“Whoa,” Emily breathed. The ship stretched several city blocks, and there were more circular portholes on each level than she could count. Emily had read in the Eco Cruise brochure that the vessel contained a theater, a casino, a gym with nineteen treadmills, a yoga studio, a hair salon and spa, thirteen restaurants, eleven lounges, a rock-climbing wall, and a wave pool.
Mr. Fields pulled into an available parking space near a big tent with a banner that read PASSENGERS, CHECK IN HERE! There was a line of thirty or so kids with suitcases and duffels. After he cut the engine, he sat staring straight ahead. Seagulls circled the sky. Two girls squealed excitedly when they saw each other.
Emily cleared her throat awkwardly. “Thanks for the ride.”
Mr. Fields turned abruptly and looked at her hard. His eyes were iron-cold, and two curved lines accentuated his mouth like parentheses.
“Dad …” Emily’s stomach started to hurt. “Can we talk about this?”
Mr. Fields set his jaw and faced front. Then he turned up the radio. They’d been listening to a New York news station for the second half of the drive; now a reporter was droning on about someone nicknamed the Preppy Thief who’d escaped from a New Jersey holding cell that morning. “Ms. Katherine DeLong might be armed and dangerous,” the reporter was saying. “And now, on to weather …”
Emily twisted the volume down again. “Dad?”
But her father didn’t pay any attention. Emily’s jaw wobbled. Last week, she’d broken down and told her parents that she’d secretly had a baby girl over the summer and had given her up for adoption shortly after she was born. She’d omitted a few of the more sordid details, like accepting money from Gayle Riggs, a wealthy woman who’d wanted the baby, and then changing her mind and returning the payment, which A had intercepted. But she’d told them a lot. How she’d hid in her sister Carolyn’s dorm room in Philadelphia during the third trimester. How she had seen an ob-gyn in the city and had a scheduled C-section at Jefferson Hospital.
Emily’s mom hadn’t blinked through the whole story. After Emily had finished, Mrs. Fields took a long sip of her tea and thanked Emily for being honest. She even asked Emily if she was okay.
The clouds had parted in Emily’s mind. Her mom was being normal—cool, even! “I’m holding up,” she’d answered. “The baby is with a really great family—I saw them the other day. They named her Violet. She’s seven months now.”
Then a muscle in Mrs. Fields’s cheek twitched. “Seven months?”
“Yep,” Emily said. “She smiles. And waves. They’re wonderful parents.”
And then, like a light switch abruptly flipped on, reality hit Emily’s mom at full force. She blindly groped for her husband’s hand as though she were on a sinking ice floe. After letting out a squeak, she leapt up and ran to the bathroom.
Mr. Fields sat, stunned, for a moment. Then he turned to Emily. “Did you say your sister knew about this, too?”
“Yes, but please don’t be mad at her,” Emily said in a small voice.
Since that day, Emily’s mom had barely come out of her bedroom. Mr. Fields handled the chores, making dinner, signing Emily’s permission slips, and doing the laundry. Every time Emily tried to broach the subject with him, her dad shut her down. And forget about talking to her mom: Whenever Emily even got near her parents’ bedroom, her father appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, like a rabid, protective guard dog, shooing her away.
Emily had no idea what to do. She would have preferred her parents send her to reform school or to live with her über-religious relatives in Iowa, like they’d done when they were mad at her in the past. Maybe she shouldn’t have told her parents about the baby, but she didn’t want them to find out from someone else—like New A. The Rosewood PD knew, too, as well as Isaac, the baby’s father, and Mr. Clark, Gayle’s husband.
Amazingly, the news about the baby hadn’t made its way around Rosewood Day, but it didn’t matter—Emily still felt like a pariah. Add in the fact that she’d witnessed a murder two weeks prior and that the police were now investigating Tabitha’s death, and most days she could barely hold it together. She was also more certain than ever that A was Real Ali—that she’d survived the fire in the Poconos and was out to get them once and for all. Real Ali had framed Kelsey Pierce, driving Emily to almost kill her at Floating Man Quarry. Then she’d thrown suspicion on Gayle, shooting her when she got in the way. Emily shivered. What would she do next?
A loud horn on the boat roused her from her thoughts. “Well, I guess I should go,” Emily said softly, glancing at her dad again. “Thanks for, um, still letting me go on this.”
Mr. Fields took a sip from his water bottle. “Thank the teacher who nominated you for the scholarship. And Father Fleming. I still don’t think you should go.”
Emily fiddled with the University of North Carolina ball cap in her lap. Her parents didn’t have money to send their kids on frivolous class trips, but she’d won a scholarship through her botany class. After her parents had found out about the baby, Mr. Fields had gone to Father Fleming, their priest, to ask if they should still let her attend. Father Fleming had said they should—it would give them time to process what had happened and figure out their feelings.
There was nothing left for Emily to do but open the door, grab her bags, and start toward the check-in tent. She hadn’t walked but three steps when her dad gunned the engine and took off down the road, not even staying to see the boat off as most parents were. She blinked back tears, trying hard not to cry.