Emory had already thought it through and pardoned himself as the exception. He had an off-ramp, in blueprints, but an off-ramp still.
“Nothing. I deal with my bullshit and keep things squared away. I don’t want you cleaning up after someone else’s mess or having to answer for their choices. You can’t fix whatever is broken in Jack. Don’t lose yourself trying.”
“You were supposed to end up like our dad—a simple man, a family of your own, a quiet life. How squared away can you be saddled with all of this?”
Mirabelle gestured to the mansion around them, the enduring symbol of a crumbling empire. How fitting it wasn’t really Emory’s. He didn’t want Liam’s house, no more than he wanted his legacy.
“I have to live with the cards I’ve been dealt,” Emory said and left it at that. Mirabelle’s irony wasn’t intentional. She didn’t know that the only simple and quiet pleasures their father ever knew were in death, not life.
“Maybe someday you’ll fold.”
“Maybe,” Emory agreed but felt the clouds roll in again, on-call to cloak the light. “Go to bed. All will be well.”
He had a lot of nerve saying something like that on the wrong side of midnight. Mirabelle stooped down to kiss his cheek and did as she was told, but clearly didn’t buy it.
Neither did he.
FORTY-SIX
AMELIA
Fearlessness didn’t exist in a girl like Amelia. Her mother told her so when she was five and got stuck in the white oak in their backyard. Brian had climbed it with courage burning so brightly that Amelia stood at the bottom in blind awe of her little friend.
On her turn, Amelia had made it only six feet off the ground. She wrapped herself around a branch, closed her eyes, and wailed for help. Her mother got her down and, after the ordeal, consoled Amelia with homemade cookies and a worried smile.
“You’re fearless in other ways,” she’d said, but it stuck like a thorn in Amelia’s side as she waited for her brand of fearlessness to show up.
It did tonight.
When she wasn’t looking, it blindsided her. Perhaps it should’ve made her proud or relieved,but Amelia’s body was wooden and aching and her mind snowy with static as Mirabelle followed her into Emory’s bathroom.
“You were so brave,” Mirabelle said with misplaced effusion that echoed amongst the glazed tiles.
It reminded Amelia of the recommendation letter her English professor had sent to Harvard. It’d been stuffed to the gills with thoughtful hyperboles. A fictional Amelia existedmore exacting and assertive and braver than she had any right to be.
Amelia shook her head and started the shower. “I wasn’t brave. I was lucky.”
Mirabelle stared at Amelia as if it never occurred to her that bravado made no guarantees, that luck was dumb and heroes often failed. She opened her mouth for the million-dollar question—did Ivan do to her what he did to those other girls?—but Amelia bluntly grounded that conversation before it took flight.
“I’d like to clean up now,” she said. “I’d also like something other than a t-shirt and underwear to sleep in. Maybe one of Emory’s flannels.”
Mirabelle nodded but sniffled with misty eyes. She needed comfort Amelia couldn’t give and didn’t have to begin with. That well ran dry and might not function the same again, so Amelia turned her back on a crying friend, a moment she’d surely torment herself with later. With nothing else to say, Mirabelle left.
After her shower, Amelia toweled off and wrung out her hair but didn’t take inventory of her injuries. She felt them just fine; every bruise, scrape, and cut accounted for. Then there was the bite mark still screaming with pain too loud to ignore. Mirabelle had dug out a red flannel shirt and left it on Emory’s bed with a pair of leggings. No one wore flannel in Nevada, but in some outpost of Emory’s closet, his sweaters and fleeces hung like a homesick wish.
Amelia dressed with the desire to burrow beneath bolts of fabric, layers and layers as thick as armor, until she disappeared. Even that wasn’t enough, though, so she sought comfort in her and Emory’s sanctuary on the third floor.
The room enchanted with its strange trinkets and paintings of lunar-drenched seas and boats seeking harbor. She’d almost forgotten about the black phone there and couldn’t remember why it’d once fascinated her. It just looked ordinary, its sheen dull beneath a layer of dust.
Cross-legged on the floor, Amelia flipped through a book ofshort stories. She skimmed the words but mostly admired the intricate gold-leaf illustrations. Emory found her there and sat beside her with blood still on his cheek and dirt staining his jeans. He brought an ice pack and medical supplies that laid in a heap next to him.
“That was my grandmother’s,” he told her and gestured to the book in her lap. “She kept a bunch of old toys and books in her basement from when my dad was a kid. Whenever we’d visit, she’d send us down there to play. I didn’t care about the toys. I only ever wanted to look at this book. I liked the pictures and some of the stories.”
Old books had memories; the parts where the spine was worn and glue cracked from revisiting the same page. After a while, they opened there of their own accord, committing to heart the most well-loved parts. That book was no different. It flopped open to an illustration of a raven carrying the moon.
“This was your favorite,” Amelia said, and it felt as though she was reaching into Emory’s distant past. So little of it existed at Liam’s. Perhaps just that book.
“Is it that obvious?” he chuckled, and Amelia skimmed the story.
