Read Touch for Free Online Page B

her family while Toby grilled her about the redhead she’d brought home.
    “Is he your boyfriend?” he asked, in the highly amused, singsong tone that annoyed
     older sisters the world over.
    “No.”
    “Mo-om, is he Ally’s boyfriend?”
    “Eat your dinner, dear.”
    “Allison’s got a boyfriend! Allison’s got a boyfriend!”
    “Tobias,” her father said, coming—in one word—to her rescue. He did give Allison the
     careful once over, but asked none of the questions he was probably thinking.
    “Allison is about to be minus a brother,” Allison told the brother in question, through
     gritted teeth. This had the predictable effect—none. But aside from Michael, which
     boys had she ever brought home? Nathan, but he’d come with Emma.
    She finished dinner in slightly embarrassed silence and retreated to her room. She
     even picked up a book, but her mind bounced off the words instead of sinking beneath
     them.
    Not dying
.
    Emma had said that, once, two weeks after Nathan’s death. She hadn’t used the same
     words, but it didn’t matter. What Chase saw when he chose his words was what Emma
     saw when she looked into a future that, now and forever, had no Nathan in it.
    There had been nothing she could do for Emma, and she’d hated it—fluttering helplessly
     to one side, uncertain whether or not any comfort she tried to offer would be intrusive
     or make things worse. She understood Emma’s loss, she understood Emma’s grief—but
     she’d never known how much room to give. When did giving someone space become abandoning
     them or ignoring them?
    What saved her was understanding that it was Nathan, not Emma, who had died. Allison
     knew she couldn’t fill the empty, collapsing space that Nathan had left in Emma’s
     psyche—but Allison wasn’t Nathan. She didn’t
have
to fill it. She just had to make sure that the space she did occupy in the same psyche
     was a safe one. It was best-friend territory, not love-of-life territory, but it was
     important.
    Allison had watched Emma withdraw. It wasn’t completely obvious to begin with; Emma
     went through all the motions. She took care of her appearance, she did all her schoolwork,
     she spent time at school with her friends, she watched as their relationships began
     or fell apart. But none of it mattered anymore.
    Michael mattered. Allison mattered. Petal mattered.
    Why? Because the three of them needed Emma, and she couldn’t just turn and walk away
     from them.
    Nathan was a shadow that could fall, unexpectedly, over any conversation. A line of
     a dialogue. The punch line to a joke. A piece of familiar clothing on an entirely
     unfamiliar body. Snatches of music. Even food. Emma would flinch. She always withdrew
     when it happened, but she didn’t always leave.
    Both of Allison’s parents were still alive. So was her brother. The Simner family
     didn’t have pets, except goldfish, and while burying goldfish had seemed enormously
     heartbreaking in kindergarten, she knew it didn’t and couldn’t compare. The only death
     she’d experienced had been her grandfather’s, and she had been younger. Death hadn’t
     seemed real. Her grandfather hadn’t lived with them. She had come to understand that
     death meant permanent absence—but it hadn’t shattered her.
    She could sometimes hear the echoes of his voice, and pipe smoke pulled his image
     from her memories, because she’d liked his pipe. Her mother, not so much.
    Emma had lost her father and her boyfriend. She’d had eight years to recover from
     the loss of her father. She’d had less than four months to recover from Nathan. And
     Allison didn’t lie to herself: Those months were
not
a recovery. They were a tightrope act, an effort to find and maintain emotional balance
     when you’d just lost half of yourself.
    Now, Emma could see the dead.
    She could see the father she’d missed and longed for for half her life. And she knew
     that if she waited long enough, she could see