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CHAPTER TWELVE

Emmy sat in the dark inside the jail complex.

Her leg had finally stopped shaking, but that was only because the muscles had burned themselves out.

As the hands on the clock circled up to four in the morning, she’d felt every single tick draining the life out of her.

There was nothing left to give. All she could do was stare at the bank of video monitors in front of her.

Twelve different cameras on the men’s side. Eight on the women’s.

Paul Dalrymple was being held in isolation for his own protection.

He’d been pacing his cell when Emmy had first relieved the jail monitor.

Now, his fists were wrapped around the bars.

He was gently tapping his forehead against the steel.

Sweat had saturated his black and white striped uniform.

Vomit stained the front. They’d had to call maintenance for his clogged toilet.

He was going through alcohol withdrawal.

They should probably call a doctor, too, but Emmy wasn’t in the mood to help the man responsible for the death of her father.

She let her gaze travel to the lower right monitor.

Hannah was also alone in a cell, but that was because she was on suicide watch.

She hadn’t moved from her cot since Emmy had walked into the monitoring station.

She was lying on her side, curled into a fetal position.

Her head was down, but Emmy could see Hannah’s shoulders shaking as she sobbed.

Emmy’s heart broke for her. She wanted to go into the cell, to hold her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right.

In truth, she wanted Hannah to do the same for her.

There had been so many times in the past twelve years that Emmy had ached for the comfort of their friendship.

When Myrna had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

When she’d really started to decline. Then Gerald’s lung cancer.

Then the liver cancer. And now this insanity with her older sister suddenly back in town less than twenty-four hours after their father had been shot dead in the street.

Hannah had been the one person in Emmy’s life who’d told her that the Clifton craziness wasn’t normal.

That the things all of them had witnessed but none of them ever talked about, like Gerald’s past alcoholism or Myrna’s sporadic affairs or Millie’s kleptomania or Taybee’s OCD or this cousin’s hoarding or that cousin’s gambling or that uncle’s weird obsession with collecting the stickers that were put on fruit was actually so very fucked up.

Emmy looked at her phone on the desk in front of her.

When Gerald had first revealed that Martha was alive, Emmy had done every kind of legal search possible on Martha Judean Clifton.

It had never occurred to her that her sister would start using her middle name, just like it had never occurred to her that Martha might’ve gotten married and changed her last name.

Emmy had been typing in a fresh search when Seth Alexander had done the work for her. His text had been practically giddy—

Can you believe how lucky we are? She literally wrote the book!

He’d provided a link to the book in question.

Statistical Comparisons of Investigatory Modalities in Child Abductions and Kidnappings (Rev. 2022) by J.M. Archer, PhD.

Emmy already knew the scholarly work. She’d used an earlier version to write her dissertation.

“Mom?” Cole was standing in the doorway, which was the downside of the entire family having Life360 on their phones.

His eyes went straight to the monitor in the bottom right corner.

Hannah had continued her relationship with Cole because she loved him and it wasn’t his fault his mother was a terrible friend.

Emmy could read every emotion on her son’s face.

And then she could read nothing, because she had raised him to be as stunted as the rest of his family.

He said, “The FBI sent a woman to take over. She’s pretty badass. I overheard one of the agents talking about how she caught a serial killer.”

Emmy took a deep breath. “What’s she doing?”

“Interrogating Elijah Walker. Maybe she’ll get something out of him.”

Emmy made herself let go of the breath. She couldn’t add this extra level of stress right now. She had to keep her focus on finding Paisley Walker. “He remember anything else on the truck?”

Cole leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb. “Nothing, but he kept hitting on how Paisley was dressed when she left the house. Told me he forbade her to wear leggings without putting on a skirt or shorts over them. Said that I knew the reason why, which I took to mean because men are disgusting.”

“Does that strike you as strange? Him going on about what she wore?”

“Seems more strange that he’s using it as a way to blame his daughter for her own kidnapping.” Cole shrugged. “Did Papa care how you dressed?”

“It was usually Grandma yelling at me to wear something other than jeans and a T-shirt.”

Cole’s smile didn’t last more than a second. “Dad texted me.”

Emmy had almost forgotten about the fight with Jonah. She watched Cole lean over to place his phone on the table beside hers. She looked at the text.

Tell your mother your welcome for not having her arrested for assault.

“He’s always struggled with contractions.” Emmy guessed turning into Myrna was the shit frosting on yet another shit cake. “Baby, sometimes, when somebody dies, it brings up a lot of unresolved stuff.”

“Are you talking about Jonah or you?”

He was too clever, her son. “Don’t call him Jonah. He’s still your father.”

“Did you know he gave Adam Huntsinger a job at the bar?”

Emmy had to swallow down the words that wanted to come. “Everybody’s gotta work somewhere.”

“Okay.” Cole grabbed his phone and started to leave.

“Hold up. Sit with me for a minute.”

Cole was visibly reluctant, but he did as he was told. “What is it?”

Emmy felt her resolve start to crumble, but there was no way around this.

She didn’t want her son blindsided the way she’d been.

Still, there was no easy way to say it. “I don’t have the energy for subterfuge, so I’m just going to be blunt about this.

Your aunt Martha is alive. She’s the FBI agent who had Seth Alexander jumping around.

She’s calling herself Jude Archer now, but it’s her. ”

Cole said nothing, but his shock flashed like a neon sign.

“Papa told me and Tommy about her last year.” Emmy knew she was throwing too much on him at once.

She gave him a few seconds to catch up. “After your uncle Henry drowned in the river, Martha went off the rails. Started drinking and drugging. Then she started stealing things to support her habit. Eventually, she stole your great-aunt Millie’s car.

Got drunk. Nearly killed somebody on the highway.

The other driver is fine now, but he was in the hospital for a week.

A lot of people were angry. Martha ended up leaving town in the middle of the night. Never looked back.”

Cole shook his head like he didn’t understand. “But why did Papa say she was dead?”

“Because there were people in town who wanted her charged for the car accident.” Emmy could still see his confusion.

“Baby, this was over forty years ago. There was no internet. Nobody had computers. Every police report or complaint was written on a sheet of paper that could be shoved in the back of a filing cabinet or thrown away. Your great-uncle was the county prosecutor. Your other great-uncle was the circuit judge. Aunt Millie was editor in chief of the Herald . Uncle Penley was the mayor. If Gerald Clifton said his daughter died in a car accident up in Memphis, then everybody accepted that his daughter had died in a car accident up in Memphis.”

“Okay.” Cole was clearly tapping the weak spots. “What about the funeral?”

“Papa told everybody she was cremated. There wasn’t a funeral. Tommy was away at college. I was still a baby so I had no idea what was going on. Millie was furious about her car. She shut down the cousins. It didn’t take much effort. Jude had burned a lot of bridges.”

Emmy gave him another moment to think. She skipped ahead to the next question she knew he would ask.

“Obviously, your grandma knew the truth. That’s one of the reasons Papa told us.

Grandma kept saying Martha was still alive.

Papa thought it was wrong for us to keep insisting she was dead.

And I guess Papa wanted us to know, too.

This was around the time he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

The prognosis wasn’t good even then. He said he didn’t want his ghosts turning into our demons. ”

Cole kept tapping. “Why didn’t she come home before now?”

“I can take a guess,” Emmy said. “She told Papa she wouldn’t step foot back in Clifton County until he was dead.”

Cole’s jawbone stuck out again. He’d always been protective of his grandfather. “What did Tommy say?”

“That stuff was more complicated than Papa was letting on, but he kept those complications to himself.” Emmy knew this was the least surprising part of the story. “Anyway, Papa said he made a lot of mistakes back then.”

“‘Mistakes can give you a reason to forgive.’”

He was quoting Gerald. Emmy bit her lip so that she wouldn’t tear up again.

Cole asked, “Why didn’t anybody tell me about this before?”

“Because—” Emmy knew the levers she could pull right now to shut down further lines of enquiry.

They were the same levers Gerald had pulled, the same ones Tommy swung on like a monkey, and she wasn’t going to weaponize them against her son.

“Because we’re all cowards who refuse to talk about things that upset us. ”

Cole gave a startled bark of a laugh. “That sounds about right.”

Emmy let out another long breath. She’d reached her limit of uncowardly gestures. “Did you give your statement about Papa’s shooting to Sherry Robertson?”