Page 49 of Coming Home

"Go ahead, Emma. Leave. It's the only thing you're actually good at."

CHAPTER 17

Ralph

Theo stood in the middle of the pool deck staring at the glass doors his sister had just vanished through.

"Shit." He ran both hands through his hair, pulling hard enough to ruin it. "I just found her. I just found her, and the first thing I did was chase her away."

I didn't respond. There wasn't a right thing to say. He was correct, and we both knew it, and pointing it out would've earned me a broken jaw.

He turned toward the exit. "Emma, wait!"

I moved with him. We pushed through the doors together, the afternoon sun hitting us after the cool humidity of the pool facility. The parking lot was half-empty. My SUV was where Emma had parked it this morning.

She was gone.

We scanned the lot, the sidewalk, the street beyond. Nothing.

Theo let out another curse, this one louder, aimed at the sky. Then he turned to me, and his eyes were a war between fury and fear, and the fury was winning by a hair.

"Start talking," he barked, poking a hard finger into my chest. "Before I dismantle your face."

"That's fair," I said, not shifting an inch. "Go ahead."

"It's not a joke, Ralph! My little sister has been residing under your roof, and apparently spending enough intimate time with you to show up here with you. You looked me in the eye in your kitchen and lied about a pink suitcase. Start. Talking."

I gave him the truth.

I started from the baseline—the night her name finally flashed on my phone after three years of static. Theo listened.

"Why wouldn't she just call me?" The anger went out of him, and what was left was rawer—his voice dropping to something I hadn't heard from him since we were kids. "I'm her brother, Ralph. I would have burned that city down for her."

"Because she was drowning in her own shame, man. She left to prove she could survive on her own terms, and she couldn't bear the thought of coming back with nothing. She thought she'd burned the bridge down, and she assumed you'd stopped waiting on the bank."

"I never stopped waiting," he hit back, his voice thick, the words clearly tearing something out of him. "Not for a single day."

"I know that. You know that. But she's been living in the dark for three years, man. Long enough that a little light starts to look like a trap."

Theo pressed both of his palms flat against the hot roof of his sedan, burying his face between his forearms.

I swallowed past the sudden tightness in my own throat, taking a step closer. "There's more."

He lifted his head, his eyes bloodshot.

"She has lupus."

Theo just stared at me. I watched it hit him in waves. Confusion. Comprehension. Then something that aged him five years in a second.

"How long?" he whispered.

"Five years. She was swimming through the initial flares during her final season. She didn't know what it was. That's why her career ended, Theo. It wasn't a mental block."

He turned away from me, took three blind steps toward the edge of the lot, stopped, and came right back.

"She went through an autoimmune diagnosis alone. While I was signing endorsements."

He pressed a closed fist hard against his mouth, his chest heaving. Theo was fighting tears in a parking lot.