It was the last thing she’d expected her mother to say.
“Do you know that?”
Emma felt herself sag in the middle of the foyer. “Yeah, Mom. I do.”
“No matter what you do, nothing will change that. You got that?”
Unable to speak, Emma nodded.
“Good.” Emma watched her swipe at a stray tear. “Okay, then. Let’s talk in the morning.”
As her mother disappeared down the hall from view, something inside Emma gave. The night had been a car wreck. And yet.
Emma wandered into the dark kitchen. Outside the rain battered the windows, but she left the lights out. She felt jumpy, and she itched for something to allay it. To take the edge off. She paused at the liquor cabinet, and continued on.
For the first time in ages she was hungry. Like starving. She’d barely eaten at her grandparents’. Let’s be honest, she’d barely eaten in weeks. She tugged the refrigerator door open. Light spilled from the cavernous interior, and Emma blinked in its glow. Then she began reaching. For a block of cheddar. For the pitcher of iced tea. In a glass container she found leftover pesto pasta. In another, tiny meatballs. From the cabinets and drawers she grabbed a plate, a cutting block, utensils. Then she sat down and dug in.
When she’d emptied her entire plate, she shoveled more forkfuls of pasta into her mouth straight from the container. Who knew cold spaghetti could taste like heaven? As she filled herself, her thoughts meandered. She thought of Sully. Of the bravery it must’ve taken to walk up her front steps and be confronted by her father. The same way he’d stood up to the camp director that first day when he was late: not with disrespect, but with confidence. Not because he thought he was all that. But because it was the right thing to do. He wasn’t like Amanda Hastings and some of the others. Sully McMahon cared.
Just as she cared about Alicia. Tomorrow, she would go to Alicia’s house and apologize. Even if it meant facing Chet. Even if Alicia was still upset with her. There was something to be said for lifelong friendships. Just because you grew up together didn’t mean you grew at the same pace, or even in the same direction. Sometimes you grew away from each other, and that was okay, too.
The last thing she thought about was something Great-Grandma Elsie had said at dinner that night, about family trees. Emma thought about her own family, picturing each one of them. All lined up together in a great big forest. Grandpa Edward was like an old oak, staid and sure. Just like Jane, though her branches were more colorful, her leaves a fiery red. Her mother was slender and delicate, maybe a white birch, who bent and flexed with the seasons, never breaking. Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Jake were probably the most alike, vibrant and full, with branches that shot skyward in every direction. Jake’s toward all the places he had traveled to, the adventures he’d had, the people he’d collected along the way. And Phoebe’s toward her husband and children, her leaves rippling with her big ideas and even bigger laughs, but always circling back, like vines, wrapping around her family and her home.
It was her father where Emma had trouble. She thought harder. If Perry Goodwin were a tree, he was unlike the others in his family. His trunk was straight and true. It rose dutifully out of the ground in one direction, due north. His leaves may not have been as frilly and soft, or as vibrantly colored, as the others in the forest. But Emma knew one thing: they were strong. They were branches you could climb on, and branches you could swing from. They provided sound shade on an unforgiving day, and respite from the rains.
As she sat alone in the dark kitchen and filled her stomach with food, Emma contemplated her own place in the forest. She was a sapling. A branch or two may have cracked. Hell, she’d broken more than a few. But saplings gave and flexed. Where one twig snapped, another unfurled. Always reaching toward the light. From now on, she’d try to grow toward the light. Alongside her fellow trees. Because underneath them all, where the soil was dark and pithy, their roots ran together. A complicated tangle of tuber and stem, root and rhizome coursing through shared earth. They were hers.
Suddenly a roll of thunder rumbled overhead and a flash of light filled the foyer windows, but it was not lightning. Emma watched the headlights cut through the dark, spilling across the marble floor and into the kitchen where she sat. Emma pushed her empty plate away. When the front door opened, and her father filled its frame, she ran to him. There was nothing she needed to say. Her father flung his arms open like branches, and she fell into their shelter.
Olivia
She and Luci lay side by side in the dark, exhausted. Jake was downstairs on the couch, unable to speak since Perry had left. They’d not talked much to each other on the way home from the disastrous dinner party, but Olivia had prattled on about things outside the window and what a nice dinner Jane had made… on and on, wondering what Luci had heard or thought about the whole unendingly awful evening. Olivia was pretty sure she’d managed to whisk her out before it got too ugly, but still—kids instinctively felt when things were wrong. They always knew. Now, side by side in the solitude of Luci’s bedroom, was the chance to talk to Luci about it. But Olivia wasn’t sure where to begin. “That was quite a dinner,” Olivia whispered. “I’m sorry that some of Jake’s family seemed mad. I hope it didn’t upset you.”
In the darkness, Luci slipped her fingers into Olivia’s hand.
Olivia went on. “This is what it means to be in a family, Lu. Sometimes people laugh and play and talk together, and sometimes they argue. Just like with friends. Or with husbands and wives. Sometimes people who love each other get mad at each other.” Olivia felt her throat tightening, as she spoke, and she had to pause.
“Are you mad? At Jake?” Luci’s voice was so soft and the room so dark and her head so heavy, Olivia wasn’t sure if she was hearing things. She rolled over, face-to-face, and from the faint hallway light she could see the question in her daughter’s eyes.
“Lu Lu!” She’d heard right.
“Are you?” Luci asked again.
Olivia pressed her hands quickly to her eyes, and smiled. “No, baby. I was mad, but I’m not anymore. Jake and I are having some quiet time now, and then we will sit together and talk. That’s what you do when you love someone. Right?”
Luci nodded, but she still looked unsure.
“Tonight, I learned something I didn’t know. That Emma was driving the boat before the accident.”
Luci nodded again.
“It’s important to tell the truth, Lu. Even when you love somebody and don’t want them to get in trouble.”
Luci rolled over on her side, nose to nose with Olivia. “I like Emma.”
Olivia was so relieved to hear the whisper of words coming from her daughter, it almost didn’t matter what she was saying. And yet it did. Now they could confront that day. Maybe not tonight, maybe not for a while. But Luci was talking. Some tied-up, knotted piece inside her had worked itself loose, and with it, finally, came her words. And with those would come her thoughts, her worries, her feelings;allof her little self.
Oliva wrapped her arms around Luci and pulled her in close against her chest. “Sweet girl. You are safe and you are loved.”
