Lovely Girls(79)

If not for the fact that Emma had broken into my house and was brandishing a knife, I would have laughed at this. It was so childish and petty.

“Then tell me,” I suggested. “Explain why your good friend Ingrid sent nasty anonymous texts to the daughter of your other good friend Genevieve?”

“I know Ingrid seems calm and poised on the surface. But the reality is she’s always been a very jealous person. She was jealous of me, of Genevieve. That we were both happily married, while she was single and alone. That’s the thing about Ingrid. Having the picture-perfect life has always been important to her. She wanted all of it—the perfect marriage, the accomplished career, the high-achieving daughter. When her husband cheated on her and blew up her perfect family, she never recovered from that. She’s always viewed the end of her marriage as a failure.”

“If she was jealous of you and Genevieve, why would she target Daphne?”

Emma let out a humorless laugh. “Because Genevieve has never missed the opportunity to rub her perfect life in Ingrid’s face. Her rich, successful husband. Her beautiful and gifted children. Her house that could have been featured in a magazine. And it got to Ingrid. It was like a pebble in her shoe, a constant irritation that she couldn’t get rid of. And she couldn’t confront Genevieve because that would have been the end of their friendship. But she could take her frustrations out on Daphne.”

“But those texts were awful. They were ugly and mean. What kind of an adult would go after a teenage kid like that?” I asked.

“I think it was Ingrid’s way of taunting Genevieve that her family wasn’t as perfect as she likes to pretend.”

I wondered how Ingrid would feel when she learned that Daphne had murdered her daughter. Would she question whether the texts she’d sent Daphne had inflamed a conflict that ended in her daughter’s death?

“It’s all so toxic,” I murmured. And it was. The clique of mothers and their murderous clique of daughters.

“Yes. Daphne is toxic,” Emma said, missing my larger point. “I’ve always wondered if there’s something fundamentally wrong with her. Like if she has borderline personality disorder or malignant narcissism. That’s probably what happened. It wasn’t Shae at all.”

Emma was suddenly earnest, as though she were trying to convince us both that Shae was just another one of Daphne’s victims. And maybe I would have believed her. If I hadn’t seen the video. Shae hadn’t hesitated when Daphne demanded that she help her kill Callie. Shae had jumped right in.

“Emma. Listen to me.” I held up my hands, and Emma hesitated, lowering the knife. “I know you’re upset. I know it’s a lot to process. But your being here isn’t going to change anything. The truth is going to come out about what happened that night.”

Emma shook her head dazedly, as if continued denial was enough to stop the truth.

“Shae would never hurt anyone. It’s not in her nature,” she said quietly.

“Shae always does what Daphne tells her to.”

Emma took another step toward me, the hand holding the knife rising up again. I skittered backward until I hit the wall next to the entrance to the kitchen. My head banged against the framed Ellsworth Kelly poster I’d bought at the Albright-Knox museum back in Buffalo. It swayed back and forth. I wondered whether it would fall off its hook and crash to the ground—and hoped it would, because that might alert Alex to the present danger—but it stayed put.

“I need to see Alex now,” Emma said, biting out each word.

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m not asking. I want every copy of that video, and I’m not leaving until I have them.”

Emma lifted the knife again and took another step toward me. The blade was now dangerously close.

“I’ll kill you if I have to,” Emma said with such quiet determination, I believed her.

My heart drummed with terror as I stared at the lethal weapon in Emma’s hand. I could see the resolve in her eyes. She really was prepared to kill me and Alex in order to save her daughter.

I looked around, wondering whether I could make a run for it. It was possible I could get out of the kitchen and into the front hallway before Emma could catch up to me. But what then? Would I be able to get out of the front door before she had time to plunge the knife into my back? Or make it to a neighbor’s house to call for help? Maybe, but I wasn’t sure. And I still didn’t know whether Alex was aware that Emma was in the house, threatening to hurt us. I could hardly leave her here alone, even to go for help. Emma would find Alex. And I would not let that happen.

Emma took another step toward me. She was now only a few feet away from me. So close, I could see the green in her hazel eyes, the tiny mole above her right eyebrow. Emma seemed to be readying herself to commit the violence she was threatening. Her eyes were oddly blank, her mouth set in a grim line. She didn’t look sane. Was it possible that she’d experienced a psychotic break? That learning that her daughter was a murderer had been too much for her to bear?

“Emma, please think this through. More violence isn’t going to fix anything,” I said. My voice was thin and high pitched. “It’s only going to make everything worse.”

Emma shook her head once. “Once I destroy every copy of that video, this will be over. At least it will be for Shae.”