Secondhand Sinners (18 page)

“Unfinished business?”

“That’s my nice way of saying we fucked.”

“When? Today?”

“No.” Alan laughed. “Not yet, anyway. It was a few years after she left town. We met up at a bar.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’d tell you to go ask her for yourself, but she obviously doesn’t want to talk to you. Guess you’ll have to take my word for it. I never figured her for a biter, but she did this thing where she took little bites outta me. Damn. I can get off just thinkin’ about that.”

Miller could’ve rolled in a pile of fire ants, walked barefoot through a bed of stickers and then been struck by lightning, and that still would’ve hurt less than hearing Alan talk about being in bed with Emily.

Alan pushed on his shoulder. “She doesn’t want to see you. Stop being a dick and go home.”

“
I’m
being a dick?”

“There you go.” Alan gave Miller’s shoulder one final squeeze and started to walk back to his car. “Keep reminding yourself of that,” he called over his shoulder.

Miller stood there while Alan’s car pulled out of the parking lot with no idea of what he was going to do next. Fear and confusion mixed together into a mortar of indecision that was seeping into every joint. He couldn’t shake off the flashback of hearing odd sounds as he walked up the stairs, of walking into his own bedroom and seeing Alan in his bed and the look of pleasure on Sara’s face. Only now it wasn’t Sara’s face he saw, it was Emily’s.

How could she have been with Alan? How could she have shared something with that ass that she once shared with him? Humiliation burned in his chest. What they had last night wasn’t special at all. Alan may have been a bastard, but
he
was an idiot…an angry idiot.

Emily wouldn’t let him explain his side of the story? Fine. He could relegate her presence to the distraction that it really was and go about the business of getting his quiet, content life back. He was going home. Emily could go to hell.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Emily

Emily cringed when Alan got in the car. “That was fun.”

“Where’s Miller going?” Jack called out from the back seat.

Alan looked into the back seat through his rear view mirror. “Who cares?”

“He’s taking me fishing today.”

“I’ll take you.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “Miller’s taking me.”

“I doubt that. Right, Emily?” Alan said, taking her hand.

She snatched it out of his grasp. “Don’t talk to my son.”

“Hey, Jack.” Alan kept his eyes on Emily, his lips contorted into a spiteful smile. “You know that word
retard
?”

“Don’t,” Emily said through gritted teeth. “Leave him alone.”

“That’s a bad word,” Jack said.

“Well…” Alan twisted at the waist to face Jack, “Miller called you that.”

“But,” Jack’s voice wavered, “but he’s my friend.”

“No. He’s a liar. You know what else he said?”

“Stop, Alan. I get it, okay? Leave him alone.” Emily looked back at Jack. “He didn’t say that, buddy. Alan heard him wrong. Right?”

“You know what? Your mom’s right. Now that I think about it, he didn’t say
retard
. He said ‘I wear a pink
leotard
.’”

“Leotard?” Jack started to laugh. “That’s funny. Leotard. Leotard. Can we go home now?”

“Not yet. Your mom has to help me find something.”

“What?”

“Something that was stolen from me years ago. A treasure.”

“Oh cool!”

“Let’s go,” Emily said, sitting back and pushing on Alan’s shoulder to get him to do the same. “The sooner we get this over with the sooner I can get back to Miller and clear this whole thing up.”

“Yeah. About that.” Alan shot a fake pout at Emily. “I don’t think Miller’s going to want to take you back after our little discussion.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him about our hook up.”

“You had no right.” Emily wanted to slap Alan. Or punch him. Or kill him. She crossed her arms over her stomach and clutched Miller’s shirt in her fists. “I told you I’d do what you asked. Why’d you have to go and tell him about that?”

“Because it pisses me off that you still think I’m
asking
you to do something. You don’t get to call the shots anymore.”

“I’m sure you left out the most important details, like how I was depressed and wasted and you stalked me.”

“I’m hurt that you think those are the most important details. Now…” He held his hand out. “Give me your phone.”

Instinctively, Emily’s hand touched her pocket. “No way.”

“Give it to me, or I’ll get on the phone and call the high school. I’ll tell Abby all about her so-called adoption.”

“They’d never let you talk to her.”

He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and pressed a number. “Got the school on speed dial,” he said, raising it to his ear. His voice changed from dark and angry to light and charming. “Hey there, Shirley. This is Alan. How’s it goin’, beautiful?” He rolled his eyes as he listened. “Listen, I’ve come across some stolen items in this case I’m working on. I think I’ve got something here that belongs to Abby Anderson. I’m going to need to talk to her ASAP.” He paused for a moment to listen, then winked at Emily and said, “Great. I’ll hold.”

“Okay.
Okay,”
Emily whispered fiercely, pulling her phone out of her pocket and handing it over to him. She still hadn’t had time to process what she saw and heard when Miller and Levi were talking.
Was
Abby her daughter? She couldn’t be, not if she had Wilson’s.

With his gaze fixed on Emily, he said, “Oh, you know what, Shirley? I was wrong. Sorry to have bothered you.” Alan ended the call. “Next time I won’t hang up.”

“I would have helped you find what you’re looking for. All you had to do was ask. There’s no need to go all brutal on everyone.”

Alan slid her phone into his pocket, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot. “I’ve been stuck in this shit hole for far too long, trying to find what I’ve been looking for. Now that everything is falling into place, I’m not about to rest my whole future on anything so fragile as trust.”

The situation was much too heavy to wade through. Emily wanted desperately to go back thirty minutes in time, to when she stood with Alan in that video room at the police station watching the recording and then live feed of Miller and Levi’s conversation. She’d probably have to go back much further to undo all the damage Alan had done. How far back? When did this whole mess begin? When Miller took Abby? When she ran away? Even earlier?

She knew she was in trouble when she saw the gleeful smile on Alan’s face while they watched Miller tell Levi that Abby had Wilson’s before he shrugged in defeat and said he had to make sure Abby never found out. She didn’t know how bad the trouble would get. Not until he put his arm around her, pulled her close to him and whispered, “It’d be a shame if Abby ever found out about this, wouldn’t it?”

Though she didn’t know if Abby was her daughter, there was a huge part of her that hoped she was. However, there was another part of her, the one that was chased away by her own family, that doubted anything so wonderful could be hers. God hadn’t necessarily come through for her in the family department. Why would he drop the daughter she gave up almost fourteen years ago in her lap now? And under these circumstances?

“How am I supposed to help you find Hoyt’s treasure?” she asked.

“You’re going to tell me where the key is.”

“What key?”

“The key to the safe deposit box. The one Daniel gave you.”

“He didn’t give me a key.”

“You’ve forgotten. Think harder.”

“Why would he have given me a key to a safe deposit box?”

“Hoyt kept a treasure hidden away at the bank while the rest of us went hungry. I came home one day and they were fighting over it because Daniel took it. Your name came up.”

“My name? Why?”

“Probably because he gave you the key.”

“I don’t remember a key, Alan. I swear.”

“Then he must’ve hid it. I know he snuck out of the house all the time to meet you. Where did y’all go?”

“He came to my house.”

“Then that’s where it must be.” He made a sharp U-turn in the middle of the road. “It’s hidden in your room.”

Unease twisted at Emily’s stomach. She couldn’t go back home. She still had nightmares about that house.

“This is actually for the best,” Alan said. “I thought I’d have to drive you back to Dallas because you had it stashed away with all your old stuff. Or worse, you’d have thrown it out because you didn’t know how valuable it was. God, Em…” He reached over and rubbed her shoulder, and she let him so he wouldn’t mess with Jack. “Now that you’re back in town, all my planning is really paying off.”

“I think you’re mistaking dumb luck for planning. Cause there’s no way you could have known I was coming to town.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh really?”

“You knew? How?”

“I may have been the little birdie that spoke in your mom’s ear that said you should come home to help your brother. Didn’t take much either. Not sure if you noticed, but that woman’s gone a little off her rocker.”

Emily remembered her mother’s call telling her to come home, the rustling on the other end after she answered, her mother’s odd cadence. Like she was reading a script. “How could you have known about Abby being adopted?”

“I didn’t. Not until I saw that video. Your brother bashing your father’s head in was my first stroke of luck. Seeing that video was my second. Cut out a messy step I was not looking forward to.”

“What?”

“Well,” he rolled his eyes. “I hate to admit it now because it sounds so stupid. I was going to plant drugs in your car, fake arrest you, and then offer you a deal—you give me what I want, and I give you your freedom. I gotta admit, I was a little thrown by the whole Daniel-was-gay-and-I-was-pregnant-with-Miller’s-child revelation. That was my third stroke. I knew you’d be more persuaded if your own daughter was in trouble.”

That was the big question.
Was
Abby really the little girl Emily handed over to her grandfather nearly fourteen years ago? She always thought she’d know her daughter if she ever got to see her again; she never thought to look for her back home. How could she be hers if she had Wilson’s? Though she could see why Miller would think Hoyt might have hurt her, it wasn’t true. Hoyt was a terrible father to Daniel, but he’d never hurt her. Not unless she was suppressing some horrible memory. Maybe her grandfather gave Miller someone else’s baby. Why would he do that, though? That still didn’t even begin to address the question of why Miller took the baby in the first place. He was still a teenager with a baseball scholarship and his whole life ahead of him. Those were questions that would have to be answered later. She didn’t care whose child Abby was. She deserved better than to be told the truth about her parentage from an idiot like Alan.

“You could have asked me to help you.”

“Huh uh. I don’t ask for help. Not anymore. I decided that morning I woke up and you were gone that Hoyt was right about one thing. The only way to get what you really want is to take it yourself.”

“So you’d rather take the risk with the drugs than ask for help?”

“I said it was messy, but yeah, I would. I’m under a time crunch here. If Hoyt dies before I get what I need, I’m up shit creek.”

Emily pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror to the backseat. Jack was playing with his Legos, unaware of how scared she was over how far Alan was planning to take his control over her. She doubted that there was any “treasure” and wondered if he was trying to manipulate her to get her to sleep with him or something. It was clear, they both knew, whatever he demanded, she would do it to keep him from telling Abby that Miller had been lying to her for her entire life.

Other than Jack randomly blurting out “Leotard!” and laughing, they rode in silence to the house she grew up in, the house she ran away from, the house she wasn’t sure she could even step foot inside. She had to, though, didn’t she? For Abby. For Miller.

***

Emily stood on the back porch of her parents’ house. All she could think about was that Halloween when she was eleven and Seth dared Levi to go into the old burned-out barn everyone thought was haunted. Levi didn’t want to go and started crying. Seth called him a baby. Emily retaliated by calling him a fat ass and then marched up to the old barn herself. She pulled the squeaky metal door open and went inside. Then, to prove she wasn’t scared, she shut the door behind her.

The only difference between then and now was that she knew that barn wasn’t haunted. She wasn’t so sure about her parents’ house. She found the key under a rock in the flower bed, unlocked the door, and froze.

“No more stalling,” Alan said. “Open the damn door.”

She turned the knob and pushed the door open a bit and held her hand out for her son. “Come on, buddy.”

“I’m dying.” Jack looked like a June bug lying on the grass with his arms and legs up in front of him, twitching.

“No you’re not.”

“You said if we don’t keep moving we’re going to die.”

“No. I said we have to get out of the police car because we’re like astronauts exploring a new planet. You can stop pretending now.”

“No I can’t. I’m stuck on Mercury, and I’m dying.”

“Why are you dying?”

“Because I’m burning up.”

“Jack, if you’re too hot, come into the house.”

“There are no houses on Mercury.”

“There’s no oxygen either. Let’s pretend something else.”

“No. I like being—”

“Okay. You’re an astronaut on Mercury, and this house is our base.”

Jack rolled over and stood up. “Okay.”

“We need to go in because a mean alien is after us.”

“What does the alien look like?”

“I don’t know.” Emily eyed Alan, who appeared annoyed with the exchange. “He’s wearing a police uniform.”

“Ouch,” Alan said. “That hurt.”

“What does he smell like?”

“Too much Stetson.” Emily pushed the door open and led Jack inside.

Once they were in, she winced at the smell of bleach and the lingering memory of the room the last time she was there. It was the night she got the call from Verna that Daniel had shot himself, and she ran out of the house without even asking if she could go see him. When she got to the ER, she walked so slowly to get to Daniel that she hated herself afterward—that was another five seconds they could have had together. He was barely conscious and covered in blood. She held his hand and told him she loved him. He squeezed her hand, touched her face, and said, “I’m sorry.” One of the doctors made her step out of the room. A half an hour later he was dead.