Found

CHAPTER 45

I texted Ema. No reply. I called her. No answer.

I sat at the kitchen table and stewed. Forget her. Hadn’t she said that she’d be there when I got hurt from this? She’d known, hadn’t she? She tried to make me see what Troy was, but I wouldn’t open my eyes. She knew that I’d have to make a big mistake like this and that it would hurt. How had she put it?

I want to protect you from that pain. But I can’t. I can only tell you that when it hurts, I’ll be there for you.

And then she added, Always.

“So where are you now?” I said out loud.

An hour later, Uncle Myron came home. He saw the expression on my face and said, “What happened?”

I wasn’t allowed to tell him about Abeona. That was part of the rules. Both Lizzie Sobek and Dylan Shaykes had made that crystal clear to me. But I could tell him about Troy. I could tell him about how my wanting to belong to a team had ruined everything.

Uncle Myron listened with great patience and even understanding. When I finished, he asked one simple question: “Do you know what you’re going to do?”

I gave a simple answer: “No.”

“Good,” he said. “You should sleep on it. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say, you should toss and turn on it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t expect to get much sleep.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You messed up. We all do.”

“Even you,” I said.

It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Myron said. “I messed up. I thought I was helping your dad all those years ago. It ends up, I made him run away. And, yeah, I know that if I hadn’t done that, he’d be alive right now. I live with that ghost every day. And your father isn’t my only ghost. There are a lot more who won’t let me go.”

“Myron?”

“Yeah?”

“How do you live with that?”

“With what, the ghosts?”

“Yeah. How do you live with them?”

“You don’t have much choice. What else are you going to do?”

“That’s it?” I frowned. “That’s your answer.”

“Mostly, yeah. And I try to remember that the mistakes I made were just that. Mistakes. I never meant to hurt anyone. Sometimes you try to do right but wrong still seems to find you. I remind myself of that. And I also remember that it’s not the battle, it’s the war.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning in the end, I’ve done more good than evil. I’ve saved more than I’ve harmed. You are a sum of your life, not just one part.”

I nodded. He started to walk away. “Myron?”

“What?”

“Dad wouldn’t want you to blame himself,” I said.

“I know,” Myron replied. “And that just makes it harder.”