Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad.......um.......there is no bad guy in this book, y'all.
Tag Line: A timeless love....and a terrible tragedy.From the Back of the Book: Haunted House. On a whim, Emma Donovan bets her twin brother, Charlie, that she can spend the entire night alone at the spooky, abandoned house next door. The place is seriously creepy, but she's determined to overcome her fears and prove her brother wrong. Until she finds herself reliving a horrific night from the house's past and a passionate love with a handsome - and strangely familiar - young man. When Charlie finds her, he's sure it was all just a dream. Yet Emma has persistent paranormal experiences involving the house and the young man from the past. As her "dreams" intensify, Emma becomes convinced they are very real...and that she has a dreadful part to play in the supernatural reenactment of a tragic love.
This book was published in 2002 which is way later than the books I usually recap for this blog. I've never read it but I'm pretty familiar with Cusick (as are all of you).
We begin with our protagonist Emma
and her friend Val. There's some kind of paper due for
English class on the topic “Strange or Scary” and Val
wants to do hers on Emma and her twin brother Charlie. Emma
is a little irritated that her friend thinks they are strange and/or
scary but Val explains that people have a natural fascination with
twins. I'm not entirely sure most people find them strange and/or
scary but whatevs. Emma isn't sure it's a good idea. She thinks
Charlie will balk and she's not really fond of having her personal
life up for academic perusal.
Their conversation morphs into
discussion about an upcoming dance. Val had a date but he ended up
moving out of town and now she's afraid no one else will ask her.
Emma says they can go together because she doesn't have a date
either. Apparently Emma is a little picky when it comes to men and
is holding out for a “tall, dark and handsome” dream man that's she's had in her mind for her entire life but never met.
Somehow the topic leaves the dance and
lands on the house next door – the Farmington place. It's in bad
shape and abandoned and Val is convinced it's probably haunted. Emma
wants to get back to studying which is why Val is there in the first
place I guess. Suddenly Val gasps and says someone is in the
Farmington house. She points to a window on the second floor where
Emma can see a shadow standing. It appears to be watching them.
Charlie jump scares them by coming up
behind them and grabbing Emma's shoulder. She tells him about the
shadow in the window and that's when Val laughs and says she was just
joking about it and she actually hadn't seen anything at all. Emma
is confused because she definitely saw someone in the window.
Charlie thinks maybe it was just his lights reflecting as he pulled
into the driveway but since it was a second floor window that doesn't
seem likely. Emma is worried that maybe someone broke into the house
and wonders what they should do. They all end up dismissing it as
imagination.
We hop into Charlie's head for the
night. He's being plagued by thoughts of the Farmington house but
they aren't his thoughts. As twins, he and Emma are psychically
connected. When she thinks too hard or feels too strongly, it ends
up in Charlie's head too. Usually he can block her but sometimes
he's too tired or the feelings are too intense. Emma is often
frustrated with him because he can block her from reading his
thoughts as well. Tonight he gets sucked up in Emma's nightmare
about the Farmington house and can't get out of it.
We're back in Emma's head for breakfast
the next morning. She and Charlie exchange some back and forth
banter over his frustration with her plaguing his sleep all night and
her being jealous that he's a better psychic and a better psychic
blocker than she is. None of it is very interesting. Their mom asks
about the dance and Emma tells Charlie that he should ask Val. He
plays it off but Emma can feel his interest in the idea. She tells
him that Val has always liked him and she can tell he likes her.
Most people wouldn't want their best friend dating their brother but
I guess Emma is cool with pimping Val out. Charlie says he'll ask
Val out if Emma will spend one night in the Farmington house alone.
For some reason that makes no sense to me at all, Emma agrees.
We skip ahead to Friday. Emma hasn't
told Val about the grand plan which is just stupid and cruel. Now
when Charlie asks her out, she's going to think it was all his idea
and her feelings will get hurt when she finds out it was a bet with
Emma. I've watched enough Teen Movies to know this is always a bad
idea. Anyway, Emma is nervous about her night in the Farmington
house.
The twins' mother is conveniently away
for the night at some kind of training conference......oh, pause a
second.....
Send the parent of the protagonist off
on a trip early in the book? Check
Anyway, mom is out of the picture so
Emma can pack in peace. She brings books, snacks, a sleeping bag, a
flashlight and her cell phone. Charlie walks her over to help her
carry all her stuff. They get to the front door and pry it open
easily enough which should be a massive red flag that someone has
probably been going in and out of there because otherwise why would they be
able to just pry open the door like that? A cold wind comes out of
nowhere and slams the door back shut and the twins get very uneasy.
Charlie tells her she's released from
the bet. He never thought she'd get this far and he says they should
just go back home now. Emma resists. She knows Charlie will hold it
over her head for the rest of her life if she doesn't go in there. He
says he won't but she doesn't believe him. They fight back and forth
for a while and then Charlie eventually stomps off. Emma decides
she's going to sleep on the porch instead of in the actual house.
She's worried Charlie and his friends might come back to scare her in
the middle of the night so she decides to find some hidden place on
the porch to sleep. Yeah. I don't know. This is all dumb.
As she's exploring the wrap-around
porch, she remembers the shadow she saw the other night in the window
and it finally occurs to her that someone might actually be inside
the house and maybe sleeping over here isn't the best idea she ever
had. She makes a run for it but the rotting boards of the porch
break and she finds herself falling. Everything goes black.
I'm confused. How far can you fall
through a porch? They're usually a couple feet off the ground.
Unless this is a very weird house built on some kind of hill where
the front porch is really high.
Emma comes to with a huge rat right
beside her. She's in some kind of cellar which was inexplicably
right under the front porch I guess. So she fell through the boards
of the porch and then through the ceiling of the cellar? Or are we
supposed to believe that the porch IS the ceiling of the cellar. No
one would do that. Rain would get in. ((Note from future me: my husband did some research on this because it was bothering the heck out of me and it turns out that root cellars were often located under the front porch. However, they were usually encased in concrete which Emma definitely couldn't have fallen through. Even if this particular one wasn't concrete, it still would have had a roof separate from the porch.))
A voice calls out her name and she
assumes it's Charlie. The boy who comes down the stairs isn't her
brother, however. He seems upset and says that he's going to help
her and this isn't going to happen again. He seems to think someone
hurt her. Emma is confused because he's acting like he knows who she
is – he definitely knows her name – but she's never seen him
before. He seems gentle and kind but she's terrified.
He asks her if she can walk because he
wants to get her away from the person who hurt her. She moves her
legs and is confused to see she's suddenly wearing a long dress and a
million petticoats. Okay, so we've fallen back in time or something
here. Cusick always takes us on a wild ride. The boy goes to check
for injuries and runs his hand up her legs and Emma instantly gets
turned on. Whoa, Cusick, this is NOT that kind of book. This goes
on my other blog.
He helps her to her feet and kisses
her. Emma just goes with it and soon the two of them are rather
passionately making out. He kisses all down her neck and then shoves
the shoulder of her dress down so he can go lower. Just when things
are looking way too racy for one of these books..........
…..........the boy snaps back to his
senses and says they can't do this now. They have to get out of
there.
Emma's brain starts to supply her with
dialogue. She tells the boy they can't leave because “he” will
track them down and kill her. She doesn't know why she's saying this
but it just comes out of her mouth. She says that she loves him and
she can't stand the idea of “Father” hurting him. He slips a
ring on her finger with a tiny heart and she sighs “Oh, Daniel”
so I guess that's his name. Daniel takes her hands and leads her up
the stairs.
I should hate this but I really don't
mind it. For once, it's written coherently. I'll go along on this
ride.
Emma and Daniel creep through the house
and then run through the yard toward the barn. He says they can
leave on horseback and stick to the woods but she keeps telling him
that her father will find them and kill Daniel. He doesn't care.
He's afraid her father will end up killing her if they don't escape.
They're still debating it when the door crashes open and Father is
there. He grabs Emma and starts screaming a bunch of religious stuff
at her with whiskey on his breath. She's a sinner....blah, blah,
blah.
Emma gets away from her father and runs
to Daniel who picks her up and puts her on the back of a horse. He
tells her to ride away and not look back. Father throws a pitchfork
and it embeds itself in Daniel's chest. He falls to the floor as
Emma screams. The scream startles the horse and it bucks Emma off.
In the panic that follows, the horse kicks over the lantern and the
barn goes up in flames. Emma searches for Daniel through the thick
smoke and finally finds him. She holds his head in her lap and
declares her love even as she prays the smoke will kill her before
she feels the pain of burning alive.
Emma comes to back in the cellar
wearing her regular clothes. She thinks the entire thing with Daniel
was a dream brought on by the fall. She feels panicky but climbs the
stairs to go back to the front door. It won't open when she reaches
it and she has the odd feeling that the house itself is trying to
prevent her from leaving. She begins to run all through the rooms
looking for a way out because panic is always the best thing to do in
these situations. Finally she finds a door and stumbles out
onto the porch. A figure steps out of the darkness and she's sure
it's Father but it's actually just Charlie.
Charlie had been sucked into her
“dream” and came running to find her. He says it seemed so real
that he could actually smell the smoke and he was worried that the
Farmington house was actually on fire. Emma realizes her hand is
bleeding and is stunned when she looks at it and sees the ring that
Daniel put on her in the dream.
Emma begins to insist that the entire
thing with Daniel really happened and Charlie balks. He says she
probably found the ring in the cellar while she was still loopy from
the fall and put it on out of her confusion. Emma isn't buying any
of that. She isn't sure whether she's talking about time travel or a
case of reincarnation/remembering her past life but she knows
what happened was real. She starts to cry because she felt like she
loved Daniel so deeply and he died right in front of her. Charlie
takes the ring from her and puts it in his pocket.
Everything she brought with her is in
the cellar but neither of them want to go back in there that night so
they just leave it and go home. Emma begs Charlie to help her figure
out the mystery of the house and he agrees that they should do some
research. They talk for a bit about how to do that research and then
Emma goes up to take a shower and go to bed. She can't stop thinking
about Daniel and how much she loves him.
The next day Val comes pounding on the
door waking Emma up. She demands to know what's going on and Emma is
clueless. She's exhausted and still pretty shaken up from her
adventure the night before. Val says that Charlie called and asked
her to the dance and she wants to know if it's some kind of plot or
if Emma blackmailed him or something. Emma feels awful and guilty
but she denies knowing anything about it because she's a terrible
person.
Odds that Val will find out about the bet and be crushed: 90%
I can just imagine how Val will feel
when she finds out the truth and it's gutting me.
Val is super excited about going to the
dance with Charlie and wants to go shoe shopping right away. She
asks Emma to go with her but Emma says she needs to go to the
library. Val is dismayed that Emma is going to do homework on a
Saturday but says she'll call later and maybe they can get together
after. Val gives her a hug and then tells Emma that her hair smells
like smoke.
Emma goes up to talk to Charlie and
Cusick tells us that the music inside is “deafening” and gets
louder when she knocks as if Charlie turned up the volume to avoid her but then two paragraphs later, Charlie is on
his bed listening to music through his headphones and he has no idea
Emma is even there. So which is it, Cusick? Does he have his music
on and purposely turns it up louder when she knocks or is he oblivious
to her presence listening to headphones? You can't have both, honey.
Emma insists that he smell her hair and
he begrudgingly admits that it smells a little like smoke. She asks
him where the ring is and he tells her he put it “over there”
pointing toward his messy desk. She goes to look and for some reason
decides to start with the bottom drawer. Charlie yells at her to
stay out of it and jumps up to block her from opening it. Clearly
his “me time” stash is in there or something and if I were her,
I'd just back away with my hands up. But Emma is not me and she
wrestles with him over the drawer. It gives way and spills
everything out and, sure enough, she finds a picture of Val in an
extremely tiny swimsuit buried among some other things. She teases
him about it and he seems embarrassed more than anything. He tells
her he doesn't know how that got there and accuses her of planting it
on him but he's really flustered and she finally drops it. He gives
her the ring and tells her to fuck off. So off she fucks.
In the bathroom, she stares at herself
in the mirror and wonders why she doesn't seem to recognize her
reflection anymore. She puts the ring back on and the reflection in
the mirror seems to shift and shimmer like someone else is trying to
form.
We hop back into Charlie's head as he's
dropping Emma off at the library to do her research. He's headed to
the newspaper archives which I guess they don't keep at the library
like they do here. He's a little freaked out because he can still
smell smoke in the car. He drives to get himself a coffee to settle
his nerves a bit which seems like an oxymoron but as a fellow
caffeine addict, I get it. He thinks about Val and how he's loved
her for years but hasn't acted on it because she's his sister's
friend. He's paranoid that his psychic wall is slipping since Emma's
dreams keep sucking him in and worried that means she might get a few
of his dreams as well. Dreams that involve Val in
some.....ahem.....activities. The idea of that happening makes him very
squirrelly.
Back with Emma, she goes in and asks
the librarian if there's any historical information about the
Farmington house. The librarian goes to check. As she's waiting,
Emma notices the elderly Loberg sisters nearby whispering
together. They've always given her the creeps for some reason.
Today is no exception.
The librarian comes back with some
books and tells Emma that she can make notes from them but can't
check them out. Emma goes to look through them. Most of it is
boring but she finally gets to a picture of the house itself with a
carriage out front and has the thought that Daniel has hitched up the
carriage for her afternoon outing. The thought startles her and she
looks up, stunned to see it's time for Charlie to pick her up.
Charlie has had a productive day. He
found a newspaper article where 17-year-old 👤Emma Farmington👤 was
“kidnapped” and her father Josiah (a
very prominent member of society) was very anxious to find
her. He claimed that he woke up to smell smoke and found his
daughter's room had been ransacked and several valuable things were
stolen. 👤Emma F👤 was never seen again. Josiah pointed the finger at
his stable hand Daniel and accused him of robbery and kidnapping.
Charlie points out that the anniversary of the fire is two days from
today.
One year after 👤Emma F👤 and Daniel
disappeared, Josiah was found dead. The official report says he was
grief-stricken and he hanged himself. A picture was published along
with the article and Emma is horrified to see that 👤Emma F👤 looks
exactly like her.
Emma twists the heart ring on her
finger and then seems to channel 👤Emma F👤 as she tells Charlie that her
dad used to beat her sometimes and often locked her in her room and
withheld food from her. She says that her father was possessive and
hated Daniel because he was going to take her away. Charlie gets a
little freaked out and tells her to knock it off.
When they get home, Emma decides to go
back over for her stuff. She goes into the house and stands there
trying to remember how to get to the cellar from inside. A figure
steps out of the shadows and it's Daniel. Emma slips back into 👤Emma
F👤 as she rushes into Daniel's arms and breathes in the intoxicating
scent of him. He asks her to dance with him because Josiah is out
and it's the maid's day off. They dance together until they collapse
in front of the fire.
Things get a little racy for a non-Pike
PH here. They kiss and Daniel starts to unbutton her dress. He says
“let me take you” and I'm thinking I'm going to have to
bust out euphemisms for the first time on this blog but he means he
wants to take her away from her father where she'll be safe and
happy. She just wants to get on with the dress unbuttoning but
suddenly they hear Josiah's carriage coming up the drive. Daniel
quickly goes out the back and 👤Emma F👤 escapes upstairs to her room.
Suddenly Emma is just Emma again and
she's startled to find herself upstairs.
Now we're back in Charlie's head. He's
upstairs in his own house listening to music on his headphones again
when he thinks he hears someone talking to him. He knows Emma is
back at the Farmington house but he's determined not to go over
there. He just wants out of this entire business. Clearing his mind
and putting up a psychic wall, he goes to take a shower. While he's
in there, he starts to feel strange – kind of light and floaty. He
thinks he hears someone saying Emma's name a few times but convinces
himself that it isn't happening. When he gets out, he sees Emma's
reflection looking back at him from the mirror and it freaks him out.
He wraps a towel around his waist and opens the bathroom door only
to run into Val. She does a little sight-seeing before asking where
Emma is. Embarrassed, Charlie snaps at her that he's not his
sister's keeper and he heads off to his room.
Emma comes back an hour later,
exhausted and crying. Val immediately wants to know where she's been
and what she's been doing because it all seems really strange. Emma
makes up some story about the wind making her eyes water and her
having to dig through boxes in the garage to find something. The
problem is that Val keeps asking questions and Emma is pretty out of
it and can't answer. Charlie comes by and saves the whole thing
asking her if she found the magazines in the garage yet and he
handles the rest of Val's nosy questions. Val wants to do something
like they talked about earlier but Emma begs off saying she thinks
she's coming down with something. She looks pretty awful so Val
agrees she should rest. Val leaves much to Emma's relief.
Charlie questions Emma when Val is gone
but Emma is reluctant to tell him anything. She wants to keep her
moments with Daniel private. Charlie knows she had some kind of
experience and he warns her to stay away from the house. She doesn't
want to do that though and once again slips into the 👤Emma F👤 persona,
telling Charlie that it's her house.
The next morning, Emma wakes up to find
Charlie gone. She knows exactly where he is and throws on some
clothes so she can head to the Farmington house. Sure enough,
Charlie has gone to retrieve all her stuff. She yells at him that he
has no right to be in her house and he's not really amused. Emma is
worried that somehow events are going to repeat themselves on the
anniversary of the fire the next day and Charlie reassures her that the barn no
longer exists so things can't play out the same way. Still Emma
frets that maybe she's meant to do something to help 👤Emma F👤 and
Daniel somehow.
Charlie suggests that he stay Sunday
night in the cellar so maybe he can get to the bottom of what's going on. Emma thinks he's lost his mind but she's
thankful that he's trying to help her make sense of everything.
Charlie points out that it's weird that Daniel is the only one that
seems to be trapped in the house – if he IS a ghost that is and
that has yet to be established. Charlie thinks 👤Emma F👤 might have
survived the barn fire because her ghost isn't trapped at the house
as well.
Emma wants to search around where the
barn used to be. Charlie says it's somewhere around where the Loberg
sisters live now. Emma wonders how she can get onto their property
to look and Charlie tells her she's taking everything too far. He
notices she's still wearing the ring and he tells her that maybe if
she takes it off, Daniel will stop coming for her. Emma can't bear
the thought of losing him. She loves him. She refuses to take the
ring off and goes running up the street.
Emma finds herself outside the Loberg
house. She climbs over the fence and into their garden. As soon as
she does, she hears Daniel's voice calling out to her and she's full
of angst because she can't see him. The shorter Miss Loberg (SML)
comes out to tell her that Daniel is in torment and Emma is shocked
that SML knows who Daniel is.
SML takes Emma inside where they are
joined by TML (tall Miss Loberg). SML is thrilled that Emma
is finally here to end Daniel's torment. He's been haunting their
garden for ages and his anguish is heartbreaking but they couldn't do
anything for him. TML just mostly seems impatient that it took Emma
so long to come here. SML sees the ring on Emma's finger and is
delighted. It's the one Daniel told Betsy (the Farmington's
maid) about. Betsy was apparently a cousin of the Loberg's
grandmother or something like that.
SML tells Emma everything she already
knows about 👤Emma F👤 being in love with Daniel and Josiah not
approving. She tells Emma everything she already knows about the
escape attempt and the fire. It's all pretty pointless but Emma is
gracious about it. She then tells SML and TML about Josiah killing
Daniel with a pitchfork and leaving both of them inside to die from
the fire. She also tells them about her strange experiences in the
house.
TML says that they don't believe 👤Emma F👤 died in the fire. If she had, Daniel wouldn't be looking for her.
Emma says that Charlie feels the same way and the old Miss Lobergs
both blush. Apparently they think Charlie is quite handsome. Emma
shrugs off that very awkward moment and moves on. The sisters tell
her that she's the reincarnation of 👤Emma F👤 and she's the only one who
can help Daniel now. Their theory is that everything will happen
again on the 100th anniversary and this time Emma will die
too so she and Daniel can be together.
Emma is understandably not happy with
this theory.
She fucks out of there and heads back
home. Her mom is upstairs asleep and Charlie is gone so she goes to
her room. She can feel Daniel watching her and trying to summon her
and it pisses her off. She starts pounding on the window saying she
doesn't know what he wants and she doesn't know how to help him.
Charlie and Val come in mid-freakout and Charlie demands that she
explain everything to Val because he can't handle this alone anymore.
The girls kick Charlie out so they can
have some girl talk and then Emma tells Val absolutely everything.
After she shares the whole story, they talk about their friendship
and how they're both a little jealous of each other and it's a very
wholesome girls-supporting-girls moment but it's WAY out of place
here. Still, it's nice to see girls actually acting like friends in
PH land.
Val thinks there might be a solution to
the problem that won't require Emma to die. She suggests they hold a
seance. They present the idea to Charlie who is reluctant because
he's the sensible one. They lie and say that SML and TML said that
if they connect with Daniel he might leave Emma alone. Val thinks
they need to do it that night because the next day is the anniversary
which means they don't have much time if Emma is to avoid death.
Charlie thinks they don't know the whole story. Daniel promised to
save 👤Emma F👤 and he DID. 👤Emma F👤 got away and was safe. So why is he
still looking for her? Charlie thinks Daniel's motives might not be
as romance-novel-esque as Emma and Val are trying to make them.
Charlie is scared to death that
something might go wrong and Emma could get hurt but the girls are
persistent and they finally wear him down. He agrees to have the
séance later that night at the Farmington house.
We skip in time to that evening.
Charlie goes into the Farmington house first but, before Val can
follow him, Emma stops her. She says she thinks this is wrong. It's
dangerous and they have to get Charlie out of there now. She has to
do this alone. Val laughs at the idea that Charlie is going to let
her do it alone. Emma is uneasy. She just knows something bad is
going to happen.
They find Charlie in the room with the
fireplaces and he predictably refuses to leave Emma there alone.
They set up their candles and things and Emma begins to call out to
Daniel. The only issue is when 👤Emma F👤 takes over, she doesn't know
who Charlie and Val are and she thinks they're intruders sent by her
father to keep her and Daniel apart. Something attacks them both –
hitting Val and choking Charlie.
What follows is super confusing. I
read it three times and I'm still not sure I know what happened. It
seemed to follow the first experience with Daniel and 👤Emma F👤 running to
the barn and the barn catching on fire. This time Daniel drags 👤Emma F👤 to the back of the barn toward a window up high that is covered
with boards. They are both covered in his blood and he is clearly
weak. He climbs up to take the boards off so 👤Emma F👤 can get out the
window but before she can, the roof falls or something and she
is.....killed I think?? I'm hoping Emma will explain things to
Charlie and Val later so Cusick will explain it to me.
Emma comes back to herself with Val
frantically trying to wake her up. Charlie's been badly beaten but
Val has no idea how or by whom. Charlie is in severe pain and thinks
something might be broken. Val says they have to get him out of
there. Emma just keeps nonsensically saying that she thought she was
there but she wasn't. Helpful.
Finally Emma seems to come around a
little more and she tells them that 👤Emma F👤 definitely died that night.
Daniel is the one who escaped.
Emma and Val take Charlie to the
hospital. Val's dad is working in the ER and they tell him that
Charlie fell down the stairs. He has a broken collarbone and is
pretty banged up. They put his arm in a sling and send him home.
Their mom is stuck at their aunt's house because a freak snowstorm
blew up out of nowhere so the twins are on their own in true PH
style. At least their mom exists and isn't in Europe. She's
appeared in this book way more times than most PH parents.
They review everything that happened
and I had it right I guess. They theorize that Daniel got out and
got away and that he probably came back a year later and killed
Josiah. Now he's on this endless quest to save 👤Emma F👤 because he
couldn't the first time. The Lobergs were wrong about the endgame.
Emma doesn't have to die – Daniel has to save her.
Charlie is pissed. He doesn't want her
to put herself in danger again. She tells him that she doesn't have
a choice. Daniel won't stop until he saves 👤Emma F👤 and she won't be
able to get away from him. To prove her point, Daniel seizes control
of Emma's heart and it starts to beat faster and faster. She goes
into something that looks like a seizure and Val and Charlie panic.
Finally Daniel releases her and she comes to again more determined
than ever to end this.
They finally get poor Charlie home and
Emma gives him the pills that the doctor prescribed. They're pretty
heavy-duty and will probably knock him out cold for several hours.
He's thankful for that because he's in pretty intense pain. He can't
get himself undressed so Val volunteers to help him and he doesn't
protest. Emma discreetly leaves them alone.
Val and Charlie come up with a plan.
They believe that Daniel will try to replicate the fire so he can
save Emma and it will be tomorrow on the anniversary. They are going
to stick with her the entire time because history can't repeat itself
with extra people in the way. Emma gets oddly angry about it because
Charlie getting hurt tonight proves that they can't protect her.
They'll just mess everything up.
Val confides that Charlie kissed her
upstairs after she got his shirt off and Emma feel very alone. The
only man she ever loved is actually dead and now her best friend and
her brother are going to be a couple and won't have time for her.
That's why most people don't want their best friends dating their
brothers, Em. Sheesh.
Emma feels so mean and petty about it
that she tells Val about the bet. Val is crushed and Emma
immediately tries to backpedal and say that Charlie has clearly
always loved Val but Val doesn't believe her. She begins to cry and
ends up running from the house out into the blizzard. Emma watches
her drive away feeling terrible.
The guilt begins to eat at Emma.
Charlie is laying upstairs bruised and broken and Val is driving off
in dangerous conditions and might get hurt as well. The two of them
are probably never going to get together now which will only crush
both of them and it's all Emma's fault. I kind of agree with her
here. The clock strikes midnight and she decides to just go get this
over with. She figures she deserves whatever is going to happen to
her.
She goes to the house and Daniel meets
her at the door. He tells her that he's always loved her – so much
that there's been no rest or peace for him since she was taken away.
He gives her a choice. She can leave now and he'll let her be or she
can come inside and let things play out the way they are supposed to.
She knows she loves him. She's been searching for him her entire
life and she can't leave him to suffer. She steps inside.
Suddenly we're transported to the barn
scene again. Daniel is frantically trying to get the boards off the
window as the roof collapses on Emma. He apologizes to her over and
over and she tells him it wasn't his fault. 👤 Emma F👤 wasn't meant to
survive for whatever reason but their love survived and that's all
that mattered. She absolves him and then suddenly it's over and
she's waking up in the snow in the yard of the Farmington house and
it's on fire.
It's suddenly a week later and Emma and
Charlie are over at the Lobergs filling them in on what happened.
This is a completely disturbing chapter with both of the elderly
ladies full on flirting with poor Charlie and poor Charlie feeling
horrifically uncomfortable. This is not okay, Cusick. I have no
idea why you thought you needed this but you ABSOLUTELY did not. Anyway, Emma gives the ring to
the Lobergs and she and Charlie leave to get him to a doctor's
appointment. Charlie asks her if she misses Daniel and she says she
misses the way Daniel loved her. She and Val have kind of patched
things up and there's hope for Val and Charlie but we don't get to
know for sure because the book ends.
This book was unusual for a Cusick. It was much better written than the books I'm used to from her and the characters were normal teenagers who had healthy relationships with each other. Val and Emma's friendship was one of the best in PH land and there were no creepy incest moments with Emma and Charlie which was a nice change. There weren't even very many dashes or ellipses. It almost didn't read like a Cusick at all. Which makes me wonder....did someone bury her in their backyard and take over her career??????
No comments:
Post a Comment