Page 80 of All Yours

“My box of shame,” she declared. “Open the door, please.”

What the hell was going on here? I obliged and held the door.

“Grab the grill lighter,” she said.

“Sloane?”

“You’re either helping or leaving.”

I crossed the kitchen to the drawer, retrieved the lighter, and followed her to the fire pit. She was already arranging the logs. Should I say something? What happened with her parents?

Sloane arranged the book in the middle of the sticks like a small pyre.

“Lighter,” she said, holding out her hand like a surgeon requesting an instrument.

I placed the lighter in her hand.

She lit the sticks underneath and sat back on the ground with her legs crossed at the edge of the fire pit.

The wind whipped around, sending a chill through me. The fire rose through the pile of sticks and licking up around the book, smoke swirling. For someone who loved books as much as Sloane, this had to result from being pushed beyond her limits. Something bad had happened today.

She opened the guilt box, pulling a paper out, and holding it to the flame. It caught easily, and she dropped it into the fire. One at a time, she removed paper after paper and sacrificed them to the growing flames.

“The last few years, part of me still thought it was all my fault that I couldn’t handle the pressure,” she said, eyeing the flames.

“You were a child.”

“Yes. But I still thought that I’d screwed up everything my parents had given me. I was at fault for throwing all that away.” She pulled a newspaper clipping from the box. “I must be deficient. And needed to live out here alone.” The clipping went into the fire.

At this point, the flames fully engulfed the book, and it turned black. Soon it would be unrecognizable. The heat radiating from Sloane’s pain going up in smoke reached me as the wind shifted. It was too cold for her to be sitting on the ground like that.

“This,” she said, pulling a small book with an elastic wrapped around it out of the box, “is the journal I kept during that time. There are entries in here lamenting how I let everyone down. How I’d failed them.” Sloane pulled the elastic off and flipped through the pages.

“How—”

“How could I ever feel that way?” she interrupted. “I was raised by master manipulators, that’s how. I knew enough that I needed to get away from them five years ago. But I didn’t know why. Until today.” She tossed the journal onto the burning remnants of Sebastian’s book. “I’m done holding onto all of that.”

Sloane said the words with a surprising calm, considering the meaning of what she was talking about.

We watched the journal ignite into flames.

“I release you,” she called into the night air. Her breath was visible against the backdrop of the fire glow.

A cold drop landed on my cheek. A glance up revealed snowflakes falling. It’s too early for snow here. And she was still on the frosted ground that I remembered from experience how cold she should be by now.

“It’s snowing. We should get inside.”

“I’m not done, yet.” Slone picked up the mysterious manilla envelope.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, this little gem here is the catalyst.” She pushed herself off the ground and held the envelope up. “The rip your blinders off, punch you in the stomach realization that the only thing my parents ever cared about was that I made them money.”

What on earth was going on here? What had they done?

“This morning I got a call from Jeremy that my parents wanted to have lunch with me.” She paced in a semi-circle around the fire, shaking the envelope. “I didn’t get my hopes up. But there she was telling me she’s proud of me, and I’d never heard those words out of her mouth before.”

Oh god. My heart sank. That little girl who they shipped off to boarding school and expected to perform for the world had thought she’d received acceptance from her mom. But I guessed we wouldn’t be here freezing right now if they didn’t kick her teeth in moments later.

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