“I’m not really suited to it,” he says finally. “The relationship thing. Your mother?—”
“Mom left because you put the club first. Always. For twenty years.” I look at him. “Josie’s not asking you to choose. She understands the club. She’s part of it.”
“Which is why anything between us would be complicated.”
“Everything worth having is complicated.”
He glances at me, something shifting in his expression. “You read that on a fortune cookie or something?”
“I’m just smart, Dad. Figured it out on my own.”
“When’d that happen?”
I give him a half smile, because what am I going to say? That I grew up and learned a bunch in all those years while he wasn’t paying attention?
The silence seems to say it, anyway. Because the next words out of my dad’s mouth come as a bit of a shock.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “For all the years I wasn’t there. For choosing the club over you and your mom. For not fighting harder to keep our family together.”
My throat tightens. “Dad?—”
“No. This has to be said.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “When you showed up at Devil’s for the reopening, I was so angry at myself. Because I knew if you were back, then it meant you weren’t OK. That if you were runningtohere, then the safety I thought you had in your New York life was broken.” He glances at me. “I know that’s my fault.”
I swipe at my eyes, annoyed that I’m crying again. I can’t even blame the pain meds anymore. I’m just emotional.
I pull it together with a gross snuffling sound, clearing my throat before I speak. “I didn’t come back because I needed saving, Dad. I came back because this is where I belong. With you. With Lee. With Bones.” I look at him. “It just took me a while to figure that out.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You need him.”
“Yeah. I do. And he needs me. That’s how it works.”
“I understand.”
“You know,” I say, staring out the truck window, “when I was a kid, I thought Stoneheart was the smallest place on earth. Now it seems gigantic. Every street has a whole story behind it. Every person has a lifetime here.”
“That’s what they’re trying to buy.” Dad’s knuckles go white on the wheel. “They think money can erase that.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re so desperate,” I say. “No amount of money can buy the kind of history we have here.”
He glances at me briefly. “I hope you’re right.”
So do I. Because tonight, we find out if history is enough.
22
EMMA
The town hall is packed.
I’m backstage—well, behind a makeshift curtain that’s really little more than a bedsheet strung up between two poles—watching through a gap as people file in. Every seat is taken and more keep coming, lining up along the walls, clustering in the back. The local news crew has set up cameras. There’s a table at the front with microphones and name cards for the town council members who’ll be moderating.
This is real. This is happening.
“Miss Emma, I’m nervous.”
I look down to find one of my younger students clutching the hem of my shirt. She’s maybe seven, dressed in her best leotard with her hair pulled back so tight it makes her eyes look huge.
“Me too,” I admit, adjusting my crutches so I can put a hand on her shoulder. “But we’ve practiced this. You know the routine. And you know why we’re doing it, right?”
