“You let him live here out ofguilt.” Emily didn’t hiss the word, but she imbued it with the same silky intensity that she packed into her gaze. “You didn’t know what role he played in little Carol Ann’s sickness, but you were sure he had to have done something. Maybe he fucked her a little too hard?”
I jolted at the vulgarity, but Max took a long step toward Emily, who cringed away from him with a squeak.
“Don’t hurt me!” In the blink of an eye, she switched again, this time from seductress to little girl. “You always want to hurt me!”
Max’s face was a mask of bewildered frustration, and he lifted both his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you, Emily. But don’t talk about Carol Ann that way. She got sick. Joe had nothing to do with it. End of story.”
“Youdowant to hurt me. Youalwayswanted to hurt me.” Emily had wrapped her arms around her waist now, almost rocking. Max’s shock transformed into helpless confusion, and I bit my lip. He was completely out of his element. I knew what this creature was, but I wasn’t in much better shape to respond to it than Max.
I couldn’t take on this demon, I thought.Demons, if there were more than one, which I thought there would be. Two demons living in collusion in this house if not in conjunction, suffering each other’s presence. It was a rarity. Demons were solitary creatures. One of them had slithered into Emily, but was it always there? Or was it in the house, taking up residence in visitors as it suited them?
“Why are you so mean to me?” Emily’s wail pulled me out of my own thoughts, and I gaped as she flung herself into Max’s arms. Max who was her nephew, even though she was only in her mid-thirties and he was in his late twenties—hernephew. Her total abandonment of social standards was classic textbook possession, yet so blatant and insidious, it took my breath away.
“Emily, c’mon. Pull yourself together. We need to understand why you’re here. Why here, specifically? Why now?” With a move obviously born of long practice, Max set her away from his body as she attempted to compose herself. “The cops didn’t see you here, did they?”
“Them.” Emily pouted again, back to working the cute little girl angle. “They didn’t want to listen to anything I had to say. And the coroner is old. Probably doesn’t even know her job, all the advances they’ve made with forensics. I saw this show where?—”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said Joe was the nicest man I’d ever met. That he wouldn’t hurt afly.” Emily burst into tears, throwing me off my game yet again. “I don’t know why he took that gun out there, Max. Why would he do that? He had everything to live for!”
I forced myself not to look around at the evidence of what Joe had to live for, but Max was paying closer attention. “Tell me you weren’t out here this past week, talking to him.”
Her eyes got huge. “It’s not a crime to talk to someone. Joe and I were friends.”
“Okay, then what did you two talk about? Did you tell the cops you were out here?”
“They didn’t ask.” She sniffed. “And I certainly didn’t suggest that he kill himself, if that’s what you’re saying. Joe and I werefriends.”
“You described Joe as a ‘shut-in hoarder’ up until three months ago. So I don’t think your friendship was all that deep.”
“You don’t understand,” she whined. But even as Max rolled his eyes and turned toward the kitchen—presumably to continue looking through the place—I realized that he did understand. There was something about the way he moved, the way he watched everyone, that told me he understood alotmore than he was letting on.
Which was all well and good…but understood what, exactly?
What hadn’t he told me?
I didn’t ask him. Not because I didn’t want to know, but because it didn’t matter. I was here now, and I wasn’t going toleave until it was over. I couldn’t run away from this place, not again.
Maybe never again?
The softest whisper of a laugh curled through me, silent and distant.
Maybe.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Dinner that night was about as lonely and quiet as the ones I’d spent at home. A tray of lasagna had appeared in the refrigerator with cooking directions, and Max had gratefully thrown the thing into the oven as soon as he’d discovered it. Sam and the parents came back while it was baking, but after they ate, the parents went upstairs without speaking to me, and Sam sat with his grandmother, staring at me with dark distrust.
Right back at you, asshole.
Emily was all smiles and giggles, then tears and recriminations by turns, lamenting Joe’s death. By the time she started on her third glass of wine, she’d transformed him from depressed shut-in to tragic martyr to unhinged monster and back again.
“What he did wasterrible,” she said, pushing lasagna around her plate. “I mean, Joe was in on it from the very beginning. That’s why he was so fucked up afterwards. Such a shame, too. He really was thesweetestguy.”
The grandmother’s hand tightened on Sam’s. “Emily.”
