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Pale golden sunlight shimmered through the crack in the curtains. Emma was already awake, had been for an hour, even though she no longer had to be up when the sky was still dark to serve burritos with Cesar. Old habits were hard to break, it turned out. Even when those habits made you miserable and cranky and served no purpose in your current life.
She rolled over. Eli was still asleep, his dark eyelashes fanned out across his tan cheek. He was beautiful. She could live with waking up before dawn if it meant waking up next to him. She could live with a lot of things, if it meant having Eli. Even her own mistakes.
It wouldn’t be easy. She couldn’t have a future with Eli if she was still keeping a secret in the past. Her father might not hold a grudge against Eli, but a daughter’s betrayal was on a whole other level. She didn’t have Eli’s excuse of just doing her job. She didn’t have an excuse at all, except she was a mess. She had lost her mother and discovered her dad was a meth cooker all in the space of a month, and she had been messy with grief and loss.
There was little Emma hated more than a mess. Realizing there had been a mess inside of her all along was painful.
Fortunately, Emma was good at cleaning up.
She didn’t know whether her dad would understand why she had done what she had done. She barely understood it herself. He might not be quick to forgive. Hopefully he wouldn’t follow in her footsteps and drag it out for eight long years. He would forgive her, eventually. She had faith. Love had a way of working it out.
Like she loved Eli.
Because, God. She did. She loved him. She loved him so much her chest felt tight, like all the love she felt for him was forcing her heart to grow bigger to accommodate it. It was uncomfortable, even a little painful. Growth usually was, she reckoned.
Footsteps on the stairs alerted her to the fact that at least one guest was awake and would probably want breakfast. She slipped out of bed, careful not to disturb Eli, and threw on clothes before heading down to the kitchen.
On the menu were blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and a variety of fruits. Simple foods that were hard to screw up, because as Cesar had pointed out, she was great at following instructions but a natural in the kitchen she was not. Still, everything was delicious and satisfying. Nearly everything was sourced locally, as close to Hart’s Ridge as she could get, with the exception of the ingredients for pancakes.
Selena, one of the guests, mumbled a sleepy good morning and tucked in, after taking the requisite photo of her heaping plate of food. It was an odd sensation, knowing that nearly a million people were going to see those pancakes, the pancakes she cooked. Not a bad sensation, just...odd. If all went well, some of those people would be booking their own stays here. She hoped so, anyway.
“Hey.”
She turned at the sound of Eli’s voice. “Hey.” She waved the spatula at him. “Want some breakfast?”
“Wish I could. Everything looks great. But I’ve got to get going. I slept in later than I meant to.”
“Oh.”
He hadn’t given her a morning kiss, and judging from the way he stood with his hands jammed in his pockets and six feet of empty space between them, he wasn’t planning to remedy that. She knew he was feeling some kind of way about their agreement, and they needed to talk about that, but now was not the time.
But God, she wanted to kiss him. To touch him. To break down this wall he was building around himself, shutting her out. His words and tone were a shade too polite. There was no warmth, no intimacy. He might as well have been a one-night-stand trying to make a quick exit.
“Come over tonight,” she said. When he didn’t say anything, she added, “So we can hear the election results together.”
His eyebrows knit together in a frown. She had a feeling that, in his mind, they were already done. Over. Well, that was unacceptable. And she would tell him that, in no uncertain terms, but she was not going to do that in front of her guests, when Holiday House had only just opened for business.
“Please,” she said. “Until the election is over, remember? The election isn’t over yet.”
“All right,” he said after a long pause. “Six o’clock.”
“Six o’clock,” she echoed.
He nodded. That was it. No hug. No kiss. No sign that they were anything but acquaintances. She hated watching him walk away from her, with this thing between them unresolved. Why was he so determined that their relationship had to end with the election?
Her stomach rolled uneasily. Maybe the question had never been whether she could forgive him.
Maybe he couldn’t forgive her.
***
Standing in a voting booth, her finger hovering over the box next to her name, was a surreal experience. Emma wanted to take a selfie to commemorate the moment, but that was illegal, and Eli would be pretty annoyed if she lost the election over something so dumb.
A trickle of sweat ran down her lower back. She was the right person for the job, wasn’t she? Maybe the fact that she was even asking herself this question, and that she cared so much about the answer, meant that she was. Funny how she had barely paid attention to local elections, either voting for any old familiar name or not bothering to vote at all, and now that her own name was on the ballot, she was sweating the choice.
Not that Eli was much of a choice, considering that he didn’t really want it. He would kill her if she voted for him.
It wasn’t even a paid position. Hart’s Ridge needed to follow the kindergarten rule of “you get what you get and you don’t get upset.”
But Emma didn’t want to be mediocre. She wanted to be great. Not perfect. She was never going to be perfect, and thanks to Eli, she was slowly getting more comfortable with that, little by little.
Not perfect. But she could be great.
She checked the box next to her name.
From the voting booth she went straight to prison. She nearly turned around twice, but turning around would mean turning away from any kind of future with Eli, and that was unacceptable.
An hour later she was sitting across from her father in the small visitors room.
“What are you doing here, Emma?” he asked. “I’m always glad to see you, but I thought you would be spending the day shaking hands with voters, getting those last-minute undeciders, that sort of thing. Is everything okay?”
“Everything is good. Holiday House is already booked for most of the summer, so there will definitely be work for you to do when you get out next month.” She couldn’t believe it was really happening. Eight long years, and next month it would all be over. He would be home.
If he still wanted to live with her after she told him the truth, that is.
“Dad, I have to tell you something. About that night. When you were arrested.” She swallowed hard. Her hands were shaking. She clasped them together and focused her attention there, unable to meet his eyes. “It was me. I told Eli you were making meth. It’s my fault you were arrested.”
The whole story came pouring out. How the smell—like a million cats had simultaneously peed in their kitchen—had woken her up several nights in a row. How she had noticed the empty packets of cold medicine, enough to supply all of Hart’s Ridge, even though neither she nor her dad had had even a sniffle for several months. How she had put two and two together after randomly watching an old episode of Breaking Bad. How she had hoped she could look the other way, that it was a one-time thing and he would come to his senses.
How that hope had been dashed when the man with the gun started hanging around.
“I was so scared, Dad. Not just for myself. I was scared for you. I had already lost Mom. I couldn’t lose you, too. I told Eli everything. That’s how he knew.” She steeled her nerves and looked up. Her dad looked as though someone had punched him in the stomach. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I don’t know if you can forgive me. I hope you can.”
“Oh, Emma, honey. What is there to forgive?” He scrubbed a hand over his ashen face. “I had no idea you knew. I had thought I could keep it away from you, somehow. That I could protect you. It made sense to me, that Eli would figure it all out. I always knew he would, eventually. He came around all the time to see you. He was a cop. This whole time, I thought I had put Eli in an impossible position. But he did what he had to do.”
“He had to do his job. I think I can forgive that, but it’s a lot harder to forgive myself.”
Her dad shook his head with a mirthless laugh. “All this talk about forgiveness. You, me, Eli—every single one of us was doing the best that we could. We all acted out of love. A little misguided, perhaps, but it was love, just the same.”
He didn’t understand. “Dad, I told a police officer you were cooking meth,” she said, exasperated. “You were arrested because of me.”
“Emma,” he said, mimicking her tone, “I was cooking meth. Maybe you sped up my arrest, but I assure you it was always forthcoming. I might be a brilliant chemist, but a criminal mastermind I am not. You found the evidence because I wasn’t any good at hiding it. I’m here”—he gestured to the prison around them—“because of my choices. Would I have made those choices if cancer treatments hadn’t driven us to desperation? Of course not. But that’s still not your doing.”
She stared at him in disbelief. It couldn’t be that easy. “So you forgive me?”
“You never turned your back on me. I betrayed your trust. I turned your home into a dangerous drug lab. And still, you show up here every week. You loved me through it all. The question is, do you forgive me?”
“I never blamed you, Dad.”
He grimaced. “You should, at least a little. A boy died from my meth. Just a couple years younger than you were at the time. I never told you that, but I think about it all the time. I didn’t force him to take it. I didn’t even sell it to him. But I made it, and he died. Even if you forgive me, I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself.”
Her eyes widened in horror. A kid died from her dad’s meth? “Dad...my God.”
“Your mistakes are nothing compared to mine. Let it all go, honey. Forgive yourself. You didn’t kill anybody. All you did was tell your boyfriend to arrest me.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Emma said reflexively. “And I didn’t tell him to arrest you.”
Her dad gave her a look. “Maybe not in so many words. But you had to know what he would do. And not just because he’s a cop and that was his job. He’s Eli. He would do anything for you. You told him your dad was cooking meth and there was a guy with a gun hanging around? Come on. You knew he would keep you safe.”
She closed her eyes. Of course she had. The thing she had pushed down so she wouldn’t have to think about it. That moment, on the second worst day of her life. She had been so scared, her mind reeling with a thousand what ifs. What if her dad blew up their house with both of them in it? What if he was killed over a deal gone wrong? So she had gone to Eli, because she had known he would fix everything.
She had never let the thought form words. It was never a concrete hope, just a wispy feeling, like breath on a cold morning. Eli would make it go away. She hadn’t even considered what would happen later. Hadn’t realized that after an arrest would be eight long years of prison.
Hadn’t realized that she would sever their friendship for just as long.
She buried her head in her hands. “I’m such a mess.”
“We both are. I don’t think you can watch someone you love die by inches and come away unscathed. Sometimes good people do bad things. Sometimes good people are a little bit messy. You are a good person, Emma. Your mom would be so proud of you.”
“Dad.” The word was broken, choked. “I’m not perfect.”
“I know that, honey. We never expected you to be.”
Her face crumpled. “But see, I wish you didn’t know that. I wish you thought I was perfect. You knew I wasn’t perfect because the one thing you and Mom wanted me to be was good at school, and I couldn’t do that. You were always a little bit disappointed in me, but I thought if I could be perfect at everything else, maybe you wouldn’t mind so much. When Mom was sick, I was a perfect nurse for her. I never forgot her medications, never cringed when I had to clean her up. And it seemed to me that no one cared so much about my grades, because of that. But after she died, I was such a mess. I wasn’t the perfect daughter anymore. I couldn’t tell you what I had done, that I had told a police officer you were cooking meth, because then you would know I wasn’t perfect at anything. And I couldn’t face that.”
“Emma.” He wiped at his eyes. “You’re right. We were disappointed that you weren’t a straight-A student and valedictorian and all that other stuff. It was what we expected from our child, because that’s who we were. But, Emma, honey, that’s our failing, not yours. We should never have put that expectation on you. There was never anything wrong with you. I am so grateful for everything you did for your mom, but I hate that we made you feel like you had to be perfect to make up for not getting A’s. We weren’t perfect parents, that much is clear. But, God, Emma, I love you, and so did your mom. Proud doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about you.”
“Even now?” she whispered.
“Especially now. Look at all you’ve done. Look at what you’ve built. And you did all that not because you’re following in our footsteps with school, but because you’re doing something you truly care about. Mom would be proud of you, and proud of herself, too. She always said leave it better than you found it. And she did that, didn’t she? Because she gave the world you.”