Page 22 of No One Can Know

The fire was contained to the floor in front of the window—the window she’d left open. There was something in the middle of it, a lump, she couldn’t tell what. The rug had caught at the edges, the fire creeping toward the curtains, toward the far wall, and the air was still thick with fumes. She threw the drop cloth over the fire.

It was out in a moment. Suffocated beneath the thick fabric, the smell of smoke joining the rank burn of chemicals.

Movement outside caught Emma’s eye, and she whipped her head toward the window in time to see a figure leaping over the wall at the front of the property. She stepped toward the window to get a better look, but Nathan caught her arm.

“You’re not wearing any clothes,” he said, and she gave him a disbelieving look. She yanked her arm away, stalked to the window. The figure was gone. Had there just been one of them?

Nathan pulled up the side of the canvas, made a face. “I think that’s flaming dog shit. I didn’t think people actually did that,” he said.

The fading adrenaline sent a shiver through her, and suddenly Emmawasvery aware that she was standing in front of the window completely naked. She wrapped her arms around her middle, fighting off a feeling of vulnerability. Exposure.

Idiot kids, she thought.That’s all it was.

“I’m going to put some clothes on,” she said, voice shaky with anger and fear, and marched out of the room.

They couldn’t stay here. This had been a mistake. They couldn’t have ababyhere. But they couldn’t leave now. Not until—unless—Nathan found a new job. Or she did, something steady, but who was going to hire a woman who would be leaving in a few months for maternity leave? Maybe she could hide the pregnancy. And then what? She wouldn’t have been anywhere long enough to get paid leave, so they’d be back to where they started.

She pulled on a T-shirt and shorts and raked her hair into something she hoped made her look less manic. She wanted to collapse into bed, but she wasn’t going to leave that vile mess on the floor.

Halfway back down the stairs, she heard Nathan’s voice.

“—Thank you. No, we’re not going anywhere. Okay.” She stepped around the doorway to see him hanging up the phone.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

“Calling the police,” Nathan said. He rubbed the side of his neck. “They said they’d send someone out soon.”

“Are you kidding me?” Emma asked. She wanted to strangle him. “Why would you do that?”

“Because someone tried to burn our house down?” Nathan asked impatiently.

She groaned, covering her face with her hands.

“We need to make a report,” he insisted. “I’ll talk to them. You don’t have to say anything. I’m going to go get some pants on, okay?”

She didn’t answer as he walked past her and up the stairs.

Just some stupid kids. Stupid kids who knew who she was and knew she was back, because why else would they have come? The house had been broken into before. It wasn’t safe.

It was never safe.

She let out a choked scream and slammed the side of her fist against the wall, hard enough to send pain shooting up the bones of her arm. Nathan’s footsteps paused in the hall upstairs. Then resumed.

Emma went out to the porch to wait, as she had when she was sixteen years old, for the police to arrive.

11EMMA

Now

A cop car pulled up to the gate. It wasn’t locked—they hadn’t bothered. Maybe she should have put on shoes and gone out to let him in, but she stayed on the porch and watched as Rick Hadley got out of the car, swung the gate open, got back in. He pulled up. No lights, no sirens, no hurry. He got out of the car again. To Emma’s surprise, the passenger-side door opened, and a second figure stepped out—still bald, his jaw gone jowly, his scalp flecked with liver spots. Chief Ellis.

Nathan stepped out on the porch next to Emma, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, his hair rumpled.

“Emma. Mr. Gates,” Hadley said. “Heard you had some trouble.”

“Yeah. Someone tried to burn our house down,” Nathan said, in aso what are you going to do about ittone that made Emma wince.

“Doesn’t look like they did a good job of it,” Ellis said affably. Ellis had done his best to play good cop to Hadley’s bad cop, back in the day. Patting her shoulder, offering her sympathy and understanding. Like she didn’t know that Hadley worked for him, that he wouldn’t be in that room at all if Ellis didn’t want him to be. He looked to Nathan. “Craig Ellis. I’m the chief of police here in Arden Hills.”

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