Unbroken

must it have cost him, to do this for my mom? He must have known I could never have walked away from him, not even if he’d begged. That’s why he acted so cold and harsh to me—not because I wasn’t enough for him, but because he believed I was too good, that I deserved a life without him.
    He loved me so much, he let me go.
    I feel tears come again, but this time, they’re happy ones: hot with relief, and joy, and the faint edge of bittersweet regret. I think of my mom, even at the end, trying to make a better life for me.
    I can’t blame her for this, I understand completely. She gave up everything for Dad, after all. She was planning on going to nursing school when she met him: a dashing foreign exchange student. But he had dreams of being a writer, and so she delayed all her own plans to get a steady job and support them both. Somehow, ‘next year’ never came. She got pregnant with Carina, and then me, and Dad’s debts started piling up, and by then she was too busy desperately trying to hold our family together to pay attention to the plans she’d made for herself.
    She built her whole life around him, hanging on to every word. She loved him so much, even when the drinking started, even when she knew it was destroying her.
    He was everything to her, and it was her downfall. She thought Emerson would be the same for me, but it’s not true: in letting me go, he proved how different he is. He made the sacrifices for my sake that my Dad never even considered: putting my happiness above everything, even his own heartbreak.
    I sob with joy. He loved me!
    And maybe he still does now.
    I cling to that precious hope like it’s a firefly in the dark night of my soul. I knew he couldn’t mean it, all the things he said today. Not when his body told me a different story last night. He was just trying to get me to leave town again, the same as four years ago. He thinks I’m still better off without him, as if a life without his love is worth anything at all.
    I let him push me away once. I can’t make the same mistake again.
    I take a shaky breath and put the car in drive, circling carefully back around the lookout point and down the cliff road into town. The storm is howling around me, winds blowing so hard I can feel the car rock. I feel a tremor of panic seeing the rain gush down the steep hill, but I force myself to stay calm, and slowly inch my way back to town.
    I drive the empty streets, eyes peeled for Emerson’s truck, but when I get to Jimmy’s Tavern, the parking lot is empty. Damn! I get out of the car, racing up the stairs to the apartment, and hammering on the door, but there’s no answer. Even Brit must be somewhere, sheltering from the storm. I go back down to the car, slamming the door quickly against the pouring rain.
    The wind is blowing flat out now, sending rain in horizontal slashes across the street, and bending the trees almost double. A newspaper stand suddenly flies down the sidewalk, bouncing past the car and slamming hard into the wall with a crash. I jerk back in my seat, my heart skipping a beat. It’s crazy out there now: going into full-on hurricane territory, but I still don’t quit. I drive every street in town, desperate to find him.
    I don’t care about the storm, or my wet clothes, or anything except looking Emerson straight in the eye and telling him I love him—and that I’m not giving up this time.
    My determination grows, but there’s still no sign of him, until eventually, I take the turn-off to head back to the beach house. Maybe he didn’t even stick around in town; maybe he got the hell out, away from the storm, like any sane person would.
    It’s too late to even think about taking that exposed coastal highway, so I drive back to the house at a snail’s pace, flinching every time I hear the trees crack and sway above the road. The street here is already messy with broken branches and debris blow in from the beach, but I make it to the turning OK. Then I find a downed tree: the long truck splayed right across the road. There’s no driving over it; my Camaro won’t make the obstacle.
    I pull over at the side of the road and quickly grab my purse from the backseat. I get out, and clamber over the tree, scraping my hands on the bark, but making it over OK. The beach house is just a little ways further, and I fight my way through the rain, struggling to stay upright against the powerful gusts of wind. Grandpa built a storm cellar in the basement, and I