Dad doesn’t even wait for me to clear the desk. He grabs me in a hug.
Mom piles on, too.
“I told you to wait,” she says. Her voice is full of emotion. “Rev, I told you to wait.”
I want to hug them back, but all this motion is jostling my arm, and the pain is so intense that I’m worried I’m going to throw up on them instead.
“I love you, too.” My voice is strained. “But Mom? I really think I need an X-ray.”
My wrist is broken. Again.
I don’t know why, but it seems fitting. A symbol of breaking away from my father.
This time, for good.
I’m sitting in the orthopedic waiting room with Mom and Dad. I’ve told them everything he said. They aren’t mad that I went to see him.
They’re mad that I didn’t tell them where I was going.
I’ve heard a litany of what-ifs that could fill a book.
But I listen to all of them. I listen and let their love and concern fill me up.
They take me home.
I sleep like the dead.
FORTY-FIVE
Rev
Matthew is in my room when I wake up. He’s sitting on the futon, reading a book. Sunlight pours through the windows, filling the room with light.
Light? I squint and peer at the clock on my bedside stand. It’s after ten o’clock in the morning.
“Hey,” says Matthew. “Look who’s up.”
I go to sit up—and my wrist reminds me of everything that happened. The cast is like a brick running from fingers to elbow. The whole thing aches.
I flop back down. “We’re skipping school?” I say to Matthew.
“Kristin said you didn’t have to go.”
“You, too?”
He shrugs and glances at the closet doors. “I said I wanted to see you when you woke up.”
Mom probably loved that, but I don’t believe him for a minute. “You didn’t want to see those guys who’ve been bugging you.” I pause. “Declan would have looked out for you. I told you that.”
“Not today.” Another shrug. “His mom had the baby early this morning. He left around four.”
“A.M.? Was he here?”
Matthew nods.
I rub my eyes with my good hand, then try to sit up again. “I need a few minutes. Do you know if there’s coffee?”
He folds a page and sets the book down. “I can make some.”
There’s a text message waiting on my phone. Actually, there are three of them.
Emma: Please tell me you’re OK.
I’m going to have my mom drive over to your house to make sure you’re okay if you don’t answer this.
Apparently my mom met your mom. They exchanged numbers. Awkward. But at least I know you’re okay. Text me when you wake up.
I smile.
Rev: I’m awake.
But she must not be. No answer comes back.
I lock myself in the bathroom. I can’t remember what the doctor said about taking a shower, and I have no desire to get a new cast, so that can wait. Brushing my teeth left-handed is enough of a challenge that I skip shaving entirely.
Getting dressed takes twice as long as it should. The short-sleeved T-shirt has been washed and folded and is sitting on top of my laundry pile. I don’t even hesitate.
And I don’t bother with a sweatshirt.
Matthew is waiting in the kitchen, eating Lucky Charms out of a box. His eyes widen fractionally when he sees my bare arms, but he doesn’t say anything. He rattles the box. “Want some?”
I shake my head. “I only eat cereal at night.”
He doesn’t act like that’s odd, but he does say, “Why?”
I pull a mug down from a cabinet. A memory comes to me, but this one isn’t too terrible. “When I was five years old, a woman from church gave me a box of Froot Loops. I knew my father wouldn’t let me have them, so I hid them under my bed. I sat and ate them in the dark after he was asleep.” I pause. “I was so scared he would catch me, but the cereal was like crack. I couldn’t stop. I kept the box for months. I remember praying God would make more. He didn’t. I mean—obviously. So then I thought I was being punished. For my great cereal sins.”
Matthew stares at me. He’s not eating now.
“Sorry.” I grimace and pour some coffee. “I didn’t mean to say all that.”
He sets down the box. Gets a bowl and pours some cereal into it. Adds milk and a spoon.
Then he plunks the whole thing down on the counter in front of me. “The hell with your father. Eat some cereal.”
I stare at him, kind of shocked. Kind of touched.
Then I sit down and eat the cereal. I have to do it left-handed, so I’m clumsy, but I eat it. It’s silly, but liberating.
Matthew continues to eat his out of the box.
We’re quiet, but there’s no strain to it.
After a while, he speaks into the silence. “I told Kristin.”
There’s no question what he’s talking about. His voice is completely even. He’s picking through the pieces of marshmallow on his palm. I force myself to keep eating.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Yesterday. After school. It was just me and her. I couldn’t—I kept thinking about what you said. How he could have a new kid there.” He finds a marshmallow in his palm and crushes it to dust.
“What did she say?”
“She asked me if I wanted to try to press charges.” He shudders. “I don’t—I can’t do that. After everything with Neil.” He crushes another marshmallow.
“You’re destroying the good parts,” I say.
He looks down at the colored dust in his palm. “Oh. Sorry.” He swipes his hand on his jeans. “She asked if I would mind her filing a complaint with DFS.” A pause. “I said that would be okay. I think.”
He’s not sure about that. I can hear it in his voice.
“It’ll be okay,” I say. “Mom will make sure.”
He falls into silence again. We crunch on Lucky Charms. I think about Declan, who’s at the hospital meeting his new baby brother. I think about how much our lives have changed in the last twenty-four hours.
“Can I ask you a favor?” Matthew says.
“Anything.”
That throws him, but only for a moment. “If I do something that might screw this up, would you tell me?”
I set my spoon down. The cereal has gone soggy and I’m beginning to make a mess anyway. “You won’t screw this up, Matthew. Mom and Dad aren’t like that.”
“But—just in case.”
“Okay.” I carry my bowl to the sink. “Anything else?”
“No.” He hesitates. “Maybe.”
“What’s up?”
“Do you think you could just call me Matt?”
FORTY-SIX
Emma
Today is as stunning as yesterday: warm and full of sunlight. I sleep until noon.
When I wake up, Texy is in my room, curled up beside my bed.
Mom went to get her. She went to get her. Just for me.
I sit on the floor and cry into Texy’s fur. My face aches, and I’m sure I have some spectacular bruises. Shame coats me on the inside. I can’t escape it.
I was so foolish. So stupid.
Mom has left me a note.
I’m looking at some condos. Let me know if you want me to come back and get you. We should make the decision together.
Maybe tonight you can show me this game you designed. I’d love to see what you created.
Love,
Mom
It brings on a fresh round of tears.
Eventually I need to shower and brush my teeth. The bruising isn’t as bad as I expect. Most of it is along the side of my face. I leave my hair down, and you wouldn’t know a guy backhanded me at all.
I turn away from the mirror before a new round of tears can get moving.
Mom gave all of my computer equipment to the police last night. At the time, I wanted them to have it. Everything felt t
ainted.
But now I wish I could go online.
And then I realize that again, I’m trying to hide.
I whistle. “Come on, Texy. Let’s go for a walk.”
He might not be home from school yet, but maybe his mom will let me wait inside. Texy and I climb his front porch steps, and I knock softly.
Rev answers the door.
In short sleeves.
With a cast on his arm.
“Emma.” His tone is rich and warm, and I want him to say my name over and over again. He looks as surprised as I feel.
Shock knocks me back a step. Mom didn’t mention this detail after she talked to Rev’s mom. “You—you broke your arm?”
He grimaces. “Wrist, actually.” He peers at me. “Are you okay? Should you be out walking?”
“They did a CT scan. No concussion. Just bruises. I took an Advil.”
“Oh. Good.” He lifts the cast. “It’s a tiny fracture. It’s not too bad.”
“So we’re both just a little broken.”
His arm falls back to his side. “I think we were before.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
Then we stand there so long that I begin to feel foolish. Texy moves forward and nudges Rev’s hands. He rubs her ears while she wags her tail and looks at me, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. Rev still says nothing.
Maybe I should go.
“Do you want to come in?” he says.
“With the dog?”
“Of course.” He pulls the door wide. Texy trots right in, her nails clicking on the tile entryway.
His foster brother appears at the top of the stairs. “Oh, sweet. A dog.”
Texy woofs at him, but he jogs down the steps to pet her, and she immediately becomes his best friend.
“Come on,” says Rev. He takes my hand.
His fingers are warm and secure on mine as he leads me up the steps.
“Hey, Matt, keep her dog company, will you?”
Texy is currently trying to shove her massive self into Matt’s lap. “Sure,” he says.
I’m surprised when he leads me to his bedroom. He leaves the door open though, and tugs me toward the futon.
“Should we sit back-to-back?” I say. I’m suddenly nervous, jittery about how this is going to go.
“No. Face-to-face.” He sits down cross-legged, much the same way he sat on the bench in front of the church. His cast falls into his lap, a stark white reminder of how much went wrong yesterday.
I sit more gingerly. Most of my muscles hurt. “Rev.” I hesitate. “I wanted to thank you—for—for what you did—”
“You don’t need to thank me.” His voice is hushed. Raw. “I feel guilty that I didn’t text you earlier. If I’d called—” He pauses. “It’s not an excuse, but I had a lot going on.”
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you when you were asking me about Ethan.” I swallow. “It’s not an excuse, but I had a lot going on, too.”
His eyes are clear, unflinchingly holding mine. “I know, Emma.”
Every time he says my name, it makes me shiver. “You’re the only person in my life who isn’t constantly disappointing me. I wasn’t—I didn’t know how to handle that. So … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He reaches up to brush hair away from my cheek. “I know what it’s like when you don’t think you have anyone you can trust.”
I close my eyes and lean into his touch.
But Rev draws his hand back. “Emma—what you said to me about Ethan yesterday. When you asked if I was jealous—”
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t. I’m sorry. There was never anything between me and Ethan. It was—it was all manufactured. I was just looking for someone I could lean on.”
“I know.”
“And I know you weren’t jealous. I know you were worried.”
“No—” His face twists. “No, I was worried. Very worried. Especially when I saw how creepy his text messages were.” He pauses. “But before that—maybe I was jealous. A little. And I didn’t realize until yesterday that I kept talking about everything happening for a reason, and I was waiting for some kind of sign, when really what I needed to do was stop worrying about whether I was doing the right thing, and I should just ask you out.”
I stare at him. “Rev …”
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to go to Spring Fling?”
I choke on my breath and almost burst out laughing. “You want our first date to be a school dance?”
Pink colors his cheeks. “Well. I was going to ask if you wanted to eat chicken nuggets beside a church, but that seems so last week—”
I giggle. “Yes. To both.”
He strokes my cheek again. I reach up to cover his hand with my own, and I remember the cast.
I pull his hand down and trace my fingers over the backs of his. “I can’t believe you broke your wrist,” I say. “You hit him that hard?”
“I wanted to hit him harder.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yesterday, I wanted to cut it off. Today it’s better.”
I look up at him. “Can I sign it?”
He smiles. “Sure. I think there are some Sharpies in the desk.”
There are three. Red, blue, and black. I lean down over his arm. “Do you care what I write?”
“Nope. Write, draw, whatever.”
I put the blue pen against the cast. He strokes my hair as I write, and it feels so good that I want to write a novel on his cast.
But then I stop and look up at him. “What does Rev mean? You started to tell me, but then you never finished.”
“Oh.” He blushes again, and looks away.
“Is it from the Bible?” I say. “Like … the Book of Revelation or something?”
“No.” He smiles. “But that’s a good guess.”
His room is so quiet, and the air between us is so peaceful. Any tension that existed is gone. I never want to leave. “Is it short for Reverend? Like a religious person?”
“No.”
“Is it short for—”
His mouth quirks up. “Do you want to keep guessing, or should I tell you?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s silly. I was seven.”
“Tell me.”
“Okay.” He holds out his arm. “You keep writing.”
I do. He talks.
“It was something I heard Dad say. At dinner. He’s a college professor, mostly political science, so he’s always talking about something. When I first came here, I barely spoke at all, but I listened to everything. He repeated a quote. ‘The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.’ ” He pauses. “I had just gotten away from my father. The only verses I knew were from the Bible. I held that quote in my head and said it to myself over and over again.”
I stop writing and stare at him. “Revolution.”
“Yes.” He pauses, then gives me a teasing smile. “But you can call me Rev.”
“I love that.” I continue drawing on the cast, creating large block letters. “Who said it?”
“Che Guevara. He was big on radical change.”
I sit back. “Look. What do you think?”
He looks down. The smile disappears, but the look that replaces it is not unhappy. “You wrote ‘Fearless.’ ”
“Is it okay?”
He raps his fingertips against the cast. “Yes.”
“Are you going to keep wearing short sleeves so people can see it?” My voice is gently teasing, but it’s a genuine question.
He hesitates.
“You don’t have to,” I say.
“No. No, I want to.” He runs an aggravated hand through his hair. “I think—for so long, I was ashamed of the scars. I saw them as a mark of all the ways I failed my father. I didn’t want anyone else to know how terrible I really was.”
I take his good hand in both of mine. “Rev.”
“When I was in the hospital getti
ng the cast, a nurse said to me, ‘You look like you survived someone pretty terrible, son.’ ” He pauses. “And other people have said that to me before. But yesterday—after seeing my father—”
“You saw your father?” I almost fall off the couch.
“Yes—I don’t want to talk about him. He doesn’t deserve any more of my attention. But when that nurse said that, I realized she was right. He gave me these scars. I survived him.”
“You did,” I say.
He stretches out his arms. “The only thing I hate is the verse. People see it, and they start to read it, and then I have to—”
“Here. I’ll fix that.” I uncap the black Sharpie. I put the tip against his arm.
He holds very still. My eyes flick up. “Is this okay?”
His eyes are very close. He nods.
I write. Our breathing is loud in the space between us.
“What are you writing?” he whispers.
“I’m turning his marks into a line of barbed wire. And then above that, I’m writing, ‘The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe—’ ”
He catches my face. Presses his lips to mine. His kiss is slow and patient, just like him. A brush of lips, followed by more.
When he draws back, just a bit, I smile. “I wasn’t done.”
“Sorry.” He offers his arm again.
“Oh, I can finish that later.” I blush and cap the marker. “I meant I wasn’t done kissing you.”
Then I pull him back against me, and meet his lips with mine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I introduced Rev Fletcher in Letters to the Lost, I knew Declan’s best friend would need a past as dark and twisted as Declan’s was. The more I wrote about Rev in Letters, the more I wanted to be able to tell his story—I just didn’t think about how wrenching it would be to get inside his head. This book took a tremendous amount of support from so many people, and I’m going to do my very best to not leave anyone out.
My husband, as always, is my best friend, my confidant, my rock. He pushes me to keep writing when I really want to just curl up and binge on Netflix—or when I want to give up. He also keeps the Kemmerer boys in line when Mommy needs to hide in the back room to knock out some words. Thank you, honey, for everything.
You would not be holding this book in your hands if not for the constant encouragement my mother gave me when I was growing up. She still likes to talk about how she kept the first book I “wrote”—in third grade, about a dog. Thank you, Mom, for everything.