Open House(69)

Haley turned back to her dad, and his gaze held hers, seeing her. Then he bent down and began to dig into the snow. When he reached the dirt, he kept going until he had a sizable hole. He stood again and carefully removed a piece of paper from his jacket. He unfolded it with shaking hands, and Haley saw it was one of Emma’s sketches, a pencil drawing she’d done of their family. In the sketch, her mom and dad stood like bookends around Haley and Emma. Each parent had a hand on one of their daughters’ shoulders. All four weren’t smiling exactly, but they looked contented, peaceful together.

Haley’s dad knelt to the ground and carefully set the sketch against the cold earth. “We’re right here with you, sweetheart,” he said. “We always will be.”

Tears fell over Haley’s cheeks. “Goodbye, Emma,” she said. She reached for her mom’s and Dean’s hands as her father buried the sketch, marking it with stones.

Snow fell quickly, covering the shallow grave.

They would come back in the spring.





EPILOGUE

Haley

Five years later

Haley glanced around Mosaic and took in the new paintings lining the coffee shop’s walls. Bright blocks of color covered the canvases, and Haley’s eyes settled on a particularly striking one with streaks of reds and navy blues. She took off her snow hat, trying to smooth her messy dark hair behind her ears, inhaling the smell of roasted coffee. A barista she recognized smiled. Haley smiled back as she got in line.

She checked her watch. 11:59. Dean would be here any minute. He still never ran late, even now that Grace was here. Naming the baby Grace had been Dean’s idea, actually, and she was absolutely perfect, a cherub with blond curls and big cheeks below light brown eyes, smooth fingers that curled around Haley’s. Since the first moment Haley held her, Grace felt so incredibly meant to be.

The shop’s door opened with a ding. Haley turned, but it wasn’t Dean and Grace, and she felt agitated with anticipation. Tap, tap, tap went her fingertips against her wool coat. “Can I add a muffin to my order?” she asked the man behind the counter, because maybe Grace could try one today. She was almost nine months. Dean was so careful with Grace, and Haley knew she’d have to run it by him first before just offering a crumbly piece. She was pleasantly surprised that Dean had turned out to be one of those parents who read all the articles about what foods to introduce first, the kind of parent who cared about all the little things that made up Grace’s life. It was endearing.

Customers chattered around Haley. She waited for the barista to make her coffee, checking out the paintings again. They were Priya’s, and they were beautiful. Haley couldn’t wait to go to the official opening of the exhibit tonight, and she imagined Priya in one of the flowing dresses she often wore now, her cheeks blushing as she took in everyone’s compliments about her paintings. Priya’s long black hair had been chopped into a bob, and sometimes she still went to reach for it, to twist a piece, and then laughed when she remembered it was gone. Priya and Haley had become good friends over the past five years, at first rehashing what Josie had done to cover up Emma’s death, and then marveling at the way Josie had scared and toyed with Priya over the years by calling their illicit meetings. But slowly Haley and Priya fostered a friendship based on something deeper, something real. Priya and Brad weren’t living together anymore, but they still saw a therapist once a month to help them coparent Elliot. Priya was doing so much better—her panic attacks had stopped completely—and that made Haley happy.

“Dr. McCullough?” asked the barista behind the counter.

Haley stepped forward in line and thanked him. She paid for her coffee and muffin, her mind on Priya and Brad. Haley had been right, of course, about a purposefully nonfatal stab wound at the open house on Carrington Road five years ago. Rappaport suggested that Noah might have been the one to inflict the stab wound, complicit in Josie’s plan to frame Brad, but Josie took credit for all of it: the scheming, the lying, and the stabbing. She said she would do anything to protect Noah, and Haley believed her. After all, Josie had carried the guilt of Emma’s death all these years, believing it was Noah who protected her from the repercussions of what she’d done that night, and Noah who kept her safe: her new ally in the world. But it wasn’t long before the police realized Josie would have needed help, too, and forensics concluded there was no way a petite woman like Josie could have dragged the deadweight of a 130-pound body across the uneven terrain and into the water. As the only people close to Josie at the party that night, Chris and Noah quickly became the obvious suspected accessories to Emma’s wrongful death. The police pressed hard on Chris, and Haley imagined that Noah had probably thought he was in the clear. But what Noah likely underestimated was Josie’s loyalty to her brother. As soon as Chris was implicated, Josie came clean and told the police that Chris had nothing to do with Emma’s death, and that Noah had dragged Emma’s body into the river. In her statement, Josie said that she pushed Emma to her death by accident, and that Noah had tried to help her cover up the murder. “She was alive at first,” Josie told the cops, “but by the time I got Noah to come help her, it was too late.”

Rappaport had let Haley watch the video of Josie’s statement, so she’d been able to see firsthand the way color had drained from Josie’s face when Rappaport asked her, “How sure are you that Emma was dead when you returned with Noah? Did you check her pulse?” Whether it was because she was only twenty-one, or because she trusted Noah, it seemed Josie had never questioned him when he told her Emma was dead. Josie had stammered on the video, trying to recover. “Noah would never kill Emma,” she finally blurted.