Chapter 13 Emma #2
"Is she going to come back? When she's not scared anymore?"
"I hope so, sweetheart. I really hope so."
Their footsteps retreated. Truck doors opened, closed. The engine started and faded into silence.
I slid down the door, my back scraping against the wood, until I was crumpled on the floor. The tears came then, hot and silent.
Congratulations, Emma. You've successfully made a six-year-old cry and probably traumatized her for life. Really excellent work. Add it to the resume, right under "professional coward" and "world-class self-saboteur."
Moments later, my phone rang, shattering the silence. I grabbed it without thinking.
"What the hell, Emma?"
Maggie. Of course.
"Hi, Maggie."
"Don't 'hi Maggie' me. I just drove past your place. Saw Cole's truck leaving. Sarah was crying in the front seat. Crying, Emma. That little girl who's been through more than any kid should have to go through. What did you do?"
"I didn't—"
"What did you do?"
I closed my eyes. "I ended things."
"You ended things," she repeated flatly. "With the man who looks at you like you hung the moon? With the child who calls you Mommy?"
"She shouldn't be calling me that."
"Why? Because you don't deserve it? Because you're so hurt you can't accept love when it's standing on your doorstep?"
"Maggie—"
"No. I've watched you do this for a year.
The polite distance, the surface friendships, the way you keep everyone at arm's length.
I let it slide because you were grieving.
But this?" Her voice cracked with frustration.
"This is you burning down your own house because you're scared of a fire that hasn't started. "
"You don't understand."
"Then explain it to me. Use small words."
"There's a missing couple." The confession burst out before I could stop it. "In the forest. A ranger came to tell me. They went hiking and didn't come back."
Silence on the other end.
"Cole lives on that mountain," I continued, the words tumbling out in a flood. "He walks those trails every day. What happens when the ranger comes to my door about them? What happens when I get that call?"
"Emma—"
"I can't do it again, Maggie. I can't love someone and wait for the wilderness to take them. I can't build a life with people who think mountains are playgrounds. I can't survive another loss like Lily."
"So your solution is to lose them now? On purpose?"
"It's not—"
"That's exactly what it is." Her voice softened slightly, but lost none of its edge. "You're so afraid of the pain of maybe losing them someday that you're choosing the pain of definitely losing them today. How is that better?"
"Because I control it," I whispered. "Because I choose when it happens."
"And that makes it hurt less?"
I couldn't answer. We both knew the truth.
"Emma, listen to me." Maggie's voice was fierce with conviction. "You don't get to decide who's allowed to love you. You don't get to push people away because you've calculated the odds of loss and found them unacceptable. Life doesn't work that way."
"It worked that way with Lily."
"Lily's death wasn't your fault. And Cole and Sarah are not Lily. They're not your mother. They're not some cosmic debt the universe is collecting."
"You can't know that."
"No, I can't. Nobody can. That's the whole terrifying point of being alive.
" She paused. "But I can tell you this: if you keep building walls around yourself, if you keep pushing away everyone who tries to love you, you're going to end up alone.
Really, truly alone. And someday, when you're old, and the fear has won and there's nobody left, you're going to look back at this moment and wish you'd been brave enough to let them in. "
Her words were like physical blows, and part of me knew she spoke the truth.
"I'm trying to protect myself," I said weakly.
"No, honey. You're trying to protect yourself from living. And that's not protection. That's just a slower kind of dying."
I didn't have a response. The silence stretched between us.
"I have to go," I finally managed.
"Call him. Go after them. Fix this before it's too late."
"I can't."
"You can. You're just choosing not to." Her voice softened. "I love you, Emma. But I can't watch you destroy the best thing that's happened to you. Call me when you're ready to stop being afraid."
The line went dead.
I sat on my floor, phone clutched in my hand, Maggie's words echoing in the empty cabin.
You're not protecting yourself from living. You're just dying slower.
My phone buzzed. A text notification.
Dad
Hey, sweetheart. Haven't heard from you in a while. Starting to worry. Call me when you can? Miss you.
I stared at the words. Simple. Loving. A hand extended across the distance I'd so carefully maintained.
My thumb hovered over the call button.
I could hear his voice in my memory, the same warm voice that had read me bedtime stories and talked me through my first heartbreak and held me together at Mom's funeral and then again at Lily's. The last piece of my original family.
I pressed call before I could stop myself.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
His voicemail clicked on. "You've reached Tom Reed. Leave a message, and I'll call you back."
"Dad, I—" My voice broke. "I'm sorry I haven't called. I'm sorry I've been distant. I just... I miss you. And I'm scared. And I think I'm messing everything up."
The words poured out, a confession to a machine.
"There were these people: a man and his niece. And I let them in, and now I don't know how to... I don't know how not to be terrified of losing them. The way we lost Mom. The way we lost Lily."
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
"I keep pushing everyone away because it feels safer. But it's not safer, is it? It's just... lonely."
The voicemail beeped, cutting me off.
I sat there, phone pressed to my ear, listening to dead air.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the windows. The mountain breathed its eternal rhythm, indifferent to my small human pain.
Maggie was right. I knew she was right.
But knowing and doing were separated by a canyon of fear I didn't know how to cross.
So I stayed on the floor, in my dark cabin, with my walls and my silence and my terrible, self-inflicted loss.
And I told myself it was better this way.
The lie tasted like ash.
But I swallowed it anyway, because the alternative was hope.
And hope, I had learned, was just another word for eventual devastation.
Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow I will figure out how to live with what I've done.
But tonight, I will just survive it.
One breath at a time.