Chapter 54 Emily
EMILY
Isat in my car outside my parents’ house, staring at the perfectly manicured lawn and the hanging baskets my mother changed with the seasons.
My hands were still gripping the steering wheel even though I’d turned off the engine three minutes ago.
I should go in. I’d promised I’d come for Friday dinner, and showing up late would just give my mom more ammunition. But something kept me frozen in place, my breathing shallow and my stomach churning.
Ever since that night with the texts and Cam and the complete breakdown where I’d spilled everything about my childhood, about my mother, about feeling fundamentally unlovable, I’d been seeing everything differently.
The way he’d held me and told me I was allowed to grieve the mother I deserved had cracked something open inside me. Like someone had handed me a new pair of glasses and suddenly all the blurry bits came into sharp, painful focus, and it was so. Fucking. Exhausting.
I dragged in a breath and reached for my phone, buying myself a few more minutes before I had to face whatever waited inside that house.
Maybe there’d be something from work, or one of the girls, or literally anything that would give me an excuse to sit here a little longer.
I tapped open my email app and my heart stuttered. Right there at the top of my inbox: Appalachian State University Art Scholarship Committee.
My fingers went numb and the phone nearly slipped from my hand.
This was it. The email I’d been simultaneously desperate for and terrified of since I’d submitted my application.
The thing I’d been trying not to think about every single day because thinking about it made my chest hurt and my hands shake.
I stared at the subject line, my thumb hovering over the screen. Re: Graduate Scholarship Application. Just open it and know, I told myself.
But I couldn’t make my thumb move because once I opened it, everything would change.
Either I’d have a future, or I wouldn’t.
Either my art was good enough, or it wasn’t.
Either I was worth something, or I wasn’t.
“Just fucking open it!”
I tapped the email. The message loaded and I scanned the first line, my heart in my throat.
Dear Ms. McIntyre, Thank you for your application to the Appalachian State University Graduate Art Scholarship program... My eyes jumped ahead, looking for the word that mattered, and there it was. Unfortunately...
...your application was unsuccessful at this time. The competition was extremely strong, and while your portfolio showed promise, the committee has decided to award the scholarship to another candidate whose work more closely aligned with the program’s current focus...
The rest of the email blurred together. Something about encouraging me to apply again in the future. Something about wishing me all the best in my artistic endeavors.
I set my phone down carefully in the cup holder, my hands steady, my heart calm. I wasn’t crying. I just sat there, staring at those stupid hanging baskets, feeling absolutely nothing.
Of course I didn’t get it.
Of course my work wasn’t good enough.
Of course I was just showing promise instead of actual talent.
The numbness spread through my chest, down my arms, into my fingers.
It was almost peaceful in a horrible sort of way, like my body had finally accepted what some part of me had always known.
My mother had been right all along.
I should get out of the car and go inside, paste on a smile and make it through dinner, but I couldn’t move. The rejection sat in my chest like a stone. Exactly what I deserved.
My phone buzzed. Bile rose to my throat when I saw the text.
Are you coming in or not? Dinner is getting cold.
Of course she’d been watching for me, and of course her first concern was the temperature of the fucking food.
I finally dragged myself from the car and up the walkway, my legs moving automatically even though my brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton. The rejection email played on repeat in my head: Unfortunately... not successful... showed promise... other candidates...
Something was building under the numbness, something hot and jagged and mean.
My hand was on the front door now and I could hear voices inside, Mom saying something sharp, Dad’s mumbled response. I should take a breath, pull myself together, be the good daughter who smiled and nodded and didn’t make waves.
But that hot, jagged thing was getting bigger, pushing against my ribs, making it hard to breathe.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
Mom appeared immediately from the kitchen, her face already set in lines of disapproval. She took one look at me and her mouth pursed in that familiar expression of disappointment.
“You’re late. And you look terrible. Didn’t you even try to fix your hair before you came?”
The words hit different this time, sharper and clearer, because I’d just been told my art wasn’t good enough and now here was my mother telling me I wasn’t good enough either. The hot jagged thing cracked open just a little bit wider.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, my voice flat. “It’s nice to see you too.”
I followed her into the dining room where Dad was already seated, staring at his plate. Mom’s good China was out, a roast in the center surrounded by perfectly arranged vegetables.
I sat down in my usual seat. The one I’d occupied for family dinner my entire life because it had the perfect view of the garden shed. Just to remind me.
Mom settled across from me, her posture rigid, her mouth already forming that pinched expression that meant she had something to say.
We made it approximately thirty seconds before she struck.
“So.” She reached for the serving spoon. “Have you heard back from that art school thing yet?”
That art school thing. Like it was a hobby. Like it wasn’t the most important thing I’d ever done in my entire life.
Unfortunately... showed promise... another candidate...
“You can stop bitching about it.” My voice was eerily calm. “I didn’t get it.”
Mom paused, the spoon hovering over her plate. For just a second, something flickered across her face. Not sympathy. Never sympathy. More like satisfaction.
“Oh.” She set the spoon down carefully. “Well. I suppose that’s for the best, really.”
The stone in my chest cracked.
“For the best?” My voice was flat. Dead.
“Emily, you were never very realistic about your talents.” She said it so matter-of-factly, like she was commenting on the weather. “I did try to tell you art wasn’t a practical path. Perhaps now you’ll finally listen and focus on something you can actually achieve.”
Something snapped.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just a clean, quiet break, like a frozen branch giving way under too much weight.
I set down my fork carefully and looked directly at her. When I spoke, my voice was ice.
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been such a fucking cunt to me my whole life, I would have been a better person.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Mom’s face went white, then red. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air.
Dad’s fork clattered against his plate. “Emily!” His voice was sharp, scandalized. “You do not speak to your mother that way!”
I turned to look at him, really look at him, and something cold and venomous unfurled in my chest.
“Oh, so now you have something to say?” I kept my voice perfectly level, perfectly controlled, even as rage burned through every cell in my body. “Now you’re going to defend her? Because she heard a bad word?”
“There is no excuse for that kind of language—”
“Where the fuck were you?” The words came out like shards of glass.
“Where were you when she locked me in the shed for hours because I didn’t want to practice my pageant wave?
When she controlled every bite of food I put in my mouth because God forbid I wasn’t thin enough for her precious competitions?
Where were you when I was so fucking desperate to escape her that I took a razor to my own skin? ”
Dad’s face had gone gray.
“You sat there.” I pointed at him, my hand steady. “You sat there like the useless cunt you are and you let her destroy me, piece by piece, year after year. And you never said one fucking word to stop her.”
“Emily, that’s enough—” Mom tried to interrupt, her voice shrill.
“No.” I cut her off, my gaze swinging back to her. “It’s not nearly enough. It will never be enough to make up for what you did to me. For what you both did.”
I stood up, my chair scraping against the hardwood floor. The sound was loud in the awful silence.
“You wanted me to be perfect. To be pretty and polished and exactly what you could show off to your friends. But I was never a daughter to you. I was a doll. A project. Something you could mold and control and punish when I didn’t perform the way you wanted.”
Mom’s hands were shaking. “We gave you everything—”
“You gave me nothing!” The words exploded out of me, sharp and cutting. “You gave me eating disorders and anxiety and scars I’ll carry for the rest of my life! You gave me years of therapy I still haven’t started because I’m too afraid to look at what you did to me!”
I grabbed my napkin and threw it down on the table.
“You know what? I’m done. You can both get fucked.”
I turned and walked toward the door, my steps measured and deliberate. Behind me, I could hear Mom sputtering, Dad saying something I didn’t bother to listen to.
I didn’t run. I didn’t cry. I just walked out of that house with my head high and my spine straight, leaving them sitting at their perfect table with their perfect dinner, in their perfect house. But without their perfectly ruined daughter.
The front door clicked shut behind me and I kept walking. Down the path. Past the stupid hanging baskets. To my car.
My hands were steady as I unlocked the door. My breathing was even as I slid into the driver’s seat.
I started the engine, put the car in reverse, and drove away from that house without looking back.