Wish You Were Gone(74)

“Because Emma and the kids probably had an emotional day,” she replied, nodding at her daughter to ring the bell. “So, we’re helping out by bringing dinner over.”

“Yeah, I get that. But why are we surprising them?” Willow asked. “And wasn’t it you who said they needed time to themselves?”

Lizzie was saved from concocting a logical answer by Emma swinging open the door. She had the phone at her ear and her eyes widened at the sight of them.

“What’s all this?”

“Dinner!” Lizzie lifted the heavy bags a fraction of an inch. “We thought you could use a break.”

“Oh, wow, Lizzie, you didn’t have to do that. Come in. Both of you, come in!” She stepped aside, clicked the phone off, and took one of the bags from Lizzie. “I was just ordering a pizza, but now I don’t have to. Thank you.”

“Hunter and Kelsey upstairs?” Willow asked.

“Yes! You can head on up,” Emma said.

Lizzie followed her friend into the kitchen, where a glass of white wine stood next to her open laptop. There were clippings from home décor magazines spread out all over the countertop and a home remodeling website open in her browser. Everything appeared to be normal. No signs of a nervous breakdown. Emma turned on the oven and started to unpack the food.

“You really didn’t have to do this.”

Their eyes met for real for the first time and Lizzie exhaled a breath. Emma was acting just like Emma. It hit home suddenly that this was all that really mattered—Emma’s friendship. She could survive without her house, but she couldn’t survive without her closest friend. Everything was going to be okay.

“I wanted to. Really.” She took out one of the big salad bowls and closed the cabinet with her elbow. “How did it go today with the lawyer? Was Gray there?”

Emma sighed. “Nope. She was a no-show.”

It took some effort for Lizzie not to smile. It seemed like the rift between Emma and Gray wasn’t going anywhere. She knew she shouldn’t feel giddy about it, but she did. For the first time in the ten years Lizzie had known Emma, she had her all to herself.

“And there were no surprises?” Lizzie asked, transferring the salad from its tin container into the glass bowl. “No names named?”

Emma shook her head and took a sip of her wine. “Nope,” she said, popping the “p.” “Honestly, Lizzie, I kept waiting for some glamorous woman in Hollywood sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat to walk in. Clearly I’ve seen too many soap operas in my life.”

Lizzie laughed, but it took more effort than it should have. Emma started to clean up the clippings, organizing everything into a pile.

“No, the only surprise was that James left a lot of his sports memorabilia to museums and places like that,” she said. “It kind of threw the kids for a loop. They thought it was all going to them.”

“Oh. Well, that seems fair, though, right? It’s almost… philanthropic.”

“Hadn’t thought of it that way,” Emma said. “The kids went to school for the rest of the day, but I’ve been dealing with the emotional upheaval ever since they got back. Can you believe Kelsey asked me if they could contest the will? I mean, does she really need to hold on to a tennis ball signed by Anna Kournikova? Was she even that good?”

“I never followed tennis,” Lizzie said.

“Me neither.”

Emma put the clippings in a drawer, then went to her computer and closed the renovation site. Behind it on the browser was a garish red and yellow page with the words GARDEN STATE PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS! scrawled across it as if written in spray paint.

“Wait. You’re still thinking about hiring someone?” Lizzie asked.

“No. I don’t know,” Emma said with a wave of her hand. “That woman—the one who answered my dead husband’s cell phone—is still out there, and as much as I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter and to just move on… I don’t know if I can.”

“You can,” Lizzie said definitively. “Come on, Emma. Do you know the size of the can of worms you’ll open up if you hire a detective? What if that woman was just the tip of the iceberg? What if James was keeping other secrets from you? Bigger secrets? You already know he was going to screw over Darnell and move to Los Angeles. Do you really want to know what else he was capable of? And we’re not just talking about the here and now or the recent past, but there could be years of—”

“Stop!” Emma lifted her hands.

Lizzie’s heart dropped. “Sorry, I just—”

“I get it, okay? My husband was an asshole. And I know you said I needed closure, and I tried to get it, but it didn’t work. I can’t stop thinking about all this shit he was keeping from me, Lizzie. I feel like an idiot. And I get that some people wouldn’t want to know, but I guess I’m just not one of those people.”

Emma slapped the laptop closed and sat on the nearest stool, placing her head in her hands. Guilt curled like campfire smoke through Lizzie’s chest, and she reached over to rub her friend’s back.

“I’m sorry. Really. Obviously, whatever you want to do… I’ll be here for you.”

“Thanks,” Emma said. She blew out a sigh. “Look, I’m not going to let it take over my life or anything. The kids—especially Kelsey—need me right now and my primary focus is on them. But I feel like I need to know what my husband was up to. I just want to know, and then maybe I can really move on.”