The Family Photo That Didn't Have Me In It novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Nineteen

"He hasn't decided," I told the elevator doors.

They had closed. I was talking to my own face in the brushed steel.

"His sister drove a car into him, and he hasn't decided."

"He hired a lawyer who isn't your father's," Bo said. "That's a vote, Em. It just isn't counted yet."

I hated that he was right.

We took the night train north, and I watched my reflection float in the black window all the way home.

A week later I turned nineteen.

Every birthday of my life had come with one cake.

It said HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMELIE in pink, with my name squeezed in underneath if there was room.

She blew out the candles. Mom cut the corner piece for me herself.

"Share, Emery," she'd say, and smile at me like I'd been generous.

This year I woke in my room over the boathouse with snow going past the window sideways.

My phone had one text from the city.

Happy birthday, Em. Just you. D.

My brother had never typed my name on purpose in his life.

I read it four times.

Then I did what I did every morning now and checked the date.

The note in my screenshots was still dated five years ahead. The girl who wrote it was twenty-three and dying.

I was nineteen and holding a phone with a text from Dillon on it.

I put it face down and went to the lab like it was any Thursday.

Bo kept a very straight face all day.

Too straight. He offered to carry my samples, which he has never done once.

He hates being lied to, and he can't tell one to save his life. It's the thing I trust most about him.

At six he said the fuel dock needed help with a delivery.

"At six on a Thursday," I said. "In a snowstorm."

"Boats don't read calendars."

"There are no boats. The lake is closing."

"Then it's a delivery of something else."

I let him have it.

We walked down the hill in the dark, and the bait shop windows glowed yellow, and the door opened before we got there.

"SURPRISE!"

The whole crew was jammed in between the bait coolers and the rope bins.

The cribbage girls. The captain in a paper party hat, with his clipboard still under one arm.

Bo's dad on his bait bucket, pipe and all. Bo's mom holding a pot roast like a trophy.

And Raegan on a crate in the middle of them, in a band shirt, with a guitar pick on a cord around her neck.

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