Public Secrets

“It seems the lot of us are drunks or poets or seers. I’ve had a chance to be all three.”
“I can make her happy.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” He picked up the letter again. “As important as it is to me for you to find who killed my son, it’s more important that you make Emma happy.”
“Da, P.M. and Annabelle have brought the baby. Oh, I’m sorry.” Emma stopped with her hand on the knob. “I didn’t know you were here, Michael.”
“You were shopping when I got back.” He stood, casually taking the letter from Brian and slipping it into his pocket.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Brian came around the desk to kiss her. “I’ve been grilling Michael. It seems he has ideas about my daughter.”
She smiled, on the verge of believing it before she saw her father’s eyes. “What is it?”
“I’ve just told you.” He put an arm around her shoulders and would have led her out, but she turned to Michael.
“I won’t be lied to.”
“I do have ideas about his daughter,” Michael countered.
She shrugged off the arm around her shoulder and stood firm. “Will you let me see the envelope that’s in your pocket?”
“Yes, but I’d rather do it later.”
“Da, would you leave us alone a moment.”
“Emma—”
“Please.”

Reluctantly he closed the door behind him and left them alone.
“I trust you, Michael,” she began. “If you tell me that the only thing you and Da talked about in this room was our relationship, I’ll believe you.”
He started to. He wanted to. “No, it’s not all we talked about. Will you sit?”
It was going to be bad. She found herself gripping her hands together in her lap as she had done since her school days when she was afraid to hear what she had to hear. Instead of speaking, Michael took the envelope out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Ice prickled along her skin as she saw the name on the back of the envelope. A message from the dead, she thought, and wished she could have laughed at the phrase. She opened the letter and sat in silence reading it.
She was so much like her father, Michael noted. Her expressions, the way grief came into her eyes, the quiet way she held herself as she coped with it. Before she spoke, she folded the letter again and gave it back to him.
“This is why you’re here?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes were dark and wretched when they met his. “I wanted to think you couldn’t stay away from me.”
“I can’t.”
She lowered her head again. It was so difficult to think when the ache came this way, marching hard. “Do you believe this letter?”
“It’s not up to me to believe,” he said carefully. “I’m following it up.”
“I believe it.” Emma had a flash of her last dear image of Jane, standing in the doorway of the dirty house, her face shadowed with bitterness. “She only wanted to hurt Da. She wanted to make him suffer. I still remember the way she looked at him the day he took me away. I was only a baby really, but I remember.”
She took a ragged breath. Tears were useless now. “How is it possible to love and hate a person as she did? How is it possible to take those feelings and distort them so completely that you could play a part in taking a little boy’s life? It’s been almost twenty years, but she still wants him to suffer.”

He crouched beside her and took the envelope that lay in her lap. “Maybe that’s true, but she may have started something that will help us find out who killed him, and why.”
“I know.” She closed her eyes tight. “It’s buried somewhere deep inside me, but I know. This time I’m going to dig it out.”

W HEN THE MUSIC started she was standing in the dark doorway in her favorite nightgown, clutching Charlie. Darren was crying. She wanted to go back to bed, back to her own bed and the glow of the night-light. But she’d promised to take care of him, and he was crying.
She stepped out, but her foot didn’t touch the floor. It seemed to float on a dark gray cloud. She could hear the hissing, the dry skittering of the things that liked the dark. The things that ate bad little girls, like her mam had told her.
She didn’t know which way to go. It was too dark and there were sounds everywhere, under and over the music that wouldn’t stop. She walked toward her crying brother, trying to be small, so small no one could see. She could feel the sweat running down her back.
She had her hand on the knob. Turned it slowly. Pushed the door. Open.
Hands gripped her arms,