Page 26 of No One Can Know

Emma went to bed alone. Nathan never came back, but she woke to find a plate with plain toast beside the bed. The doctor had suggested she try to eat something the moment she woke up, before even sitting up, to combat the nausea. Its presence seemed like a good omen, at least. She nibbled on the edge, nose twitching at the scent of coffee downstairs. Nathan didn’t want her drinking coffee. The morning after she’d told him about the baby, he’d taken her mug out of her hand and dumped it down the drain. He’d memorized the lists of forbidden substances and was meticulous in checking that she wasn’t eating soft cheeses or glancing too intently at deli meats. The bottle of white wine she’d bought for toasting was in the kitchen trash, unopened.

She’d at least convinced him a cup or two of coffee a day was fine, but that didn’t stop the dark looks. If he’d made her some, maybe he was trying to apologize for last night.

Her stomach settled for now, she showered and dressed. In the bathroom, she looked through drawers still filled with her mother’s makeup—a dozen nearly identical shades of subdued lipstick, foundation, blush, nothing that might be construed as gaudy or showy or, God forbid,fun.

There must have been good things about Irene Palmer. People had loved her, after all. But when Emma thought back all she could remember was her anger, and the feeling of being trapped. Juliette had beeneverything their parents wanted; Daphne had survived by smothering the parts of her that weren’t, growing small enough that she didn’t stray outside the lines. Emma couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. She didn’t know which it was, only that every time her mother told her to sit still she wanted to run, every time she said to sing, Emma clamped her mouth shut.

Now she was going to be a mother. Theoretically. The chance of miscarriage still loomed. She wasn’t out of the first trimester yet, and her brief foray into reading online pregnancy forums had been a deluge of horror stories and tragedy. She’d been pregnant once before, after a broken condom incident with a guy she’d been seeing for a couple of months. She hadn’t even had the chance to make the appointment when she started bleeding. A pregnancy wasn’t a promise.

But she wanted this child. She wanted to be a mother—a better mother than hers had ever been.

Instead, her child was going to be born to a mother whose life was clouded in suspicion and lies.

She opened the bottom drawer. It was mostly filled with ancient cotton balls and Q-tips, but at the back was a small opaque plastic container, which she opened in idle curiosity. More lipstick—a single tube, this one a bright red. A birth control container, three of the pills gone. A small plastic bag with six round white pills in the bottom, which Emma vaguely recognized as the ones her mother had taken for her migraines. The last object in the container was a jewelry case, which Emma popped open to discover a thin silver bracelet, set with three petite diamonds. The inside of the bracelet was etched with a minute inscription.Forever yours.

The inscription was probably chosen by Dad’s secretary, though the birth control pills at least suggested there was some level of intimacy left in the relationship when they’d died. Oddly unsettled by the glimpse into her mother’s private life, Emma put everything back where she’d found it and shut the drawer.

She went downstairs, braced to see Nathan, but there was only a note on the counter. He’d gone into town for more groceries.

Or maybe just to get away from her.

Emma pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it up on the kitchen table. They didn’t have Wi-Fi at the house yet, but she set her phone to be a mobile hotspot and opened up a browser.

She had studiously avoided searching for herself over the years. It was not a famous crime, mostly by sheer luck—there had been a school shooting the week before, and the week after had seen a celebrity suicide, a deadly flood, and the arrest of a serial killer, all of which kept a comparatively everyday double murder out of the national headlines.

There were two Emma Palmers much more famous than she was, one a D-list reality star turned influencer, and one the author of extremely popular and extremely explicit werewolf romances. It made it easier to skate under the radar. But the articles were there. Easy enough to find.

Sitting at the kitchen table, just out of sight from the patch of hallway where her mother had bled out from a hole in her heart, she read them.

She had been braced for what she might read, but it still hit her like a physical blow, seeing the words in print.Shot to death in their house—daughters sleeping only yards away—no suspects at this time—second daughter’s relationship with an unidentified man—rumors of occult activity among youth…

The last was tucked in with almost a note of embarrassment.

Randolph and Irene Palmer were home at their house in Arden Hills when an unknown intruder entered the house. The intruder appears to have entered Mr. Palmer’s study. He was shot in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Mrs. Palmer’s body was found in the hallway, as if she had come toward the sound. She was shot in the chest at extremely close range. Blood was tracked between the bodies, leaving boot prints identified as a men’s size 10.5 Dr. Martens boot. The tracks exited from the back door of the house.

The gun was never recovered.

Emma took in a shaky breath. They’d been dead when she got there. Had been dead for a while, judging by the consistency of the blood. She’d panicked, looking for her sisters, convinced she would find their bodies next. And when she saw the blood on Daphne’s nightshirt, she’d thought for a moment her fear had manifested.

“No one can know,”Daphne had said.

She’d hushed her sister. Told her to stop talking. She was afraid that she knew what had happened—exactly what had happened. But that was before Juliette came stumbling into the house, wearing someone else’s clothes, her hair wet. And long before she learned that the gun hadn’t been one of Dad’s. Those had all been matched to their registration, confirming that they were all in the gun case where they belonged, securely locked away. He had always been meticulous about that. He kept the keys on him, wouldn’t let any of them touch the guns unless he was there. Not even their mother was allowed to lay a finger on them.

It had struck her as absurd, back then. He’d been so damn proud of those guns. Twenty-three of them. She’d counted once. Twenty-three guns and he’d never had the chance to even pick one up to defend himself.

She wondered where they were now. Not that she wanted them around. She knew how to shoot—you couldn’t have Randolph Palmer for a father and not be intimately familiar with how to handle a gun—but she’d never enjoyed it the way Juliette had. Though even with shooting there was a delicacy to the way Juliette operated—the careful way she picked out her target, plucked out a shot. No wasted movement or bravado, an almost ladylike lethality. Daphne didn’t seem to enjoy the exercise, but she was competent—lining things up, tucking her tongue at the corner of her mouth, and squeezing off a shot without flinching.

She navigated back to the article. The boot prints. Gabriel wore size 10.5 shoes. But the article said they weren’t just any shoes—Doc Martens. Did Gabriel own a pair of Docs? She tried to remember, but all she could picture him in were sneakers. Not that she’d known him that well. She’d met him only a few months before her parents died.

It had felt like a lifetime. The moment they met, there had beena connection between them that she couldn’t explain. Like he understood her, in a way no one else did. Sometimes she thought he must be humoring her, pretending to care about what she had to say, but if that was the case, he never slipped up. He took her seriously. Helikedher.

For Emma at sixteen, that had been a miracle. She would have done anything for Gabriel. She would never have hurt him. Not intentionally. By the time she realized the position she’d put him in, it was too late. She couldn’t admit her lie. Not without looking guilty.

Or revealing the truth.

She chewed her lip. Part of her wanted to close the article, pretend that she’d never read it, and go back to living as if only the present mattered. But it was too late for that. She needed to know—knowmore, at least, than she did now.

She grabbed her phone from the counter where it had been charging and sent a quick text to Christopher Best.

---