Page 76 of The Summer I Destroyed You

“What’s up?” I ask coolly.

“Don’t be like that,” he replies. “You know you want to talk to me while you brush your teeth.”

He’s right. I do.

I’m okay with the way our night ended after all, I guess.

37

EMMY

“Want to go on a secret mission?” my father whispers.

It’s dark out, and I’m groggy. He doesn’t get me up this early unless we’re doing sandbags.

“Is it raining?” I ask, struggling to open my eyes. I’m so tired that it feels as if I’m under water.

“Different kind of mission,” my father says quietly, holding a finger to his lips. “A really big one.”

I smile despite my sleepiness. It’s been a bad week with my mother—she slapped me on the way home from the pediatrician’s yesterday, hard enough to leave a mark, and when my father asked, she lied about it, daring me to counter her. But he knew. He always seems to know when it’s a good day to swoop in and reset the balance.

He wraps my coat around my shoulders and hands me my shoes. We tiptoe out of the house, and he closes the door so quietly that even I don’t hear the sound, though I’m standing right there. Jeff is sixteen now—old enough that he’d no longer want to come anyway, but I know my dad still worries.

I buckle my seat belt and wait for him to climb in before I speak. “Where are we going?” Even as I ask, I’m nestling my face into the passenger seat, longing for bed.

“It’s a surprise,” he replies. “You can go back to sleep if you want.”

“Are we getting Bradley?” She comes along with us most of the time now.

His smile fades. I’ve never seen my father cry, but for a moment I’m worried he’s about to.

“No,” he says. “Not this time.”

We start to drive. He’s listening to one of those news stations, and every voice sounds the same. I want to stay awake; I want to try to guess the surprise, but I cannot.

I blink my eyes open for only seconds at a time—clocking the lights of Santa Cruz, the farms to its south, the big signs for Monterey.

The sky is starting to lighten when the guy on the radio says interest rates are going down. “You should buy stock, Daddy,” I mumble, rousing myself.

My father laughs. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

I rub my eyes. “Because if it costs less to borrow money, people will buy more things and the stock prices will go up.”

Once again, his smile fades. He’s sadder than usual today. “That’s probably true. What do you think I ought to buy?”

“I like Google and Apple,” I tell him, rousing to the conversation. “But I also like Disney. Kids always want to go to Disney, whether their parents have money or not. But more parents will go if they’ve got money.”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice barely audible, “that’s true.”

The sky is just light enough that I can make out the ocean to my right, which means we’ve been driving south for a long time.

“Are we going to Disney?” I ask. “Is that the surprise?”

“Not this time,” he says, swallowing. “It may be a while before I can take you to Disney.”

“That’s okay. I don’t really care about Disney.” That is kind of a lie. I would like to go to Disney, but I don’t want him to think I’m disappointed.

“No?” he asks. “What would you choose for our adventure if you could choose anything?”

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