Page 16 of Swerve
“It’s okay to let her see your grief, Emory. It will make hers seem a little less enormous if it is something she shares with you.”
I realized instantly that he was right. I’d kept my sorrow from her because I didn’t want to add to hers, but I could see that wasn’t the right thing to do. “I wish she’d asked me,” I said.
“How to get to Heaven?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“She says that she doesn’t think you believe Heaven is a real place. She asked me how it could not be real if that’s where her mom and dad are.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe,” I said. “I’m just—”
“Angry,” he said softly. “How could you not be?”
“Have you ever been angry at God?”
“Of course,” he said. “We’ve all been angry at our parents at some point in our lives. He is my eternal father, but that doesn’t mean I always agree with or understand the things that happen in this world.”
His answer surprised me. “You don’t think I’m horrible then?”
“That is the very last thing anyone would think about you, Emory.”
But I found that very hard to believe.
He didn’t know that I’d let my parents leave this world thinking I didn’t love them.
How much more horrible could horrible be?
The Proprietor
“Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.”
—Aesop
SHE HAS THE sleep habits of a vampire.
Sleep is for the weak. She’s always thought as much, even as a teenager when most of the girls she’d gone to school with at The Spence School in Manhattan had coveted an extra hour of sleeping in as if it were the key to the success they assumed was their rightful inheritance.
While they slept, she plotted her future. She supposed that was the difference between someone who was born with her future already mapped out and a girl who’d been granted a scholarship to Spence. A girl with a genius IQ that elevated the school’s quotable stats in a way that made her a public relations bargain.
She certainly hadn’t cared that they’d used her to enhance the school’s reputation.Mutual use was an undeniable tenet of life on planet Earth. Success was determined by an individual’s ability to spot the need in another human being and then to fill that need in a way that satisfied both parties. It was a roadmap she not only understood but had become an expert at implementing in every professional relationship that mattered.
She had her father to thank for that education. He had taken her hunting with him when she’d been a little girl. He liked to trap and then shoot, explaining to her that it was too much trouble to try to hit a moving target.He wasn’t particular about what kind of animal he trapped, although his preference was deer. They could eat deer.
One morning, when she’d been seven or eight years old, he’d gotten her up early and asked her to walk with him through the woods behind their small house to check the traps. She had been happy to be asked and dressed quickly in snow bibs and boots. The New York winter bit at her cheeks as they walked through the trees, following the path her dad knew so well.
The first trap was empty. He added bait, and they walked on anther thousand yards or so before they saw the second one.
A young deer, probably born the summer before judging from her size, leapt up from the snow as they approached. The ragged iron jaw of the trap held her right front leg hostage. She bucked and reared against it, but the leg only began to bleed more, a bright red puddle forming on the snow beside her.
She’d had no idea deer could scream. But this young doe made a sound of terror that played through her head like glass against glass. The sound made her more curious than empathetic. How long had the deer been here like this, trapped by a fate she’d never thought to expect?
She noticed then the adult doe watching them from a short distance away. Even in the early morning light, she could see the fear and worry in the doe’s eyes. She wanted to charge at them, make them leave her baby alone, but it was clear that she knew she could not. Somehow, that mama deer knew she had no power over them.
Her father held his gun out and said, “It’s time for you to learn about follow through.”
She looked at him, unable to hide her surprise. “You want me to shoot her?”
“There’s no other choice now. Even when you’re the captor, there comes a time to show mercy.”
