Wish You Were Gone(16)
“Is that what they think happened?” Lizzie asked.
“Well, he was wasted, right?” Gray said. “Maybe he put the top down and didn’t even realize it. Maybe he was half out of it, started to get out of the car, and passed out.”
“He was wasted?” Lizzie asked.
“Why else do you think he drove through the back of his own garage? To test his superhero invincibility?” Gray snapped. “Emma just said he was passed out.”
“I know, but—” She looked at Emma. “You didn’t tell me he was driving drunk. I thought maybe he fainted or—”
“He always drove drunk. He was like a pro at it,” Gray said, oozing judgment. “How he survived as long as he did is a mystery in and of itself if you ask—”
“All right, all right, that’s enough,” Emma interjected. She sounded like she had back when the kids were in middle school, when they’d gone through their constant-bickering phase. Which she supposed she should be grateful for today because it made Hunter and Kelsey’s current friendship that much sweeter. Now, facing down her friends, her cheeks were pink. She didn’t appreciate Gray’s tone, like she knew everything there was to know about James, like she had the right to spew crap about her husband—even if it was true crap. Also, Lizzie didn’t know anything about James’s drinking. Unless Hunter had said something to Willow and Willow had passed it along. It wasn’t something Emma chose to share with Lizzie. She liked having a friendship that was untouched by the quagmire of her marriage. Lizzie never asked, in a quiet, concerned voice, how things were at home—or whether she was okay, or if she needed anything. Their relationship was, for that reason, easy. Maybe slightly shallower than her relationship with Gray, but no less meaningful to her. She needed Lizzie, just for entirely different reasons than those she had for needing Gray.
Gray checked her watch and Emma shifted in her seat. She knew Gray had to get to the office, and Lizzie needed to open up shop soon.
“Okay, so you’ve got the tie, the car roof, the door,” Gray said. “What’re you thinking?”
Gray studied her face as if she were on the witness stand. Emma ran her fingernail along a groove in the oak table. She had no idea how her friends were going to react to this, but she had to say it. She had to talk it through with someone. “What if someone was with him?”
Lizzie looked up. She’d been staring at the floor with a look of extreme concentration, as if trying to solve a sudoku puzzle in her head. “Like who?”
“I don’t know, but what other reason would he have for getting out of the car? For taking off his tie?” Emma said, warming to her subject. “What if someone was with him and they… did something to him?”
Her two best friends stilled. Out on the street, a child laughed and a chain saw buzzed and a breeze rustled the autumn trees, but inside the shop, dead silence.
“Emma—”
“No! Just hear me out. What if it wasn’t an accident?” Emma said. “What if someone was there, and they set it up to look like an accident?”
“How would someone even do that?” Lizzie asked.
“I have no idea,” Emma said. “But something weird is going on. I can feel it in my gut.”
She tried to think back to that evening, wondering whether she’d had a sixth sense that something was off. But no, she couldn’t fool herself into believing that. In the few hours before the accident she’d been too livid to feel anything else. She’d said things, done things, texted things she wished she could take back. But it was too late now.
Gray and Lizzie locked eyes and in that moment, there was a hitch in Emma’s stomach. Because for half a second, she thought that maybe they knew something. That maybe they didn’t think she was crazy, that maybe they knew she was right. But then they turned to her and she was disappointed. They had the look of two people who were going in to talk down a hostage-taker. They didn’t know James like she did. He was a creature of habit. There were things he simply did not do. Something wasn’t adding up. And if she had to figure out the equation on her own, that was what she would do. Though she had hoped that her best friends, or at least one of them, would believe in her enough to get on board.
“Forget it. It’s silly,” Emma said. “Forget I said anything.”
LIZZIE
Right when she thought that maybe he wasn’t coming, Ben Thackery appeared at the door of the shop. Lizzie, having spent the entire day inside her head thinking about Emma and James and how it had turned out that she didn’t know squat about Emma and James, brightened at the sight of him. He used his shoulder to push the door open, loaded down as he always was with two coffees and a pink pastry bag.
“What have you got for me today?” she asked. Her taste buds were already tingling.
“Apple spice coffee and cranberry scones,” he said, his smile excited. She shoved aside her laptop to make room on the counter.
“It smells heavenly!”
Ben beamed. “The apple spice is a new recipe. I added more nutmeg. But the cranberry scones are my grandmother’s. I’ve been eating those since I was in kindergarten.”
As always, he watched her as she took a bite. The first few times he’d done this, it had disconcerted Lizzie, but now she found that she no longer minded. In fact, she sort of liked the attention. Ben was not her usual type. He was chubby and average height and a little bit balding on top, but he had kind blue eyes and strong-looking hands, and over the past few weeks she’d come to look forward to making him smile. Plus she adored his positive outlook on life. So few people had that these days. Ben had moved to Oakmont a little over a month ago, bought the old Greek bakery down the street, and turned it into a modern café selling trendy tarts and popovers and the most delicious array of muffins. He’d started bringing free samples to all the business owners on River Street his first week in business, but Lizzie was pretty sure he saved these special Monday evening visits for her. The café was closed on Mondays, and he spent the whole day working on new recipes behind locked doors, only coming out to serve her this closing-time snack like her very own Willy Wonka.