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My heart was jackhammering as I waited for her to continue.
"I honestly had no idea what to expect. For one, we were talking about Nathan Altman. I looked into his case as soon as Dad gave me his name. He almost killed a man in college." Her voice got louder, and Dad placed a hand on her thigh.
"He paid for—" Lilly came to Nate's defense, but Mom lifted her hand to stop her. She kept shifting between lawyer- and mom-mode, and I was getting whiplash.
"He has, but that's not my point. He has a media focus that makes the one you previously faced look like an interview with the high school's newspaper. When your relation to him comes out, you'll be in the same spotlight as Nate. Not to mention what he'll be charged for."
The kidnappings.
I swallowed several times against the sudden overproduction of saliva. Another topic everyone had been avoiding—until now. Lilly’s bottom lip began to tremble, and I scooted my chair closer to wrap my arm around her shoulder.
"He’ll come forward and go to jail," Lilly whispered as the first tear ran down her cheek. We’d known for weeks that this was the inevitable outcome, yet seeing Lilly like this broke my heart.
"He told us."
My eyes flew to my father, who had Colonel McGuire on full display. I wondered if he needed this side of his personality, his life, to deal with the situation.
"Nate, Mom, and I sat down last night. Over the last week, I’ve gotten to know him in a way that I will never be able to repay him. Without him, Emily would've killed Lilly. I'm not under the delusion that she would've just sent her home after she got what she wanted." He looked at his adopted daughter. "Emily was...ill."
"Ill?" My forehead scrunched. What the hell did that mean?
"I met Emily in kindergarten. Back then, her name was Emily Kaczmarek. Did you know that?" Mom’s tone was low, and Lilly and I shook our heads at the question. Nate dug further into Emily’s past, but with everything else, he hadn’t had a chance to tell us what he found. It seemed my mother was going to fill in some of those blanks.
"We attended the same schools all our lives since Lake Robertson only had one for each grade level." Mom grew up in a relatively small town in the Midwest, but when she left for college, our grandparents moved as well, so we've never actually seen where she grew up.
She looked at a spot behind us as she continued. "We were close. Emily had been my best friend from the day we were put at the same table in school, but there were things I never knew about her. I’ve asked myself many times over the last few weeks if I was too self-absorbed with my own life or if I didn't want to see it." Mom wiped under her nose. "She would come to school with bruises. One time, in middle school, she didn't show up for a week. When I asked her about it later, she gave vague answers that made no sense. She never let me come to her house. Maybe if I had...if I had just shown up, things would have been different. I could've helped her," Mom's voice turned desperate.
"Honey." Dad forced her to focus on him. "We’ve talked about that. There was nothing you could’ve done."
She nodded and then leveled us with a serious expression. "Emily was always around two brothers when she wasn't with me. Their names were R.J. and Gray."
R.J. Ronnie. Turner's brother. Holy shit.
Lilly sucked in a breath, and I could feel her beginning to tremble. I tightened my hold around her shoulder, wanting to reassure her that she was safe and ignore my own inner turmoil at the same time. It was easier to manage when I focused on Lilly rather than what my parents were revealing.
"I didn't put it together until Dad told me what Emily called Turner in front of you." She looked at Lilly. "R.J. was a few years older. He gave me the creeps. As the years passed, the rumors around him started. He was the local dealer, and his little brother functioned as his runner. I confronted Emily once, but she lost it on me. Yelled at me to mind my own business and that my rich ass had no idea what I was talking about." The corners of Mom's mouth turned down.
Rich?My grandparents were maybe upper-middle class—at most. Anger against Emily flared in my chest, even though all this happened years before I was even born.
"Her behavior became erratic. She would have mood swings, be her normal sweet self and then start yelling for no reason. At the end of our junior year in high school, Emily disappeared. She would call every few weeks but refused to tell me where she was—said she needed a change of scenery. I was too busy with myself to question her further. We had grown apart when her behavior changed, and I was already focused on getting into college—the future. We would still talk occasionally, but I didn't see her again until I was already at Georgetown. She came to visit and wanted to repair our friendship. Thinking about it now, maybe she had gone into a rehabilitation facility?"
Mom trailed off. I glanced at Dad, and he picked up from there. "Mom and I met during sophomore year, as you know, and Emily would come to visit a couple of times a year, but that was it. It was usually short visits, a long weekend, but even during those times, she would have moments where her behavior was...unpredictable and, at times, inappropriate for the situation."
What the fuck did that mean?
I scowled at my father but clamped my mouth shut, afraid that if I interrupted, the hour of truth would be over.
"Shortly after I started my position at Pendleton, she moved with her fiancé to San Diego. We met Henry once before, and he was a good guy. She seemed better. Then she got pregnant. You"—Dad made eye contact with me—"had just been born, and your mother was so excited for our children to be so close in age." He glanced over at Mom sympathetically. She picked at her pantleg, avoiding the three of us, and dread filled me with what would come next.
"But Mom was taking care of our newborn son and didn't see the changes in her friend," he continued. "It wasn't your mom's fault. Not by a long shot."
Huh? What wasn't—?
"Lilly was born, and Henry adored his little girl, but he had to travel a lot during the early years for his job."
"What did he do?" Lilly interrupted, speaking for the first time since the topic had switched to Emily. She still didn't know much about Henry.
"He was the lead architect for a national construction company. He would be onsite for a couple of weeks and then commute back and forth. That left Emily alone with Lilly a lot. She would drop her off with us every other day, sometimes leave her overnight."
