She turned and walked back to her car. Got in. Drove home with tears streaming down her face and Lila’s voice in her head—you’re good at hair things.
“She’ll come around,” Tyler said that night, sprawled on her bedroom floor while June sat on the bed, hugging a pillow. “Kids are resilient.”
“You didn’t see her face.”
“She’s hurt. She’s allowed to be hurt. But she loves you, and that doesn’t just disappear because she’s angry.”
“It felt pretty disappeared.”
Tyler sighed. “You know what your problem is? You give up too easily.”
“Excuse me?”
“With Ember, with the restaurant stuff, now with this.” He held up a hand before she could protest. “I’m not saying you were wrong to leave Ember. But you have a pattern, June. You have something you want, and when things get hard, you run, and then you convince yourself that running was the only option.”
“What was I supposed to do? Stay and watch Melissa deny me on television?”
“No. But you could have pushed harder before it got to that point. You could have made her choose instead of making the choice for her.”
“Ididtell her,” June said, her voice sharpening. “I told her from the beginning. I said I can’t be someone’s secret. I can’t be an experiment. She promised me I wasn’t.” She heard herself getting louder and made herself stop. “I asked for what I needed, Tyler. She agreed and then didn’t follow through. That’s not the same as me not speaking up.”
Tyler was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was more careful. “Okay. Fair. So she promised and then didn’t come through. And then you left.”
“Yes.”
“Without giving her a chance to choose differently.”
“She has chosen. She chose on live television.”
“She chose under pressure in a crisis. That’s not the same as a real choice.” Tyler met her eyes. “I’m not saying she was right. I’m saying—did you ever tell her what it would look like? What choosing you would actually mean to you? Not just that you didn’t want to be a secret, but what the alternative was? What you needed to believe this was real?”
June opened her mouth. Closed it.
“I knew Dad would freak,” she said finally. “That everyone would freak out about us. I kept it from all of you, because I get what it looks like.”
“Yeah. And Melissa kept it from everyone, because she doesn’t just have family, she has constituents and all that.” Tyler’s voice was gentle now, not pushing. “Again, not saying she’s right, but maybe you both built walls and then got surprised when the other person couldn’t see through them.”
June stared at the ceiling. The thing was—he wasn’t wrong. She could see that it wasn’t wrong, even while part of her wantedto argue. She’d told Melissa what she didn’t want. She wasn’t sure she’d ever clearly said what she did.
“Stop sounding like a grownup,” she said finally. “It’s freaky.”
He grinned. She threw the pillow at him.
Her phone rang at nine o’clock. Her heart rate picked up with hope, but the name on the screen was Rachel Carter.
“June? Hi, it’s Rachel.”
“Hi.” June kept her voice neutral. “Why are you calling?”
“Because someone needs to, and Mel is too proud to do it herself.” Rachel’s voice was brisk, no-nonsense. “The final hearing on the infrastructure bill is Thursday. Ten a.m., at the capitol building in Salem.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I think you should be there.”
June laughed, brittle and sharp. “Why would I want to watch her give another speech about her commitment to public service?”
“Because this isn’t going to be that kind of speech.” Rachel paused. “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. But I know Mel, and I know she’s been doing a lot of thinking this past week. If you want to know whether she’s really changed—whether she’s capable of being the person you need her to be—you should be there to see it for yourself.”
