Emma in the Night: The bestselling new gripping thriller from the author of All is Not Forgotten. Wendy Walker
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then I saw the first strand of my mother’s hair from behind that door, and the faces of my sister vanished and I became calm.
Mrs. Martin was wrapped in a silk robe. Her hair was tangled from restless sleep, and a thick line of eye makeup was caked under her lower lashes.
“Can I help you?” She asked the question with a sprinkle of politeness on top of a mountain of annoyance. It was six in the morning on a Sunday.
She was looking at me, studying my face, my eyes, my body. I did not think I had changed much. I wore the same size clothing. The same size pants and shirts, even the same for my bra. My hair was still light brown and long past my shoulders. My face was still angular, my eyebrows thick with big arches. When I looked in the mirror, I still saw me. But I guess that’s the thing—we all change so gradually, a little every day, that we don’t notice it. Like the frog that stays in the water until the water is boiling and the frog is dead.
The moment I had not been prepared for—the one thing I had not ever imagined in all those years—was that my mother would not recognize me.
“It’s me,” I said. “It’s Cass.”
She said nothing, but her head jolted back as though my words had just punched her in the face.
“Cass?”
She looked harder, her eyes now bulging and moving frantically from place to place, head to toe. Her right hand covered her mouth. Her left hand grabbed hold of the doorframe, catching her body as she stumbled toward me.
“Cass!”
I had to force my feet to stand still as she lunged at me, hands, arms, face, all touching me, pawing at me.
A guttural moan left her body. “Uhhhhhh!”
Then she started screaming for Mr. Martin.
I had prepared for this part and I did what I thought I would do, which was to let her feel what she was feeling and just stand there and do nothing. Say nothing. You probably think she was ecstatic, elated, filled with joy. But Mrs. Martin had reinvented herself as the grieving mother with the missing daughters, so adjusting to my return would involve a painful unraveling.
“Jon! Jon!”
The tears started then as more footsteps sounded from the second floor.
Mr. Martin called out. “What the hell is going on?”
My mother didn’t answer him. Instead, she grabbed my face with her hands, pressed her nose right up against mine and said my name with that same guttural sound. “Caaaaaaass!”
Mr. Martin was in his pajamas. He had put on weight since I saw him last and he looked even older than I remembered. I should have expected that. But when you’re young, you see people over a certain age as just old, and there does not seem a need to imagine them any older. He was very tall and very dark—hair, skin, eyes. I had never been able to read him well. He was adept at hiding his feelings. Or maybe he just didn’t have many of them. Few things made him angry. Fewer things made him laugh. On this day, though, I saw something I had not seen before on his face—utter bewilderment.
“Cass? Cassandra? Is that you?”
There were more hugs. Mr. Martin called the police. He called my father next, but there was no answer. I heard him leave a message, saying only that it was important and he should call back right away. I thought that was very considerate of him, not giving my father the details of this shocking news in a voice mail. It made me wonder if he had changed.
They asked me the questions you would expect. Where had I been? What had happened to me? When I didn’t answer them, I heard them whisper to each other. They concluded that I was traumatized. Mr. Martin said they should keep asking questions until I answered. My mother agreed.
“Cass—tell us what happened!”
I did not answer them. “We need the police!” I cried instead. “They have to find Emma! They have to find her!”
Time froze for what seemed like forever, but was only eight seconds. Mr. Martin shot a look at my mother. My mother calmed down and started to stroke my hair as though I were a fragile doll she didn’t want to break—and that she didn’t want to move or speak.
“Okay, sweetheart. Just calm down.”
She stopped asking me questions but my hands were shaking. I told her I was cold and she let me take a hot shower. I told her I was hungry and she made me some food. I told her I was tired and she let me lie down. My mother stayed by my side and I pretended to sleep while I secretly soaked in the Chanel No. 5 that lingered on her neck.
When the cars started to appear, Mr. Martin went downstairs. He did not come back up. I could see each car as it entered the property because the window from my mother’s room has a view of the top part of the driveway. First came the state police in three marked SUVs. Next were the paramedics in an ambulance. It took another forty minutes for the specialists to arrive in all sorts of cars. The FBI agents would be among them. And some kind of evidence evaluator. And, of course, a psychologist.
Some people took samples from my nails and skin. They combed through my hair. They drew some blood. They checked my heart and pulse and they asked me questions to make sure I wasn’t insane. Then we waited again, for the people who would ask me the questions about where I’d been, and where Emma was.
I had not been in my mother’s bed since I was a little girl, since well before the divorce. We were not forbidden. It was just not a place either of us, Emma or I, wanted to be after we learned about sex. Our parents’ bed was the place they “did it,” and we found that disgusting. We used to talk about it when we played with our Barbie dolls.
They get naked and Daddy puts his dick inside her.
Emma would say things like that with complete nonchalance, as if it didn’t faze her at all. But I could sense her anger from the words she chose and because I knew her so well.
She took off Ken’s clothes and Barbie’s clothes and mashed their androgynous crotches together. Ken was on top. Emma made oohs and aahs.
That’s what they do in their bed. I’m never going in there again.
Emma had learned the truth about sex from our half brother, Witt Tanner. Emma was eleven. I was nine. Witt was sixteen. Emma had come home from school upset. We usually took the bus because our mother didn’t like to interrupt her nap. Sometimes we walked. We attended a private school, so we were on the same campus no matter what grades we were in, and Emma always let me walk with her even though I was annoying. It was on these walks she would tell me things she had come to know, usually about boys. On this day, though, she had been quiet the whole way, telling me to “shut the hell up” every time I tried to talk to her. When we got to the house, she ran to her room and slammed the door.
Witt lived with us every other weekend before the divorce of our father and mother. He spent the rest of his time at his mother’s house. That added up to 96 hours out of 672 hours each month. It was not a lot. It was not enough.
But the day Emma learned about sex was a Friday that Witt was at our house. He was playing a video game in our family room when we came inside.
What’s wrong with her?
I went into the family room and sat down as close to Witt as possible without being in his lap. He leaned into me, bumping shoulders. He didn’t say anything except to ask about Emma and why she’d run upstairs. Usually on every other Friday, we both would find Witt and cling to him like plastic wrap until he went back to his mother Sunday night. He was soft-spoken and easy to be around. But he was also strong and he always knew what to say and how to say it.
I used to think that Witt was a gift our father had given us to make up for the mother he had given us. I know that’s stupid, because we wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t our mother and because Witt was born before we were, before our father had even met our mother. And anyone looking at Emma