Page 48 of No One Can Know

And she was careful—had been careful—never to be the source of the fight. Nathan was so easy to read, it was a simple enough matter to tell when he was irritated or angry long before the pressure built up enough for him to bring it up to her. She adjusted, bent, experimented until she could tell by the lightening of his mood that she’d found the source of his displeasure.

When had she decided that it was better to be miserable than to be alone, she wondered. Or had that always been the price she was paying?

Her parents had tried so hard to make her small, and she’d fought every moment of it. But for Nathan Gates she’d simply surrendered.

She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t bend one more inch. Not for him.

The kitchen table was covered by a cheap tablecloth, folded in half. The Glock lay disassembled on top, with a cleaning kit half-unpacked next to it. It looked like Nathan had started in on the project and then given up.

Emma sighed. Her father at least had never cleaned guns at the kitchen table or any place where people ate. She gathered up the pieces and carted them to the living room instead, opening a window to let the inevitable fumes out. She set to work—dry brushing the chamber and barrel, wiping it out with solvent and a cloth, brushing again.

It was another several passes before the barrel was clean enough to have passed her father’s inspection, back in the day. There was a meditative quality to the process, and she found herself falling easily back into the rhythm.

With the parts cleaned and lubricated, she assembled the gun, the movements coming back to her fingers before her brain.

“I was going to do that,” Nathan said. She startled. He was standing in the doorway, clothes covered in the dust and grime of the carriage house. “I was going to look up a video later.”

“Well, there are plenty more to clean, if you want to,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, taking a breath to stay calm. “Nathan, I’d like to take these back to the storage unit until we can arrange to have them assessed and sold. I do not feel comfortable with them in the house.”

“Right. You’re a good little liberal who hates guns,” Nathan said, rolling his eyes, and her carefully constructed calm cracked in half.

“Yes, that’s why. It couldn’t be because my parents were murdered with a gun. That I grew up with a dad who thought it was funny to point them at us as a joke,” Emma said, cheeks hot. “Get rid of them. Sell them, have them melted down, I don’t care.”

“If you just want me to get rid of them all, why bother with cleaning it?” he asked.

“Because it was obvious you didn’t know how,” Emma said.

“I told you I was going to watch a video.” He turned and strode out of the room, sparing her from making things any worse. She looked down at her hands, streaked with black and stinking of solvent. It was on her clothes, too, in her hair. She swiped her palm across her already soiled T-shirt, but it wouldn’t scrub clean.

She took the gun to the foyer. She turned the key and swung open the glass door. She set the Glock in carefully, exactly as her father would have, and shut the door again, locked it.

An overactive imagination, her father had called it. The way her mind could so easily concoct the image of a gun in her hand, trained on a human being. The feel of the trigger under her finger. The kick against her palm, the calamitous sound. The heat of blood. All of it so vivid it could have been real. As vivid as a memory.

She pulled the key from the door and put it in her pocket.

She couldn’t stop it. The pressure built too fast for her to bleed it off in the thousand small ways she had developed over the years to keep things steady and agreeable. The fight was coming—not an argument, a real fight, the kind she had avoided in all the time they’d been married. And she found that she no longer wanted to stop it. Enough silence. She wanted things in the open.

It was dinner when it finally boiled over. It started with a look, Nathan watching her, his fork in his hand.

“With everything that’s happening, maybe…” He paused. “I mean, it’s not too late. To change our minds.”

“About what?” she asked, but the implication hit her before the words had fully left her mouth. She set her fork down. She hadn’t touched her dinner. She knew she should be eating more. She’d started getting faint in the middle of the day, but she could still only manageto nibble at plain bread. Now the alfredo that she’d hoped would be enticing enough that she could get down a few bites was congealing on her plate. “No.”

“You’re not being rational about this. You can’t tell me you have a good argument for keeping it. Why are you so set on having a baby right now?”

“That’s not it,” Emma said. It wasn’t something she could break into a list of pros and cons, because there was only oneprothat mattered—she wanted this child, wanted this little life to kindle inside of her. She didn’t know why. She didn’t need to. “It’s not up for discussion, Nathan.”

“There’s a time limit on these things,” he said, but she didn’t answer. She thought of after the accident, after the doctor had told her that she might not be able to safely carry a pregnancy to term. The way Nathan’s face had crumpled, and for the next week he slept with his back to her, could hardly meet her eyes. But she’d healed. Better than anyone had expected. He’d been the one to cry when they got the news, pressing his face to the crook of her neck.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I just hate having to wonder how many more secrets you’re keeping. It’s like you’ve been putting on an act the whole time we’ve been married,” he said.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked. For once, she couldn’t tell. Should she cry? Should she plead? Should she shout at him in turn? Did he want her anger, or her confession?

“I don’t know, Emma. The truth, maybe?” Nathan asked.

“I don’t even know what the truth is. If I did, I would tell you, and we could be done with this.”

“Come on. That’s bullshit,” Nathan said, slamming his palm on the table so hard she jumped. “You know plenty. You still haven’t told me what happened. Why? Are you hiding something that would make you look guilty?”

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