Page 100 of The Summer I Destroyed You

She frowns at me. “How are you so sure?”

God. God. All this time, and the answer was right under my nose.

“Because I got one too,” I reply. “And I think I know what we’re supposed to do with them.”

* * *

Bradley was dubious when she left—I hope I didn’t mislead her. Any small progress we’ve made toward a truce is probably ruined if I just told her to go smash up the only memory she has of her dad for no reason.

“You really think you’re supposed to break it open?” Liam asks as he drives me to my mother’s house.

“It would be pretty fucked up to talk about smashing angels into a million pieces with your daughter and then send her an angel with nothing inside it,” I counter.

His worried gaze flickers to me and back to the road. I know exactly what he’s thinking: your dad did a whole lot of fucked up stuff. Why assume now that he’s reasonable or thoughtful? And he certainly has a point. My father definitely cheated on someone, and then he started working for a crime syndicate to support his second family. It’s pretty easy to imagine a guy like that wouldn’t be the most sensitive of parents.

“You don’t think your mom got rid of them?” he asks.

I shake my head—my mom doesn’t seem to get rid of much. But wouldn’t it just figure if this was the one exception?

He pulls into the driveway, and we walk to the shelves on the front porch together. We’ve just turned on a flashlight when my mother emerges from the front door. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demands. “You’ve got no business on my property.”

I stare at her and feel…nothing. I feel no desire for her approval, and therefore, no fear. She made a choice to keep me in the dark about Bradley and then she allowed me to believe my father had simply been using me to get away. She also refused to use any of the funds my father left behind to help Bradley and her mom, and with the way this town gossips, she must have known how they were living and that Bradley worked all hours as a young kid too.

Maybe if I were a better person, I’d feel some sympathy for her; her husband cheated on her, after all, and when he ran away, he only took me.

But there’s none inside me. She bled every emotion out of me with her carelessness. “I’m just getting what’s mine.”

I find the angel and grab it. If she’d even been civil tonight, I’d have told her to look inside hers too. But no—she can remain in this junky old house alone, without any final bits of truth from my dad. She doesn’t seem to care about the truth much anyway.

“Next time I’ll call the police,” my mother warns as Liam and I head to the truck.

“There won’t be a next time,” I reply.

I’m mostly silent on the way home, the angel clutched in my sweaty fist. I’ll feel like an idiot if there’s nothing inside it.

Liam helps me out of the truck and hands me a hammer from his toolbox. “Do the honors,” he says.

With one last look at this final gift from my dad, I swing. The angel snaps open into three distinct pieces.

And there’s something inside. It’s an old key with foam taped around it, and a small note, which Liam unwraps and hands to me.

Emmy,

I’m so sorry. I should never have tried to take you with me and then put you on that train alone. I hate that your last memory might be of me running off like a coward. God, I hope it’s not. I’ve got someone keeping an eye on you, making sure you’ve got what you need until I can get back. The key is to the lockbox in the shed, which now belongs to you. Maybe it won’t seem all that special. Just know it contains my entire heart. I miss you so much.

Love,

Dad

P.S. I imagine you know by now that Bradley is your sister. Please make sure she knows to break her angel open too.

My eyes jerk to Liam’s. “Shit.”

Why did I tell him to throw it out? Why was I so scared of what it would reveal about my dad, so angry about his abandonment, that I never even looked?

He bites down on a smile. “Hang on,” he says.

He walks into the garage and returns with the lockbox.

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