Page 20 of Dark Ugly Places

“With me?” I pull back. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Liar,” she says. “I know when something is wrong with you. Your eyes are all puffy, and your face has that look.”

“Look? What look?”

She shrugs. “Just a look. Like sad, but also angry, and something else, too.” Emmy thinks. “Like you’re dead inside.”

The words hit me hard. Dead inside. Am I dead inside?

I force a smile. “If I were dead inside, would I be able to do this?” I dive forward and start a tickle war. Emmy leans back and starts laughing as Scotch gets up on all fours, tail wagging excitedly.

After a moment, Emmy pulls away and holds the side of her head. “It was bad today,” she tells me. “I took a pill during class and almost fell asleep.”

“Oh, Em.” I wrap my arms around her and pull her close to me to examine the long, glistening scar on her scalp. My fingers touch the skin lightly, and she winces. “I think we should see Dr. Ching.”

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice growing small. “I really don’t want another surgery.”

“Don’t worry about that now. Let’s just see what she says first.”

Emmy nods and hunkers down into the sofa cushions. “Can we have mac and cheese for dinner?”

“Sure.” I smile at her.

You should tell her you got fired today.

Again, I release the thought with a flick of my head, like I’m batting away a fly.

Tell her. She can handle it.

I know she won’t stop, won’t be quiet until I do. So I do.

“Em?” I start. “There’s something you should know.”

She looks up from her computer.

“I quit the hotel job today.”

“What? Why?”

I shrug like the whole episode was no big deal, like it didn’t matter that I came face-to-face with her father’s killer, that I have his driver’s license in my phone now, his face in my mind, and a photo that places him in the same car, in the same city, at the same time on the day of the accident.

“It wasn’t working out. But I don’t want you to worry.”

“Okay,” she answers. “But we need the money, so …”

“Don’t worry about that,” I say confidently. “I’ll find something else.”

“Something else? Like what?”

“I don’t know yet,” I tell her and rub her back. “Try not to worry.”

We sit for a moment in silence. The feeling of holding her is the calmest I’ve felt all day. I wonder if she can sense my unease.

“You know, sometimes I get so upset that it’s hard to think straight,” Emmy says.

I sit quietly, just listening. She’s so much like me at her age sometimes, it scares me.

I shake the thought from my mind. Emmy scratches Scotch behind his ears. One of them twitches, and they shift with the sound of a passing truck outside.