“Probably because I told her very clearly I didn’t want to adopt.” Mr. Clark rubbed the top of his head. “So what happened? Why didn’t you give her the baby?”
Emily’s throat bobbed. “I chose another family. That’s all.”
Mr. Clark blinked rapidly. “Was it because you never spoke to me? Was it because you thought we weren’t a good match?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Emily mumbled, staring at her high heels.
Mr. Clark’s eyes were vacant and hollow as he stared past the girls at the wall. “Sometimes Gayle gets ideas in her head that she can’t let go of. She can be very determined—even pigheaded—to get what she wants.”
He blew his nose. “I assure you, though, we didn’t kidnap any children. We hadn’t told anyone yet, but Gayle had just taken a pregnancy test last week. It was positive, and she was overjoyed.” He shook his head. “We’d worked so hard to get pregnant. This was our fifth round of fertility treatments. We’d been through so much pain.” His shoulders started to shake. “This can’t be happening. First Tabitha, now Gayle.”
Tabitha. Just hearing her name was torture. Spencer reached over and took Emily’s hand. Hanna and Aria looked like they were going to explode.
Emily shifted her weight. “I’m very sorry about your daughter. That must have been so hard for you two as parents.”
Mr. Clark’s eyebrows lowered as he turned toward them. “Well, Gayle was Tabitha’s stepmother. It was hard on her, of course, especially since they had some . . . problems. Tabitha had behavioral issues. Gayle pushed to have Tabitha sent away, and I finally relented.”
Spencer exchanged a covert, startled look with Emily and the others. Stepmother? That would explain why she was never on the news and had a different last name.
Mr. Clark put his head in his hands. “I shouldn’t have given into Gayle’s pressure to send Tabitha away. And I made so many mistakes with Gayle, too. I shouldn’t have nagged her about all the boards she was on, all the money she spent on parties. I shouldn’t have yelled at her for that money that went missing last summer. I just want her back. I need her back.”
He let out a low moan. Lowry stood and shooed the girls out of the room, following them out. Once they were far enough away, he put his hands in his pockets and jingled loose change. “I don’t think we need to ask him any more questions about whether he kidnapped your baby, Ms. Fields. I just got a text that the police are done with their search of the house, too. They didn’t find any clues, and they certainly didn’t find any children.”
Emily’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Okay,” she said quietly.
Lowry frowned. “Do you know who might have sent you to Ms. Riggs’s house, even as a joke?”
Emily shot a nervous look at the others, then shook her head. “I don’t. But I don’t think whoever sent it meant anything by it—or had anything to do with Gayle’s murder. We’re the Pretty Little Liars. People send us fake notes all the time, and this was all just a terrible coincidence.”
Her lips trembled. Spencer could tell she hated lying. She almost jumped in to tell the cop everything about A, but then restrained herself.
Lowry let out a frustrated, why are you wasting my time sigh. “You girls are free to go. But don’t think you’re off the hook. You were still on someone’s property without permission, and you were still witnesses to a murder. If there’s anything you aren’t telling me—like about who sent this text—you’d better come forward. And those of you who are under eighteen, I’m going to have to call your parents about this.”
Emily flinched. “And tell them what?”
Lowry stared at her. “That you were trespassing. That you witnessed a murder. Personally, Ms. Fields, I think you should tell them the whole truth. But I can’t make that decision for you.”
With that, he opened the front door and let Spencer and the others out. The digital clock outside the bank across the street said it was almost three in the morning. Not a car was on Lancaster Avenue. Spencer pulled her coat around her and stared long and hard at her friends. “Okay. Did I just hear what I thought I heard?”
“I’m having a hard time believing it, too,” Hanna whispered.
“That was why I saw her at Babies “R” Us,” Aria murmured. “I thought it was to get ready for your baby, Em, but she must have been shopping for her own.”
“But she threatened me,” Hanna said in a small voice.
Spencer tapped her lips thoughtfully. “What exactly did she say?”
“That she wanted what she was owed. Meaning the baby.”
“What if Gayle wasn’t talking about the baby? What if she was talking about the money?” Spencer gestured in the direction of the police station. “Mr. Clark just said he was really hard on Gayle for losing some money over the summer. What if it was the money that she gave to Emily for the baby?”
“I gave that money back,” Hanna protested.
“You put it in Gayle’s mailbox. Someone could have easily stolen it,” Spencer pointed out. “What if Gayle thought Emily scammed her? What if she’s been pissed all this time because she thought you took her money and ran?” She blinked hard, the puzzle pieces suddenly snapping together in a different way. “It could make sense. What if A stole the cash from Gayle’s mailbox to make her angry, which would make her look like she was out to get us? What if A took advantage of the situation and cast suspicion on someone innocent, just like what happened with Kelsey?”
“But . . .” Aria bit her fingernail. “Gayle’s Tabitha’s mom.”
“Stepmom,” Spencer corrected. “It sounded like there wasn’t any love lost between them, either.”
“A could have lured us to Gayle’s house, trying to trap us, just like you said, Spence,” Emily said. “Maybe A hadn’t expected Gayle to be there tonight—she was supposed to be at the gala. But then she was. Maybe she took A by surprise. So A killed her.”
Spencer nodded, thinking the same thing. Had Gayle inadvertently saved their lives? If she hadn’t been at the house, would A have killed them instead?
Aria and Hanna shifted, but didn’t say anything. A long silence followed. A lone Honda Civic rolled through a stop light without waiting for the light to turn green. A neon sign blinked across the avenue.
“Do you think it’s true?” Hanna’s skin was pale. “Do you think we were wrong again?”
Spencer shivered, staring into the distance. “Maybe,” she whispered.
And someone else was dead because of it.
33
ARIA’S CONFIDANTE
The next morning, Aria sat cross-legged on the living room floor at her dad’s house, trying to meditate. Let go of all of your stress, a soothing voice said through her headphones. Breathe in and out and picture it all slowly floating away . . .
It was easier said than done, though, because the image of Gayle’s ashen, bloodless face kept leaping into Aria’s mind. The news had talked about nothing but Gayle’s murder all morning, and everyone was hysterical that another Rosewood killer might be on the loose. Miraculously, Aria and the others weren’t mentioned in the story. Last night, when Spencer’s dad found out the girls had been taken to the police station for questioning about Gayle’s murder, he’d immediately left his apartment in Philadelphia, driven to Rosewood, and had a long talk with Lieutenant Lowry, who happened to be the son of one of his best friends. Because there was no evidence that the girls had actually done anything, because the girls had been through so much media scrutiny the previous year, and because Mr. Clark wasn’t pressing charges for trespassing, the cops had agreed not to release the girls’ names to the press.