by Katie Sise
“Who do you want, Noah?”
My voice sounds thin in the wind, insubstantial. And when Noah doesn’t answer right away, I feel that way, too. “Noah, please?” I ask. “Tell me the truth.”
He turns and takes me in. “Don’t you know?” he asks, his voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. I’m quiet, unable to speak, not wanting to be the one who says it. “You,” he says, and that single word has never meant something so big. “I want you, Emma, and only you.”
The tears spill over my cheeks. Noah puts his hand against my face and tilts my chin so he can look at me. I smell beer and cold winter air, and then he leans closer like he’s about to kiss me.
“Wait,” I say, my breath coming faster. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
FORTY
Priya
Come.
Josie had texted that single word, and now Priya was racing toward the hospital with her pulse pounding in her throat. As soon as she’d gotten the text, she called Brad’s mother, who adored Elliot and was the only person Priya could leave him with under the circumstances. Priya had explained the situation briefly, and by some miracle Brad’s mother didn’t ask too many questions. A case of mistaken identity, she’d announced, as though this kind of thing happened all the time. Priya had settled Elliot by assuring him she’d be right back after a quick trip to the hospital to talk to the woman who’d mistakenly put the blame on his dad. She knew it was the only way to get his blessing for her to leave.
Priya pulled into the parking lot, the hospital looming tall against the cloudy night sky. She opened her car door and stepped into the cold, keeping her eyes on the pavement. Someone had plowed it, but a layer of ice had already formed, and she was careful not to fall. Streetlamps illuminated the slick black ground beneath her feet, and Priya didn’t look up until she was at the curb. When she did, she saw Noah standing next to the hospital entrance.
“Noah,” Priya said carefully. She took in his strong build and the way he’d stuffed his fists into his pockets like he was trying to punch his coat farther over his body. He was shivering, whether from the cold or trauma of the day Priya didn’t know. She studied his perfect bone structure: high cheekbones, wide jaw, and deep-set hazel eyes. Could this man have tried to kill his wife today?
The night air was freezing, and Priya wanted to race into the warmth of the hospital, but with the way Noah was standing there, more imposing than any guard, she knew she couldn’t.
“I know Josie asked you to come, but I can’t let you see her,” Noah finally said, breaking the silence. “You have to know that.”
Priya felt steady and anchored to the snowy sidewalk in a way that surprised her. “I have every right to visit her,” she said.
“Really? After what your husband did today?”
Something hot burned through Priya, something that felt an awful lot like rage. She’d never been comfortable with her own anger—it was far easier to stuff it down and deal with the resulting depression—but she felt it now, and she wondered if that meant there was still passion for her husband somewhere deep inside her. Or, more likely, was this all for Elliot, a burning desire to protect him from a father in prison?
“Brad didn’t hurt Josie today,” Priya said. “Josie was the one who invited him there. And I still don’t understand why.”
“Of course you don’t,” Noah said. And then he looked up to the sky like he needed to get his bearings. But his face was still furious when he returned it to Priya. “The cops found evidence in the gorge this week that makes Emma’s death seem suspicious,” he said, “and after Josie learned this, she arranged a meeting with you and Brad to tell you she was going to the police with what she knew about him and Emma sleeping together back at school, because for some reason, she feels a connection to you, or some messed-up version of loyalty to you for being there for her when Emma disappeared. Obviously her foolish idea for the meeting backfired, and your husband tried to shut her up permanently.”
Priya recoiled. “Is this really what you think happened?” she asked slowly, turning all of it over in her mind.
“I do,” he said, “and you’d be a fool not to.”
Was she a fool? Why was she swinging so wildly between faith and disbelief? If only Brad hadn’t broken her trust in other ways, maybe he’d be easier to defend.
“But what I can’t figure out,” Noah went on, “is if you were there when it happened. Did you see Brad attack Josie? Or, maybe you did it?”
Priya’s mouth dropped open. “No, of course not!” she said. “Dean and Haley saw me arrive. I was driving a car length ahead of them.”
“But maybe you circled back,” Noah said. “How should I know what happened? The point is that Brad was there when the rest of you showed up.”
Priya was shaking now. You believe your husband, don’t you, Priya? came a small voice inside her. Defend him. “And what about you, Noah? Had you been to the house, too, this morning?”
A red flush crept up the exposed skin on Noah’s neck. “I brought Josie my car because it handles the snow better, and I helped her set up. But I left before your husband arrived, and when I left, my wife was perfectly fine.”
My wife.
There was something in his voice that turned Priya’s stomach. Possession, ownership: the things about marriage she’d never been comfortable with. “Is that right?” she asked, her voice so dreamy it sounded out of place in the conversation. “But isn’t it always the husband?” she asked. She remembered what Brad had said during their conversation tonight, and how relieved he was when it wasn’t his baby. “Emma was pregnant, did you know Brad and I knew that?” she asked. “Maybe it was yours, for all we know.”
Noah’s features darkened, and she knew she had him. A rush of blood shot through her, and she felt practically elated at the turn of events. “The baby certainly wasn’t Brad’s,” she went on.
She stood there so entirely certain of herself, right up until the moment Noah asked, “Then why is there a pregnancy test with your husband’s DNA all over it?”
The edges of Priya’s vision went black, and she tried to focus, tried to blink away the darkness.
“Maybe he was there with Emma when she took the test,” Noah said slowly. “How supportive of him.”
“He wasn’t,” Priya spat, but she had no idea.
“Or maybe Emma had it with her for some reason in the woods,” Noah said, his gaze far away, like he was trying to picture it, to figure it all out. “That night Emma told me she was meeting someone on the trails, and maybe it was Brad, and maybe that’s when he handled the test. How else would his blood get on it? The cops thought the tiny spot of blood was Emma’s until they tested it, and imagine their surprise when they realized it was Brad’s.” Noah shook his head, staring hard at Priya. “Don’t you see it, Priya? Your husband handled a dead girl’s pregnancy test, a student he was sleeping with, no less, and then when my wife told him she was going to the cops with the evidence, he attacked her. And now he’s going to pay for both crimes, which is exactly what he deserves.”
FORTY-ONE
Emma
Ten years ago
Noah’s eyes are piercing in the dark, two golden orbs surrounded by a bright white aura. The wind swirls around us, coming faster now that we’re at the top of the cliff. A circle of rocks mark the ground between where we’re sitting and where the cliff drops off, as though they’re warning us how dangerously close we are. The cliff towers over the dirt below, and then it’s twenty or so yards until the shore of the river. When my dad used to bring Haley and me to the woods above the gorge, he warned us never to get too close to the edges of the cliffs, but we were so little then. It’s different now. Everything feels more perilous.
What I need to say to Noah comes slowly, crystallizing in my mind first, and then whooshing into my mouth with a weight of its own, something that bursts forth because I can hold it in no longer. “I’m pregnant,” I say, my hands wringing themselves in my lap. “An
d the baby is yours.”
Telling him feels like an exorcism. The whites of his eyes get bigger and bigger, but he says nothing. He stares, taking me in like he’s seeing me for the first time. “We weren’t careful,” he says, and the evergreen trees behind us swish and carry away his words.
I wait until the air is still again, and then I say, “We weren’t.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he says, and for a second I think he’s going to cry. I’ve never seen Noah cry. “I guess I’m surprised, even though I shouldn’t be.”
It’s a relief to hear him say that, to accept what I’ve told him as the truth instead of questioning me like Josie and Brad did. “But I thought you were on the pill,” he says.
“Why would you think that?” I ask. I draw my knees into my chest as though I can protect myself from the blame in his voice.
“Because we had sex without a condom,” he says. “I just assumed you were on the pill to do something like that.”
To do something like that.
Vulnerability washes over me. “This isn’t only my fault,” I say. “It’s both of ours. You have to know that.”
“I do know that,” Noah says. An animal calls out behind us, and I shiver. Noah’s voice isn’t gentle enough when he asks, “But now what are you going to do about it?”
I look at Noah, and for the first time I see a child, a twenty-one-year-old who dreams of living in Australia for a semester, not an almost-adult who dreams of being with me exclusively forever and ever. “You think I should have an abortion?” I ask, trying on the word. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud about the baby.
“You just told me the news five seconds ago,” Noah says, angry now. “I don’t think anything yet.”
Defiance rises in me. “I’ll figure this out,” I say. “I have my family.” My words are so soft I’m not even sure Noah hears me. Branches rustle behind us, and Noah turns first. I follow his gaze, my eyes fuzzy in the dark but still able to see the streak of bright red parka that means Josie.
She crashes through the brush. Her eyes narrow on me, and then on Noah, like she’s trying to figure out whether I told him the secret. The silence between the three of us is so weighty I want to scream. And maybe Josie can’t stand it, either, because when she blurts out, “What are you guys doing?” her voice sounds uncharacteristically nervous.
“We’re just talking, Josie,” I say.
“Yeah,” Noah says, running a hand over his jaw. “Just talking.”
I know by the way he says it that he doesn’t think I’ve told her I’m pregnant. Sometimes he’s thick like that.
Josie considers us, and it feels so good to have the upper hand here, to be the only one that Noah thinks he wants, even if that might not be true. The forest towers above us, and I wonder how many love triangles these woods have seen, and if they’re all basically the same, or if we’re somehow special.
“So did you invite your tall, dark, and handsome boyfriend?” I ask Josie, because it’s the question I would ask if I weren’t always just a little afraid of her, and like I said, I’m high with my upper hand.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Josie hisses. I can practically see her cheeks burning in the dark. Everything the three of us have been to each other weights the air between us, stifles us. “But yeah,” she says. “I invited Dean. He’s back at the campsite. Wanna come?”
FORTY-TWO
Haley
Haley and Dean were back at home, sitting across from each other at their makeshift kitchen table and avoiding each other’s glance. It was an old-fashioned worktable, or at least a new table designed to look old-fashioned, the kind of thing hipsters purchased at design stores and put in Brooklyn apartments. Haley hated it. She rested her elbows on the thing, even though Dean abhorred elbows on tables. The things that bothered him felt so obscure and disjointed that Haley could never predict them. Was she about to spend her entire life trying to figure him out?
“I’m tired,” Haley said, her head in her hands.
“That makes two of us,” Dean said. He set down his mug of coffee, and Haley noticed a tremble in his fingers.
“Dean,” Haley said, but he still didn’t look up. “Are you okay?” she asked, softer now.
“I don’t know what I am,” he said. “Are you okay? I can’t imagine what this must be like for you and your parents.”
She glanced around the kitchen now, feeling helpless, not knowing what to say to him. In the hospital Noah had admitted that the baby could have been his, which surprised Haley but certainly didn’t shock her. She could tell her sister had always had a crush on Noah.
Haley still needed to tell her parents about the pregnancy, but she’d put off calling them, wanting to know more answers before delivering a punch like that. “I just keep thinking about how devastated they’ll be to know she was pregnant,” she said to Dean now. “For them it’ll be like losing two people instead of just one.”
Dean nodded. Haley’s eyes caught on a knife lying next to the sink, a sharp one Dean had used to slice tomatoes in his attempt to make her a sandwich. He was so fastidious about keeping the house clean, and it was the first time since she’d known him that he’d let dishes pile in the sink. The air smelled stale and unfamiliar as Haley went on. “I guess, well, first, I don’t understand why Priya and Brad were both there at the open house,” she said, trying to put words to the things that flooded her mind.
Dean shrugged. “Apparently Josie invited them there so she could tell them she was going to the police with what she knew, all these years later. She said she was a little scared of how they’d react, so she wanted to tell them somewhere quiet, but a place where people coming in and out would make it public enough.”
“That makes no sense,” Haley said. “Why would she even need to warn them?”
Dean’s lips pursed. “Priya and Brad are the kind of teachers that cast spells over their students.”
It wasn’t like Dean to speak poetically. “What do you mean?” Haley asked.
“I think Brad and Priya were incredibly magnetic, especially for students who were twenty and impressionable. I’m sure Josie felt some kind of weird loyalty to them, and that’s why she wanted to warn them she was going to the cops with the pregnancy test. And I absolutely don’t think she thought Brad would try to kill her over it.”
“Well, I suppose she was wrong,” Haley said, her voice too callous.
Dean looked away, and Haley knew she’d been cruel. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it,” she said quickly.
Dean examined his fingernails. “I get that you’re angry that Josie didn’t tell the cops all of this ten years ago,” he said.
“That’s an understatement,” Haley said, crossing her arms over her sweatshirt.
“She was only twenty-one back then,” Dean retorted, and Haley opened her mouth to object, but he put up a hand to signal he wasn’t finished. “Things twenty-something-year-olds do, they don’t always make sense,” he said. “Their brains aren’t even developed all the way. And she got really hurt today. She almost died for coming forward like she planned to with that test.”
Rage surged inside Haley, but she tried to quell it, tried to remind herself that Josie had loved Emma, too, and that she’d almost lost her life today. She tried to make her tone more palatable for Dean when she said, “Josie let Emma’s death remain a mystery for so much longer than it might have otherwise.”
“We still don’t know who killed your sister,” Dean said softly.
Haley swallowed. “I know that,” she said. “I just . . . I wish Emma had told me she was pregnant. She didn’t, obviously, but Josie could have told me at some point after Emma disappeared. I wish I’d known all this time, that the secret hadn’t been hidden from my parents and me for ten years. It just feels like we should have known about the baby, talked about him or her, even in the past tense after Emma died. Maybe that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” Dean said.
H
aley cleared her throat. “I’m not a cop, but I’ve gotten to know Brad a little, from class. I don’t think he’s a psychopath. And that’s what he’d have to be to murder my sister and then calmly go about teaching me in class. The first day of class, there was this uncomfortable beat when he called my name from the roster. He definitely glanced up, and then maybe looked at me a little funny. I assumed it was just because he was putting together that I was the infamous Emma McCullough’s sister, but it also could have been the way you’d look at someone who was the sister of a person you knew intimately when you shouldn’t have. But not someone that you’d murdered in cold blood—I just, that doesn’t feel right to me. Wouldn’t I have sensed something?”
Dean blinked at her, but then his eyes cut away. Did he think she was a fool for being so sure about something like this?
“Anyone at that party could have killed Emma,” Haley said carefully. “But take my sister out of the equation for one second. What if Noah tried to kill Josie today for some reason we don’t even know about?”
“Like what?” Dean asked.
“Anything,” Haley said, her voice shrill now. “Whatever happens in people’s marriages that we don’t even understand, because we’re not married yet. Look at my parents,” she said. “Would you ever think my dad had been unfaithful?”
Dean’s face blanched white. “Being unfaithful is different than physically hurting someone.”
“Plenty of people do that in marriages, too.”
“Haley,” Dean said.
“Read the statistics,” Haley spat back, remembering a particularly grim class at Yarrow on recognizing the signs of domestic violence.
“You’re going a little dark, don’t you think?”
“I don’t, actually,” Haley said.