hadley had a new dog walker. Daphne had given her a false name, of course. Mrs. Hadley, who should have been less trusting given her husband’s profession, had given her a spare key. She was so busy, and so tired of coming home to puddles on the floor, you see.

They found the gun in Hadley’s garage workshop. White grip. Three bullets missing. As a place to hide a gun, it wasn’t bad. Not like anyone suspected the man investigating the murders, after all, and no one else went out there, not even his wife. Though if a neighbor had glanced outside a few days before Rick Hadley took a rock to the skull, they might have seen the new dog walker letting herself in.

The harder trick had been getting them to look in the first place. She’d known she couldn’t come out and accuse him, but she’d thought she might be able to nudge her sisters into figuring out enough to point the finger, and Christopher Best was bold enough to follow through. It had almost taken too long, though. It had almost gotten Emma and JJ killed.

But it hadn’t. They were all alive and safe and healthy—the baby was healthy. It wouldn’t grow up with a mother in prison. It wouldn’t grow up with Nathan Gates as a father, and thank God for that. Could you imagine if he had a daughter? Could you imagine if he had a son?

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