Chapter 19 - WHAT A FATHER CAN’T FIX
I wanted to fix Emily. That was my last bad habit. Healing was not about returning her to who she had been before Michael. People change after surviving things.
Emily rented her own apartment.
She went grocery shopping at midnight once because Michael used to forbid her from going anywhere after dark.
She called me afterward.
One afternoon, she found me cleaning the old metal case from under my truck dashboard.
“You still need that?”
“No.”
Emily picked up the card.
“You kept this fifteen years?”
“I thought maybe someday somebody would need help.”
She looked at me.
That hurt.
“Would I have?”
“Before Easter?”
I thought about every warning I had translated into normal marriage problems.
“Maybe.”
She nodded.
Not cruelly.
Just honestly.
I put the card down.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Does that help?”
“Sometimes.”
Fair.
Then she reached into her bag.
“I want you to read it.”
I did.
At the bottom, beneath the lines Emily had read before, Claire had written one more sentence:
Arthur will try to protect you from every bad thing. Remind him you are allowed to protect yourself too.
Then she took the old emergency card from the table.
“Can I keep this?”
“Why?”
“To remember something.”
“What?”
May you like
She looked at me.
“That asking for help is not the same as giving away control.”
