Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

agree that Jenna deserves more opportunity.”
    “She’ll get that opportunity when she goes to college. I did. We all did.” Given the circumstances of the last few hours, she couldn’t bring up her old argument that Cherrystone was a safe haven. Seattle had a rave culture. Cherrystone was still 4-H. Certainly there were drugs in the town that David derided as “no more than a pockmark on the map,” but Emily knew more kids were concerned about showing how high their sunflowers grew than how high they got. Seattle teens got beaten and murdered and abused everyday of the week.
    And now Cherrystone had a murder times three. The idea pounded at her cranium. Was it lack of sleep or the realization that some kid had slaughtered his family for no apparent reason?
    “Really, David, I can’t talk about this right now.”
    “Someone’s dog loose? Cow get out of a pasture?” David could be cutting and never missed the chance to remind Emily that she was slumming in Cherrystone.
    Her head pounded. “I’d answer that, and since you’ll probably relay everything back to Dani, I’d better use small words so she’ll understand” The second they spewed from her lips, Emily wished she hadn’t been so harsh and could pluck them from the air before David heard them. If she hadn’t been under so much pressure because of the storm and now the Martin murders, she’d have held it together.
    “Now, I remember why I couldn’t stand being around ‘ you.
    His words cut to the bone. She knew they’d been deserved, but she hated the idea of their entire life together being cast in an odious light. They did, after all, have a few good years earlier in their marriage. Maybe even more good years than bad. And they did have Jenna.
    “Sorry,” she said. “I do have to go. David, I’ll call you. But for now, please understand that Jenna is going to see you this summer-for the two weeks we’ve agreed upon in the parenting plan. Nothing more”
    “Dani and I think she’s old enough to change her mind-“
    Dani was David’s girlfriend and Emily couldn’t stand it that she was closer in age to Jenna than she was to David. They’d met once, not long after the divorce was final. Dani had seemed nice enough. She wasn’t particularly beautiful. She wasn’t even blond. And her chest? Just average for a second wife, or at least what most men tend to go for when they trade up. Emily hated the age disparity. It just seemed wrong, ugly, and predictable. David was a lot of things in their marriage, many of them annoying, but he’d never been predictable.
    “I didn’t call you to argue,” he said, his voice icy. “I wanted to tell you that I’ve been talking with Jenna and she wants to live with me for the summer. The hospital PR department says she could help out on the Web site. It would be a good opportunity.”
    Emily was stunned, but she tried to keep cool. Why would Jenna collude with her father? Wasn’t she happy? “She said so?” she asked, before she thought better of it, and laid the blame at David. “Or is this something you’ve cooked up?”
    “I’m her dad. She needs her dad. Studies say that girls grow into stronger, more self-actualized women if they have close relationships with their fathers” He was superior, cool, and oddly detached; it was as if he was reading his words out of some journal that Dani probably nabbed off the Internet.
    “Really? That would have been nice to know when we were all still living together, wouldn’t it?”
    “Okay. This call is going nowhere”
    “Right” Like our marriage, Emily thought, though she held it in. “Good-bye, David. I’ll have my lawyer call yours”
    As she moved the phone from her ear she heard him say, “When are you going to tell him? Tonight in bed-“
    It was a cheap shot and Emily snapped her flip phone shut. An argument with David always ended with a calculated abruptness. Even though it was a pattern that had been repeated ad nauseum during the more difficult times of their marriage, Emily never got used to it. Her face felt hot with anger. Her pulse raced. It was true, Cary McConnell had been her divorce lawyer. She and Cary hadn’t so much as shared a meal until after the divorce was final. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. The phrase out of the frying pan came to her mind.
    Emily got out of her car in the Cherrystone High School parking lot. A girl sat in her big brother’s blue Nova and smoked a More cigarette. She looked over at Emily, pulled