Made her want him now.
She couldn’t even close her eyes without that raging fire at his house haunting her. Without seeing his face as he watched everything in his world go up in flames. He’d suffered and she was more to blame than all the others put together.
She was so deep in regret she almost didn’t notice the tap on her door.
Before she even looked she knew who it wouldn’t be. Not any of her friends, because she no longer had any friends. Not her parents, because they had likely disowned her.
Maybe one of her new friends, Fairgate or Austin?
Emily adjusted her blouse, smoothed her skirt, and took a breath. Might as well get it over with. She checked the peephole.Her father.She drew back, wrenched the door open in one continuous action. “Dad? Is everything all right?”
Her heart bumped her rib cage. The urge to cry came from nowhere. What if her mother was ill? What if it was Emily’s fault? God, she’d already hurt them so much. The air snagged in her raw throat. What if her brother had been in an accident?
“I need to speak with you, Em.”
The defeat in his voice and in his eyes, now that she looked, made her desperate to fix this whole mess somehow.
“Come in.” She stepped back, to give him room to pass, then closed the door. That he carried her overnight bag registered. Was he bringing her things to her so she wouldn’t have a reason to come back home?
“I thought you might need these.” He set the bag on the chair by the window.
She managed a strained up-and-down motion of her head. “Thank you.”
He was dressed for church, with his navy trousers and crisp white shirt and the striped tie her mother had most certainly selected. Ed Wallace could not coordinate colors to save his soul.
“Ray called me this morning and told me what happened last night.”
Emily winced inwardly. After Troy ranting at her right in their own front yard, hearing more of the same from Ray had to be hard to take. She was doing it again. Making her family miserable.
Her father gestured helplessly as if he wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Between you going into that burning house and what Ray told me, your mother and I have—”
“Dad,” she stopped him, “I’m really sorry—”
He put his hand on her arm to quiet her. “I need to finish this. I’ve put it off too long in hopes of sparing you the fresh hurt.”
The anguish on his face made her want to weep for all the damage she’d done. She was certain whatever her father had done he’d only done to protect her.
“It was Homer Jenkins,” he began. “He was the one who recommended Fairgate to me.”
The anticipation she’d expected to feel when her father finally gave her the truth was glaringly absent. She felt cold and afraid. She wanted to ask her father to sit down, but she didn’t dare move or speak for fear of somehow altering the momentum of the moment.
“I had gotten into trouble that year,” he went on, his eyes distant as if he were reliving those days ... mentally filtering through the events that had led up to his decision. “We would have lost everything. Going to Fairgate was my only option. So I took Homer’s advice.”
A divorced, good-hearted man of about fifty at the time, Homer Jenkins had been the neighbor on Emily’s side of the house on Ivy Lane. It was his car that Clint Austin had insisted he’d been attempting to steal that night.
Emily hated that her father had to relive that awful time but she had to know. This terrible secret had been buried too long.
“Fairgate lent me the money. At the time I was so glad, I didn’t consider how a man like him might want his repayment.” Her father’s white-clad shoulders lifted and fell listlessly. “It only mattered that we could hang on to our home for a while longer.” He exhaled a big breath. “When it was time to repay him, the debt was four times what I hadborrowed. I couldn’t pay all of it ... not even after months of unparalleled investment returns. I simply didn’t have it. I went to him thatday. The day of Heather’s murder.”
Emily felt herself wilting, unsure she could hold up beneath the weight of guilt growing heavier as what Sidney Fairgate had told her was corroborated.
Dear God, what had they done?
“I had half the money. Fairgate took it, told me what he would do if he didn’t get the other half in one week.” Her father stared at the floor a long, pulse-pounding moment. “One of his bodyguards called him to the door of his office, said it wouldn’t wait. I didn’t move. I was too afraid. I knew what Fairgate and his men were capable of. So I sat there. He went to the door behind me and had a conversation.”
Emily braced for what came next, unsure she could bear to hear him say the words.
“I didn’t see any of it,” he said, his eyes urgent now, needing her to understand. “I didn’t dare turn around, but I heard the exchange. Then I heard a third man speak.” His own voice wavered. “It was Austin. I heard Fairgate tell him to take Homer’s car that night.”
