Sara Shepard - Seven Minutes in Heaven

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mrs. Mercer.” He glanced around the room, picking up a pineapple-shaped serving dish from the counter and examining it in his hands.

Emma walked over to stand by Laurel, who gave her a wide-eyed, furtive look. Mrs. Mercer gestured for Quinlan to sit in one of the dining chairs, then took a seat across from him, her husband standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder.

The detective took a tiny notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. “I’ve been talking to Las Vegas, and here’s what I’ve got so far. Emma Paxton went missing on September first after an argument with her foster family. No one’s heard from her since. Her foster mother reported her missing, but because there were no signs of abduction or foul play, she was assumed to be a runaway. Foster kids take off all the time. Emma was just a few weeks away from turning eighteen, so LVPD figured she’d just gotten a head start on setting out on her own.” He clicked his pen a few times and glanced up at Emma. “What we’re trying to figure out is how she ended up here. Is there anything you can tell me about that, Sutton?”

Emma took a deep, controlled breath, trying to quell the rising panic in her chest. If they were investigating Emma Paxton, it wouldn’t be long before they checked Sutton’s Facebook account and found out the twins had been in contact. She had to tell them as much truth as she could without giving herself away—or else she’d get caught in a much bigger lie.

She licked her lips. “Y-yes,” she stammered. “She messaged me on Facebook the night before she disappeared. We made plans to meet in the canyon the next day.”

Mr. and Mrs. Mercer’s heads both shot around to stare at her. “What?” Mr. Mercer asked, his eyebrows arched up as high as they could go. The color had drained from Mrs. Mercer’s face. Next to her, Laurel gaped soundlessly.

Emma stared down at her feet—she didn’t trust herself to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” she said, inventing rapidly. “I wasn’t sure if it was real or not. She never showed up where we agreed to meet, and I assumed it was all some sort of prank.” She thought back to that night—how eager and hopeful she’d been, how excited to finally meet her family. Grief twisted in her chest.

Laurel snaked her arm reassuringly through Emma’s. “Was that what you were trying to tell us earlier this afternoon, back at school?”

“Yes,” Emma agreed quickly, grateful for Laurel’s explanation. “I waited for her for hours.”

Quinlan’s pen scratched quickly across the page, the only sound in the thick silence. Emma looked up at the Mercers, their faces full of sadness and confusion. The gray streak in Mrs. Mercer’s hair seemed to stand out more starkly than usual, her face lined. She looked strangely old.

“And you didn’t tell anyone about this? Didn’t worry about your sister?” Quinlan said skeptically.

Emma met Quinlan’s eyes. Inside, her heart was racing, her nerves on fire. But she gazed steadily at the detective for a long moment. “This all happened right after I met my birth mom, Detective Quinlan. Do you know anything about my birth mom?”

Quinlan glanced at Mr. Mercer. During Becky’s most recent stay in town, she’d been arrested for pulling a knife on a stranger during a psychotic break. Emma was willing to bet it wasn’t her first run-in with the law.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I know about your mother.”

Emma could feel her lip trembling, but she held her head steady. Mr. Mercer took a step toward her as if to comfort her, but she didn’t turn her gaze from Quinlan.

“Becky has problems,” she said. “She skips town any time she gets a little upset. How was I supposed to know Emma wasn’t just like her?” The bitterness in her voice—anger directed at Becky—was genuine. A single tear streaked down her cheek. “And like I said, I wasn’t totally convinced it wasn’t a prank. I didn’t want everyone to see me acting . . . desperate.”

Mrs. Mercer gave a strangled groan and buried her face in her hands. Mr. Mercer looked torn between comforting his wife and going to his daughter. But before he could move, Laurel spoke.

“In case you haven’t noticed,” she said curtly, “we’re grieving.”

A rush of gratitude for my sister filled me.

Quinlan pursed his lips slightly, jotting something down in his notebook, then flipped back a few pages to look something up. “All right,” he said. “Miss Paxton’s time of death is estimated to be between August thirtieth and September first. Were you in Sabino Canyon between those dates?”

Laurel gave a little jump, and Emma knew what she was thinking. The thirty-first was the night Thayer and Sutton had been out in the canyon on a date; when Thayer was hit by someone driving Sutton’s car, and Laurel had to come take him to the hospital. But it was Mr. Mercer who answered.

“Sutton and I were both at Sabino Canyon on August thirty-first.” He glanced at Mrs. Mercer. “We met Becky there. It was a pretty emotional night. Sutton didn’t know about Becky until then.”

Quinlan turned his steely gaze back on Emma. “Was this before or after you’d found Emma on Facebook?”

“Just before,” she said. “Becky told me about Emma, and a few hours later I got the message from Emma herself.”

Quinlan’s hairy eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “That’s quite the coincidence.”

Emma shrugged, though a thin sheen of sweat had broken out at her temples. “I assumed Becky had gotten in touch with Emma right before she came to see me. After all, Emma is the twin that Becky raised. I’m the one she gave away. The one she didn’t want.” She let her voice waver, then hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. “If she wanted us to finally meet after all these years, it stands to reason that she would go to Emma first.”

A long and awkward silence followed this speech. Mrs. Mercer was still hiding her face in her hands, weeping silently. Laurel seemed to be examining the brown mosaic tile on the floor. Emma swallowed hard.

“Okay,” Quinlan said, drawing out the second syllable skeptically. “So can you explain why you walked into the station two days later calling yourself Emma Paxton?”

The question dropped like a bomb. Mrs. Mercer’s hand flew away from her face as she whipped around to stare at Emma. Next to her, Laurel went rigid. Mr. Mercer blinked at Quinlan.

“She did what ?” he asked, his face sheet-white.

“Yup. First day of school, Sutton came into the station insisting that she wasn’t Sutton but Emma, and that something terrible had happened to her twin. I blew it off as another prank. Now, though . . .” He shook his head. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Emma’s collar suddenly felt like it was choking her. She swallowed hard, forcing herself to hold Quinlan’s gaze.

“Well, yeah,” she said softly. “It was a prank. I’d just found out I had a twin. It wasn’t like I knew anything had happened to her. Like I said, she didn’t show up when we were supposed to meet.” She held his gaze, trying to channel a little of Sutton’s attitude, trying to imagine how Sutton would handle being interrogated when her long-lost sister had just died. “I was mad . Mad at my parents, mad at Becky, mad at Emma for standing me up. I was hoping you’d call me on it. That you’d tell my parents, and then I’d find out if Emma was even real.”

She looked away from Quinlan to her grandparents. Mrs. Mercer stared miserably at her, her eyes glassy with tears. Mr. Mercer looked stern for a moment, like he might chastise her, but then he looked away as though ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Mercer said, blowing air heavily out through his mouth. “You’re right, Sutton. We should have told you the truth much sooner.”