Page 111 of The Love Ambush
Thankfully, Trisha and Dad are nowhere to be seen as I lead Emily upstairs and into Sophie’s room.
Sophie’s pacing, but she stops when she sees us. “It’s not too late, Gentry. Emily and I can handle this, okay? Emily’s upsetnow, but she’ll come around. You can go back to art school and live your life the way you should have been living it for the past three years.”
Emily sobs harder. “I don’t want to,” she wails.
My heart bangs hard against my ribcage. “Do you really want to get rid of me that badly?”
“Noooo,” Emily cries into her hands.
“We want you to be happy,” Sophie says. “We saw your painting in Yuletide. That’s what you should be doing. I never even realized you were only going to nursing school for us. I thought you wanted to be a nurse.”
“Me too,” Emily sobs.
I sink onto Sophie’s twin bed, bringing Emily to sit next to me. “That’s so sweet of you guys, but all I want is for you to be happy and healthy. That’s more important to me than my art or my career.”
“You’re so nice,” Emily sobs. “And I’m so mean.”
“Oh my God, Em,” Sophie says. “Stop blubbering. You’ve already ruined everything. Why are you still crying?”
“Can you two keep a secret?” I ask. It’s probably not the best idea to share a secret this huge with my sisters, but they need to know what’s really going on. They deserve to know.
Emily looks up, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks puffy. Sophie sits on the bed next to Emily. “I didn’t tell Dad about Emily getting drunk before Brodie’s wedding. I know how to keep a secret.”
“You can’t even tell your friends,” I say.
“We won’t tell anyone,” Emily says. “Right, Sophie?”
Sophie rolls her eyes. “I already said I won’t tell anyone.”
I tell them about Levi and his family helping to put up roadblocks to the sale. “I’m not sure what difference it’ll make, since Dad seems determined to ignore Deacon’s suggestions, butit’s nice to know they tried. And I have a feeling they have more planned.”
Hope beams in Emily’s expression, her tears forgotten. “Really?”
“Really,” I say, already regretting my decision to tell them. What if the Sullivans can’t stop the sale? What if I’ve just gotten Emily’s hopes up for no reason? “But even if the house does sell, I’m not going anywhere, okay? I can take art classes here at Maple Ridge and, if you want me to keep living with you, I can make that happen, too. You both deserve to have a relationship with Dad, and I’m not going to do anything to mess that up, but I still want to be a part of your lives.” I pause, not sure how to phrase what I need to say next. “Has Trisha done anything really mean to you?”
“No,” Sophie says. “She just acts like she’s better than us, and she asked us to call her mom.” Sophie shudders. “I want Dad to stay, too, but I’m never calling her Mom…”
“I don’t want to either,” Emily says. “But I will if she really wants me to. I don’t want Dad to get mad and leave again.”
“If Dad leaves again,” I say, hoping with everything I am that he’s going to stick around for these two amazing girls, “it won’t be because of anything you’ve done or said, okay?”
They nod, but they don’t look convinced.
“Am I right, though, that you both want to keep living in this house?” I ask because they deserve to have a say.
“Yes,” Sophie says. “Trisha will probably want to move to some fancy house way up on the mountain. I’m not driving thirty minutes to school every day.”
“Dad said they want to downsize,” I say. “If I’m moving out and you’ll be going to college soon, they won’t need such a big house.”
“Downsize?” Emily says. “That definitely means they’ll want us to share a room. I’m not sharing a room with Sophie.”
Sophie rolls her eyes. “It would be for, like, two years. I think we’d survive.”
“I wouldn’t survive,” Emily says. “Our house isn’t that big, anyway. The only way I can get away from you all is to go to my room. We don’t even have a place to watch TV without the whole house knowing what we’re doing.”
Our first floor is an open floor plan, and none of us have TVs in our rooms.
“You watch everything on your tablet anyway,” Sophie says. She looks at me. “But I don’t want to move either. Especially because…”
