Page 79 of We Are All Guilty Here

She let her hand fall away from his. She couldn’t go back into the office with Milo. Didn’t want to talk about obituaries or caskets or arrangements or processions. She wanted to be alone.

Emmy walked around the body, went through the viewing room, then the chapel, then stood in the front lobby with its bright overhead lights and vases of flowers and boxes of tissues discreetly placed in corners. Her vision blurred again, but not with tears. She was going to pass out. She leaned her shoulder against the wall. She was back on the street outside Adam’s house. Hearing Hannah scream. Watching the gun go off. Seeing Cole run with his vest flying out behind him. Feeling the great cleaving behind her; an iceberg breaking off, a giant limb splitting from a tree. She was set adrift. She was falling. She was completely lost without him.

“Emmy?” Jonah knocked on the glass door. “Are you okay?”

“Shit,” she whispered. These men just kept pecking at her. “What do you want?”

“I want you to open the damn door.”

Emmy twisted the lock. The dank smell of weed preceded him into the lobby. His bar closed at two, which meant he’d spent a good while drinking before getting behind the wheel.

He asked, “You all right?”

She stepped back to get away from the smell of him. “I’m fine, Jonah. What do you want?”

“You ain’t gotta be a bitch about it. I wanna know if our son is okay. He’s not answering my calls. I was heading to the house when I saw you through the glass.”

Cole didn’t pick up Jonah’s calls on a good day. “Maybe give it until the morning. We’re all having a hard time right now.”

“I get it,” he said. “I felt like I was hit by a damn freight train when my dad died.”

Emmy leaned back against the wall. She silently begged him to leave.

“You remember the funeral?”

Emmy remembered Jonah being so drunk that he’d passed out in the back seat of the car.

“I wish Dad had lived to see me get on my feet, you know?” Jonah had a sad smile on his face. “Running my own bar. Playing gigs every weekend. I think he would’ve finally been proud of me. But he didn’t live to see it.”

Emmy reminded herself that it was no longer her job to stroke Jonah Lang’s ego. His father would’ve been disgusted. The money to buy the bar had come from Emmy being forced to sell her grandmother’s house so she could pay him to go away.

“Em, will you call Cole for me?” Jonah asked. “Tell him he needs to talk to his daddy.”

Emmy struggled to swallow her irritation. “I’m not getting in the middle. He’ll call you when he feels like talking. There’s no good that’ll come from pushing him.”

Jonah laughed. “If I waited until that boy felt like talking, he’d never open his mouth. Me pushing him is the only reason he didn’t turn into some damn robot like you.”

Emmy couldn’t do this again. “Did you try the station?”

“Jesus Christ, girl. Did you make him go back to work?”

“He told me that’s what he wanted.”

“And you let him?” Jonah sounded indignant. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m sure you have a list somewhere.”

“The whole town’s gotta list.”

“Cole is an adult. He’s entitled to his space.”

“He’s a fucking Clifton is what he is. You made damn sure of that.”

“Jonah.” She had to get him out of here before she lost her shit. “For the millionth time, I didn’t have anything to do with Cole changing his last name. He did that for Dad when he found out about the cancer.”

“What about my dad? He died, too. Do you know how that would’a made him feel? His own damn grandson won’t carry on the Lang family name? It’s gonna die with me. Is that what you want?”

Emmy pushed away from the wall. What she wanted was to punch him in the kidneys until he pissed blood. “Can you please for once not make every goddam thing about you? My father was murdered less than twenty-four hours ago.”

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