Free Seven Minutes in Heaven by Sara Shepard Page A

hands. Mr. Mercer looked torn between comforting his wife and going to his daughter. But before he could move, Laurel spoke.
    “In case you haven’t noticed,” she said curtly, “we’re grieving.”
    A rush of gratitude for my sister filled me.
    Quinlan pursed his lips slightly, jotting something down in his notebook, then flipped back a few pages to look something up. “All right,” he said. “Miss Paxton’s time of death is estimated to be between August thirtieth and September first. Were you in Sabino Canyon between those dates?”
    Laurel gave a little jump, and Emma knew what she was thinking. The thirty-first was the night Thayer and Sutton had been out in the canyon on a date; when Thayer was hit by someone driving Sutton’s car, and Laurel had to come take him to the hospital. But it was Mr. Mercer who answered.
    “Sutton and I were both at Sabino Canyon on August thirty-first.” He glanced at Mrs. Mercer. “We met Becky there. It was a pretty emotional night. Sutton didn’t know about Becky until then.”
    Quinlan turned his steely gaze back on Emma. “Was this before or after you’d found Emma on Facebook?”
    “Just before,” she said. “Becky told me about Emma, and a few hours later I got the message from Emma herself.”
    Quinlan’s hairy eyebrows arched high on his forehead. “That’s quite the coincidence.”
    Emma shrugged, though a thin sheen of sweat had broken out at her temples. “I assumed Becky had gotten in touch with Emma right before she came to see me. After all, Emma is the twin that Becky raised. I’m the one she gave away. The one she didn’t want.” She let her voice waver, then hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. “If she wanted us to finally meet after all these years, it stands to reason that she would go to Emma first.”
    A long and awkward silence followed this speech. Mrs. Mercer was still hiding her face in her hands, weeping silently. Laurel seemed to be examining the brown mosaic tile on the floor. Emma swallowed hard.
    “Okay,” Quinlan said, drawing out the second syllable skeptically. “So can you explain why you walked into the station two days later calling yourself Emma Paxton?”
    The question dropped like a bomb. Mrs. Mercer’s hand flew away from her face as she whipped around to stare at Emma. Next to her, Laurel went rigid. Mr. Mercer blinked at Quinlan.
    “She did what ?” he asked, his face sheet-white.
    “Yup. First day of school, Sutton came into the station insisting that she wasn’t Sutton but Emma, and that something terrible had happened to her twin. I blew it off as another prank. Now, though . . .” He shook his head. “Now I’m not so sure.”
    Emma’s collar suddenly felt like it was choking her. She swallowed hard, forcing herself to hold Quinlan’s gaze.
    “Well, yeah,” she said softly. “It was a prank. I’d just found out I had a twin. It wasn’t like I knew anything had happened to her. Like I said, she didn’t show up when we were supposed to meet.” She held his gaze, trying to channel a little of Sutton’s attitude, trying to imagine how Sutton would handle being interrogated when her long-lost sister had just died. “I was mad . Mad at my parents, mad at Becky, mad at Emma for standing me up. I was hoping you’d call me on it. That you’d tell my parents, and then I’d find out if Emma was even real.”
    She looked away from Quinlan to her grandparents. Mrs. Mercer stared miserably at her, her eyes glassy with tears. Mr. Mercer looked stern for a moment, like he might chastise her, but then he looked away as though ashamed.
    “I’m sorry,” Mr. Mercer said, blowing air heavily out through his mouth. “You’re right, Sutton. We should have told you the truth much sooner.”
    Not bad , I thought, oddly proud of Emma’s performance. She did a good angry Sutton Mercer. I must have been rubbing off on her after all.
    A stab of shame shot through Emma’s chest. Now Mr. Mercer thought he was in the