then, including the complete disregard for what a girl of ten may or may not want. She did not want to live with her aunt and the uncle who made her skin crawl. She did not want to be the live-in orphan, which is how she felt and how her new step-sisters treated her. Her mother and aunt had never gotten along, and Emily knew her mother would be upset to know her only child had been shuttled off to Santa Barbara to live with her sister and him . That’s how her mother referred to her brother-in-law, simply as “him.” Never Joseph, never with anything that could be confused for affection or even respect. Her mother always had suspicions about the man, about how he made his money and his dictatorial way of being a husband and father. Unfortunately, Barbara and Carl Lapinksy thought they had all the time in the world and had neglected to make legal arrangements should something happened to them, which it did. Now they were gone and one of the few things that remained of their ever having been on the earth was the small gold cross Bo fastened around her neck.
She had been wearing the necklace the night they were killed. Even as a child she only took it off to bathe, and her father jokingly said he was concerned she would become a nun. He mistook her attachment to the crucifix for a devotion to the cross. Emily did not understand the whole Jesus thing and never considered the two to be connected, even though she knew many people wore crucifixes as professions of their faith. She had no faith, and she was not a nun. She was a killing machine that had been oiled and ready for three decades. Her surrender to the cross was her surrender to the memory of her parents, in this case her mother, and her complete acceptance of the commitment she had made as she watched the men flee from their home: I will kill you. As odd a thought as that seems for a ten year old cowering in a closet, it was the thought she had and the promise she made. I will kill you. I will find you. I will hunt you down.
Here she was at last, having never known for sure it could come to pass. She had believed it would. She had kept things in place, ready to act. But until she saw the watch for sale she could not have sworn in a court of justice—for that is where she now found herself—that the opportunity would present itself and all her preparation would have been for good. What she was doing was good. What she was doing was right. No innocence would be violated; they had forfeited any claim to innocence when they left two people dead in a bedroom. She had carried out the Court’s decree with the men Frank and Sam, and now, once she was finished here, she would return to anonymity. She would replace the smile on her face, so familiar to her friends in St. Paul. She would tell them what a lovely time she’d had in Hawaii, her first trip in years but definitely not her last, so wonderful and relaxing and tropical. And she would close the lid at last—the lid to her past, to her parents’ coffins, to the hatred that had fueled her nearly her entire life.
She slipped into her comfortable black loafers, adjusted her expression to be as soft, welcoming and unremarkable as possible, and headed downstairs.
Dylan wasn’t able to have a seating arrangement at the tables, that would have been too formal, too deliberate, but he could steer people in the general direction of where he wanted them to be. The real challenge with a group like this was knowing who to keep apart, not who to seat together. Diane Haley, for instance, had been in a Cold War state with Marti Martin for years, ever since Marti stole Diane’s girlfriend so long ago neither of them remembered her name. Bad blood tended to stay bad, and no infusion of good will or forced togetherness would change that. The same might be said for Linus and Danny, although Danny wasn’t really the grudge holding sort. His dislike for the stuffy restaurateur didn’t cross the line into open warfare, but it would
She had been wearing the necklace the night they were killed. Even as a child she only took it off to bathe, and her father jokingly said he was concerned she would become a nun. He mistook her attachment to the crucifix for a devotion to the cross. Emily did not understand the whole Jesus thing and never considered the two to be connected, even though she knew many people wore crucifixes as professions of their faith. She had no faith, and she was not a nun. She was a killing machine that had been oiled and ready for three decades. Her surrender to the cross was her surrender to the memory of her parents, in this case her mother, and her complete acceptance of the commitment she had made as she watched the men flee from their home: I will kill you. As odd a thought as that seems for a ten year old cowering in a closet, it was the thought she had and the promise she made. I will kill you. I will find you. I will hunt you down.
Here she was at last, having never known for sure it could come to pass. She had believed it would. She had kept things in place, ready to act. But until she saw the watch for sale she could not have sworn in a court of justice—for that is where she now found herself—that the opportunity would present itself and all her preparation would have been for good. What she was doing was good. What she was doing was right. No innocence would be violated; they had forfeited any claim to innocence when they left two people dead in a bedroom. She had carried out the Court’s decree with the men Frank and Sam, and now, once she was finished here, she would return to anonymity. She would replace the smile on her face, so familiar to her friends in St. Paul. She would tell them what a lovely time she’d had in Hawaii, her first trip in years but definitely not her last, so wonderful and relaxing and tropical. And she would close the lid at last—the lid to her past, to her parents’ coffins, to the hatred that had fueled her nearly her entire life.
She slipped into her comfortable black loafers, adjusted her expression to be as soft, welcoming and unremarkable as possible, and headed downstairs.
Dylan wasn’t able to have a seating arrangement at the tables, that would have been too formal, too deliberate, but he could steer people in the general direction of where he wanted them to be. The real challenge with a group like this was knowing who to keep apart, not who to seat together. Diane Haley, for instance, had been in a Cold War state with Marti Martin for years, ever since Marti stole Diane’s girlfriend so long ago neither of them remembered her name. Bad blood tended to stay bad, and no infusion of good will or forced togetherness would change that. The same might be said for Linus and Danny, although Danny wasn’t really the grudge holding sort. His dislike for the stuffy restaurateur didn’t cross the line into open warfare, but it would
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