Words We Never Say Read online

  “You sure you don’t wanna come with us? Jaxx has a new telescope and everything.” Emery hoped her father would change his mind. He didn’t seem to be budging, though.

  “Emery, he knows that,” Jaxx interrupted, but Emery waved him off as their father began to speak.

  “No, Emmy, I have some things to finish up at work.” Michael smoothed Emery’s hair and smiled. Emery noticed her mother, who looked particularly forlorn.

  “Michael?” her mother said, almost pleadingly.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I really do have some very important business to take care of.”

  Emery, anxious to get to the stargazing field, hurriedly kissed her father on the cheek and tried to usher him away. “See you later, Dad. Love you.”

  Emery, Jaxx, and Amelia walked to their car while Michael walked in the opposite direction to leave.

  When Emery got into her mother’s car, she was practically bursting with angst. She had been wanting to talk about Matt with her mother in private, but this would have to do. “He almost said it, Mom. Matt almost said it.” Emery was buckled in, sitting on her hands, trying so very hard not to fidget.

  “Wait, like, the ‘I love you’ said it?” Her mother looked just as engrossed as Emery hoped she would be.

  Emery nodded somberly in response.

  “That’s weird,” Emery heard Jaxx chirp from the back.

  She swiveled her head around to glare at him sitting in the backseat. “You’re not in this conversation, Jaxx.”

  He smiled at her vehemence and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

  Emery threw up her hands in exasperation, turning back around to face her mother. “I don’t know if I love him. I mean, I love him as a friend, but how does he even know that he loves me as more than that? I mean, it’s only been four months. They’ve been amazing months, but still?” She was rambling, she knew, but she felt like a ball of wound up energy threatening to explode. Her mother always knew how to defuse her.

  “Matt is a really great guy, Em. We’ve known him for such a long time. He’s really sweet and respectful—”

  “But, Mom—”

  “Let me finish. He’s sweet, respectful, and I’ve seen the way you’ve been around him. You are comfortable around him—I know you are—but there’s more to love than that. If you love him like that, you’ll feel it when you’re around him. Think about it more and if he says it before you do and you’re not ready, if he loves you, he’ll understand that.”

  Emery continued nodding throughout her mother’s explanation. She began to look out the window of the car, watching her town pass by in a blur. She knew exactly where she was: the high school, Revival Springs Café, and the community college all close in proximity; her father’s law practice behind them; the hospital a few miles in front. Just as she was sure her mother was finished with the topic, Amelia began to say one last thing.

  “But, Emery?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “Don’t let the fact that you’re afraid of change stop you from saying how you really feel.” Emery’s eyes opened wide, feeling as if her mother had read her mind. Her mother chuckled softly in response. “I know you, darling. Don’t forget that.”

  “We’re here!” Jaxx shrilled just next to Emery’s ear.

  She cringed as her mother put the car in park and her younger brother practically jumped from the vehicle. Emery unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the passenger door to get out.

  Jaxx was already at the trunk of the car taking his telescope out. It was an odd sight that made Emery smile. The telescope was at least the size of her younger brother—if not larger—and seemed to take him a lot of effort to set up. He was happy, though. Anyone could see just by looking at the expression that was on his face.

  Emery helped her mother lay out a blanket in the wide-open field. It was a little outside of the city limits and Emery wasn’t even sure they could legally use the field, but she never questioned it. No one ever came to tell them to leave, either.

  So, as Jaxx made the finishing touches on his telescope, he whispered to himself, “Clear skies.”

  Emery loved her little brother for his nerdiness. His forever-rumpled black hair, his glasses that always fell off the bridge of his nose, his startling blue eyes that matched the rest of her family: everything about him was familiar. She looked over to her mother and saw the same matching blue eyes that she and Jaxx had, her creative hands, her gentle smile. She loved them both so much. Emery was beyond content. There wasn’t a single thing she’d change about her family.

  “There it is! There it is!” Jaxx said in triumph, jumping up and down with his eye still trained inside the telescope. He was pointing at the sky, but Emery couldn’t make out where in the world he was pointing.

  She walked over to him and touched the telescope. “Can I see?”

  He swatted her hand away fast. “Not yet, Emery!”

  Emery threw her hands up in surrender and shook her head. She sat down next to her mother and watched as Jaxx continued to explain how amazing the solar system was. He tried to explain each constellation and planet that was visible, but it was lost on both Emery and her mother.

  “You sure I can’t see?”

  Jaxx returned a glare to her, strikingly similar to the one Emery had given him earlier in the car.

  Maybe if she changed anything, she’d make Jaxx listen to her more.

  It was later than they normally stayed out, but her mother did not seem to want to go home. Jaxx, of course, didn’t mind at all and went on and on about the planets that become visible later at night. Emery could tell that her mother was happy to entertain that escapade a little longer, but something was bothering her. Emery just couldn’t make heads or tails of what that might be.

  So, when they packed up their things to go home, Jaxx was practically asleep in the backseat of the car. Emery had finally gotten the chance to look through the telescope at the stars, but she wasn’t nearly as intrigued as Jaxx had been. It didn’t take her long to get bored of it all.

  Her mother was tucking the blanket around Jaxx as he slept in the back seat. Emery, after loading the telescope into the trunk, promptly slid herself into the passenger seat and buckled in, thoroughly exhausted.

  It only took Emery a moment to fall asleep, but in that moment, she heard the terrifying screech of metal being ripped apart.

  She thought she was dead, but the pain made her realize she was very wrong.

  When she opened her eyes, all she could see was the light from the headlights. They were in a forest and Emery could see a tree branch going through the front end on the car. Smoke was billowing from the hood of the car. She moved slightly, gasped in pain, and watched as glass from the side windows and windshield broke off in a spray of tinkling noise. She looked to her left to see her mother and a hoarse scream pierced her throat.

  Everything inside of Emery writhed and twisted and burned, but not in the way that physical pain burned. She nearly threw up from the intensity of the sensation.

  Her mother was impaled by the branch that came through the window. Emery would not have been able to recognize her had it not been for her hands. Her mother’s beautiful, paint-stained, creative hands.

  “Mom! Mom, get up! Wake up!” Emery shoved her mother violently as she started to hyperventilate.

  Emery’s scream turned into a whimper as she turned to the back seat to look for Jaxx. The back seat was empty. That made Emery frantic as she tried to escape the car. Her seatbelt came off easily but shouldering the passenger door forced the air out of her lungs. She cried out in pain as she tried again, successfully opening the door and falling to the ground. Something cut into her side, but it was barely a pinch compared to everything else she was feeling. Emery tried to stand, to walk, to hurriedly find her younger brother, but she fell each time she tried. Her shirt felt sticky and wet.

  “Jaxx!”

  She saw a curled-up figure wrapped in the blanket from the car, illuminated by the headlight
s. So, Emery began to crawl as fast as she could to that figure, but broke into another long chorus of screams as she saw her younger brother.

  Jaxx was wrapped tightly in the blanket as if he held onto it when he was ejected from the car. His glasses were askew on his face. A piece of his scalp was missing.

  Emery crawled closer to her brother and wrapped him in her arms as she cried. “Jaxx, please.” It was a weak and pathetic attempt to wake him, but her vision was starting to blur. She could feel herself slipping away from reality just as a dark figure approached the two of them.

  Chapter 4

  Things passed before Emery very suddenly. She felt like she was in a car driving past lights, only distinguishable by the streaks of color they left behind. She was scared—she knew that much—but she couldn’t remember why. She wanted to cry out, to scream, to tell someone that there was a burning in her chest that would barely let her catch her breath. Emery couldn’t speak, though, and when she tried, a sputtering came from her chest that was so nightmarish that she never wanted to hear it again.

  Emery felt as if she would be sick. They were moving her too fast. She heard words like, “prep,” “surgery,” and “critical.” None of these were good words, but she never had the chance to dwell on it. A mask was placed on her face and shortly after, the world went black.

  She could see the silhouette walking towards her. She was in the forest again. Jaxx was in her arms. The silhouette was reaching out for her as she tried to get away. The long, spindly, shadowy fingers came for her. She screamed.

  Then, she opened her eyes.

  She couldn’t remember how she had gotten here. She couldn’t quite place where here was either. It was a white room with hardly anything in it besides a few items of furniture. Charles McQuain, her dad’s father, was standing in a corner, looking outside of a window with so much hatred that something inside Emery stirred. He had always been a hard man ever since his wife, Genevieve, passed away a few years ago, but now was different. It was a hardness she could not comprehend yet.

  The accident. Her mother. Jaxx.

  She tried to move, but someone’s head was laying on her leg. That someone was also holding her hand. It was Matt.

  For some reason, knowing that Matt was there, knowing that he was trying to be supportive and kind and caring as he always was, it just made her feel wrong. She did not want him to be the one comforting her. She wanted her mom. She wanted to be able to hold Jaxx in her arms even though he was a lanky eleven-year-old. She wanted what she could never have.

  Emery moaned in distress and pulled her hand from Matt’s, a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  Charles turned and finally noticed her alertness. “You’re awake. You’ve been unconscious for the good part of a week,” he told her matter-of-factly. He nodded towards Matt. “He’s been here almost every day. He raised hell when they wouldn’t let him see you in the ICU.” Charles’ salt and pepper hair had looked more salt than pepper than Emery had last remembered. His eyebrows were knitted tightly on his face, showing the worry lines across his forehead more prominently. He was tough. He had always been the grandparent who was not as lovey-dovey as the rest. Emery used to like his hard shell. At that moment, though, it just made her more aware of the emptiness inside of her.

  “What happened?” she asked. It was a scratchy, unsure question, but she wanted to know everything. Somewhere in her heart, she knew they were both dead. She could feel that weight in her chest that was stronger than the pain. It was heavy and debilitating. She could feel everything swimming out of focus as she tried to get a grasp on the situation, as she tried desperately to find something to latch on to.

  She wanted to know how they died.

  She began to feel hysterical when he refused to answer her. “Tell me. Are they dead?” Some dreadful trick replayed in her mind that there was hope. Maybe she thought it was worse than it actually was. Maybe the images of their broken faces were skewed in her mind. “Just tell me before I wake him up to tell me.”

  Her grandfather’s face remained tight. There wasn’t a single emotion on his face besides anger. “They thought they would be able to save Jaxx, but he had brain injuries too extensive to fix. Your father signed the papers a few days ago to cut his life support. Your mother died on impact.”

  Emery remained silent, but his words were stabbing her in the gut with each of their pronunciations. Each syllable and sound and articulation damaged her. Her mother’s words—and words in general—had always brought her hope, but now? She never thought words could make her feel so cold.

  “It was a hit-and-run. The bastard fled the scene as soon as it happened, I’m sure.” His hands were curled into fists. It was the first sign that could make Emery see how much he was hurting then.

  She closed her eyes, letting the words punch her and bruise her and destroy her. “Get out. Just, please, get out. Take him with you.”

  Matt looked confused as Charles woke him up and led him out of the door. Emery could hear him protesting as he realized that she was awake, but she couldn’t care less how much he was hurting. She could only think about the pain in her own heart as she choked on her own sobs.

  The next morning, Emery woke up to sobbing that wasn’t her own. It was her father. He was standing in the corner with the window—the same corner that her grandfather was in the night before—and he had a flask held to his lips. She could hear him swallowing the contents, drinking almost as if his life depended on it, as a sob escaped his throat. He sputtered as the alcohol lodged in his throat and it brought Emery back to the moment she arrived at the hospital. The memory was blurry and very patchy, but she could clearly remember a sputter similar to his that signaled her own demise.

  “Dad?” she said, no longer able to ignore his heavy presence.

  Her father became silent and took several moments before he turned to look at her. Emery could see how deep the pain was in his eyes. Michael had tears streaming down his cheeks and barely looked at Emery for more than two seconds before leaving the room.

  Emery knew that he had a lot to process—after all, she had gotten her processing techniques from him—and just as she had made Matt and her grandfather leave, Michael had left her. It still hurt like hell, though, to think that her father couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her. The only survivor of a crash that killed his wife and son.

  Emery felt disgusted with herself, too. She wished Jaxx was the one who lived. She wished she could exchange her survival for theirs. It didn’t work that way, though, and she just had to deal with the fact that she survived and they didn’t.

  She hadn’t done much the whole rest of the day. She just couldn’t make herself read any of the cards that people had sent her. She couldn’t even pick up Zoe’s, who, as far as Emery knew, hadn’t even come to visit her in the hospital. Not that Emery would have let her in anyway.

  The police paid her a visit, too. They got her statement about the accident and she learned that someone called 911 on her cell phone after everything happened. It wasn’t her, she told them that five times, but she didn’t have a clue who could’ve done that. They suggested that Jaxx may have if he was still conscious, but Emery couldn’t even stomach the idea that he was awake at all during those horrible moments. They also suggested that it could have been the person who hit them. Emery couldn’t seem to stomach that idea either. It made the person who killed her family seem more human.

  She tried to remain completely emotionless during the whole ordeal with the police—especially when they mentioned anything about the person who could’ve hit them—but her mind often wandered to dark corners during their conversation.

  They had nothing. They told her they had nothing besides a partial print from her cellphone that didn’t match anything in their system. The police had nothing and Emery wanted to break something. She wasn’t sure how she’d ever move on if they never found out the truth.

  Matt had also come by again, but Emery had strictly told the n
urse not to let him in. She didn’t know what to do about him. The only thing she did know was that she didn’t love him, not in the way that he wanted her to. Maybe the accident changed her feelings for him, or maybe, she had never loved him in the first place. Either way, his affection could not fill the growing void in her chest.

  Her uncle, Hugh, arrived sometime after Matt had tried to get in. He had fresh clothes for her in his arms and a bundle of paperwork. Emery sat up in her bed, still feeling sore but breathing a whole lot better than she had been before, as Hugh sat on the edge of her bed.

  Hugh was a large, burly man who looked like he should be in an ad for flannel as a lumberjack. He was bald and had a medium sized beard that he always kept very well groomed.

  “They say you’re good to go, kiddo. I’ve gone through most of the paperwork for you, but I’ll still need a few signatures from you since you’re eighteen now.”

  Emery felt confused by his statement. “I’ve only been here for a day, Hugh.”

  “It’s almost been a whole week,” Hugh said gently as he touched her shoulder.

  She felt stupid as he said that. Of course, she had been there longer than she remembered. Her grandfather had said as much the night before. “Right,” was all she could manage to say back.

  “We’re having the funeral tomorrow,” Hugh said quietly. “We wanted to make sure that you were okay and out of the hospital before we did anything.”

  Emery knew that was supposed to make her feel better that she hadn’t missed their funerals, but she felt so sick to her stomach thinking about being there. So many people would be there—crying—even though they didn’t know her mother and brother nearly as well as she did. She didn’t want the condolences and casseroles and communities. It was all a general confirmation of what she no longer had.

  “It will be closed-casket only and the visitation will only be for a few hours in the morning,” Hugh went on. “We thought that would be for the best. And we’re not going to tell your grandmother, Adeline.”