“You are not what happened to you. You are what you do next.”
Something in her words finally got through, and I suddenly wanted to cry. A pinch of emotion in a dark, deep nothing.
“You turn around, you face it, and you fix it,” she said. “Or you’ll be running from what Amber did to you until the day you die.”
My chin quivered and she held my gaze.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How?”
“Do you trust me to help you?” she asked. “You’ll do whatever I say?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice thick.
“Can you let Justin help too?” she asked.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I want to, but I can’t handle it.”
It was funny that in my state I was able to articulate this. A brief moment of clarity. But it was true. I couldn’t let Justin help me because he wasn’t just Justin. He was the kids too. And they weren’t mine. I couldn’t handle any more unstable relationships or situations where someone I cared about could be taken from me. And neither could they.
They needed people in their lives who will stay. People they can count on. I was the furthest thing from that to ever exist—but he deserved to hear that from me, not to be left the way I almost did. And even that just thrust me deeper into my belief that I wasn’t good for anyone. Not the way I currently was.
“I need to see him,” I said. “Before we go. I have to tell him in person.”
She nodded. “All right. We’ll take you there tomorrow.”
“And then what?”
“It’s my turn to pick,” she said. “I get to pick two times in a row. That was the deal.”
I wiped under my eyes. “Okay. So where are we going?”
“Somewhere you always should have been.”
CHAPTER 44 JUSTIN
I went home like Maddy said, and I waited. Emma texted me around 10:00 p.m. and told me she was coming to talk to me tomorrow morning.
I didn’t sleep all night.
The kids kept asking where she was. I didn’t know what to say.
She’d left her key on the credenza. I couldn’t touch it. I couldn’t move it. I felt like the second I acknowledged it was there, the reason why she’d left it would be real.
I kept thinking about what Maddy said, to never let her leave, because if she leaves, she won’t come back.
I should have never let her out of my sight. I should have gone with her to talk to Amber. She was vulnerable and she wasn’t okay, I should have seen that. And now even though she was coming home, I had a feeling she wasn’t.
I wanted to be wrong. I pictured her showing up at the door with her bags and apologizing for leaving and I’d hug her and take her inside and life as we knew it would continue, and we’d never think about this blip again. She didn’t take off on me and the kids because she intended to never come back, she was just freaked out. This was a knee-jerk reaction to what happened, understandable.
But when the morning came and she finally got here and I ran to the door and threw it open, it was just her. Nothing was with her. No luggage. And Maddy was parked behind her in front of the house with the car running.
My heart sank.
“Can we talk in the living room?” she asked, still standing in the doorway.
“We could go upstairs,” I said. “We could sleep for a bit and talk when we feel better,” I said hopefully. I felt like if I could get her to my room, I could derail this. Nestle her back down into the life we’d been living, remind her it was good and she wanted it.
“I think the living room is better.”
I swallowed hard and let her take me to the sofa.
It didn’t escape me that all the worst news I’d ever gotten in my life was delivered on this sofa. It was where I found out Dad had died. It’s where Mom told me she was going to prison.
I had this almost out-of-body urge to ask if we could move to the kitchen instead, but I didn’t want to taint the breakfast nook too.
She sat on the cushion next to me. Our knees touched. I wanted to grab her and take her off the cursed sofa and run away with her before she said what I thought she was going to say. I hated this. I didn’t want it to keep going.
“Please stop,” I said, before she even started.
She peered at me with a face that looked like heartbreak.
“Justin, you know I only want what’s best for you, right?”
“Whatever you’re about to do is not what’s best for me,” I said. “I don’t want it.”
She looked away. “Tell the kids I had to take a new assignment. Okay? Tell them it was an emergency and I had to go.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We’re not doing this, Emma.”
