Wish You Were Gone(91)

“What?” Gray said. “She’s been picked up by the cops for shoplifting more than once.”

“How do you know about that?” Lizzie was pale.

“I’m president of the town council, remember? People talk.”

“Okay, fine. It’s true. But she’s not going to do it anymore. We’re working through it.” She blushed when she looked at Emma. “But, yeah, she did steal his phone.”

“What?” Emma demanded. She thought back to the email exchange between James and Willow—the one she’d read entirely the wrong way—and it hit her. “Oh. At the coffee shop in the city.”

“I don’t understand. When did Willow even find out that James was her father?” Gray asked. “How long has she known?”

Lizzie rubbed her face with both hands. “Honestly, the whole thing was kind of a mess. For her eighteenth birthday, Willow decided to get herself a DNA test. I didn’t think anything would come of it, but as it turned out, she talked a bunch of her friends into it, too, including Hunter. When it came back, the test indicated that they shared fifty percent of their DNA.”

“Her birthday last month,” Emma said, then gasped. “Oh my God, does Hunter know?”

Lizzie nodded. Gray threw up her hands and turned her back on them, as if trying to keep herself from physically exploding.

“Does Kelsey?”

“I think so. They’ve been spending so much time together…”

Emma nodded. She’d thought that was odd, and this would explain it. It would also explain why Kelsey was clearly helping Willow with her eBay enterprise.

“So, even though I told her not to, Willow reached out to James. He mostly ignored her, but finally, I guess, he replied and told her to back off.” Lizzie took a breath. “But my daughter is tenacious. Backing off is not in her nature.”

Just like her father, Emma thought.

“I asked her about the phone after I found it and Willow told me that the day James died, she and Hunter skipped out of school early and went into the city,” Lizzie said, her voice picking up speed as if she just wanted to get it all out. “Willow met him at some coffee shop or something and it did not go well. She told me she snapped and swiped his phone. I don’t think she was thinking straight. I think she was devastated, and it was the only thing she could think to do to get back at him.” She shot Emma an embarrassed and apologetic look.

“This is unbelievable,” Emma said, turning the phone over and over in her hands. Hunter had known about this all this time. He and Kelsey had both kept this huge secret from her. It was impossible to fathom. What must they be thinking? How did they feel about all this? “I can’t believe I thought he was having an affair.” Gray clucked her tongue and Emma looked at her. “I mean I know he did have more than one affair, but that woman who picked up when I called his phone was Willow.” She stood up, unable to sit still a moment longer. “I wish she’d just said something. For the past three weeks I’ve been losing my mind, running all over the place, trying to track down this mistress, and it was her all along. His daughter.”

Emma brought her hands to her temples, the phone clutched in one of them, and groaned in frustration. “I can’t believe this is happening.” She dropped her hands and looked at Lizzie. “So is this why we’re friends? Did you move out here just to spy on us? To get close to the wife of the man who fathered your kid?”

Lizzie glanced at Gray. It was pretty clear she didn’t want to have this conversation in front of her, but Emma didn’t much care at the moment what Lizzie wanted.

“Lizzie?” she prompted.

“Yes, at first.”

Emma shook her head, incredulous.

“Of course, I was curious. And part of me wanted James to see Willow. I wanted him to see me,” Lizzie said, her voice throaty. “I didn’t want to just be some footnote to him, some random slut that didn’t matter. I thought that if he knew we were living close by, he wouldn’t be able to forget about us. But then—”

“But then, what?” Emma demanded.

“But then I met you,” Lizzie said, her voice cracking. “You became my family—you and Hunter and Kelsey—right when I needed one most.”

Emma wiped tears from her eyes. Try as she might, all she could see when she looked at Lizzie was her friend—the person who had been there for her for the past ten years, making her laugh, making her see the beauty in the everyday, giving her an outlet for her photography. She couldn’t even imagine the girl that Lizzie had once been—the one who’d been sucked in by her enigmatic husband. She was just Lizzie. And for better or worse, they were family.

Lizzie had lied to her, yes, but Emma had kept secrets, too.

“Did you and James ever talk?” Emma asked. “All those times you were at our house… all those parties… did he ever even acknowledge you?”

Lizzie shook her head and looked away. “I tried a couple of times. In the early days. But he told me to fuck off. He told me if I said anything to you, he’d kill me.”

“Jesus,” Gray whispered.

Emma let out a half sob, half laugh that she couldn’t find the strength to hold in. “I’m sorry, I… I don’t even know what to say.”