I walked right into Neil’s mansion without waiting for someone to open the door.
Justin and Maddy were waiting in the pool house. They hadn’t wanted to leave me, but I didn’t want an audience.
I stood in the living room for a moment to stare at the incomplete rose wall that I now knew was the banister in Mom’s childhood home. The re- creation of her pretty memories, distorted and beyond salvaging.
All the beautiful things she started, only to abandon.
I turned and went up the staircase to find her, opened the bedroom door without knocking.
The room was a mess again. Three empty wine bottles, along with takeout cups and containers, littered the floor. The bed was in disarray— except for Neil’s side. That was perfectly made.
The bedroom was full of burning candles. At least two dozen. The air was so thick with their scent, it felt like I was breathing perfume. I heard water running in the bathroom and I came around the corner to find Mom in her robe over wrinkled pajamas, scrubbing a shirt in the sink. She glanced at me standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?” she asked, barely looking up.
It was clear she was still in the depths of whatever crisis she was having.
I didn’t care. I had never cared less in my entire life.
I could see myself behind her in the mirror. My eyes were puffy. She didn’t even ask what was wrong. It didn’t even occur to her to see why I’d been crying. It didn’t occur to her that today was my birthday and she’d forgotten, again. But now that seemed perfectly natural. Of course she’d
forgotten.
Now I knew what I was worth to her. I truly, truly did. I’d been operating on the belief that I should be the most important thing in her life. How could I not be? I was her baby. I was all she had. So if she mistreated me, it was never for lack of love, because of course she loved me. How could she not? I spent my life excusing the very real evidence that I was nothing to her. I was a gerbil she kept in a too-small cage. A fish in a cup of water. Something to look at and entertain her when she was bored and wanted to play house.
“I met Daniel today,” I said.
She didn’t look at me. She kept scrubbing the shirt in the sink. “Did you hear me? I said I met my brother.”
“I’m fighting with Neil, I’ve got a headache, I don’t have time for this.” My nostrils flared. “You will make time.”
“Emma—”
“NOW!”
She tossed the shirt into the sink with a slap and turned to me. “I gave up a baby, Emma. I was fifteen.”
“You said I had no family,” I said, trying to contain my fury. “You lied to me my whole life.”
She went back to the sink.
“You left me,” I said. “You abandoned me. You let me go to strangers.”
She didn’t turn around. “You had a good family. Maddy’s parents wanted to adopt you, but you didn’t want it—”
“I wanted you! I was waiting for you to come back for me!”
She brushed a loose hair off her cheek with the back of her hand. “Well, I wasn’t in a good place. You were better off there. You have a brother. Now you know. He’s nice, you’ll like him.”
I stared at her back in disbelief. “That’s all you have to say to me?” She ignored me.
“My grandparents died before I ever got to meet them. I lost decades with people who would have loved me. Do you know what I lived through? The things that happened to me in foster care?”
“You think I was in any better place when you were in there?” she said.
I laughed incredulously. “Yeah, I do. I think you were in Wakan, sleeping it off.”
Nothing.
“What other lies did you tell?” I demanded. “Was my dad really married? Do you even know who he is at all or was it just your mission in life to keep me from anyone who would have actually taken care of me.”
She just focused on her washing. Didn’t even look up.
And then I knew that’s what it was. The truth roiled in my stomach. “Your parents would have wanted me, wouldn’t they?” I said. “Like they wanted Daniel.”
She whipped around. “You weren’t theirs,” she snapped. “They had no legal right to you—”
I burst into manic laughter. It was so fucked up, it was funny. She was the architect of the shattered life I’d lived. Of the life I still lived.
And she wasn’t even sorry. That was the worst betrayal of all.
It was the death of the last innocent, naive version of myself. That Emma no longer existed. I was snuffed out like one of her candles.
And I was done.
That broken and damaged part of me that she made turned on her. The part of me that could leave anyone and any place behind and never look back activated just for her. My heart shut off. All attachments I had to her, every bond she’d ever been given was pulled from the root. My defenses wrapped around me like an impenetrable protective shield, and I felt myself go eerily calm. I knew this was the last time I’d ever see her. I wouldn’t miss her. I wouldn’t grieve her. I would never look for her. This is what I was capable of.
This was my gift. This was my curse.
Not the silly thing I was trying to undo once with Justin. It was my ability to not love.
“I’m going to give you one chance to tell me why,” I said steadily. “And then I’m never going to speak to you again.”
She looked at me. For the first time since I walked in here, I saw something like fear flash across her face. But she didn’t reply.
I turned and started for the door. “Emma!”
I kept walking. “Emma! Please!”
I stopped and turned back to her, my face flat. “Why?”
Her eyes were tearing up. “Because they would have kept you,” she said. “They would have kept you like they kept Daniel. And I loved you too much to let you go.”
I stared at her dispassionately.
“If you really loved me, you would have let me go.”
Then I walked out the door and pushed her from my heart forever. But I wasn’t done.
I felt myself get small. I got so small, I vanished. It was catastrophic. A total decimation. A detachment like I’d never experienced.
I folded into myself tighter and tinier than I ever had, and when I was done, I got smaller still. There was no room for anyone. Not Maddy, not Justin. No one.
I didn’t want anyone near me. I didn’t want anyone to know me.
I wanted to be the island. I wanted to be alone and untouchable. To never rely on anyone or love anyone or let anyone love me, because this is what love gets you.
My heart shut off. I called an Uber.
I knew it would hurt them when I disappeared, but I also knew the hurt I’d spare them because leaving was always in me. I was going to do it one day, I think I always knew that. My luggage would always be under the bed, waiting. As soon as Maddy didn’t want to be on the road anymore, I would have continued on without her and left her behind. Or when times got hard with Justin, because life throws things at you and relationships aren’t easy, I wouldn’t stay and work on it. I’d withdraw. I’d sabotage us so I could have a reason to take off, the way Mom always did. I’d leave him before he rejected me or I’d leave him when I loved him and those kids so much it terrified me enough to flee to protect myself.
It already did.
This was always going to happen. I didn’t know how to love anyone or let myself be loved. I couldn’t even say the word.
I could admit to this flaw in me now.
I wasn’t fit to be in a relationship. I wasn’t fit to be a parent. I wasn’t even fit to be a friend. I was full of cracks. And I didn’t want Maddy and Justin to have to fix something they didn’t break. I didn’t want those kids to
lose another person they cared about like I’d lost all the people I’d ever cared about. So I was going to be the island.
And this time nobody would be on it.
