It Wasn't Always Like This

by Joy Preble

  It was just Emma and Matt after that, his arm draped casually over her shoulders, and some mixture of anthem rock and Christmas songs . . . and four or f ive bourbons too many. Matt was not Charlie. Could never be Charlie. But Matt was there. Sometimes there was enough.

  And now here they were.

  “I don’t have coffee,” Emma said to move things along. She did in fact have coffee, two neatly stored packages in the side door of the fridge: Dunkin Donuts dark roast and a vanilla-f lavored one from Whole Foods. She liked them mixed half and half. In Portland, she’d favored espresso. Dallas seemed to require something sweeter. And as soon as Matt was out the door, she would brew a pot. She would sip a mug on her little balcony while she scribbled notes, and she would decide if there was anything about the Elodie Callahan case worth pursuing. Anything she might have missed.

  “You look awfully young,” Matt said. He stood slowly, frowning, a thin wrinkle furrowing his brow.

  Matt was not young. Not old, either, but somewhere in the middle. Surely no more than thirty.

  “I’m twenty-one,” Emma said. It was the age on her current ID, basically the youngest possible age to be licensed and accepted without suspicion as a private investigator in the state of Texas, though eighteen was the off icial minimum. Besides, the age on her driver’s license was even true, from a certain perspective. She had def initely lived twenty-one years. And as far as the other minimum requirements to be licensed as both a driver and private investigator—she’d met them, too, though not in any way that could be explained to the authorities.

  She remembered bringing Matt home now. Remembered eating those greasy tacos. “Give me a bite,” he’d said, grinning. But she hadn’t shared the taco. Even drunk, Emma was particular about her food.

  He’d tried to kiss her a few times on the walk from the bar, and she’d giggled, batting him away. They’d stumbled into the apartment, and her mood changed. The air was fresh inside from the little Christmas tree she’d put up this year—her small acknowledgement that it was the holiday season, fa-la-la. She’d f lipped on the tiny Italian lights and forgotten to turn them off. They were still twinkling in the branches. She’d been very drunk. It had been very late.

  She should have focused on the case. She should have trailed that guy she’d followed, Elodie’s classmate, back to his house. Or made sure Coral got home from that party. But it was just after Christmas, almost New Year’s. And even after all this time, all that loss took a cheap shot at her, and there she was: bringing someone home, someone who hadn’t looked at her carefully. Who tried to kiss her while she shoved tacos in her mouth and let her pretend the pain wasn’t there, who had no clue that the world hurtled forward while she stayed exactly the same.

  Someone who wasn’t—would never be—Charlie.

  Matt’s lips twitched. “We could go to breakfast . . .” The offer did not sound particularly heartfelt. He scratched the back of his head. The word believe was tattooed in blue on his forearm. Last night it had seemed the most interesting thing about him. Emma had almost called him on it: “Believe in what?” But even drunk, she’d known that this question could have led anywhere.

  Now she moved toward the window. Clicked off the tiny Italian lights. She felt sticky and tired, but the hangover was already fading, as it always did.

  “This was fun,” she lied. He needed to get the hint. She needed to call Coral. She needed to brush her teeth.

  Matt took a step toward the bedroom door. Emma watched as he patted his pockets, touching wallet and phone. She could see their indentations against his thighs. There was a spot of something that looked like queso on the left knee of his jeans. She tried not to think of tacos, but her stomach was already recovering, too.

  He paused, his gaze landing on the ornate gold-chained pocket watch hanging from the wall by her bed.

  “Didn’t peg you for the old-fashioned type.”

  She shrugged. Maybe he meant that no one wore pocket watches these days, which was mostly true. As far as she could tell, the people in charge of the latest fashion mined the past the way everybody mined the past—perpetually and always.

  She wanted to snatch it away, wanted him to leave now, but instead she said more defensively than she meant, “It was a gift.”

  His gaze shifted back to her, looking her up and down. “You know you could pass for younger. Sixteen, even.”

  Good, he was done talking about the watch. Now he was stuck on the age thing. Maybe he was worried he’d broken the law.

  “You killed it at history trivia,” he said. He paused, as if trying and then failing to remember any other salient details about the night. In Emma’s estimation, this was for the best for the both of them. Matt hadn’t broken the law, but he hadn’t been good at history trivia, either. Or books. Or movies, except war movies.

  Matt could quote every war movie he’d ever seen. Matt had a def inite thing for war movies. “Wanna know what Patton said about winning a battle?” he’d asked and she’d shrugged, which he’d taken as a yes. But the bourbon had muddled whatever his answer was.

  “See you later,” she said now, a lie. She handed him his striped dress shirt. It smelled of beer and sweat and some kind of cologne that should have been a deal breaker. Christ.

  Matt tucked the shirt over his arm rather than putting it on.

  Then he smiled as if he wanted to say something gentlemanly, but thought better of it. Good for him.

  When Matt was f inally gone, Emma stood under a hot shower for a long time, washing the previous evening away. Having grown up before indoor plumbing was a given, Emma had a keen adoration for endless hot water.

  Then she dried and dressed and brushed her teeth. She f lossed. Emma was quite devoted to f lossing, thanks to Detective Pete Mondragon in Albuquerque, who had told her you could tell a lot by a person’s teeth.

  Pete Mondragon, like Coral and Hugo, had become a friend at a bad time through the unique circumstance of her existence.

  They can only hide so much under expensive clothes, he’d said.

  She agreed with him about that. Certainly she’d known enough people who hid their evil under fancy outf its. It didn’t take her long to admit that Pete was right about the teeth, too.

  In the kitchen, wearing a peacock-blue silk robe, her dark, wavy hair in a thick, tidy braid, Emma measured out the coffee. When it was ready, she took her cup to the balcony. The weather had turned, the air warm and muggy, the sky heavy with clouds. It reminded her of Florida.

  Outside, Emma sipped, the f lavor both bitter and sweet. Underneath the almost tropical air, she could sense there was something unsettled. Texas weather shifted like that, fast and brutal. Or maybe she was unsettled. The possibility of that sudden change made her think about the f irst time she’d turned seventeen. What would Matt say if she told him exactly how long ago that was? In spite of the sentiment of his tattoo—believe—she doubted he’d believe that. In Emma’s substantive experience, people believed lies far more easily than the truth.

  Chapter Three

  St. Augustine, Florida

  1916

  The smoke smell grew stronger the closer Emma and Charlie drew to the mainland, their tiny rowboat lurching with every stroke. Then they could see it: plumes rising, black and ominous, over the treetops. Emma averted her eyes. She watched Charlie’s hands on the oars, his face pale and jaw tight, and she tried to f ight back the fear. It didn’t have to be what she thought. It didn’t have to be the worst.

  And then they hit the dock and Charlie was up and pulling her with him, the boat rocking wildly beneath them. At that point, she gave up the f ight. She knew she was right to be afraid, that she should always expect the very worst.

  Emma had loved Charlie since that day when they were ten years old, the day he caught the hawk she’d allowed to escape. It was 1906 then, and Emma’s head was f illed with possibility in this strange
new place—Florida, so different from Brooklyn, where they’d lived before. Florida was heat and light and lush plants growing. Birds and bugs and air thick as wads of cotton. Florida was where her father promised the world would be theirs.

  Not that Emma had believed him, even then.

  Emma’s father, Art O’Neill, had moved his family to start a business—the same reason families had always moved around the country, no matter if it was 1906 or 2006 or any year in between. Art O’Neill planned to entertain the wealthy tourists who had come down from the East for the winter with the O’Neill Alligator Farm and Museum. Not a rough-and-tumble carnival-type place like those ones in the Everglades, but a real museum with an aviary where people could learn about the creatures and see them up close. If, like Emma, you weren’t fond of reptiles, there would always be the birds to look at.

  Her father had also hired an acquaintance—the ever-talkative Frank Ryan—to run the bird piece of things, and so Frank had moved down from Brooklyn, too, and brought his own family with him: a wife and three children, one of them a boy Emma’s age. Charlie, his name was, not that she thought much about him one way or the other. Apparently he was good with birds and would be helpful in the aviary. That was all she cared to know about him for the f irst few months.

  They would get rich, both men whispered, the way foolish men have been whispering to their families all around the country—always, since before there was even a United States. The difference in their case (and foolish men believed there was always a difference): trust. Emma’s father always said he knew Frank Ryan enough to trust him.

  They both saw the same need, waiting to be f illed. A family need. The way Emma and Charlie’s fathers saw it, families needed to be entertained with reptiles and birds. They were more than just businessmen looking for the next best thing. They were family men.

  “A solid basis for a partnership,” said Emma’s father.

  Emma wasn’t so sure. Mr. Ryan struck her as a braggart. Everything he said began with “I,” every story large and dramatic. On the other hand, he’d worked at the Central Park Zoo and the Bronx Zoo and even the menagerie in Prospect Park near the O’Neill’s house, and he knew more about birds and gators than her own father did, which was mostly limited to books. Emma’s father read everything—so did Emma—but he hadn’t been much of a doer until now.

  Still, she had to hand it to him; this move to Florida was a real adventure. Not just something he read about or talked about. Emma hoped her father was right, that the move would make them rich. Who could complain then? Money made her parents argue, that much she knew. They fought about it late at night when they thought their children weren’t listening, but sometimes Emma heard, and it made her stomach clench. Having more of it would help, wouldn’t it?

  But how long would that take?

  Her father didn’t have an answer. Once they arrived in St. Augustine, he went back to reading. And now that they were stuck here, stuck in this sticky and swampy place, she wished her father would look up from his books more often.

  Then maybe he’d see how her mother laughed a little too loudly and smiled a little too brightly when Mr. Ryan told one of his jokes or stories.

  The man was always talking.

  Didn’t he know people could also be quiet? He could stand to read a little more. In this way, she supposed, she was like her father. She liked to learn, liked knowing how the world worked, really worked. People like Frank Ryan didn’t care. They were happy to make it all up as they went along. Then again, people and things weren’t always predictable in ways you could learn from books.

  Money would help, Emma reminded herself, and if they got rich, life would improve.

  So she held out hope. Her mother would admire how her father had been right. The business would do well. Florida would be the best thing that had ever happened to any of them. Her mother would stop looking at Mr. Ryan, and Emma could stop worrying. The Ryans didn’t seem to have much money either, at least not that Emma could tell.

  So maybe once they all got rich, everything would work itself out.

  “It’s going to be wonderful,” Emma’s mother kept saying.

  When? Emma kept wanting to ask.

  It was hot and humid, and there was no big city just across the bridge like in New York. Oh, Emma loved the ocean, but she could see the Atlantic back in New York. Sometimes they traveled up to Jacksonville, but that wasn’t much better. Everything smelled salty here—parts of Brooklyn smelled like the ocean sometimes but never this bad—and the streets were too skinny, and it was all too . . . small. It was not an adventure, after all. The grown-ups were too busy getting the Alligator Farm and Museum up and running, too busy rounding up huge scaly gators with enormous jaws and frightening teeth.

  “But the sunrises!” her mother would exclaim when Emma grumbled.

  Secretly Emma found the sunrises beautiful, the way the sun rose as if from underwater, lighting everything golden. But she would reply with a sour face.

  “It’s just the sun. And everything tastes like salt.”

  Mostly Emma thought, You spend too much time goggling at Mr. Ryan, Mama. Thinking about it made her chest feel tight.

  And so it went. Until the day of the hawk. Until Charlie.

  •

  “I’m going out for a while once we f inish,” Emma’s mother said that morning. She was unwrapping a plate from brown paper, the last of their items that had been left in storage crates from the move. “Do you know that Frank Ryan says there are thousands of ibises? He says they’re exquisite. He knows everything about birds, you know.”

  Her mother loved pretty things. Anything new and different always caught her eye. She was a pretty thing herself, her f igure shapely and slim in her new shirtwaist, even after three children.

  “I hate birds,” said Emma, even though she didn’t. But her mother was removing the wrapper from another dish, the stiff brown paper crackling as she folded it, and so she didn’t hear. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “I need to get some air. I’ll be back soon.” Her mother fanned at her f lushed face.

  In addition to unpacking, they’d been cooking and baking all morning, making baked ham and yeast rolls and mashed potatoes and green beans and a chocolate cake that was now wilting in the overheated kitchen as it cooled, the icing dripping onto the cake’s platter. The museum sponsors were coming for supper, and Mrs. O’Neill had outdone herself.

  “You watch Jamie and Lucy,” she told her oldest daughter. “Just for a few minutes. I promise.”

  Emma nodded, because she knew her mother would go whether she agreed or not. Another thin dribble of icing slid from the chocolate cake. The air felt heavy and full. Her hair was curling wildly because her mother had been too distracted and busy to help her plait it, and besides, what did Emma care about her hair? Or anything except f inding a way to get her family to move back to Brooklyn where everything didn’t always taste like the sea. It made her feel like she was drowning.

  A plan arose in her brain then. Emma was fond of plans, of f iguring things out and getting the right answer. She hated making mistakes, and everything about Florida felt like a mistake.

  She skimmed across the kitchen and down the hall into the small parlor where her brother Jamie was playing a game of marbles with her sister Lucy. In her haste, she almost tripped over a cat’s-eye marble that had rolled toward the hall.

  “Jamie,” she said, “take care of Lucy. I’ll be right back. It’s important, Jamie. Are you listening?”

  He was, sort of, but she knew she had to hurry. She was already out the door before she realized she hadn’t told them not to touch the ham or rolls or cake. But Jamie was eight already, and Lucy had just turned six. More than old enough to be responsible for a few minutes. That was what Emma’s ten-year-old logic informed her.

  Her mother might have gone to the aviary.

 
Emma caught no glimpse of her down the dirt road that led from their house to the museum buildings. The plan evolved. She would go to the aviary and f ind her mother—and if she saw them together, her mother and Mr. Ryan, she would . . . well, she wasn’t sure what she would do. But it would be something. And then her father would know and take them all home and leave this crazy business and this foreign place to the Ryans.

  Only that wasn’t what happened at all.

  What happened was Emma yanked open the door to the aviary without thinking about what was on the other side. There was a furious rush of wings and the bird was past her, shooting into the air before she could even take a startled breath and realize her mistake.

  “Oh!” she cried. “Oh no!” She turned, latching the door behind her, but it was too late. The hawk soared into the bright blue sky, its jess trailing, wings wide and dark. Sweat trickled down the hollow of Emma’s neck. Her heart beat hard and sharp in her chest. Her ankles were itching like mad because she hadn’t even stopped to put on her shoes, and something in the grass had irritated them.

  The hawk screeched—loud enough to make her wince, like it was taunting her.

  She gaped at it, panicked, unable to move or think.

  And then, as if out of nowhere, Charlie Ryan strode toward her. He was a slender weed of a boy back then. He calmly lifted his face toward the sky and whistled low and long. Above him, the hawk hovered, then circled. Once, twice. Then it landed with an oddly delicate grace on Charlie’s jacketed arm, talons curling then gripping tight. Its wings settled.

  A dangerous thing, this bird. A heavy thing. Emma could see that now. A goshawk, Charlie told her now. That’s what it was called. Even though it hadn’t escaped, even though this boy had exerted some sort of magic control over it while she was still frozen with fear.

  But Charlie didn’t f linch. He wasn’t even wearing that long glove—was it called a gauntlet? He knew how to be still, this boy, Emma thought. So unlike her father. How had she never noticed?