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

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СКАЧАТЬ her Bible now open, the verses spilling out, Abby bounded to her car as if she could somehow outrun them. None of this would matter now. Because Cassandra Tanner was home. Because soon she would know the truth and whether she’d been right or wrong. Because soon she would know if she could have saved them from whatever it was that had happened.

      Agent Leo Strauss had been the lead on the investigation. It had not been their first time working together, so there had been a rapport. He had been her mentor, in work and in life. His family had included her in holiday dinners. His wife, Susan, baked her cakes on her birthday. There had been a bond between them that made it difficult for Abby to hide what she was thinking. How Judy had seduced Owen Tanner. Neglected her children. Had an affair with a man from the country club. About the bitter custody fight. And about the toxic home Judy made for her daughters with Jonathan Martin and his son, Hunter.

      Abby had thought the investigation would barrel down this freeway once they had the divorce file and, in particular, the report of the attorney who had been appointed to represent the children. The guardian ad litem, or GAL, as they’re called in Connecticut. It was right there in an independent record—the voice of Cassandra Tanner four years before she disappeared. Telling them all that something was not right in that house. Something with Emma and Jonathan Martin and Hunter. To Abby’s ear, it was a ghost from the past telling them where to look.

      That report had been the second alarm bell. But the forensics had not supported her theory.

      Verse number three.

      The shrink—“What did you think they would do with this report from the divorce file? After all the forensic evidence came up clean? The house, the phones, the money? All they found was one broken picture frame—isn’t that right? Which the mother said resulted from the girls’ fight over a necklace?”

      She thought they would order psychiatric evaluations. She thought they would conduct more coercive interviews. She thought they would see what she could see.

      The shrink—“The woman who wrote that report during the divorce—the GAL—she dismissed Cass’s concerns about the Martins, didn’t she?”

      Yes, she did. But she was an incompetent hack. She dismissed the fears of an eleven-year-old girl, believing her mother instead—believing that girl was lying to help her father.

      The shrink—“Because the father, Owen, was so devastated by the affair and the divorce, right? Parents do that in custody fights. Use the children . . .”

      Yes, they do. But Owen agreed to settle, to spare the children. Anyone who’s worked in that field knows that the person who cares more about the children usually loses. And Owen lost. There was nothing to indicate he had told his daughter to lie.

      Then there was the story about the necklace.

       Verse number four.

      The shrink—“This is when you decided to push for the psychiatric evaluations? When you found out about the necklace?”

      Judy Martin told the story to the press. How she bought the necklace, a flying-angel medallion on a silver chain, for Emma and how Cass was bitterly jealous—and how they’d been fighting about it the night they disappeared.

      Only that wasn’t the truth. Leo interviewed the woman at the store who sold Judy that necklace—a twenty-dollar trinket. The woman was the store’s owner, a small shop that catered to teenage girls with overpriced jeans, short miniskirts and trendy throwaway jewelry. She knew the girls and their mother. They’d been shopping there for years, and the mother never failed to express her disdain for the merchandise in a whispered voice that would carry throughout the store.

      The woman recalled two encounters with Judy Martin and the necklace. In the first, Judy, Cass and Emma stopped to browse while shopping for school clothes. The younger girl, Cass, picked up the necklace and sighed. She asked her mother to buy it for her. Judy Martin took it from her hands, told her it was “cheap garbage” and that she should learn to have better taste. The girl asked again, telling her mother how much she loved it. The angel reminded her of Tinker Bell from Peter Pan—and that had been her favorite book when she was little. Apparently, her father had read it to her every night. Peter Pan. This did not help her cause. Judy Martin admonished her even more harshly, and then started walking away. Both girls followed. The older one, Emma, bumped shoulders with her sister, making her trip. She held up her hand to her forehead in the shape of an L. Loser.

      The next day, Judy Martin returned and bought the necklace. The woman remembered smiling because she thought the mother was buying the necklace for the girl who’d asked for it—the younger one. Leo asked her, holding two pictures in his hands—“Are you certain it was this girl, Cass Tanner, and not this girl, Emma Tanner, who picked out the necklace?”

      The owner was certain. “When I saw that interview, the one with the mother, Judy, I couldn’t believe it. She was saying how she’d bought the necklace for the older daughter, Emma. And I guess she did—right? Gave the necklace to Emma and not to the other sister, who wanted it?”

      Emma had worn the necklace every day. Friends confirmed it. Her father confirmed it. The school confirmed it. There was no doubt that Judy Martin had gone back to the store and bought the necklace for Emma. Not Cass.

      The shrink weighed in. “Maybe the clerk was mistaken, Abby.”

      That’s what Leo had thought. And that’s what the department had said when they dismissed her theory about the family after the evidence came up with nothing solid—and after the family had started to push back with lawyers and tears in front of cameras.

      But Abby knew the truth. This is what they do, people like Judy Martin. They are masterful in their deception. They are relentless in their manipulation. Abby had not only studied these things; she had lived them, too.

       Verse number five.

      The shrink—“Was she ever diagnosed? Your mother?”

      No. Never. And Abby had been the only member of the family to know there was something that needed to be diagnosed. Not her father. Not her stepmother. And not even her sister, Meg, who to this day still thought of their mother as “overindulgent” and “free-spirited.”

      The shrink—“Do you think that’s why you went into this field? Why you wrote your thesis on the cycle of narcissism in families?”

      And what did that prove? It had not been a conscious decision, studying psychology. But when Abby had first read about narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder, the adrenaline had rushed in so hard and fast, it sent her to her knees. Right there in the library at Yale. Right there in front of her roommate, who thought she’d had a stroke. Abby had wanted to curl up on the floor and swim in it—the understanding that was seeping from the words in that textbook.

      It was an illness that everyone thought they understood, assigning the label “narcissist” to every girl who looked twice in a mirror and every guy who never called. Books and films labeled every selfish character a “narcissist,” but then there would be redemption, reconciliation, seeing the light. Few people really knew what this illness was. What it really looked like. There was never redemption. Or reconciliation. There was no light to be seen. It was the combination of these things—misperception and overuse—that made this illness so dangerous.

       Verse number six.

      The shrink—“Let’s СКАЧАТЬ