22. Emerson #2
“You wanna know about the missing two years in my file?” I started.
“I told you after Autumn came back, she didn’t speak, and when she did, it was torture.
She blamed Mom and Dad for everything. At first, I understood.
She was traumatized and didn’t know how to deal.
But then as it went on and I’d see my mom break down in private, I began to get mad.
And the day I found my big, strong, loving father on his knees—literally on his knees in his bedroom sobbing—I snapped.
I hated Autumn for what she’d done. My parents fought all the time.
Mom wanted to have Autumn committed, which I was all for.
I wanted her gone. She was tearing apart our lives.
But Dad refused. He said she needed to be with her family and if she was locked away in a hospital, she’d feel abandoned. They argued about it all the time.
“I’d moved home and was working in a grocery store.
Yeah, the irony of that wasn’t lost on me.
Months away from graduating from college and there I was working as a check-out girl.
I hated it. I hated Autumn. I hated that my parents were so wrapped up in her shit, they’d forgotten they had a second daughter.
I was a nursemaid. Autumn needs this, Autumn needs that.
Emerson, can you try to talk to her—again. Emerson, your sister needs you.”
I stopped talking when the guilt and self-disgust hit.
“Emerson—”
“No. There’s more. You know why I hated her so much?
Because I’d given up everything. Everything I’d ever wanted, to help her.
I’d lost the one person in the world I loved more than anything and all she could do was torture me.
One day when Dad was at work and Mom was shopping, Autumn came into the living room where I was watching TV with a backpack slung over her shoulder.
I barely looked up at her. Then I heard the front door slam and she was gone.
The first thing I felt was relief, then I realized what was happening and I couldn’t let her leave.
But it was too late. She was gone. Vanished.
Mom and Dad spent the next three months trying to find her, blaming me for letting her leave.
They were right, I had. Mom filed for divorce and I knew the only way to fix my family was to find Autumn. ”
“ Agápi mou. ”
I ignored him and went on. “You see, all of this is my fault. If I’d been a better person.
A better sister. A better daughter. If I had stopped her from leaving that day, none of this would be happening.
I’ve spent eight years trying to atone for my sin.
And I got it, the first time I saw—really saw—what women like Autumn go through.
I understood in a way that forever changed me.
The first time I saw a woman locked in a cage, seeing her broken, was the day I knew I deserved nothing good in my life.
I’m the worst kind of bitch. Heartless and selfish.
So, no, I don’t get to have you or the life we’d planned.
Not after what I’ve done. I don’t get to believe. ”
“Thank you for sharing that with me.” His gruff voice pulled my attention back to him.
“But straight up you are wrong. Everything you felt was normal. The situation, what happened to Autumn, was extreme. You all were feeling shit that the average person thankfully will never have to feel. But you are not a bad person. You are not heartless or selfish.”
“Did you not hear anything I just said? I let her leave .”
“I heard every word, felt them down to my bones. You don’t believe now, but you will.
There was never anything for you to atone for.
I wish you’d never had to see the horrors of the sex trade, I mean that with everything I have.
That shit is whacked. And you’re right—it changes you in a visceral way.
But, baby, you’ve helped free some of those women.
Gave them back something they never thought they’d have—their freedom. ”
“Thad— ”
“What happened to you and your family is what we call catastrophic chaos. When the perfect storm brews and sheer devastation mixes with confusion and disorder. The results are fatal. There’s no coming back from it.
No strategy you can implement to pull out of the death spiral.
There was nothing you could’ve done to prevent the outcome.
No amount of care and love for Autumn would’ve stopped her.
“Retribution is an ugly thing. It consumes you, and you should understand that. Autumn was plotting and planning her reckoning. She was using all of you as an outlet for all the ugliness she was bottling up, building it, and when she was strong enough, she set her course for vengeance. And, babe, your sister has spent years getting hers. The reports on her are not like yours. She didn’t gently kill one man at a time to get more information so she could find her sister.
She’s enacted vicious attacks. Don’t mistake me telling you that as me judging her because I’m not.
I just want you to understand your sister is on a path that is not pretty and that is on her.
You need to really get that. What Autumn has done, what she’s still doing, is what she feels she needs to do.
And you never had the power to change her mind. ”
I dismissed all thoughts of the possibility he could be right, that there’d been nothing I could’ve done to make Autumn stay—to fix her. Instead I focused on what he’d told me about the things she’d done.
“Vicious attacks?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
I couldn’t picture my sweet baby sister viciously doing anything. Except, after seeing her, what she looked like now, maybe I could. Maybe she and I were the same. Both out for blood and retribution.
And Thaddeus was right—it was ugly.