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Hill never took her eyes off Noah, her voice brimming with disgust. “Doyle claimed your client tricked a poor young woman into thinking she was his date for the evening.”
“Stop it,” Noah said, desperation saturating the syllables. “Stop it!”
“Why should I?Youdidn’t.” Hill’s voice was as deadly as a Category Five hurricane barreling toward land, and Emma had an overwhelming need to board up her emotional windows and evacuate the area. “Did you think it would be funny to convince the ordinary girl from the ordinary family that you wanted her to be your date to your grandmother’s birthday party? She was, after all, only allowed into your upper-class prep school because she was on scholarship. She was so beneath you, so you thought you’d just have a little fun at her expense?”
“Stop.” Noah shot from his seat and turned his back on the table. “Stop.Stop.”
“You broke her heart!” Hill shouted. “And just how devastated was the girl when she found out what you did? Did she just run home and hide, lie low until she turned eighteen?”
“Don’t.” Noah clasped his head with both hands as if something was clawing to get out.
Emma finally found her voice, although she wasn’t sure if the woman or the attorney stepped in. “That’s enough, Detective. I need a moment alone to confer with my client, and I want that damn camera off. If that red light stays on after you leave, I’ll file a lawsuit big enough to endbothyour careers. By the time I’m finished with you, you’ll be so radioactive no police force would dare hire you again.”
“Fine. We’ll give you a minute to confer with your piece of shit client.” Hill gathered their papers as Tanaka pushed to his feet. “Although, I’m being far kinder to him than he was to Amanda Jennings.” Hill placed a paper-clipped stack of papers on the table. “If you’re interested, here are photocopies of Amanda’s diary. Her father gave it to us. Well, actually, her sister did. Her parents are both dead now, and the sister never signed the non-disclosure agreement your family forced her dad to sign. She was thrilled to give the diary to us. You should read the last couple of entries, Counselor, and then tell me if they don’t sound eerily familiar to what your client did to you. Amanda wrote the last entry the day before the party where your client stomped on her heart and humiliated her. Your client may not have slit that girl’s wrists, but he’s sure as hell the reason she’s dead.”
Emma pressed a palm to her heart.Noah, what did you do?
She remained where she was until she and Noah were alone and the red light on the camera went white. Only then did she pick up the journal pages and lower back into her chair. The front cover was an hombre of blues and purples in pretty pastels, printed in full color for maximum emotional manipulation no doubt. A mermaid tail started at the top right corner and “swished” to the bottom left. The tail had the same blending of colors, only darker. Silver outlines gave the fin and scales a distinct look.
Emma turned the pages over. The back was a mirror image of the front, and Emma prayed that her relationship with Noah wouldn’t mirror whatever she was about to read.
She opened to the first page. Amanda Jennings had a bulldog who slept with her every night and would curl up next to her when she journaled. The dog’s name was Veronica Mars, and girl and dog liked to go on adventures and figure things out. She liked mysteries, but mostly, she liked anything that got her out of the house and away from her father when he started drinking.
Emma wiped at a tear and kept reading. Amanda’s mother had died when she was nine. She wrote a lot about losing her mom. She also wrote a lot about how her father had grown increasingly mean as he fell deeper into what Emma concluded was depression. As a result, Amanda had taken on more and more responsibilities at home, and from the tone of her writing, she was getting increasingly overwhelmed. Her schoolwork was suffering, and she’d had to take a part-time job so that she could make sure she and her sister could eat. One of the part-time jobs was as an English tutor, which is where she met and fell madly in love for the first time.
On page after page, she gushed about Noah Whitlow III, his gorgeous home, and his lovely mother. Emma could relate. She, too, had been swept away in the current the Whitlows generated, but when she reached the last entry, her heart broke.
“Noah asked me to go to his grandmother’s birthday party with him. Me! I can barely believe it. Noah Whitlow! I’m going to see if I can find a pretty sundress on sale, something that won’t drag the ground if we go to the stables and pet the horses. He loves his horses. One day, maybe he’ll take me to the creek he loves. He told me it’s his favorite spot in the entire world, and I hope to share it with him one day. I think I love him. Maybe at the party, I’ll finally find the courage to tell him.”
The horses, the creek, the overwhelming sense of not being enough. Emma was Amanda all grown up—only Amanda had never gotten to grow up.
Emma steppedto Noah’s side. “It’s true,” she asked, “isn’t it? What the detectives said. No, wait, don’t answer that. I may not mean anything to you, but I’m still your attorney. Not another word, do you hear me?”
Noah didn’t speak, didn’t turn to her. He couldn’t bear to face her. Hell, he wasn’t sure he could even speak. Her nearness was too painful. He was a dying weed, and she was the sun. His guilt and shame were as unbearable now as they had been the dayPapátold him of Amanda’s suicide.Papáhad done his best to assuage a young Noah’s guilt and mitigate the blame, but Amanda’s death had been his fault, just like Hill had said.
He needed to be alone, needed to lick his wounds. Everything was too raw, too exposed. His head was a kaleidoscope of dark emotions—the most prominent, as always, was guilt. As a teen, it had sent him spiraling into a depression he’d nearly been unable to escape. The alcohol and the drugs, none of it had deadened the pain. Only time, counseling, and the unwavering loyalty and love of his parents had done that.
“Was anything between us real, Noah? Anything at all?” Her voice was so soft that he scarcely heard it. He wanted to tell her the truth, that she was the only true source of joy in his life, but he didn’t deserve joy. Or happiness. And it was time he came to terms with that, so he said the one thing that would punish him for the rest of his life.
“No,” he lied. “None of it was real, Emma. Just go.”Before I break down completely.
If she responded, he couldn’t hear it over the screaming in his head and the interview door slamming. Guilt carved his heart into a million tiny slices, but he’d done the right thing. He didn’t deserve happiness, and Emma deserved so much better than him.
Leaning his head against the cold cinderblock wall, he closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a hand pressed against his shoulder blade, andPapá’sfamiliar aftershave tickled his nostrils.
“I’m here,”Papáwhispered.
Without a word, Noah turned into his father’s embrace and, like he had when he was sixteen, wept in his father’s arms.
