I didn’t wait to hear who. Emma could be in there. I ran up to the French doors off the kitchen and rattled them. They were locked. I jumped off the deck and ran around the side of the garage, Maddy on my heels, and I crashed right into Neil in the driveway. He was standing there with his hands in his pockets looking up at the smoke billowing out of the top floor.
“Who’s in the house?” I shouted.
“Nobody,” he said calmly.
“Where’s Emma? And Amber?” My heart was pounding.
“Gone. Amber just left in a taxi and Emma was getting into an Uber when I got home. Amber said they had a fight.”
I bent over with my hands on my knees. “Thank God,” I breathed.
I panted for a few moments, catching my breath before I pulled out my phone and called Emma. It went straight to voicemail. “Hey, where are you? Why’d you leave? Call me.”
Maddy watched me hang up, then she walked away, typing into her screen.
Neil and I stepped onto the front lawn and he stood there, watching the tendrils of smoke curling out of the windows on the top floor. He was smiling.
I stared at him. “Are you okay?”
He looked over at me like the question surprised him. “What? Because of this?” He gestured to the burning house.
“Yeah. Yeah, your house is on fire.”
He smiled up at it. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
Sirens started blaring in the distance.
“She set it, you know,” he said.
“Who did?” I asked.
“Amber. One of those soy candles she likes to burn. She threw it at me. My head actually. Really poor aim, I ducked it easily.” He sighed happily at the smoke pouring now from the front door.
I blinked at him. “Are you happy about this?”
He gazed thoughtfully at his home.
“You might not know this, Justin,” he said, “but I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life. I was a real asshole once. A few years ago, I lost the only woman I have ever loved because of it. I’ve been to a lot of therapy and worked hard on being a better person. Unlearning a lot of the toxic behavior I grew up seeing. Then Amber showed up. At first I thought this was my reward. I was a better man, so I was ready for a good woman. A nice, healthy relationship. But that’s not why Amber was here.” He looked over at me. “She was sent to test me. And I never wavered.”
I shook my head at him. “She set your house on fire.”
“I know.” He peered up to the house. “And now my debt to the universe is paid. She has wiped my slate clean. That woman was an angel sent from God.”
He looked at the flames licking out of the window over the garage and he started laughing. Pure joy.
I thought about what Emma said once. That framing is everything. That if you can frame the terrible things in the best possible way, that’s where true happiness comes from. I guess in this case it was a good thing because his fucking house was burning down.
Fire trucks pulled up to the property just as Maddy came running over. “Emma’s luggage is gone.”
I looked at her, confused. “What?”
“She left, Justin.”
“Yeah, she got in an Uber—”
She shook her head. “No, Justin. She left left. Like, in the bad way. Her luggage is moving, I’ve got AirTags on them. She picked them up a half an hour ago and she’s heading to the airport.”
My face fell. “What do we do?”
She was already tapping something into her phone. “You do nothing. Go home. Wait and I’ll call you.”
“Are you sure? I’ll come with you—”
“I’m sure. Go home. If we’re lucky we might just see her again.”
CHAPTER 43 EMMA
I was sitting on the edge of the bed in my hotel room by the airport staring at the wall. I couldn’t say how long I’d been there. An hour. Maybe ten.
The momentum that catapulted me away from Neil’s had lost its inertia. I had screeched to a halt and I sat where I stopped.
My brain was glitching. I was hungry and probably dehydrated from crying. I hadn’t eaten since the birthday breakfast Justin made me this morning. We’d never made it to my birthday lunch. That plan felt a thousand years away now. Pancakes felt like a fever dream. It was hard to believe it was even the same day. I’d turned twenty-nine and discovered a new family and a lifetime of lies and betrayal. Been to Wakan and back, met my brother and sister-in-law and niece. I’d seen my mother for the last time and I’d walked out on my entire life and everyone in it. All in the course of twelve hours.
I worked in a hospital. I knew the centuries that could take place in half a day. I knew the decades that could pass in a minute. I’d somehow aged more than that today. I’d lost eons and I’d never get them back.
It was scary how detached I felt. Like something had been unplugged. I knew objectively this was bad. A severe trauma response. A form of shock. But I was too disconnected to feel anything other than the void and I was too grateful for the void to want it to stop.
I replayed the day in my head like footage from a documentary. Like it had happened to someone else. The sweet things Justin said to me at breakfast, that I deserved to be appreciated. The gift he’d gotten me, so thoughtful. The way he held me on the side of the road, a docking station when I needed to dock. But thinking about it didn’t bring me back. It pushed me further offshore. I just wanted to get away from it, put more space between me and him.
