Page 6 of Let Me In

I watch until the curve takes her out of sight, one hand still loose at my side.

Then I look at the empty stretch of trail she left behind.

And I do something I haven’t done in a long, long time.

I hope she comes back.

3

EMMY

The wind diesas I roll down the last stretch of gravel, the tires crunching softly over rock and sand. The road levels out near the shoreline, where the Atlantic breathes slow and steady against the east coast of Newfoundland. Salt clings to the air, carried in on a breeze laced with seaweed and the faint, briny bite of low tide. Gulls call overhead—sharp, mournful cries that rise and fall with the wind.

I’ve always loved the sea. Its vastness. Its rhythm. The way it promises escape in every tide. But lately, I find myself craving something else—something quieter. Higher. The hills behind me call louder than the waves now. Up where the trees hush the wind, where the air smells of spruce and smoke. Where he is.

You can keep doing that.

But it's what he said after that strikes even deeper.

If I see you out here alone again after sundown... we’re going to have a conversation.

He didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t look angry. But something about the way he said it—low, level, certain—made my pulse skip. It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t quite a warning either. It feltlike a promise. Like a line drawn not to punish, but to protect. And the part of me that always flinches... didn’t.

Not then.

I replay it like a favorite line from a book, as if the repetition might make it permanent. As if maybe, if I hear it enough, I’ll stop bracing for the moment when it’s taken back.

The Surron’s hum fades to a whisper as I coast into the driveway.

Gravel shifts beneath the tires, and then it’s just me. The silence here settles in slow and close, like fog over water—familiar, but no less disorienting.

Dad’s in the garage.

He doesn’t say anything when I walk past. Doesn’t glance up from the open hood of my brother’s car. Just a dry, ugly breath of laughter through his nose—sharp enough to make my chest tighten, like my lungs forgot how to work for a second. Like the sound itself has claws. Like it knows exactly where to dig. Like my existence is a joke only he’s in on.

I don’t look at him. I don’t have to.

I still hear it.

His words from other days cling to me like oil. They coat everything, sink in where they’re not wanted:

You don’t have a chance.

Why are you even still here?

They don’t need to be said out loud to echo. Not anymore. They live in the air between us. In the way he doesn’t look at me. In the way he laughs like I’m a punchline.

My shoulders hunch. I move quieter. Smaller. Just a girl slipping around the edge of someone else’s temper. It’s a practiced art, this disappearing. This vanishing while still being in the room.

I tuck the bike into its corner of the garage. Out of the way. Like I’m hiding a part of myself I’m not allowed to show. Like ifI make it small enough, quiet enough, it’ll stop being something for him to hate.

Inside, the air is warmer but no softer. Mom’s in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove. The smell of soup or stew clings to the walls, but it doesn’t make me feel safe. She doesn’t turn around.

Maybe she doesn’t see me.

Maybe she does.

I love her. I do. But sometimes she’s cruel in the way softness withheld can be. In the way she doesn’t ask how I am. In the way her silence agrees with his. Different from my brother’s pure disinterest in my life, and my sister’s invasive brand of concern—the kind that masquerades as love but feels more like surveillance and control from a distance.

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