“Look at me, Emma,” he said.
She clenched her jaw, but she turned and looked at him just as he’d asked. James’ World War II uniform consisted of a drab olive green, long-sleeve jacket with copper-colored buttons and two front pockets. A tan tie and a matching olive green shirt were tucked behind the jacket. Patches, pins, and stripes of color decorated the jacket, and if Bobby had been there, he would have known what each item represented. Emma, on the other hand, was completely distracted by his hazel eyes.
“Do you feel like you can trust me?” James tapped a finger against the top of his head. “Don’t use this.” He tapped his chest. “Use this.”
Emma almost blurted, “Yes,” but she pressed her lips together and nodded instead.
When James smiled at her response, Emma’s lips parted. For years she had wondered what James Grey looked like when he smiled; now she knew, which made her feel as though she needed to see it over and over again.
“Go see Morty. I’ll see you tomorrow,” James said, his words sounding like an enchantment in her ears.
Emma nodded again, cast under his spell, but she knew she’d wake up in her bed in a little while, and James Grey would be as real as a unicorn.
Emma used her spare key to let herself into Morty’s cottage on the library grounds. She’d visited enough family members in the hospital to know Morty would want a change of clothes—his own clothes—rather than the open-back gown and skid-proof socks that were the normal standard issue.
Morty’s cottage was clean and cozy, and it filled with light during the daytime when the sun shone through the wide bay window in the living room. Just as his clothes were top of the line, his home was well organized and free of clutter, with the exception of the books that spilled from the shelves and found homes in a variety of places.
His heavy, masculine furniture complemented the space without feeling too much like a British tearoom, all wood paneling and dark corners. Gone were the frills, the lace, and the tiny porcelain figurines loved by the former head librarian. Morty had told Emma the collectibles had given him nightmares until he could find new homes for all of them. Now the dark wood furniture and floors shined, and the scent of aftershave lingered.
Emma had never been in Morty’s bedroom before, so she flipped on the light and stood in the doorway, hesitating and trying to shake off the feeling of being an intruder. This is for Morty and for his sanity. He needs his own things, she told herself. She stepped into his room and went straight for his closet. There was an overnight bag on the top shelf of the closet, so she pulled it down and packed a few shirts and pants, along with a belt, two pairs of socks, and underwear. Then she added a few miscellaneous toiletries, not knowing what he could live without for a few days or what he might actually want. Because he would only be gone a few days at most, and then he could have whatever he needed. Morty was coming home; she wouldn’t accept—couldn’t accept—any other scenario.
When Emma arrived at the hospital, she tried to remain calm, but all she wanted to do was run as fast as she could to the nurses’ station. Words crowded together on the sterile, white tile in the hallway, but they parted like the Red Sea as she hurried past. Her chest felt tight with worry. Linda Davis sat behind the long, circular desk, blew a pink bubble with her gum, and popped it before smiling at Emma.
“Hey, honey,” Linda said with a voice that was so gentle, it could subdue a wild animal. “I’ve been waiting for you to get here. He’s in ICU Room 404.”
Emma clutched the rounded edge of the desk. “ICU? Why? Is he…is he worse? Is it that serious? I mean, I know it’s serious, but the ICU—”
Linda reached up and gently pried Emma’s fingers from the desk. “It’s customary to put most heart attack patients in the ICU. Yes, it’s serious, but he’s stable.”
Linda had lived next door to Emma’s family and was a young nurse just starting out at Mystic Water’s hospital when Emma was born. A few years later, when Linda heard about Emma’s mama running off with an army cadet passing through town—Emma was two and Bobby four—Emma remembered Linda coming over to their house on Saturdays and bringing them ice cream.
Linda had been at the hospital when Emma’s daddy was admitted after his heart attack and never released, and she’d been there when Bobby had been in and out for chemotherapy before they’d released him to hospice care. During those times, Linda had brought Emma gallons of coffee in Styrofoam cups and a never-ending supply of snacks from the vending machine. They’d spent Linda’s breaks talking about which books they were reading, debating about which ones were worth reading, and which ones should be used as doorstops. No one had seen as many of Emma’s tears as Linda had—with the exception of Morty—and seeing Linda now felt like being wrapped up in a wool blanket, toasty and familiar.
“Stable, as in he’s going to be okay?”
Linda nodded. “He’s uncomfortable, but they’ve given him something for the pain. Definitely a heart attack, though, and not a stroke. He’s lucky you were there. I hate to think about what would have happened if he’d been alone.”
Oh, he wasn’t alone. He was hosting a party for weirdos and for my childhood crush. “You doing okay?”
Linda reached across the counter and squeezed Emma’s hand. “Go on,” she said. “We can catch up on your way out.”
Down the hallway, Emma pushed open the door to room 404. Morty lay inside, hooked to machines that seemed to be keeping track of every part of him, constantly assessing his vital signs. A breathing machine pushed oxygen into his lungs, and the steady, rhythmic whoosh of air was almost soothing. Medication, given intravenously, dripped slowly from an IV bag with a long, snaking tube that stretched from the bag to his hand. Morty wasn’t awake, and he didn’t stir when she approached his bed. Emma stood looking down at him, wishing his visage didn’t recall images of her daddy and her brother in similar positions.
She dropped the overnight bag in a chair and then stood next to Morty’s bed and exhaled. “I’m not sure what you think you’re doing, but you are not allowed to leave me, especially not like this, not with all of these questions. Maybe I’m losing my marbles, but there’s something going on. Something’s not right, Morty.
“I think James Grey is in the library or else my vivid imagination has reached a whole new level of intensity. Or, and this is also possible, you’ve found a look-alike because you’re trying to force me to go on a date. And this guy, he’s on the ridiculous side of good looking. Totally not my type. I mean, have you seen me? Plain Emma Jane. And you know how I feel about James Grey. He might as well have been my hero as much as he was Bobby’s.”
Emma shook her head and sighed. “You better heal fast because I have questions—more than normal—and I’m expecting answers.” She pressed her cold fingers against the warm skin of his palm. “And if I’ve knocked loose my sense and I need to be admitted to an old-fashioned sanatorium, I know you’ll be the one to take me, and you’ll come visit me on weekends.”
Emma’s heart squeezed just as a machine beeped. “You get some rest and come back home. That’s an order.”
A nurse opened Morty’s door and pushed in a cart loaded down with smaller machines. “Need to check a few things.”
Emma nodded and slid out through the open door, clicking it shut behind her. She stopped by the nurses’ station and had a quick conversation with Linda before driving home. Once she was at her apartment, Emma called Vicki to ask if she could come in on her day off to help with the library tasks since Emma wasn’t sure when Morty would be able to return to work.
She sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her empty hands, remembering the day she lost her daddy, then the day when she lost Bobby, which made her think of losing Thomas. She glanced at the lamp on her end table and recalled a day when Thomas called her his lighthouse, saying she was like a light in the darkness, giving him hope. What had he given her? She reached for her notepad and wrote.
When the ocean was not blue
but a w
ild, relentless fury,
when it caught you,
tossed you, pushed you under,
when you knew you were lost,
I stood, waiting, welcoming,
high above the spray
and the violence,
lighting a path to safety,
to rest, to peace,
to my arms
when you needed that more
than you needed air,
I was your lighthouse, your love.
As Emma lay on her bed that night, the wobbly ceiling fan blew words around her room. Trust me. Different. Ache. She pulled the sheets up to her chin and gripped the soft, worn fabric in her fingers, closing her eyes. She refused to let her thoughts drift to James, which caused a stirring in her chest that crept down to rouse a long-sleeping feeling inside her. So, instead, she let her old friends sorrow and worry into her heart. She thought of Morty lying in the hospital bed, and tears pooled behind her closed lids.
When she rolled over, the tears leaked down her face and onto her pillow. She opened her eyes and saw more words curled up on the faded carpet beside her bed. Uncontrollable. Hearts. Safe. If Emma had learned anything, she knew that when it came to love, the heart was never safe. So why did those words cuddled up together make her think of James Grey?
6
Emma’s cell phone sounded an alarm early the next morning, but she’d been awake for at least an hour. She folded back the sheets and slid her legs off the bed. Her notepad sat on her bedside table, so she opened it to a blank page. She’d woken with the lingering memory of standing in a warm, evening breeze, arm pressing against someone, looking up at his hazel eyes.
You are the dragonflies
bursting from knee-high grass
reflecting the light on your wings
spreading warmth with your wind
holding me captive.
I am like air,
shivering in your light.
I close my eyes
open my hands for you
as you move around me.
She touched her fingertips to her words on the paper and sighed. The disorienting feeling of careless abandon with a man caused Emma’s skin to itch. How dare her dreams try and convince her heart to have hope again. She took as hot of a shower as possible and scrubbed her skin as though she’d fallen head first and full body into an overgrown patch of poison ivy. When she emerged from the shower, pink-skinned and frustrated, she stood in her closet, looking for something to wear. She tried on a pair of loose jeans, an old pair of khaki shorts, and a pair of slacks she hadn’t worn in four years. They hung low on her bony hips.
Emma grabbed the hem of a white skirt decorated with sea green and blue flowers and pulled it out so she could admire it from the hanger. She hadn’t worn it in months, but she had always loved the easy way it flowed around her knees. She could pair it with a white blouse. Just as she tucked in the blouse and twirled in front of the bathroom mirror, she realized she had spent the past twenty minutes hyper-focused on her attire—and twirling, for Pete’s sake—which could only mean that she cared about the way she looked. James. Sparks of irritation shot through her. She would have yanked off her girly clothing and worn a battered T-shirt and jeans if she’d had time to change, but she didn’t. Not now that she’d wasted it on trying to dress up for an imaginary man.
Instead, she stomped into the kitchen and found she was out of instant coffee packs, so she snatched a half-full box of Cheez-Its and drove to the library, leaving a chalky dust of annoyance trailing behind her car.
On her way to work, Emma called the hospital. The head nurse told her that Morty had experienced a setback during the night—difficulty breathing and spiking blood pressure. They had adjusted his medication in order to get his system back in control. Morty would also need to remain on the oxygen machine. The doctor didn’t want to risk the chance that Morty’s heart was not yet strong enough to pump oxygen properly to the rest of his body. He was doing a little better this morning, and he’d been lucid enough to speak with the doctor and with his nurses until he’d fallen asleep again. His stay in the ICU would be for at least a few more days, and he’d remain under observation for possibly a week, depending on his recovery. Emma left her phone number with the nurse and asked that someone keep her updated if anything changed.
Mystic Water could never be called a sleepy town. The sun, which had barely been beaming in the morning sky for an hour, shined down on people walking through the park at the end of Main Street. There were small groups sitting outside at the coffee shop’s wrought iron tables while sipping iced coffees in the rising heat. Families snuggled into Scrambled, the local diner, to fill up on stuffed French toast and pancakes covered with sweet, sticky syrup. It was an odd juxtaposition to see the townsfolk going about their day like normal when Emma had experienced anything but a normal evening. She felt as though everything should be tilted out of alignment, not just her life.
Emma went through the process of opening up the library for the day, clicking around the tiles on her sandaled feet. The library felt oddly quiet without Morty. Even when they weren’t in the same room, Emma felt Morty’s presence and was comforted by the fact that he was around somewhere. But now, alone in the library, the silence seemed to intensify his absence and her worry.
It also didn’t help her mood that around every corner she imagined running into James, but the library remained empty. She felt annoyed when disappointment darkened her temperament. Shouldn’t she be relieved that the partygoers from the night before were gone and the library was still in working order? That they hadn’t burned it to the ground or stolen what little money there was or robbed the archives?
“Oh, what did you expect, Emma?” she asked, sounding as annoyed as she felt. “James Grey showing up with a mug of coffee, asking you how your night was?”
“You must have read my mind.”
Emma gasped and spun around so quickly that she had to steady herself on a bookshelf. James stood behind her, holding two mugs. He extended one toward her and smiled.
“Good morning,” he said. “If you don’t mind me saying so, you’re looking lovely today. How was your night?”
Emma stared at him and pressed her hands against the waistband of her skirt. He extended the mug farther. She reached out and wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic.
“Hi,” she finally said. “Thanks.”
James sipped his coffee and watched her. “Sleep well?”
Emma shrugged and stared at the steaming liquid. “Not the greatest night’s sleep I’ve ever had. I didn’t really think you’d be here today.”
“I don’t expect so,” James said. “Here, let’s sit down for a minute.” He pulled out two chairs at the closest study table, and he waited for Emma to sit down before he sat beside her, shifting his chair toward her. “Let’s start with the easier question. How’s Morty?”
She placed her mug on the table and crossed her legs at the ankles. “The nurse said he was resting better now, but he experienced shortness of breath last night, and his blood pressure was scary high. They adjusted his medications, and they’re leaving him on the breathing machine for now. The medication adjustment and the oxygen seem to help. She said he might be in there for as long as a week. But Morty told the doctor that he was going to follow their directions to a T, and he bet he’d be out of there sooner. He wants to come home.”
James’ eyebrows rose on his forehead. “I bet he does. Hearing that he’s resting well and aiming to come home soon is the best news I’ve heard all day.”
“All day? Been up long?” Emma asked, unable to stop her smile. “It’s only seven a.m.”
“I’ve been up for hours,” he said, drinking more coffee. “Waiting for you.”
Emma straightened in the chair and had no immediate response because of the seriousness she heard in James’ voice.
“Why?” she finally asked.
James put down his coffee and leaned forward so that his elbows rested o
n his thighs. “I knew you’d have questions. You always do. You’re a curious one.”
Goose bumps rose on Emma’s arms. Why does he talk like he knows me? “I do have questions, but none of them seem like they’ll cover the entirety and the strangeness of this situation. I’m having trouble accepting this as reality. It’s a lot to take in—with Morty and with…you.”
James nodded. “That’s a fair response.”
Months had passed since Emma had felt the urge to reach out and touch someone just to assure herself that he was really there. She remembered the initial excitement she’d felt when she and Thomas had first stumbled into an unusual friendship. Similar flutterings sparked inside her now. She wanted to study James’ face, to ask him to smile, but she also didn’t want to entertain those kinds of dangerous thoughts ever again. She had taken a chance with Thomas, and he’d annihilated her heart, deserted her like the decision to abandon her was easy, like it didn’t matter if she was shell shocked and broken.
“Who are you? I mean, really. Did Morty find you somewhere and ask you to dress up? To pretend to be from my favorite biography? You can be honest with me. I don’t know how much he’s paid you, but I’ll keep it a secret. I don’t want you to be out the money, but this charade doesn’t have to keep going on.”
James leaned back in the chair and slid his palms down his thighs. “I understand that you want this situation to be logical. You want all the answers to fall into place and to make sense, but this time they aren’t going to unless you stretch your willingness to believe in the extraordinary.”
Emma turned toward the table, away from him, and cupped her hands around her coffee mug. “You want me to accept that you and the other people I’ve seen wandering in the archives are fictional, yet here and alive. Just walking around the real world.”
“It’s temporary, but yes.”
Emma looked at him. “What do you mean by temporary?”
The Legend of James Grey Page 6