A Christmas to Cherish (A Festive Christmas #4)

Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

H enry’s eyes widened as he began to cough. His glasses fell off, and his eyes watered as he doubled over. Marie jumped to action, thumping him on the back. Emma lurched over to where he was parked and knelt in front of him. In a daze, she lifted the bottle of water to his lips and helped him hold it up. His bright eyes fixed on her face and grew clearer. Slowly, she handed him back his glasses, and he lifted his chin.

After a few sips of water, he pushed her hand away and cleared his throat. “I’m fine. I’m all right.”

Emma frowned and peered into his ashen face—at the thin sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. “You’re not. You had a stroke a few days ago. You should be resting in bed.”

Henry shook his head and tightened his shoulders. “No, I should be here. I need to see this through.”

Emma rose to her feet and frowned. “You can’t be serious. Why would you want to risk your health for treasure?”

Especially when they were going to bring it back to him.

Emma wasn’t sure of the specifics, but she knew they could find a way between the six of them.

Even if it meant having to be stealthy and discreet.

Her father deserved to have the reveal be from the comfort of a bed, with the best doctors and nurses in the area waiting in the wings.

Because she had no idea how he would take any of this.

Half of Emma was afraid it was going to send him headfirst into another stroke. Another half of her was terrified the reveal would only push him further away into the labyrinths of his mind, lost to them forever.

Henry linked his fingers in his lap, and his expression turned grave. “You don’t understand. I know what the treasure is.”

Emma froze and glanced at the faces of the others gathered. Most of them met her gaze with shell-shocked expressions.

Except for her mother.

Was this another one of their lies?

Had Emma walked right into it?

“A few months ago, I started looking into my father’s research and trying to put the pieces together. I called in a few favors at Oxford and Harvard, and we managed to decode some of the letters. My father didn’t bury treasure. He buried his research.”

Emma’s ears were ringing now, and she thought she could feel the ground beneath her feet shift. “What?”

“I knew if I told you the truth, you’d dismiss me. You haven’t been interested in astronomy in years, not the way you used to be, and I needed to get you here.”

Emma opened and closed her mouth several times.

Marley said something in the background, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

“So, you…you lied to get me here?”

He’d lured her here under false pretenses and had her chasing her tail for the past ten days, all in the hopes that she was doing something good.

As if trying to pull her family back together wasn’t hard enough.

“You had to come back to Rockport,” Henry continued in the same even tone. “You needed to reconnect with who you were, and I couldn’t force you to do that.”

“No, you decided to trick me instead.” Her words were hollow and strained, even to her own ears, but she wasn’t sure how else she was supposed to respond.

Or how she was meant to react to any of this.

Emma wanted to hide behind the nearest bush and empty the contents of her stomach. She swallowed, and the hot chocolate rose to the back of her throat, tasting like bile.

How could her father do this to her?

“I didn’t want to trick you,” Henry maintained. “But I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist looking into the mystery of the eclipse. So, I’ve been talking about it for months, getting the rest of the townspeople interested enough that I knew you’d hear about it when you came.”

Emma took an unsteady step back, and her chest tightened. “The letters and everything in your drawer? You planted them there?”

Henry nodded. “I did. I usually have your grandfather’s things in the attic, but I figured having them in my study would be easier. I knew you’d figure it out, honey. You just needed some time and a push in the right direction.”

Emma took another step away and made a vague hand gesture. “Marley and Jack were in on it too?”

“What? No, Emma, we would never—” Jack began, his eyes flashing as he lurched toward her.

“Neither of them knew what I was planning,” Henry interrupted with a sharp look in Jack’s direction. “But I knew they’d be able to help you. The three of you always liked working together, and I knew you just needed a nudge.”

Emma glanced over his shoulders at her mother, who was staring at her feet. “You knew about this?”

Marie swallowed and lifted her gaze. “I began to have my suspicions a few days ago.”

Emma let out a low, humorless laugh. “So, you had me wasting all this time on stupid folklore.”

Henry shook his head. “No, there is a Sullivan family treasure, but it’s not gold. It’s not even material. According to what I’ve read, it’s my father’s astronomical research, things he had been working on during the war and in the days leading up to his death. Based on his notes, I have every reason to believe that whatever he unlocked is going to be groundbreaking.”

Silence stretched between them.

“I was going to go looking for the treasure myself, but when I started feeling sick, I knew I had to bring you back, Emma. You have to finish what I started. You’re the only one who can.”

Emma’s legs buckled and gave out before she knew what was happening.

One minute, she was gawking at her parents.

The next, she felt a pair of arms slide around her shoulders and prop her up against the nearest tree. Then, Jack was kneeling in front of her, holding a water bottle up to her lips. She kept her eyes on his kind and familiar face and took a few long sips of the cool drink, hoping it would drown out the roaring in her ears.

What was happening?

What mixed-up alternate reality had she wound up in?

And why hadn’t her parents just been honest with her?

Was it just because they were incapable, or did they really believe deception and trickery were the only ways?

“I think we all need to give her some space to breathe,” Jack said, raising his voice to be heard over the arguing. “This is all a little too much.”

Henry’s voice cut through the fog and the dim chatter around her. “Emma, do you remember how you and I used to spend hours in the backyard, and you wanted to learn about the stars? Remember what I taught you about the great big universes out there and the planets that inhabit them?”

Emma pushed the bottle away, swallowed, and looked directly at her father. “What are you talking about?”

“I know I shouldn’t have lured you here under false pretenses, but I knew you wouldn’t resist digging into the truth about the eclipse,” Henry continued, smiling when Marie wheeled him closer. “I hoped that after you learned the truth, you’d stay to help me change your grandfather’s legacy.”

In spite of Jack’s protests, Emma pushed herself up to her feet, her head still swimming. “What I don’t understand is why you felt you couldn’t tell me the truth. Why did you feel like you had to sensationalize the whole thing just to get me to stay?”

Why had they found her lacking, the way they usually did?

She pushed her hair out of her eyes and folded her hands over her chest. “Why wasn’t I good enough for the truth, huh?”

Silence settled over the group, and everyone shifted from one foot to another.

“Why don’t we all go see the eclipse from across the street? I heard the view is much better.” Marley linked her arm through Jules’s and tugged. She offered Emma a sympathetic smile as Jack approached Kyle and drew him into conversation. Once they were far out of earshot, Emma covered the distance between them and stopped directly in front of her parents.

But she didn’t even know where to start anymore.

Suddenly, after weeks of chasing theories and pouring over maps, whatever was in the ground didn’t seem to matter anymore.

It didn’t have any kind of appeal for her.

Even as the minutes ticked, drawing the location of her grandfather’s research ever closer, Emma didn’t care anymore.

“I know you’re upset,” Marie began in a soft voice. “But this had nothing to do with you being good enough. Your father just wanted a chance to make amends.”

Emma made a choked sound and threw her hands up in the air. “And this is how you chose to do it? What happened to just asking for help?”

“Would you have come?” Henry’s eyes moved over her face; his pale features illuminated by the dim lighting from a nearby streetlamp. “If I had told you about the eclipse from the beginning, would you have still come?”

Emma dropped her hands and cleared her throat. “Well, yeah. Maybe not right away, but I could’ve made time.”

Especially if it meant bridging the distance between them.

The crushing weight of it had been pressing down on her, making her question things long before the letter came in the mail.

She hadn’t needed some elaborate plot to get her home.

Why hadn’t her parents seen that?

“I wasn’t sure it would be enough,” Henry whispered, shaking his head. “I couldn’t take that risk. You had to be here on time, or we would’ve missed our chance.”

Emma frowned. “So, you tricked me into coming here because you didn’t want to miss the chance to uncover more of Grandpa’s legacy? It’s always about the research, isn’t it? It’s never about what’s happening down here on Earth. I hope you’re happy, Dad.”

She spun on her heel and strode past them, tears burning the backs of her eyes.

Her mother’s voice drew her back and stopped her in her tracks.

“They found a tumor in my breast,” Marie said to her retreating back. “That’s what the health scare was. They were able to get all of it out during surgery, but I had to do a few rounds of chemo after, and there was talk of a mastectomy…”

Emma made herself turn around, even as her heart thumped painfully inside of her chest. “What?”

“I’m fine now,” Marie added before stepping out from behind Henry’s wheelchair. “But I was terrified. When they ran the labs and did the PET scans, I kept thinking to myself that I didn’t want to die and leave things as they were between us.”

Emma’s eyes welled with tears, and her stomach dipped. “Is that why Dad took care of you?”

“The studio wasn’t happy with how many days I was missing, and there was talk of me being fired. My agent had to step in and tell them the truth, against my wishes. I didn’t want anyone to know. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone seeing me that way. I was so weak and frail…”

Emma bridged the distance between them and took her mother’s hands in hers. “You are not weak. You have never been weak.”

And knowing the truth only made Emma appreciate her mom all the more.

She couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like to keep all of it to herself—to hide away from the world for fear of rejection—especially when the world had gotten used to seeing her as a glamorous and elegant star.

“If it weren’t for your father, I don’t know what I would’ve done.” Marie withdrew one hand and placed it on his shoulder. “We want things to be better between us, Emma. Maybe we didn’t go about it the right way, but our hearts have always been in the right place.”

“I’m sorry about how I got you here,” Henry added in a whisper-soft voice. “I hope you can forgive us.”

Emma glanced between the two of them.

Then, she threw one arm around her father and the other around her mother, drawing them in for a hug. The three of them cried in silence for all the wasted time they had lost. A part of Emma was still furious over how they’d led her here, but for the first time in weeks, she understood her parents better now.

Thinking that they were out of time had made them desperate and reckless.

She couldn’t fault them for resorting to extreme measures.

And it had gotten her back to Rockport, after all.

Everything else, she could get over.