Page 99 of The Summer I Destroyed You

EMMY

The next three weeks are a flurry of meetings and paperwork and contracts. There’s still no guarantee this will work out—Charles could always hire lawyers to fight the historic designation, and Ellis doesn’t have enough money on the line to make it worth his while to fight back, though I suspect he would anyway. He actually seems like a pretty good guy, and every meeting we’ve had has been respectful and entirely free of sexual innuendo. Ultimately, what he cares most about is making money. And that’s something I do rather well.

In my spare time, I’ve been helping a few of the businesses in town—Jeannie’s in particular—prepare for the changes to come. They need better marketing, a small overhaul in what they offer, and some renovations, but I think they’ll be just fine once they’ve finished those improvements. And in between all those meetings, I do the one thing I’d have sworn on my life would never happen: I meet with Bradley.

It’s she who texts me, asking if we can talk. Based on our history, I’m understandably nervous, but she’s my half-sister, after all. And if nothing else, if I’m going to stick around Elliott Springs for a while, we need to clear the air.

She arrives at Liam’s wearing the same sneakers and outdated jeans I saw her in when we saw each other in town. The last time, I gloried in the differences between us, in the fact that I looked wealthy, and she looked downtrodden, but it’s a little harder now. If my mother hadn’t kept every penny of my dad’s money, would the difference between us be lessened? Of course it would.

She takes the seat beside mine on Liam’s porch. “So,” she says.

“So.”

“My mom said you didn’t know. About your mom keeping all the money.”

I sigh. “I didn’t even know we were related, Bradley. The bit about my mom keeping the money was a relatively small revelation by contrast.”

“Small for you maybe,” she says snippily.

This is going about as well as I’d expected it would.

“Jesus, are you still bitter about this? Don’t you think the endless shit you did to me for eight years straight more than made up for the fact that a person I had no control over withheld funds?”

“Do you think so?” she snaps. “I mean, look at the two of us. You’ve got a fucking graduate degree from an Ivy League school, and that car you’ve been renting since you got here probably costs more per month than I earn in a year. I have to live with the fact that our father only chose to take you. Do you really think a little high school bullying made up for all that? Do you want to fucking trade places with me? Because I’d sure as shit trade places with you.”

I roll my eyes. “Our father only chose to take me because my mother, not yours, is a sociopath who has hated me since I was born. Did it ever occur to you that maybe my life was already hard enough, being stuck with her?”

She swallows, and for a half second I almost think I see remorse in her eyes before her gaze turns steely again. “And,” I add, “you were punishing the wrong goddamn person the entire time. I personally took nothing from you.”

She folds her arms, glaring at me. “No, but you were the beneficiary of it, weren’t you?”

I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in my life so unable to accept responsibility for their own bullshit—aside from my mother.

“And did it help your situation in some way, plastering photos of my texts all over the halls?” I demand. “Did that improve your SATs a little? Did it give you the extra edge you needed in a science fair?”

Her eyes narrow. “No, but it made me feel a little better about the fact that none of those things were coming together for me.”

Her expression is truculent; her arms are folded while she glares at me. She reminds me of someone. When I realize who it is, I start laughing despite myself.

“What’s so funny?” she demands.

“I just realized who you remind me of,” I tell her. “You’re pissy and vengeful and completely blinded by rage, and I’m exactly the same way.”

She stares at me, and then her glare gives way just a little. Her mouth twitches. “I don’t remember much about our dad, but I can’t say I love the parts of him I see in the two of us.”

I sigh. “He was a good man. Aside from, you know, the money laundering and abandoning us and cheating.”

She frowns. “Now I’m pissed again. Because you have a thousand memories with him, and what do I have? Some donuts on the pier in Santa Cruz and those fucking angels he sent.”

A chill slides up my spine. “Angels?” I ask quietly. “What angels?”

“He sent one to me and one to my mom the Christmas after he left. Someone must have dropped them off for him. No idea who.”

“What makes you think they were from him?” My voice is weak.

She shrugs. “My mom told me they were. She said he always used to buy them for your mom. She was pretty pissed about it. For all I know, they were just from someone who came into the store and felt sorry for us.”

“No,” I whisper. “They were from him.”

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