How do you recover from something like this? How do you walk around in the world after finding out your whole life was a lie? How do you wear mascara and buy stamps and go to the carwash and vacuum and do all the things that fully functional people do? I couldn’t even stop staring at the wall. I’d been too shaken to pick a flight. The hotel was about all I was capable of. I needed to eat, but the thought of figuring it out was too exhausting. So I sat and I spiraled deeper into myself.

I thought things had been bad when I was sick and alone on the island. But it occurred to me that I might actually die here in this hotel room. This would be the thing to kill me. I would just wither away. Fail to thrive. I would lay down and not get up. And who would even know?

That’s the nature of being on the island. That’s the price. And it still cost less than the alternative.

Someone was calling my name. The sound drifted into my consciousness like a voice underwater.

Knocking on my door.

“Emma!”

It was Maddy.

“Emma, open the door. I know you’re in there.”

I didn’t move.

“I know you’re small, and you don’t want to see anyone. I don’t care, let me in.”

Something instinctual got me to stand. I’d spent half my life taking orders from that voice. Even in my condition, I couldn’t stop now. I dragged myself up and unbolted the door. My best friend stood on the other side.

“How did you find me?” I asked weakly.

“I put AirTags in your luggage.” She edged past me into the hotel room. “I knew you’d leave me, but you’d never leave your bags.”

She plopped her purse on the dresser and sat on the bed, hands folded in her lap.

I just stood there, looking at her dispassionately.

“Well, you finally did it,” she said. “You went full AWOL.”

I didn’t respond.

“Were you even going to say goodbye to us?” she asked.

“No.”

“You don’t think that’s a thing you should do?” she asked.

“I am the worst thing that could ever happen to either of you,” I said.

She cocked her head. “Why? Because you have a flight response to stress? A messed-up attachment style from years of trauma and neglect?”

The truth hit me gently in the chest. Small futile soft thuds, like a child’s fists banging on a brick wall.

“Is that what it is?” I asked, my voice flat.

She picked lint off her pants. “I mean, I’m not a therapist, but I’ve done a lot of reading about it. I’ve had my suspicions for a while. Avoidant attachment relationship style is my best guess.”

I nodded and looked away from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have listened?”

I paused for a long moment. “No. Probably not.”

She took in a breath through her nose and blew it out. “Sit. Go on, take the chair.”

I took the order and dragged myself to the chair across from her. She got up and rummaged in her bag and pulled out a sandwich, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a bottle of apple juice. She unwrapped the sandwich and put it in my hand, opened the chips, and twisted the cap off the drink. Then she sat there and watched me eat.

I could barely taste the food, but my body responded like a wilted plant being watered. Some of the brain fog and misery dissipated as the sugar and nourishment hit my bloodstream.

The sandwich was what I always ordered.

She’d stopped to get this. She’d ordered it for me. She knew what kind of state I’d be in and she’d come prepared.

Maddy was like a first responder for my soul.

She always had been. And even when I quit her, she didn’t quit me. This plucked at me. Tried to get in.

It did not.

She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees as I finished my food. “Better?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. Now I’m going to tell you something, and I really need you to hear it,” she said. “You can cut me off, cut Justin off, be so small no one can ever find you. Go ahead. Run like the wind, I won’t chase you. But you can’t escape yourself.”

I just stared at her.

“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.