But it probably was true that she couldn’t understand what I was feeling right now. I had always been the little sister, always been the one who wasn’t big enough, wasn’t old enough. The one who didn’t understand the inside jokes and was left out of the talks about boys. And now I was left out in the worst possible way.
By the time I got home, I had cooled down. I had talked myself down off the ledge. I saw AJ and Taylor out on the dock, in their tiny life jackets, fishing. They were both blond from all the sun and so tan. If anything could make me feel better, it was those two.
“What you doing, dudes?” I asked.
Taylor was scooping minnows with a tiny net and putting them into a bucket. Poor minnows.
“Just fishin’,” AJ said. He looked up at me, and I realized he had his goggles on. I made my most serious face to keep from laughing. “Aunt Emmy,” he said, as I sat down on the dock, cross-legged. “Do fish love one another?”
I smiled. Taylor was looking at me now, too, rapt with attention.
“Well, sure,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged.
“Do you love someone?” I asked, putting the pieces together.
Taylor threw his arms around my neck and said, “I love you!” giving me a slobbery kiss right on the lips. I pulled him into my lap and wrapped my arms around him, resting my head on his. He was so adorable.
“I love Caitlyn in my class,” AJ said.
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Why do you love her?”
He cast his line again, thinking, and said, “I love her because she always runs as fast as she can.”
“That is a great reason, bud,” a deep voice from underneath me said.
“Oh, my gosh!” I gasped. “Adam, you scared me to death.”
I looked down and saw that he was sitting in the kayak, almost under the dock because the tide was so low. “I wondered why the boys were out here alone.”
“Oh, you know,” he said, “they’re two and four now, so we just slap a life jacket on them and let them have at it.”
We both laughed.
I fished with the boys for a little longer and then walked straight to the guesthouse to avoid seeing Mom. But as I turned down the street, I saw someone even worse walking toward me: Jack. I had been avoiding him, too, because heaven knew he wasn’t going to know what to say to me. I thought about turning around, but after a few seconds of rationality, it seemed immature.
I waved and kept looking straight ahead as I passed him.
“Emerson,” he said softly.
I had to stop, didn’t I?
“I just can’t,” I said.
He nodded. “I understand. You don’t have to do anything. I don’t want anything from you.”
Well, that sounded nice. Everyone always wanted something from me: to put in a good word with my agent, to critique their audition tape, to appear at their fund-raiser, to endorse their product. The only people who never really wanted anything from me were my sisters and my mom. They let me be myself, and they loved me anyway. And I was shutting them out and acting like an infant because of some perceived slight that, really, none of them could help. I bit my lip to keep from crying. Not because I was sad but because, suddenly, I was all filled up. I wasn’t half of Caroline or Sloane’s sister. I wasn’t less of Mom’s child. I wasn’t less a part of my own family.
Jack said, “Well, maybe you could come find me when you are ready?”
He was walking away when I said, “Say what you need to say, Jack.”
He turned and smiled at me. “Oh, God. I didn’t expect that. I have nothing prepared.”
I couldn’t help but half-smile.
He put his hands in his pockets, jangling his change nervously. “I guess I just need you to know that I wanted to be in their lives, Emerson. I wanted to know my daughters.”
