Chương 5
Ryan said, “Of course.”
Emma almost cried over that.
Not the slap.
Not Daniel being taken away.
A dead battery nearly destroyed her.
She sat in a hard plastic chair while the phone charged at a wall outlet behind the desk. Claire bought coffee from a machine and immediately threw hers away after one sip.
“It tastes like a lawsuit,” she said.
Emma laughed again.
This time Richard did too.
Then all three of them stopped because the sound felt wrong.
Claire shrugged.
“Bad coffee doesn’t become good because the night is terrible.”
Emma looked at her.
“Is that an Army thing?”
“Air Force.”
“You’re in an Army-looking uniform.”
Claire stared at her.
Even Richard smiled.
Emma had known Claire for almost five years through the veterans’ housing nonprofit that Richard’s foundation helped fund. They had become friends by accident. Claire disliked donor dinners and Emma disliked the people who enjoyed donor dinners, so they usually found each other near exits.
Four days earlier, Emma had called Claire from a hospital bathroom.
She had not called her mother.
She had not called Ryan.
That fact sat beside them now.
When the old phone finally powered on, the lock screen showed a photograph of Emma and Daniel at a lake two summers before.
They were both laughing.
Emma stared at it.
Ryan turned the phone over.
“You don’t have to look at that.”
“I put it there.”
“You can change it.”
“I know.”
She turned it back.
The photograph had been taken during a good weekend.
That was the problem with the story everyone wanted her to tell now. They wanted Daniel to have been a monster from the beginning so they could hate him cleanly.
He had not been.
He had once driven six hours overnight because Emma’s grandmother was dying and she was afraid to fly during a thunderstorm.
He had learned to make her coffee exactly the way she liked it.
He had stayed beside Diane after a minor surgery when Richard was stuck overseas.
He had also put Emma through a bathroom door with his shoulder because she had locked it.
Both were true.
That had been the trap.
The first officer who reviewed the phone found dozens of screenshots, photographs, and saved voice messages.
Some were ordinary.
Daniel asking whether she wanted Thai food.
Daniel reminding her to call her dentist.
Daniel sending a picture of a dog asleep in a grocery-cart child seat.
Then the language changed.
Answer me.
Where are you?
Why did you turn location off?
Don’t embarrass me tonight.
You make people worry about you.
Tell your mother you fell.
Emma watched the officer scroll.
She wanted to explain every line.
She wanted to say that some looked worse without context and some looked much less bad than they had felt.
She wanted to protect herself from being seen as dishonest.
The officer said, “You don’t need to narrate every message right now.”
Emma looked up.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize either.”
That annoyed her.
“People keep saying that.”
The officer blinked.
Then, to Emma’s surprise, smiled a little.
“Fair.”
At 4:36 in the morning, they left the station.
Claire had reserved Emma a room at a different hotel under Claire’s name.
Richard objected.
“She can stay with us.”
Emma said, “No.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I won’t be. Claire’s staying.”
Claire looked over.
“I am?”
Emma’s stomach dropped.
“I thought—”
Claire handed her a second room key.
“I got adjoining rooms.”
Emma closed her eyes.
“Okay.”
Ryan stretched his stiff shoulders.
“I’ll stay too.”
“No.”
“I can sleep in a chair.”
“You snore.”
“I do not.”
“You sound like a leaf blower.”
“That was one time. I had a sinus infection.”
Emma looked at him.
Ryan looked back.
For the first time all night, he appeared like her brother rather than a man trying to invent a weapon out of his body.
“Go home,” she said.
He nodded reluctantly.
At the curb, Diane arrived in a rideshare still wearing the burgundy gown, now hidden under Richard’s spare overcoat.
She walked straight to Emma.
Then stopped three feet away.
“Can I hug you?”
Emma hesitated.
Her mother waited.
“Yes.”
Diane touched her carefully, one arm around her shoulders, the other avoiding the bruised forearm. Emma smelled Chanel, rain, and stale champagne.
She did not hug back at first.
Then she did.
She cried for approximately nine seconds.
After that, she became furious with herself and pulled away.
Nobody commented.
The next morning, Emma woke at eleven with her shoes still on.
For several seconds she did not know where she was.
The hotel room was too white. White sheets, white duvet, pale gray walls, a framed photograph of some bridge that could have belonged to any American city with water.
Her phone was on the nightstand.
Thirty-eight missed notifications.
She stared at the number without touching it.
There was a soft knock on the adjoining door.
“Emma?”
Claire.
Emma sat up.
Her cheek hurt.
“Yeah.”
“Coffee outside the door.”
“You can come in.”
Claire entered carrying two paper cups and a bag from a bakery downstairs.
She had changed out of uniform into jeans and a gray T-shirt. Without the ribbons and polished shoes, she looked younger and more tired.
Emma took the coffee.
“Oat milk?”
“Yes.”
“You remembered.”
“I have listened to you complain about dairy for five years.”
Emma drank.
It was too hot.
She burned her tongue and swore.
Claire sat by the window.
Cold blue daylight filled the spaces where chandelier light had been the night before.
Neither woman spoke for a while.
Traffic moved twenty floors below.
A window washer’s platform hung against the building across the street, empty in the Sunday morning wind.
Emma finally picked up her phone.
Most messages were from people who had been at the gala.
Are you okay?
Call me.
Heard something happened.
Ryan says Daniel hit you???
May you like
Please tell me this isn’t true.
One message was from a number she did not know.
