Page 65 of We Are All Guilty Here

Gerald disappeared inside.

She took another deep breath before she let herself check on Cole. He was holding back a line of cars. He couldn’t stop the people who were on foot. Emmy was about to look away, butthen she recognized one of the women walking toward her. Blonde hair pulled back. Light make-up. Hannah’s anxiety was palpable. Her hands were clasped together. She was still wearing the diamond ring Emmy had helped Paul Dalrymple pick out for her.

Paul was a full-on alcoholic now. For years, Emmy had heard gossip around town. Paul found passed out at work. Paul making a scene at one of Davey’s baseball games. Then there were the citations and tickets in the patrol logs. Public nuisance. Reckless driving. Two DUIs. His license suspended. His business almost in bankruptcy. Before Madison had been stolen away, he’d been nerdy and sweet. Now, he was bitter and damaged. Paul never missed an opportunity to glare his hatred into Emmy on the rare occasions they saw each other in town.

Hannah lifted her chin to acknowledge that they had seen each other. Then she stood a few feet away from Emmy and looked out at the crowd. Emmy looked, too, but not out of curiosity. Backup hadn’t arrived yet. Cole was half a football field away. Her father was alone inside a house where a double murderer lived, and there was a mob of people who’d been shouting for blood ten minutes ago.

And a fourteen-year-old girl named Paisley Walker was still missing.

Emmy took out her phone, pretended to check her messages. She swiped up the camera so that she could record all of the faces. Moms in leggings. Men in factory coveralls. A few stragglers in business casual. Then there was Ashleigh Ellis and Brandi Norton, who’d rounded out the popular girls with Kaitlynn back in high school. And Dervla Culpepper, who’d been stuck in the Miata on the soccer pitch the night the girls had gone missing, then twelve years later lied her ass off when Jack had interviewed her for episode one of theMisguided Angelpodcast. Dervla was filming the spectacle with her phone, probably hoping to drag out another ten minutes of fame.

In all, Emmy counted twenty-six people with more on their way. She knew that violent criminals often tried to insert themselves into investigations. They pretended to be witnesses or concerned citizens or spectators. The backroads were not thatfar from where they stood. Densely wooded forests lined the roads in between. It would be easy to dispose of a body along the way.

Hannah cleared her throat.

Unthinking, Emmy turned toward her, looking directly at Hannah’s face for the first time in over a decade. She was caught for a moment by the sight of laugh lines fanning from her eyes, the strands of gray showing in the part of her hair. Emmy knew that Hannah was noting the same changes. Time had moved forward, even if their friendship had not.

Hannah asked, “Do you think Adam took Paisley?”

Emmy was shaken by the sound of Hannah’s voice, as recognizable to her as Tommy’s or her father’s. She used the phone as an excuse to look away from Hannah, filming the cars parked on the side of the road. She checked on Cole again. He was leaning against the hood of a parked car. His thumbs were hooked inside his vest. The straps hung down.

She told Hannah, “If Adam took her, he wouldn’t bring her here.”

“No,” Hannah said. “Even a caged animal doesn’t forget how to hunt.”

Emmy noted the dispassion in Hannah’s tone. There were dark circles under her eyes. She probably hadn’t had a restful night’s sleep since Jack’s podcast came out. Even before Madison’s murder, Paul had been a hectoring type of husband, the kind who wouldn’t let things go. Everyone in town knew that his drinking had gotten out of hand. He’d shown up drunk at one of Davey’s baseball games a few weeks ago. Hannah was probably the only thing holding the family together right now.

Murmurs spread through the crowd. The front door had opened. Emmy tucked her phone into the breast pocket of her vest. Gerald stepped onto the porch. She recognized Walton Huntsinger by his build. And then she realized that she wasn’t looking at Walton. She was looking at Adam.

Hannah realized it, too. Her breath caught. She grabbed Emmy’s hand. Neither one of them spoke, but Emmy could pick out the ripple of vitriol from the people around them—

Cocksucker, murderer, I hope he got what he deserved inprison.

Adam pulled the door closed. Emmy watched her father wince as he walked down the porch stairs. His knees were down to the bones. His spine was bent like a shepherd’s crook. If he kept losing weight, he would disappear before Myrna did.

Hannah squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

Emmy smoothed her lips together. Both of her hands should be free in case something bad happened, but the physical contact with Hannah, the familiarity, felt like the only solid thing in her life right now. She blurted out the first words that came to her mouth.

“She still hasn’t forgotten you broke her china set.”

Hannah huffed a laugh. “Fucking Myrna.”

Emmy blinked her eyes to clear them. Gerald was making his way up the driveway. His shuffle was more pronounced. His pants needed to be taken in. She had always known her father to be old, but only now did she understand that he was failing.

Hannah could see it, too. That was why she was holding Emmy’s hand. She had come to Adam’s house because she was scared, because her heart was broken, because another precious thing had been taken from another terrified mother.

And then she had fallen back into her old role of trying to comfort Emmy.

“Okay.” Emmy let go of Hannah’s hand as she walked toward her father. He’d rested his elbow on the mailbox. He was short of breath. Emmy wiped her eyes. Tried to get her shit together. She motioned for the crowd to move back so that her father had some space. Only Dervla Culpepper didn’t comply. She was waving her phone around like anAccess Hollywoodreporter. Emmy wanted to block her, but she took her usual position to her father’s right.

Gerald waited for silence, then told the crowd, “The girl isn’t here.”

“How do you know?” a woman demanded. “Did you go into the basement?”

“Yes,” Gerald said, which Emmy knew to be a lie. You couldn’t access the basement from the house. “Paisley Walker is not here. Go home. Let us do our job.”

No one moved until a man in coveralls threw up his handsand walked away. A few more followed. Then a few more. Emmy felt her watch tapping her wrist as the timer hit the thirty-minute mark. Gerald was right. They should be calling the FBI right now, not play-acting would-be vigilantes and ghouls.

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