Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy Page A

moment when the DA showed the photographs in court. Leo had seen the photos before, but not projected on a six-foot screen. Troy Grayling was the only suspect, with a DNA match, but he had never confessed. He said he had been fishing near Whitefish, two hours north, on the night she was taken. His brother and his parents swore it was true. Leo had quit his job after Emily’s death so he could give his full attention to the case, and now it was over, but questions remained unanswered.
    Lying awake at night, Leo had gone over the decisions that might have led to a different outcome. If he had objected to Emily’s house-sitting in a remote house. If he had tried to keep her on the East Coast for college. If they hadn’t sent her at fifteen to the outdoor course in Wyoming that convinced her to want bigness, ruralness, westernness. Leo designed sky-blocking office buildings for a living, and wondered if forestry was a direct challenge to him. But he had loved her adventurousness, amazed that he and quiet Helen, who taught fourth grade in a private school, could produce such a fearless girl.
    He had argued with Emily about her choices, to test her resolve, but her gray eyes would only get solemn and sure, and her chin would lift stubbornly. Her favorite book at seven had been The Lorax , Dr. Seuss on environmental ruin and corporate greed: “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” She had read it in their apartment in Chelsea, with its little square of garden. The chopped trees in the book had triggered in her a fierce indignation and fear for the planet. Even as a child she wanted vast forests, not gardens.
    She was their only child, born when he and Helen were both in their thirties, and they had been happy with one. He wondered now if that had been a mistake, but it was hard to imagine other children. Emily was so particular and real to him, still. The way her hair curled around her small ears, the faces she made at his jokes, her breathless laugh. When she was in high school, a man tried to pull her off her bicycle, and Emily had roared at him, pushing him away, and ridden home. She had described the scene in the kitchen, crying and shaking and laughing at the sound she had made, trying to imitate it with all the adrenaline gone. She was slight but very strong. He wondered why she hadn’t fought off Troy Grayling, and guessed the man had surprised her. She had been talking on the phone, and then the knife was at her throat. There were marks there, where he hadn’t cut her deeply but had held the blade against the skin. Grayling must have whispered to her to get off the phone as if nothing was wrong, and she must have believed he would kill her if she didn’t. But she was clever, and sent her father a signal, knowing he would understand.
    The Goth girl was looking at him, waiting. What had she said? That’s just how Troy was . He tried to pretend that this statement could be reasonable. “What do you mean, that’s how he was?”
    The girl shrugged. “He had an edge.”
    “Is that what you call it?”
    “He didn’t do anything,” she said, but she watched him for information about her performance. It was an infantile expression: a child’s attempt at lying.
    “What about the DNA match?” he asked.
    “He was framed by the cops.” She threw the words away, bored by them already. “Why did you ask me to a hotel room?”
    “To talk in private.”
    “I thought maybe you wanted to fuck me.” Again the unguarded, waiting gaze.
    He coughed in surprise. “No.”
    “Didn’t you think about it?”
    He hadn’t. He had watched her testimony and felt only horror at her loyalty to Troy Grayling, her stonewalling of the DA, but he had hoped to find a way through to her. He had, after all, some experience with teenage girls. Now she lazily pulled off her jean jacket and he watched, frozen, as she crossed to him and put her hands on the arms of his chair, leaning