Wendy Walker - Emma in the Night - The bestselling new gripping thriller from the author of All is Not Forgotten

All Is Not Forgotten

For my sisters and brother-Becky, Cheryl, Jennifer, and Grant

According to the Greek myth, Narcissus was a hunter who was exceptionally beautiful and proud. He was so proud, in fact, that he rejected anyone who tried to love him. Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, decided to punish Narcissus. She lured him to a pool of water where he was able to see his own reflection. He fell madly in love with himself and stared at his reflection until he died.

Cover

Also by Wendy Walker

Title Page

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

Acknowledgements

Copyright

We believe what we want to believe. We believe what we need to believe. Maybe there’s no difference between wanting and needing. I don’t know. What I do know is that the truth can evade us, hiding behind our blind spots, our preconceptions, our hungry hearts that long for quiet. Still, it is always there if we open our eyes and try to see it. If we really try to see.

When my sister and I disappeared three years ago, there was nothing but blindness.

They found Emma’s car at the beach. They found her purse inside, on the driver’s seat. They found the keys in the purse. They found her shoes in the surf. Some people believed she had gone there to find a party or meet a friend who never showed. They believed that she’d gone for a swim. They believed that she’d drowned. Maybe by accident. Maybe a suicide.

Everyone believed Emma was dead.

As for me, well—it was not as simple as that.

I was fifteen when I disappeared. Emma would never have taken me to the beach with her when I was fifteen. She was a senior in high school and I was a nuisance. My purse was in the kitchen. Nothing of mine was found at the beach. None of my clothes were even missing from the house, according to my mother. And mothers know things like that. Don’t they?

But they found my hair in Emma’s car and some people clung to this, even though I had been in her car countless times. They clung to it anyway because if I had not gone to the beach with Emma, if I had not drowned in the ocean that night, maybe running in to save her, then where was I? Some people needed to believe I was dead because it was too hard to wonder.

Others were not so sure. Their minds were open to the possibility of a bizarre coincidence. One sister drowned at the beach. One sister run away, or perhaps abducted. But then . . . runaways usually pack a bag. She must have been abducted. But then . . . bad things like that didn’t happen to people like us.

It had not been an ordinary night, and this fueled the coincidence theories. My mother told them the story in a way that captivated audiences and gathered enough sympathy to quench her thirst for attention. I could see it in her eyes as I watched her on the news channels and talk shows. She described the fight between me and Emma, the shrill screaming and crying of teenage girls. Then the silence. Then the car leaving the property after curfew. She’d seen the headlights from her bedroom window. Tears were shed as she told the story, a collective sigh echoing throughout the studio audience.

Our lives were pulled apart in search of answers. Social media, friends, text messages and diaries. Everything was scrutinized. She told them how we had been fighting about a necklace. I bought it for Emma for the start of school. Her senior year! That’s such a special time. Cass was jealous. She was always so jealous of her sister.

This was followed by more tears.

The beach faces the Long Island Sound. There is not much of a current. At low tide, you have to walk a long while to get in over your knees. At high tide, the water rolls so gently, you can hardly feel its pull against your ankles, and your feet don’t sink into the sand with every wave the way they do at the beaches up the coast that face the Atlantic. It is not easy to drown at our beach.

I remember watching my mother on the TV, words coming out of her mouth, tears coming out of her eyes. She had bought new clothes for the occasion, a tailored suit, dark gray, and shoes by an Italian designer who she told us was the best and a statement of our status in the world. I could tell by the shape of the toe. She had taught us a lot about shoes. I don’t think it was because of the shoes that everyone wanted to believe her. But they did. I could feel it coming through the television.

Perhaps we crumbled under the pressure at our private school. Maybe it was some kind of suicide pact. Maybe we’d filled our pockets with rocks and walked slowly into our watery graves like Virginia Woolf.

But then, where were our bodies?

It took six weeks and four days for the story to stop leading the news shows. My celebrity mother went back to being plain old Judy Martin—or Mrs. Jonathan Martin, as she preferred to be called—formerly Mrs. Owen Tanner, formerly Judith Luanne York. It’s not as complicated as it sounds. York was her maiden name before she took the names of her two husbands. Two husbands are not a lot of husbands these days.

Emma and I came from the first one—Owen Tanner. Emma was named after my father’s mother, who died of a bad heart when he was seventeen. My name, Cassandra (Cass for short), came from a baby book my mother had. She said it sounded like the name of someone important. Someone people admired. Someone people envied. I don’t know about any of that. But I remember her brushing my long hair in front of her bathroom mirror, admiring me with a satisfied smile.

Look at you, Cassandra! You should never be without a mirror to remind yourself how beautiful you are.

Our mother never told Emma she was beautiful. They were too much alike for words of affection to pass between them. Praising someone who looks the same or acts the same or is wearing the same clothes is like praising yourself and yet it doesn’t feel that way. Instead it feels diminishing, like that other person has stolen praise that should have come your way. Our mother would never allow Emma to steal something as valuable as praise.

But she said it to me. She said I had the best of both gene pools. She was very knowledgeable about these things—things like how children got blue eyes or brown eyes or math brains or music brains.

By the time you have children, Cassandra, you might be able to choose nearly every trait! Can you imagine? Oh, how different my life could have been if those scientists had worked a little faster! [sigh].

I didn’t know what she meant then. I was only seven. But when she brushed my hair like that, when she shared her secret thoughts, I listened with great interest because it would fill me with joy from my toes to my eyebrows and I never wanted it to end.