Page 51 of Emma on Fire

Byron sucks in his breath sharply. Emma’s never spoken to him like this.

“You keep insisting that what I’m saying isn’t true,” Emma says. “You seem incapable of taking me seriously.And you did the same thing to Claire. She told you she was hurting. And you kept telling her that she was strong, that she was doing great, that she could handle anything life threw at her. But she couldn’t.”

“She could have handled it,” Byron insists. “She’s not like—”

“You and me?” Emma interrupts. “Her death proves that she couldn’t. And everything I’ve been saying lately proves that I can’t either.”

“It only proves she gave up too soon,” Byron says. “And your behavior lately is nothing more than an outpouring of grief, another version of pain and weakness leaving the body.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Emma cries. “She was grieving. She felt completely alone. We weren’t there for her.” Emma feels tears sliding down her cheeks. “If we’d listened better—if we’d really understood how bad things were—then maybe she’d still be here.”

“It was Claire’s decision,” Byron says quietly. “If I could change it—” His voice breaks. “I would give anything. I thought losing your mother was hard. And it was. It was awful. But losing Claire almost killed me.”

“You didn’t even take a week off of work!” Emma yells.

“My work was the only thing keeping me alive!” he shouts back.

“Thanks,” Emma says bitterly.

“Oh, Emma,” he says. “You matter more than my job. You matter more than anything else. You’re all I have. But I had to keep my mind occupied—can you understand that? Otherwise I would’ve gone crazy. You would’ve lost a father too. I can’t get lost in my emotions. It…” His voice wavers again, and Emma can’t help but wonder when he clears his throat if it’s weakness leaving his body. “It wouldn’t be good for anyone if I did that.”

“Fine,” she says. It doesn’t even matter to her. She knows he loves her as much as he possibly can, and if he loves work more, there’s not much she can do about it. And what would they have done, sat around in the living room and cried next to each other? Or worse, she cried while he watched her, occasionally checking his phone? “My point is that we have to accept some of the blame.”

“How does that help?”

Emma wipes her streaming cheeks. “You’re always talking about how important it is to be responsible for our actions. Or our inaction.”

“We aren’t responsible for Claire driving her car into a goddamn pole.”

A vehicle, traveling in the westbound lanes of Interstate 90, veered off the right side of the roadway and struck a utility pole.That’s what the accident report said.

“Do you ever picture it?” Emma asks. “Because I can’t stop.”

“No,” Byron says flatly.

“Not the crash,” Emma says. “The fire.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line.

After Claire plowed her car into a pole, the damaged engine exploded. Flames shot up from the hood, then enveloped the interior. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be asphyxiation. In other words, the crash didn’t kill her, and she was breathing when the car caught fire. Claire Isabelle Blake, of New York, New York, burned to death at age twenty-four.

“I see it every time I close my eyes,” Byron whispers. “Why do you think I don’t sleep anymore?”

“Me too,” Emma says.

The grief is unbearable. She digs her fingernails into her palm, wanting to make the hurt physical. But she can’t even feel a thing.

“We failed her,” Emma says.

She hears a door close, hears her father settle into his office chair. She pictures him looking out the massive window, surveying his domain. Byron gives a long, drawn-out sigh. “No, Emma,” he says. “We are not responsible for her death.”

“No,” Emma agrees. “But we could have been more responsible with her life.”

There’s silence on the other end, and she hears him get up, start pacing the room. A small smile pulls on theedge of her lip. Knowing where her tic comes from is oddly comforting.

“I looked at my calendar,” Byron finally says. “For the day she died, then the week, then the month. I was double, triple booked. I kept looking at it, kept trying to find a spot where I would have had time to reach out, to check in.” He stops again, emotion closing this throat.

“And when I realized the opening just wasn’t there, I actually felt…” He takes a deep breath. “You’ll hate me, Emma, but I actually feltbetter.I didn’t feel like I failed her or like I should have done something different. I truly believe that everything I did that day, that week, that month, was important, was something that needed to happen. Claire’s problems, they…”

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