“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. I’ll let you know what I believe when I am safely on the sidewalk.”
“Here, let me,” Cooper said. He stepped in between Emma and the chair, grabbed the handles of Leo’s chair, easily tipped him back and put his front wheels on the curb, and then the back wheels. “There you go,” he said to Leo. “I think it’s probably a straight shot from here. Want me to push you home?”
“I’ve got it,” Emma said, and elbowed her way in front of Cooper, shoving against his hard chest. He budged only a little.
“You okay, Leo?” Cooper asked again, unwilling to move until he heard from the horse’s ass.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” Leo said. “I guess I freaked out a little when this delicate little flower couldn’t get me up here. And she hasn’t eaten, so I am expecting her to faint at any moment.”
“Why haven’t you eaten?” Cooper asked, frowning at her.
“I ah . . . haven’t had time,” she said crisply. “But I’m fine. I’m not even hungry.” She hoped he couldn’t hear the rumbling in her stomach.
“Maybe you could take her to dinner,” Leo said. “We could postpone our—”
“Thanks, Leo, but I have plans!” Emma said.
Cooper smiled slowly and easily at her fluster. His gaze wandered down her body, causing her starved belly to tingle even more. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
“I don’t think so,” Emma snorted.
“We’ll see,” Cooper said, and leaned around her to put his hand on Leo’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“Could not be better!” Leo said. “You have made my day, Cooper Jessup. I’m so stoked you came into town.”
“Okay, all right,” Emma said, pushing against Cooper and leaning into the chair to get it moving. “We need to go.”
“I’ll see you tonight, Leo,” Cooper said, and then caught Emma’s arm, forcing her to stop and look at him. “I’ll see you later, too,” he said, his voice annoyingly and knee-bendingly stern.
“That’s great,” Leo said. “We were just talking about how Em’s going to try and get out more. You know, socialize with people. I can’t be her sun and her moon, you know what I’m saying?”
Cooper chuckled.
“He’s not funny,” Emma said. “Don’t laugh at him. And don’t get some idea that we’re going to be friends, because we’re not, Cooper. Not now, not ever.”
“Ouch,” Cooper said with a funny little smile.
“Leo and I really need to go.”
“No we don’t,” Leo said.
“We’ll see about the friend thing, Em,” Cooper said with a wink, and leaned around her, giving Leo’s chair a push to get it started.
Emma gave the chair another heave and began to move Leo along as quickly as she could.
“Thanks, Cooper!” Leo called out.
“Welcome!” Cooper called back.
She wasn’t going to look back. She was not going to look back.
Damn it, she looked back.
Cooper was standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, watching her. Expressionless. Virile. Kryptonite.
“Total hottie,” Leo said, wheezing a little.
“Oh my God,” Emma said. “Are you serious right now?”
“Well, he is. Way to draw him in, Em! I mean, if you get any warmer and fuzzier, we might have to call a fire truck. You want my advice?”
“No.”
“My advice is to be nice to him. It’s no skin off your nose. Who knows, he might even feed you.”
“I can feed myself,” Emma muttered.
But Leo was right. She could be abrupt, especially when she was flustered. She’d never been a sweet girl, that was for sure. Nothing but brass tacks and nails coming out of that mouth, her mother used to say. Even as a little girl, Emma had understood she wasn’t considered to be a nice girl, like Laura or Libby. If she could have figured out how to change that about herself, to become personable, she would have done it in a heartbeat. It sure would have saved her a lot of agony through the years. Unfortunately, having a way with words always seemed to elude her, like it had just now, with Cooper.
But then again, what was the nice way to tell someone to get lost?
Emma knew Leo was hurting when she wheeled him into the little house on Elm Street. He wasn’t hungry, either, which seemed to bother Bob more than usual. “What’s happened to your appetite, Son?” he demanded, as if Leo had eaten a jar full of cookies.
“I don’t know, Dad. It could be the delicious selection of pulverized food you offer me every night,” he said, and laughed. But even his laugh sounded a little off. When his care attendant came at four, Leo asked him to put him in bed.
He looked so thin and uncomfortable in that hospital bed, and there was a crease between his eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. “Should I get Bob?” Emma asked.
“No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” he said at Emma’s look of concern. “I’ve got a full night lined up—it’s the Real Housewives reunion show, and then hockey! I don’t even have time to explain to you how important this game is for the Bruins.”
“Thank God,” Emma said, and smiled at Leo. She touched his temple.
“Cut it out,” Leo said, his eyes twinkling above his permanently lopsided grin. “Dad will have a heart attack if he knows how into me you are.”
“He already knows. I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and leaned down to kiss the top of his head.
“Stop,” Leo groaned. “Get out of here. But you better come back here with some gossip! The Methodist ladies are coming over tomorrow afternoon, and if I don’t have some meat for them, they will draw blood.”
Emma laughed. The Methodist Women’s Group had adopted Leo as their cause. When they came to see him, they gathered around like hens, picking at the gossipy morsels Leo tossed out to them. “Don’t stay up too late,” she warned him. “You’re always such a grump if you stay up too late.”
“Hush, I can still catch the end of Dr. Phil,” Leo said.
Emma left him lying there, his gaze fixed on the TV.
She gathered her things, said goodbye to Bob and the nurse, and drove down Elm Street to the main drag. But instead of turning right to head out of town toward the ranch, she went left, into town, like she did every day the weather was good. She drove past the faux-Western storefronts, past Tag’s Outfitters, past the Grizzly Lodge. She drove until she reached the city park and playground on the other end of town.
Emma parked and walked to the wooden bench under the oak trees, taking a seat on the peeling paint, careful to avoid the old bird droppings. The faint smell of stale smoke wafting out from someone’s chimney filled the air. It was a bright day, but cool, and the sun was starting its slide down behind the mountaintops.
Emma pulled her sweater coat tightly around her and wished she’d thought to bring gloves. She trailed her forefinger over the name carved into the seat of the bench. Tashi. She wondered if Tashi was a boy or a girl. If Tashi was grown or one of the teenage girls who hung out at the park and, once, overtook her bench with their cell phones and magpie chatter. She wondered if Tashi was happy or if Tashi looked up at the sunlight glittering through the bare branches of the oak tree and wished to be far from Pine River, in a different family with different siblings and parents and friends.
With the exception of Tashi’s name, Emma liked this bench. Actually, she felt like she owned it. It was far enough from the playground so that she didn’t look like a stalker, and yet close enough that she could see the kids.
The kids, her kids, were outside today as she knew they would be—they were in the park every afternoon when the weather was good. They were three siblings, two girls and a boy, all within six to eight years old. They lived across the street from the park in one of the identical
Craftsman houses that filled this neighborhood. Sometimes, Emma saw their mother on the porch, a cup of coffee in her hand, watching them. But most of the time the children were alone, probably watched by their mother through the big plate-glass windows of her house. Emma could picture her preparing an evening meal with one eye on her children through the windows. Spaghetti, Emma mused, to be heaped onto big plates, over which the kids would report the details of their day.
The three of them were a tribe, always on the move. Emma loved watching the paths their imaginations took them each afternoon, carrying them deep into a fantasy world where their characters took shape, rising up so real that Emma could almost see them: superheroes, moms and dads, teachers, spies, bad guys and good guys. Emma wanted to go with them, to disappear into the world they’d created.
Emma had named the kids, too. Finn was the boy. He was the ringleader, instructing the girls what to do, and deciding what make-believe would be played that day. Or at least it seemed so from where Emma sat. She’d named the girls Quinn and Brynn. They were very close in age. She liked how the two of them sported a different accessory each day—princess dress or cowboy hat, scepter or sword.
Emma had also envisioned a mother and father for these children, a hearth and home. She imagined them gathered around the kitchen table, coloring. Or after dinner, the family engaged in some board game, their Ozzie-and-Harriet parents lovingly admiring their brood.
Emma imagined all these things a few afternoons a week.
She was acutely aware that it was a weird thing to do. She couldn’t even say why she did it. She wasn’t crazy—she didn’t need a trip to the psych ward like Libby had last summer. But for reasons that Emma had long ago allowed to escape her, these kids, this fantasy, made her feel good. It made her feel normal. Lovable. As if she could be part of something like this.
It would be easier for Emma to understand her compulsion to see these kids if she’d had a difficult childhood, but her childhood had been okay. Even when her mother had tried to reconcile with her absentee father, it had been relatively normal.
Emma was nine or ten when Grant had shown up in California with Libby in tow. Of course Emma had been thrilled that her father had appeared at her house to live, instead of the occasional holiday or quick weekend trip to the beach with her and her mother as had been the norm for the first years of her life. Emma had never really understood where her father went in between those short visits. She’d asked her mother about him, had even imagined that he was an important person, like a soldier, or the president—someone whose job was so critical that he couldn’t come around more often than he did.
But then, like magic, he’d appeared on their doorstep with Libby, a robust figure, his smile as infectious as his laugh. “I’m going to marry your mother,” he’d confided in Emma, and Emma had worshipped him.
Unfortunately, the reconciliation was a fiasco. Her parents never married. They survived only eighteen months of each other, and then it was over. Her father disappeared from her life again, and so did Libby. A few months after that, Emma’s mother met and eventually married Wes.
Wes was a single father. Emma would never forget the first time she met his daughter, Laura. She was only a few months older than Emma and had short auburn hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a wide grin. She was sunny and outgoing—all the things Emma was not. Laura also had a motorized scooter, a huge point in her favor.
They were quickly friends and soon after, sisters. Emma adored Laura. They wore matching socks, braided their hair the same way, and giggled about boys. They attended public school together, attended sleepovers, and were elected cheerleaders to the same squad. They’d even experienced their first kiss on the same beach on the same night.
Emma confided everything in Laura. She believed Laura was just like her, a cosmic twin, the closest thing to her in mind and spirit as could possibly exist. It was a perfect union, a perfectly melded family. Perhaps the only imperfect thing about it was that Emma’s mother loved Laura, too. Loved her so much that, at about the age of thirteen or fourteen, Emma had begun to feel as if her mother loved Laura more than her. Laura could do no wrong. Laura was effervescent and happy and, as her stepfather had explained, “socially adept.”
“Whereas you can come off as sullen and strange,” her mother had matter-of-factly added.
Still, Emma couldn’t complain about her childhood. It was pretty good as those things go, right up to the summer of her seventeenth year. What happened that summer had not tainted her childhood—it had tainted everything going forward and had sent her spinning off in a destructive direction. That summer, she learned what men saw in women, what they really wanted from life: sex.
That wasn’t all Emma had learned that summer. She’d also discovered just how hard and deep a slash of betrayal could penetrate a person. Bone deep. Marrow deep. Emma had been thoroughly slashed by two people she’d believed had truly loved her, social awkwardness and all.
“Ugh,” she groaned, and looked away from the happy tableau of frolicking children for a moment. Why did she do this? Why did she relive the insanity of what had happened ten long years ago? It was over and done. And what the hell was she doing in this park every day? Trying to re-create her childhood? Or did she come to shake the pervasive feeling of melancholy that seemed to envelope her lately? Did she come to pretend that in some universe, families like this really existed? That not every family was a dysfunctional mess as hers had turned out to be?
Trying to figure out how her mind worked and what she was after was overwhelming for Emma. These days, it seemed like thinking in general exhausted her. She wanted only to exist for a time. Not think. Just be, quietly. Without drama, for God’s sake. Without tall, dark-haired men with incredible gray eyes showing up to harass her about more things she didn’t want to think about.
It was her own damn fault, but she still blamed Carl for the fact that her refuge here had been breached.
Carl.
Emma definitely didn’t want to think of the night with him because it made her sick. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block the image of his bloated body and that hideous diamond ring twinkling on his pinkie. She remembered his square hands, and how he’d groped her. Men always groped, grabbing and squeezing like a kid with a mound of Play-Doh.
Emma hated herself for that night at Carl’s. She always hated herself after nights like that. And though she’d managed to escape the worst with the excuse that she wasn’t feeling well, she felt as disgusting as if she’d allowed him to use her completely.
And then she’d taken that stupid medal. But that’s what she did. She let men grope her or worse, and then she took things from them.
God, if only Emma could understand what was wrong with her. She didn’t want any of the things she took—they were meaningless items with no value other than that they’d been in a place where she’d happened to have been, being groped and hating herself. She’d even Googled it once—stealing from so-called lovers. Kleptomania was what WebMD labeled it, but Emma wasn’t buying that. She didn’t have any of the other symptoms of that disorder. She didn’t have other compulsions or obsessions, and she didn’t feel the need to steal from anyone but men she allowed to pick her up. What she had was an undeniable desire to take something from men before they took something from her.
There was no WebMD diagnosis for that.
Every time it happened, Emma vowed she’d never do it again. She bargained with God, promised to be good and do right. But then . . . then something would click in her brain and it was impossible for her to prevent it. Physically, emotionally, it was impossible.
Once, she’d even made an appointment and gone to see a therapist in Dana Point about it. Emma was fairly rational. She’d realized that what she was doing—the sleeping around, the stealing—was beyond nutty, and nutty things required intervention. The psychologist, a young woman with rectangular glasses and frizzy hair,
had given her a sad smile and had said, “We have some work to do, don’t we?”
Emma never went back. She didn’t want to work, she didn’t want to examine every angle of her life to discover why she did it. She knew why she did it. She just wanted to stop doing it. Give her the magic pill, show her how it was done, and voila, she’d be over it!
She’d just kept on, keeping to herself, trying to resist the urge and failing. But then her boss, Melissa, had called one day. What happened to the candlesticks, Emma? We borrowed those from Haute Interiors.
That call was the thing that turned everything on its ear. It had happened only a couple of days after Emma had left Carl snoring like a beach bum in Malibu, the medal in her purse. Emma had never once taken anything from work, had never even had the desire to take something. Why that night? Because Keith, the other vice president at CEM, had run his hand over her ass and told her he could make her scream? Keith was always saying things like that, and Emma had never felt the unbearable need to take something of his.
Maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it was because Carl was calling her, leaving nasty messages on her phone about that medal. Or maybe it was because she had run into her stepsister that night.
Emma’s contact with Laura had been sporadic over the last few years—a few family events here and there, the occasional funeral or wedding. Emma didn’t hate Laura for what happened the summer of her seventeenth year. Still, it wasn’t easy to see her, and every time she did, Emma was reminded of the betrayal and the wound that wouldn’t heal. It was a slow, dull throb in the back of her head, replaying itself at the most unexpected and inopportune moments.
Laura had barely turned eighteen, Emma’s eighteenth only a few short months away, when Grant Tyler had showed up in Orange County a second time. He’d told Emma that after all those years, he’d realized what a bad father he’d been to her. He’d been apologetic and contrite, and well he should have been, because he had been the worst of fathers. Emma had never heard from him after the reconciliation with her mother had failed, and her mother complained endlessly about his failure to pay child support.
The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River) Page 10