Page 120 of We Are All Guilty Here

“Sure,” Emmy said. “I understand.”

Virgil looked back at the barn again. “Hell, I’ll tell him tocome tomorrow. Lemme wash up. I’ll meet you at the station in half an hour.”

Emmy hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she was behind the wheel of the cruiser. She shushed out a stream of air. Virgil’s steady presence had always acted as a balm. It would be hard enough reviewing the Adam Huntsinger case without Gerald. Emmy didn’t have it in her to battle Jude alone.

She put on her sunglasses as she drove up the dirt track. Emmy turned down the volume on the scanner. She cracked the window to air out the musty odor from the boxes. Instead of taking the main route, she cut across the backroads. Not the one that ran behind Taybee’s farm, but the one that bisected Millie’s private property. The pond was in the distance. Sunlight had turned the surface into a mirror.

Emmy let her tears roll unchecked. She had been too exhausted to dream in Dylan’s bathtub, but waking up in the water had been disorienting enough to send her back to Millie’s pond. She was diving under the surface. She was reaching for Madison’s broken hand. She was holding the weight of the girl’s head in her palm.

I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to you.

Emmy’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She assumed Millie was calling to chew her out for trespassing, but it was a text from Dylan—

Making sure you didn’t drown.

Emmy felt a fresh wave of tears. She was overwhelmed with gratitude for his kindness. For the temporary feeling of safety he’d afforded her. There was no way she could put that in a text. She could barely say it to his face. She double tapped the message to send him a quick response, but her thumb hovered between the thumbs up and the heart, which was the height of her emotional stupidity. She made it worse by choosing thehahaand dropping her phone in the cup holder.

The station parking lot was full when she pulled into her usual spot. Emmy bypassed the squad room for the jail complex. She texted the duty sergeant to send a couple of deputies to take all of the file boxes from her cruiser and put them in the conference room. Then she checked Cole’s location on Life360. Hewas stopped on the backroads near Taybee’s farm. She imagined he was showing Jude where Cheyenne and Paisley had gone missing twelve years apart. And she also imagined Jude was preparing a long list of things Gerald and Emmy had gotten wrong in the investigation.

Emmy wiped her eyes before badging herself in through the back door. She was at the end of a long hallway. The jail was quieter than usual because most of the inmates had been transported to the courthouse for their arraignments. She badged through another door to get to the holding cells, then a third and fourth door, and then she was standing in the sallyport outside the isolation block for female inmates.

She looked through the glass in the door. The long, narrow corridor dead-ended into a concrete wall. The three single-person cells were on the right, larger than the ones in gen pop, with concrete walls on three sides and bars on the front so the guards could walk the corridor to visually inspect the inmates at all times. Cameras caught every corner. Each had a microphone that could pick up even the faintest breath. There was no hiding from the watchful eye in the distant monitoring room.

Hannah was sitting on her bunk, knees pulled in, arms wrapped around her legs. Her mouth opened when she saw Emmy through the glass. Emmy reached up to her throat, tapped her fingers to the front. They had used the signal when they were children. It meant an adult was coming, or Tommy was trying to sneak up on them, or Taybee was eavesdropping again, so they should be mindful of what they said.

Emmy waited for Hannah to nod her understanding before she opened the door.

Hannah was in the first cell, the only female inmate in isolation. The smell was worse than the rest of the jail. The one-piece stainless-steel toilets and sinks were basically an open sewer. Three slits in the exterior walls were fixed with two-inch glass, but they acted less as windows and more as a reminder that there was nowhere to go. Every inch of concrete was painted a bright, plasticky white. The pillows reeked of sweat. The mattresses were an inch of foam resting on more concrete. The vinyl covers smelled like turpentine. The blankets and sheetswere thin and scratchy, and Emmy was ashamed to realize she’d never cared about any of these things until the moment she saw Hannah using them.

She said the first thing that came to mind. “I can get you a clean pillow.”

Hannah’s smile was weak. “Just tell the maid to bring it when she does turn-down service.”

Emmy felt the awkwardness of her own smile. “Do you need anything?”

“Dylan made—” Her breath caught. She was struggling to keep up the ruse. “He made sure Davey is with my aunt Barb.”

“That’s good.” Emmy was struggling, too. Her legs couldn’t hold her up anymore. She slid her back down the wall until she was sitting on the cold floor. “I’m sorry.”

Hannah held her gaze. “I’m sorry, too.”

Emmy watched her stand up, then slowly walk to the front of the cell. Hannah sat down with her legs crossed. Leaned her forehead against the bars. Stared at Emmy. They could’ve been back in Hannah’s childhood bedroom complaining about their mothers or talking about boys or listening to Sarah McLachlan singing “Building a Mystery” over and over so they could learn the lyrics by heart.

Hannah said, “You’ve got a sister.”

Emmy laughed, because of course a woman in isolation inside the Clifton County jail had heard the latest gossip. “Apparently, she’s some kind of crime genius. All the FBI agents are acting like Mr. Collins around Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”

Hannah’s smile was fleeting. “I’m so goddam sorry, Em.”

Emmy’s tears returned, but she did nothing to hide them. There was something to be said for being around someone who’d already seen you at your absolute worst. “He was writing a letter yesterday morning.”

Hannah started crying, too.

“It’s still in his desk, but I’m scared to read it. Couldn’t even go home this morning.”

“Gerald never struck me as the letter-writing type.” Hannah pressed under her eyes with her fingers. “What do you think he said?”

Emmy let her shoulders rise up in a shrug. “Milk. Eggs. Bread.”

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