Chapter 6 - Emma Asked Me Not to Hate Her
Emma stopped sleeping alone.
She stopped wearing pink.
And she refused to go onto our own porch.
Those changes hurt more than anything my mother said.
One evening I found Emma sitting on the hallway floor.
“What's wrong?”
She looked up.
“Are you going to hate Grandma forever?”
I sat beside her.
“I don't know.”
“She cried before she chained me.”
That surprised me.
“What?”
Emma nodded.
“She kept saying she had to know.”
“Know what?”
Emma shrugged.
“She said Grandpa had the same thing.”
My father.
I hadn't heard his name connected to Emma's condition once.
Dad had died at forty-eight.
The official explanation I'd grown up with was a heart attack.
Suddenly I remembered something I'd ignored for years.
He'd collapsed twice before his death.
Once while mowing.
Once after an argument with Mom.
She had always called them fainting spells.
I called my older sister, Rebecca, in Denver.
When I told her what Emma had said, she became quiet.
Then she asked me something strange.
“Daniel, do you remember Dad's autopsy?”
“There wasn't one.”
Another silence.
“That's what Mom told you?”
My mouth went dry.
“Yes.”
Rebecca exhaled slowly.
May you like
“There was.”
And she had seen part of it.
