Free The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

convinced that his sister was right after all. Color and life were better, even if they came with pain and death attached. Wow, thanks for the explanation, Hollywood. I said, “I’m glad that Emmy feels safe. It means we’re doing a good job.”
    “Maybe. But we’re just doing what we always did.” A pause. “I don’t think it’s only about us.”
    I saw where she was going. “Murdoch,” I said. “You’re saying that Emmy feels safe because of Murdoch. Even though he’s gone.”
    Callie’s hands gripped each other. “Look. I’m not sure how to say this. But Matt, it’s time to stop dreaming. It’s time to live in the real world. All of us, I mean. Emmy. You.” A pause. “And me.”
    Was that an admission? It didn’t matter. I said, “I do live in the real world.”
    “You know what I’m trying to say,” said Callie softly.
    I did. I hoped she wouldn’t say it out loud, but she did. It didn’t matter that her voice stayed soft.
    “Matt, it’s all over. He’s gone.”
    “I know that,” I said.
    “No, you don’t. You’re still hoping, like Emmy. But you know what? Murdoch’s not some superhero who’s going to swoop in and change everything. That dream is over. Our life is what it is. Don’t you see? It’s getting dangerous to go on dreaming that it’s going to be different.”
    “Because of what Emmy said tonight.”
    “That’s not the only thing,” said Callie, even more softly. And then I did turn to look at her. In an instant I knew.
    I said, “You heard Nikki this afternoon. You heard what she was threatening about Murdoch.”
    Callie nodded.
    I shrugged. “I’ll warn him,” I said.
    “No,” said Callie. “You have to forget him. Not pretend to. Really forget. We have to get on with our lives as they are. Listen, Matt. Think for a minute. Even when you went to talk to Daddy, you were really thinking about Murdoch. You were trying to make Ben be Murdoch.”
    “No,” I said. “That’s not true.”
    “It is.”
    “No,” I said again. But in fact, she was right that I’d had superhero fantasies, father fantasies . . .
    “I’m sorry,” Callie was saying. “Matt, I’m so sorry. I wish it had all come true. But it didn’t. Okay? We agree?”
    I nodded. “Yes.”
    “We can get back to normal here if we try. That’s what we need to do. We need to get back to thinking and feeling exactly the way we did before. It’s the only way to reassure Mom.”
    “But how are we supposed to do that?” I said. “Program ourselves to forget? I can’t. Emmy can’t.”
    “We just pretend.”
    “I’ve been pretending.”
    “We have to do a good job at it. A great job.”
    I was silent.
    “Will you try, Matt? We can’t mention him or even think of him. We have to erase him from our memories. He has to be dead to us. That time, last summer—it never happened. It was just like the summer before.” Callie got right in my face. “Emmy’s only little, Matt. Just six. If we help her to forget, she will.”
    “What if she doesn’t?”
    “She will if we show her how,” said Callie. And then she added, “And so will you. In time, we’ll all forget.” She waited.
    I didn’t believe I would. I also didn’t believe we could go back in time. But Callie was right that you, Emmy, couldn’t be allowed to goad Nikki. “Okay,” I said.

19
     
    DEMONS
     
    What neither Callie nor I knew that night, as we talked about trying to go back in time in our relationship with Nikki, was that things were changing in our mother—just as you, Callie, and I had changed. I believe it had to do with Murdoch, Murdoch as kind of a catalyzing experience in our lives, the chemical ingredient that made an already poisonous compound unstable as well. I might be wrong; it might simply have been time itself that destabilized us so sharply and so permanently. Whatever it was, the end result was the same: No amount of pretending could take us back to the way we were before.
    The change in Nikki over