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“I know,” I whispered.

“No, Ember, I don’t think you do. I know you; you’re sitting there thinking that you gave up. You’re thinking that you ran at the first sign of difficulty, like you normally do, but this isn’t running. Running is what you love to do when you fear you’re getting too close to someone. This is the opposite. You were already close, and you’d accepted it. You left them because you love them so much that you’d rather destroy yourself than let anything happen to Sophie and Everett.”

I covered my mouth to keep from sobbing aloud and pulled my knees to my chest.

“It doesn’t feel that way, Jules.”

“I know.”

I sat there staring at the wall in front of me, feeling emptier than I’d ever felt. Jules was quiet, but I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line.

“Want me to come over? We could watch a movie.”

“I left him her binder,” I said, my voice cracking. “I left a binder with all of Sophie’s routines. What she likes to eat, what books we were in the middle of reading, how she needs someone to sit with her for five minutes while doing math until she gets the hang of it. I wrote everything down. It was almost like I was turning over a project to another group in school, and the entire time I was writing it, I kept thinking, no one will ever do this the way I do it. No one is going to know that she loves the green velociraptor shirt over the teal one. No one is going to know that she hides her mom’s decorations in a box in her closet and that she opens it up and looks at things when she thinks no one is watching.”

Jules didn’t say a word; she just listened.

“And him,” I continued, tears now streaming down my cheeks. “Jules, he was coming back. You should have heard his laugh. When I started, the man didn’t smile and only ever worked, and in such a short time he now laughs and cooks and takes his daughter to festivals. I’m the one who did that.”

“Em….”

“I told him I loved him.”

“Em…”

I told him I loved him, and he told me the same, and now I sit here in my childhood bedroom, crying my eyes out while he is alone in that house. Poor Sophie will probably dive back into herself and think I’m just like the others.”

I choked on the last word and pressed my hand over my mouth as I sobbed even harder. I could barely breathe.

“Ember, listen to me,” Jules said firmly. “You’re not like the others. That little girl knows the difference between you and the others. She will remember everything about you; you leaving does not erase any of that.”

“What if it does, though? What if Everett shuts down again? Sophie will for sure hate me. What happens if he cancels the party and takes down all the decorations? What if he returns to eating dinner in his office and leaves poor Sophie all alone every night? I promised her, Jules, I promised her I’d stay, no matter what.”

I’d made a promise I couldn’t keep. That was what cut the deepest. I was young, there would be many Everetts’ in my life, but breaking a promise to a seven-year-old who’d already learned in her short time here that people leave made me feel like I wanted to die.

“Whoa, you didn’t break a promise. You made an impossible choice. There is a difference, Ember.”

“Is there, though?”

“Yes. When you don’t care enough to try, that is when you break a promise. This is different. You care so much it’s destroying you, but it was something you had to do out of love for her. I know you. You didn’t write the story to harm them. You probably didn’t even notice you were using their story until Margaret said anything.”

I lay down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling through teary eyes.

“What do I do now?”

“Tonight? You do nothing. Order in dinner for one. Let your mom take care of you and you cry until there aren’t any more tears. If need be, take tomorrow too. Then you figure out the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Yes, you figure out all the hard things. First, you look for a job. In the meantime, you figure out how to pay for your mom’s medication in the future.”

“I don’t need to figure that out. He paid it Jules, he paid for her co-pay, for the remainder of this year and next.”

“Whoa…really?”

“I feel horrible. I didn’t know. In so many ways, I am relieved, and in others I am angry. The fact he did that makes me feel worse for leaving.”

Jules was quiet.