Open House(52)

“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.

Haley 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.”