Page 94 of The Best Lawyer
“No,” she said. “No, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened.”
I felt a knot loosen in my chest. But a hundred more questions rose.
“Start from the beginning,” I said. “What about your dad?”
If she were about to tell me something Joe did, I couldn’t think about the ramifications. Not now. Now I just needed her to tell me the truth.
“I didn’t know he lied,” she said. “Are you saying my dad lied to the police about where he was? Did he perjure himself?”
“He told the police he was at a job site in Northville the morning Tom was killed. I now know that’s not true. I found the work stoppage order at the job he was talking about. He admitted to me that he lied, but he won’t tell me why.”
She buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t know, Aunt Cass. I swear. He just told me not to worry. He said he knew what to do. If I’d known he was going to lie about everything, I wouldn’t have let him. I need you to believe me. I would never have let him put himself at risk like that. Not even for me. I would have gone to Detective DePaul myself.”
“You need to tell me what happened, Emma. Now.”
She wouldn’t look at me. Her voice was so small. This wasn’t the Emma I knew. She seemed so childlike.
“My dad was with me,” she said. “We were in Cleveland. He took me to the doctor. I had a procedure at the women’s health clinic.”
Of all the things I thought she’d say, that wasn’t one of them. It took a moment for her words to sink in. The women’s health clinic?
The meaning started to click just as Emma finally met my eyes and filled in the blanks. “I wanted to be as far away from Delphi as I could get. Everybody knows everybody around here. Someone would have seen us. A nurse. A receptionist. Someone. He took me to my appointment,” she said. “I had an abortion, Aunt Cass. I didn’t want anyone else to know. If my dad lied about where we were, he did it because of me. Because I told him I wanted it kept a secret.”
My thoughts ping-ponged inside my head. An abortion? Emma had an abortion? Why on earth wouldn’t she have told me that?
“Did you think I would judge you?” I said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was me. Emma and me. She knew she could tell me anything. Her whole life, she’d known she could trust me. She could come to me if she were ever in trouble and didn’t want anyone else to know. My emotions were at war with one another. I was hurt. Angry. Confused. But most of all, I was worried about her.
“No,” she said. “It was never that. I feel so awful. It was a mistake. That’s all.”
“I just don’t understand,” I said. Then I took a breath. “Emma,” I said. “Honey, are you okay?”
I came around my desk and hugged her. She hugged me back, almost desperately. I squatted down so we were at eye level.
“But why?” I asked.
Not why she’d done it. That was her own business. Her own choice. She knew I would respect that. So why hadn’t she told me?
“It was so stupid,” she said. “I panicked. I made a mistake. A big one. I did all the things you’re supposed to do to prevent it, but it happened anyway.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I’m not ready. I’m about to take the bar exam. I’ve worked so hard. I just can’t be a mom right now.”
“Honey,” I said. “Stop. You don’t have to explain yourself about that. You know I love you. You know I’ll always have your back. But why the lie? I understand why you’d want to keep something like that private. It’s no one else’s business. But to keep it from me? Why would your dad do that?”
It wasn’t fair of me to ask her that. That needed to be part of a different conversation between me and Joe. But I asked her anyway.
“Byron doesn’t know,” I said. “You were afraid he’d find out?”
Emma and her boyfriend Byron had been together for almost two years. He was quite a bit older than her. I knew he wanted to marry her. He’d hinted as much. Had he put too much pressure on her? They’d broken up recently. Was it because of this?
Emma shook her head. “It wasn’t Byron’s. We had just ended things. He gave me this stupid ultimatum. I told him I wasn’tready to get married yet. He took it badly. I was furious and hurt. It was so stupid of me. I know better than to hook up with some rebound guy. But that’s what happened. We met up in a bar of all places. Neither of us meant for it to happen. He’s engaged. He’s getting married at the end of the summer. We were just both in really uncertain places. We turned to each other. It was stupid. I regretted it immediately. Then I found out I was pregnant. If I told him, I knew what he’d do. He and his family would have tried to control my life.”
“Emma, what’s going on? I still don’t understand why your dad would lie to me about all of this. Not when he knew how high the stakes were. Not when he knew he could face criminal charges.”
She started to cry. “I’m telling you. I didn’t know he did that. I’ve been siloed off from this case. I’ve honored that. But part of it was willful ignorance on my part. I can see that now. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know. It’s that I didn’t want to know. I just never ever realized he would go this far to protect me. I have to make this right. I can’t allow Dad to get in trouble for this. He had nothing to do with Tom’s killing. I want to wring his neck right now. I never asked him to do this.”
“So why did he?” I asked.
