by Wendy Walker
The night I gave Bill the pills, I signaled Rick with the phone. I collected my daughter from the small bed in Lucy’s bedroom while Lucy snored, her fat belly rising and falling beneath the covers. I got all the money I could find from Bill’s wallet and Lucy’s dresser. I carried my daughter down to the dock and put her in the rowboat under a blanket. I told her to wait there, under the blanket, and if she could be very good and very quiet and stay hidden, I would take her to a very special, magical place. I watched for the boat. And when I saw it come closer, I called out to him.
Help me! Please. Take me away from this place!
He maneuvered the boat to the dock. He saw the blanket in the rowboat, and my daughter squirming beneath it, and he called out again. What’s under there? Is that the child?
I did not answer him but he knew. I could tell by the anger I saw on his face. I had been planting seeds in his head for months and I had become convinced that I had destroyed his trust in the Pratts and replaced it with my love. I knew he believed that they had told me about Alaska, what he had done there. And I made him believe that they thought he was an immoral man.
I thought I had read him. I thought I had given it enough time. He would see how desperate I was and take us to shore. But I was wrong. When I jumped onto that boat, he did not agree to help my daughter and me escape. Instead, he did exactly what he had done before. You’re gonna take that child back to the house, he said.
The shock of it flooded my brain and I felt dizzy. I thought I had been a good student of Emma and Mrs. Martin. I had done everything right. I had figured out what he desired and I had become that. I had deciphered his relationship with the Pratts and I had unraveled it, slowly and with patience and what I thought was devious cunning. And in those stolen moments in the woods or on the boat when his body was on my body, when our skin was touching and our arms and legs were wrapped together like a knot that will never come undone, I thought I was being calculating. Every sigh. Every moan. Every kiss. Every touch. It was all calculated to be that thing he desired. The woman who needed to be rescued. I felt so clever that I could feel his love in the way he devoured me with such force but then held me with such tenderness. That was what I thought.
I was stupid. I was weak. I did not have the same appeal that Mrs. Martin and Emma had. Whatever Rick needed from me was easily undone by the weight of his debt to Bill and Lucy. I had not destroyed it. Not with my cunning and not with my sex power. Not even with my love, which had become real, mixing with the hate.
I will say this quickly and not say it ever again. Rage took control of my mind. It was bigger than my reason and more powerful than the currents that were always trying to bring me back. My daughter was waiting for me in the rowboat. And this man was going to keep me from saving her. From saving us. I was filled with an army of rage, with soldiers from every corner of my life heeding the battle cry. Soldiers from the times I reached for my mother and she pushed me away. Soldiers from the times my father failed to protect us. Soldiers from Hunter and Emma and that woman from the court. And soldiers from the joy I allowed myself in the arms of these monsters, Bill and Lucy and Rick. One by one, the soldiers of rage formed an army that was unstoppable.
I picked up a metal gas container and I hit Rick in the head, knocking him over the side. I threw the container in the water and I didn’t wait for a second to pass before I got behind the steering wheel and back on the throttle and then up. I steered the hull right over his body, crushing it into the dock. I reversed and did it again. Twice and then a third time. The soldiers fueled each strike, the final one leaving him still, floating facedown in the cruel, cold water that had shown me no mercy.
I took my daughter from the rowboat and we drove in The Lucky Lady—so fast, we were both holding on with all our strength—into darkness and far up the coast. I was not thinking that this would make it harder to find out the location of the island. I was only thinking about getting far, far away. When we ran out of gas, we got pulled into a harbor by the current. I let the boat run up against the brush and then I just let that boat go, into the harbor, with the ignition still turned on but the motor stalled. I carried my daughter to a gas station and called a taxi to take us to Portland. I had four hundred dollars of the Pratts’ money and I would use it to get home. I noted the name of the town so I could send someone back to find the Pratts. Rockland. But that had not been enough, and my stupidity gave them the time they needed to escape.
I rode the train with my daughter. We rode from Portland to Yonkers. Then we took a commuter train to Rye. We walked to Witt’s house. He did not know we were coming. He did not know I had found him with the help of a stranger’s phone on the train and that I had memorized his address so that I could bring my daughter to him and keep her safe while I tended to my list. While I tended to finding Emma. It was Saturday afternoon. Witt was in his yard pulling weeds and I started to laugh. I can’t describe that feeling. Even after I saw Rick die, even as I was watching the landscape roll by from the train window, my daughter asleep on my lap, and even as I walked down the street, totally free, I did not feel free. Not yet. It was not until I saw my brother in his yard, and until he saw me and wrapped me in his arms and lifted me into the air, tears rolling down his face, that I felt it, my life coming back to me.
He listened to me but did not agree at first. His wife wanted to call the police and have my mother and Mr. Martin arrested. They both said they would find Emma. Somehow, they would find her. Wouldn’t they? It was Witt who finally understood. It was Witt who could see that Emma would never be found and my mother and Mr. Martin would never be punished for what they did to her. Mrs. Martin had never been punished for anything she had ever done. She was a master illusionist. Even people trained to see, even people looking for exactly what was there to be seen, could still not see. Instead, I would be the crazy one, the one with the daughter fathered by her stepbrother. Hunter would try to take my baby and I would lose everything—my sweet child, my freedom, and my sister all over again. So they kept my daughter for me and they lied and pretended and swallowed their guilt.
I went to my mother then. I made her wonder if Mr. Martin had lied to her, if Emma had been alive and if he had conspired with me to hide her. It took time to do this. It took the FBI investigation. It took the small pieces of evidence they found. It took the necklace. It took Lisa Jennings and the affair she had with Mr. Martin. But it also took the gift from Dr. Winter—the lie that Emma had been found—to turn that switch for the last time.
The local district attorney considered bringing charges against me because I had obstructed justice and lied to the authorities. But there was too much sympathy for me in our community and they thought it would fuel Mrs. Martin’s defense of entrapment.
He wasn’t wrong to want to charge me. I had lied to everyone, including my own father, my poor father who will never get over the death of his eldest daughter and the guilt he carries for leaving us in that house where she was killed. I lied to my mother and Hunter and Mr. Martin. I lied to Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss and the other agents—about Emma and the baby and, finally, about not knowing who had killed Richard Foley. And about my daughter. I lied I lied I lied.
But telling the truth is not on my list.
When the case was over, I left my father’s house, where I had been staying since the night we found Emma in her grave. I told my father I wanted to live with Witt and his wife and take some classes in New York. I told him I needed not to be in this town where my sister died. I told him I would see him all the time, anytime he wanted. And someday soon, I will tell him about my daughter. I will have to tell everyone because she cannot live in the shadows. I will tell them she is the daughter of a stranger, some man I met in New York after I ran away. It doesn’t matter. She will not be the child of Hunter Martin.
Witt gave me a huge hug when I walked in the door. He started to cry and he told me we would only look forward from now on. No looking back. I nodded and told him how grateful I was to him f
or keeping my secret and for taking care of my baby while I was tricking my mother. He laughed and said that his wife now wanted a child after having one all these months and so I owed him “big-time” because he had planned on a few more years of being free.
I heard a different kind of cry come from up the stairs. Then I heard little feet running and then I saw little blond curls flopping on a little round face that was smiling.
I took my daughter in my arms and I squeezed her so tight. I kissed her face and I pressed my cheek against her cheek and felt her skin and smelled her smell and let her fill me again with hope.
I knew I would have to learn to live with it—the hope and the fear always together.
The hope is easy. I believe children do that to us. They make us have it because without it, my God, can you imagine? Looking at your child without hope for the future would be like feeling the sun on your face five billion years from now.
It’s the fear that is hard. It’s hard because I know what’s inside me. The scream my mother put inside me, which got bigger and bigger. The scream her parents put inside her. The scream I fear is inside my daughter after all that she’s been through, that maybe I put inside her.
It has also been explained to me that my mother is a pathological narcissist, which means the scream inside her got so big, she had to become someone else, the prettiest girl in the world, the smartest woman in the world, and the best mother in the world. And she had to make everyone love her that way by using every weapon she had. Sex. Cruelty. Fear. This makes sense to me and I understand it. But it does not give me any comfort.
They say sociopaths are created in early childhood. They say we are all formed by age three. I like to think that I got my daughter away in time. I know what I did to my sister by thirsting for power and escalating the war that led to her death. I know what I did to Rick, the boatman. I know what I did to my mother and Jonathan Martin. And I know what I did to Dr. Winter, making her lie and live with that lie forever, risking her career. I have added to my list making amends with her because she saw me, understood me and knew what to do to find Emma. This is a gift I can never repay.
I know all these things I’ve done and so I know what’s inside me and how it got there. And so when I look at my daughter, this beautiful child, I have hope but also fear.
“Mommy,” she said. And I looked at my brother, surprised. For her entire life, she has only known me as Cass.
“I’ve been showing her your picture,” he said with a big smile. “I’ve been telling her your name, your real name, is Mommy.”
I kissed her again. My face was drenched in tears.
My list is very long now. It is filled with the things I will do and will not do to protect her from what might be inside her and to protect her from what I know is inside me. I will dedicate my life to this list. I will do that for my child and to honor my dead sister.
“And what should I call you?” I asked her. She had been named Julia and I had called her that because it felt cruel not to.
But then she answered, “Emma!”
“I taught her that as well,” Witt said.
“Emma!” I cried back to her. “That’s right. Your name is Emma. And my name is Mommy. We were just playing a game before. But now the game is over. Now we’ve come home.”
My heart was, all at once, full.
“I love you!” I said. And I knew that I mean it in the purest, most perfect way. When I hold her, I feel my sister, my first Emma, when she would come to me in the night, when we felt safe and love felt possible.
I will cling to that now, like the boat that finally brought me home.
Acknowledgments
It is a precarious endeavor to write a novel about a psychologically disturbed family, as the most obvious question that arises is whether it is based on my own life. So it must be said, first and foremost, that I have a selfless and loving mother who bears no resemblance to Judy Martin. Not only is Terrilynne Walker my biggest fan, she is a frequent visitor to local bookstores where my novels often (and mysteriously) find themselves on the front displays well after their publication dates. If anything from my life shaped Emma in the Night, it is the bond between the Walker siblings that our mother helped forge and which became the inspiration for the relationship between Cass and Emma. As always, I am eternally grateful to my family.
I have been so fortunate to have had such incredible guidance and support in the writing and rewriting (and rewriting!) of Emma in the Night. My brilliant editor at St. Martin’s Press, Jennifer Enderlin, worked tirelessly to reshape and refine the story—reading draft after draft—until I finally got it right. Beside me the whole way, also reading multiple drafts and assuaging the inevitable doubt that creeps in when a story is being written, was my agent, Wendy Sherman. Without these two talented (and patient) women, this book would not have come to fruition.
To the entire team at St. Martin’s Press, including Lisa Senz, Dori Weintraub, Brant Janeway, Erica Martirano and Anne Marie Tallberg, thank you for your enthusiasm and tireless work publishing and promoting my work.
Thanks also to Jenny Meyer for bringing the novel into countries around the globe, and to Michelle Weiner at CAA, who always has a vision to bring my work to film and television.
On the technical front, I was so fortunate to have experts educate me about narcissistic personality disorder and FBI forensics. As always, I took some liberties to make the story work, but all of you helped keep me in the ballpark! So, many thanks to Dr. Felicia Rozek, Ph.D., Dr. Daniel Shaw, and Special Agents Robert and Beth Iorio, NCIS (Retired).
It has been such a pleasure to be on the road promoting my work with other authors and industry professionals. In particular, Carol Fitzgerald at Bookreporter.com—thank you for your boundless energy and expert advice about navigating social media and the retail world. Barbara Shapiro—thank you for your generosity and friendship as you travel the globe promoting your beautiful novels. I feel blessed to be a part of this industry.
To Andrew, Ben and Christopher—my beloved boys—thank you for filling my life with joy each and every day.
Also by Wendy Walker
All Is Not Forgotten
About the Author
WENDY WALKER has worked as an attorney specializing in family law. She lives in Connecticut, where she is at work on her next novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One: Cassandra Tanner—Day One of My Return
Two: Dr. Abigail Winter, Forensic Psychologist, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Three: Cass
Four: Dr. Winter
Five: Cass
Six: Dr. Winter
Seven: Cass
Eight: Dr. Winter
Nine: Cass—Day Two of My Return
Ten: Dr. Winter
Eleven: Cass—Day Three of My Return
Twelve: Dr. Winter
Thirteen: Cass
Fourteen: Dr. Winter—Day Four of Cass Tanner’s Return
Fifteen: Cass
Sixteen: Dr. Winter
Seventeen: Cass
Eighteen: Dr. Winter—Day Five of Cass Tanner’s Return
Nineteen: Cass
Twenty: Dr. Winter
Twenty-One: Cass—Day Six of My Return
Twenty-Two: Dr. Winter—Day Seven of Cass Tanner’s Return
Twenty-Three: Dr. Winter
Twenty-Four: Cass
Acknowledgments
Also by Wendy Walker
About the Author
Copyright<
br />
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
EMMA IN THE NIGHT. Copyright © 2017 by Wendy Walker. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-14143-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-16490-2 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)
ISBN 978-1-250-14144-6 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250141446
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First U.S. Edition: August 2017
First International Edition: August 2017
