Can't Help Falling

by Kara Isaac

  But there had never been one filled with coats before.

  Well, if this was it, she wasn’t going to discover the mystical land sitting on her backside. Pushing herself up to standing, she faced the back of the wardrobe and reached out a hand in front, preparing for disappointment, yet half expecting to feel the soft whisper of a snowflake against her fingers.

  Her hand hit wood. Solid, unmoving wood. Her whole body sagged. There was no portal here. She was crazy. Just like her mother.

  Emelia battled the urge to sink to the floor. To curl herself up into a ball and cry. What was she doing here? In Oxford. In an antiques shop. In a wardrobe. It would have been funny, if it weren’t so pathetic.

  Turning around, she leaned her forehead against the frame of the door, trying to settle her thundering pulse and soothe the unreasonable disappointment that had blossomed inside.

  Suddenly, light flooded in. Everything shifted and her body jolted, discombobulated by the sudden change.

  “Argh . . .” Arms flailing, she plunged headlong into the space where the door had vanished faster than a Turkish delight within Edmund’s reach.

  “Oomph.” The sound of air bursting from lungs registered about the same time as the sensation of arms grasping her waist, preventing her from hitting the floor.

  A blur of navy blue and the scent of cinnamon were all she managed to distinguish from the chaos as her feet found the ground.

  One thing she knew for sure: there was no chance this was the octogenarian who’d been holding down the fort when she’d walked in. A good thing, since she would have squashed him flat. Instead, she found herself staring up into the very surprised face of a green-eyed male with an unruly thatch of what could only be described as flaming ginger hair.

  Relinquishing his hold, he grinned down at her. “So . . .” The accent told her he was as English as mushy peas and warm beer. “Are you a Susan or a Lucy?”

  A Susan or a Lucy? Where did that come from? Victor was always the one with the lines, not him. Never him. Peter was the guy who could practice a line for days and be left dry mouthed and mute when it came time to deliver it. Let alone when someone who looked like a Narnian wood nymph fell on top of him.

  The missing girl stared up at him. All wide blue-gray eyes and wavy hair the color of Cadbury milk chocolate. She was tall too, reaching his nose when most girls barely made it to his shoulders.

  She was clearly a Lucy. Susan, ever the older sister, was way too practical to go climbing into wardrobes on a whim.

  “Let me guess. You’re Peter.” Both her tone and her face were inscrutable. The only thing that gave anything away was the American accent.

  He frowned, searching her face for anything that could trigger a memory of her. “Do I know you?”

  Now she looked confused as she shook her head, hair bouncing across her shoulders. “No. Why?”

  “Then how do you know my name?”

  “Your name?”

  This was the weirdest conversation ever. Not that, he supposed, much more could be expected when it began with someone falling out of a wardrobe onto you. “How did you know my name was Peter?”

  Now she gave him the kind of look one gave someone extraordinarily thick. “I was being sarcastic. Peter. As in Peter and Edmund. Lucy and Susan’s brothers. And no one ever wants to be Edmund, do they?”

  Good one, clever clogs. For once in your life, you come up with a good line and you manage to blow it.

  “Are you trying to say your name is actually Peter?”

  “Guilty.”

  Awkward silence. She stared up at him, her face unreadable. “It’s a bad line. It gives you away.”

  “As what?”

  “That you’re not a real Narnia fan.”

  “I’m not a real Narnia fan?” He almost laughed aloud at how wrong she was.

  “A true Narnia fan would never ask a girl if they were a Susan or a Lucy.”

  And with that cryptic remark she somehow managed to cut past him, weave her way through the furniture-filled room, and disappear. Leaving Peter to stare after her with her final statement resounding in his ears. The sound of the bell ringing and then the front door slamming shut shook him from his daze. What had just happened?

  He turned back to the wardrobe and its open door. He’d seen it in here before but never really paid it much attention. He stepped toward it. It looked deep. A few coats hung on old metal hangers. Reaching in, his fingers traversed past the rough woolen material before grazing the wooden back and then traveling down.

  His hand brushed against something cool and smooth sitting on the floor as he leaned back. Crouching down, he looked into the depths, his breath snagging at what peered back at him. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes to check he wasn’t dreaming.

  A teacup. Slowly he reached for it, pinching the saucer between his fingers and pulling it toward him, not even daring to breathe.

  Not just any teacup.

  The elusive Aynsley 1950s corset-shaped teacup with pink roses he’d spent the last ten years looking for.

  Three

  “FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE.” Peter counted down the sprint as Max’s seat on the rowing machine moved like a blur. At Peter’s last count, the tall, muscular athlete let go of the handles and collapsed over his knees, shuddering and gulping in air.

  “Good work.” Peter uttered the useless words as he dropped to one knee. Max didn’t even acknowledge them. It didn’t matter what he said. The only thing that mattered was the numbers.

  The athlete didn’t even flinch when Peter drew blood. A tiny prick was nothing compared to the abuse every muscle in his body was giving to him.

  Peter tagged the sample and read the numbered sticker out to Grant, so the cox could note it on the clipboard he held. The Boat Race may have been considered an amateur rowing race, but the teams had access to all the same training support as the professionals. The lactate levels in his blood would tell the coaching team far more about how Max’s body was responding to the ever-increasing training load than anything else.

  Peter looked at the time on the screen. Grant would note that too. Not incredible, but not bad, keeping him squarely in the middle of the pack. It was going to be a close call who the last oarsman would be for the Blue Boat. Peter was glad he was just the assistant coach—a token one at that—and the decision wasn’t on him.

  It had looked pretty cut-and-dried after the winter training in Spain, and then James had gone and gotten pneumonia, taking him out of the running and opening the field up again. The news had just come this morning that he wasn’t going to be fit to return anytime soon. The guys contending for the now-open seat were throwing everything they had at the opportunity.

  Peter clapped Max’s sweat-covered shoulder as he stumbled away to cool down. A year ago, he’d been that guy. Body sagging over his knees, lungs trying to grab oxygen with rapid short breaths. Now he was standing in a gym in Oxford, drawing blood and cross-checking paperwork. He’d only gotten the job because Sean had taken pity on him, scrounging up enough hours between working here and teaching some beginners’ rowing courses at the Oxford Academicals Rowing Club to pay what he needed to barely scrape by.

  “Ethan, you’re up next.” The big American ambled forward and set himself up on the erg. He’d lost a lot of the cockiness he’d rolled in with in September, used to being the big man on campus at Harvard with a string of impressive victories behind him.

  It happened every year with the internationals, accustomed to being rowing superstars back home. They showed up at Oxford expecting to be a shoo-in for a seat in the coveted Blue Boat. Then the reality that there was a world of mind-breaking pain between the standard race distance of two thousand meters and the Boat Race distance of six thousand eight hundred set in.

  Ethan rolled his shoulders and swung his arms a couple of times before gripping the handles.

  “Whenever you’re ready.” Peter stepped away before the muscular rower could even start. The machine would do all t
he counting he needed.

  Exiting the gym, he walked down the hall to drop the blood off with all the other samples that had been taken that morning.

  He let his mind drift back to the excitement on his mum’s face the night before when he’d presented her with her present. It had been more than worth the price tag, which would have him pretty much living on rice and cereal for the next few weeks.

  Not even Victor, who had gone easy but expensive with some kind of day spa experience, had come close. And his brother’s glower showed he knew it too. It was nice to be one up on the golden boy for once. Especially when said golden boy lied through his teeth to their parents about pretty much everything and dragged Peter along as an unwilling accomplice.

  His mind flipped over to the girl, a thought not far from his mind during the last couple of days. It still all seemed like a surreal dream. Her falling out of the wardrobe onto him. The teacup being left behind. It was about as crazy as anything that had happened in Narnia. If he’d heard it from one of the guys, he’d have assumed someone had been consuming something that was definitely not approved by UK Anti-Doping.

  “Who is she?”

  “What?” He turned to where the burly president of the club was leaning against the doorframe. He hadn’t even heard Tim approach.

  “You have a weird smile on your face. You have a hot date last night?”

  “If by ‘hot date’ you mean my mother’s birthday, then yes.”

  “Huh.” Tim didn’t look convinced but let it drop. “How are the guys doing?”

  Peter looked down at the clipboard Grant had handed to him. “Pretty good considering the brutal row yesterday. Max and Hayden are pretty much neck and neck, time-wise. Will be interesting to see what their bloods show.”

  Tim rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I hate this part. One of them is going to have his dreams come true, the other will miss out by the slimmest margin. And he’ll know it.”

  “Yes, well. Anything can happen still.” As he well knew. One second a rower on the Great Britain national team, a sure thing for Olympic selection, the next a has-been before he’d managed the has.

  “Victor’s been throwing some crazy-big numbers. Cambridge would stroke out if they could see them.” Tim made the observation casually.

  “Good for him.” Peter managed to keep most of the bitterness out of his voice. It had been easy to excuse himself from any role in Victor’s selection for the Blue Boat, not so much to try to hide the animosity that existed between the two of them.

  His brother hadn’t rowed a day in his life until Peter had gotten injured. Peter had almost lost his breakfast the day Victor had shown up at trials. There was a glint in his eye as he said he’d decided to “give it a go.” Just his luck his brother had proven to be freakishly good at it. Like he was at pretty much everything he tried.

  Tim’s eyes narrowed. “How’s the physio going?”

  “Okay.” He wasn’t ready to admit aloud that his improvement had plateaued a month ago. That even Kevin, one of the country’s best sports physiotherapists, seemed to be less optimistic with every session.

  Peter rotated his left shoulder, checking for any pain or tension. Plateauing wasn’t an option. The only option was total recovery. He had not come all this way to be permanently out of the game now. He was going to make a comeback if it killed him. He owed it to Anita.

  “You’ll get there.” Tim gave him the same shoulder clap Peter had given Max a few minutes before. “You’ve got time until Tokyo.”

  It wasn’t supposed to be Tokyo, it was supposed to be Rio, he wanted to shout. His entire life since he was fourteen had been oriented around being in the Team Great Britain boat in 2016. And he’d almost made it too. Then he’d had to try to be the good guy. And paid for it by losing the only thing he’d ever really wanted.

  Four

  EMELIA SUCKED IN A BREATH. Forced one out. Curling her fingers around the bottom of her rickety chair, she stared straight ahead at the notice board on the wall opposite. The flyers and pamphlets sat at all angles, pinned seemingly at random. Some proclaiming dates months old. Emelia’s fingers itched to go over there and restore order to the poor overladen board. But no. She, more than anyone, knew the importance of first impressions.

  Everything rested on now. She’d cut ties with LA. Changed her appearance. Booked a one-way ticket to England. Spent four nights in a hovel that deserved to be condemned. All for this. There was no Plan B.

  For some reason, the green eyes and red hair of a certain Englishman floated into her mind. “Are you a Susan or a Lucy?” His half-laughing question had echoed there since he’d asked it. It was a great pickup line. She had to give him that. If she’d been a girl who had only seen the movies. Unfortunately for him, she was a true Narnia fan. She knew what had happened to Susan. Worse, she knew she was a Susan.

  “Emelia Mason?” The words came from her right. Emelia loosened her death grip on the chair and stood. Next to her was a woman with an immaculate gray bob and a weary face. Her voice sounded tentative, even though Emelia was the only one there. She could only hope that meant there were few contenders for this job.

  She pressed her palms to her skirt for a second, then held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Emelia.”

  The woman gave her a quick handshake but didn’t quite look Emelia in the eye. Not a promising start. “Elizabeth Bradman. Thanks for coming in.” The woman gestured toward a hallway and then led her through a door that sat ajar a short distance away.

  They entered a cramped, utilitarian room. Along one wall stood a row of filing cabinets, in the middle a battered wooden desk. Facing the desk was one worn chair, stuffing poking through a couple of cracks in the brown leather cover. No one was ever going to accuse the charity of wasting donors’ money on aesthetics, that was for sure.

  The one incongruous thing was the top of the desk. Precisely positioned folders and papers surrounded a green blotter, on which sat one piece of paper at a ninety-degree angle to the edge of the blotter. A fountain pen sat to the side, parallel with the edge of the paper. Perfect order. It made Emelia feel happy just looking at it. A woman after her own heart.

  “Take a seat.” Elizabeth gestured to the chair positioned facing the desk, again, right in the center.

  Emelia’s feet moved across the worn carpet, her breath shallow in case it happened to dislodge any of the papers.

  She placed her purse on the floor and perched on the chair as the woman moved behind the desk and sat. Her posture remained as straight as a broomstick. “I’m the acting executive officer for SpringBoard. Please tell me, succinctly, why you applied for this job.”

  Clearly this was not a woman who believed in small talk. Or making potential employees comfortable, for that matter. Fortunately, Emelia had prepared for this question. “I have recently moved to Oxford. As you’ll see from my résumé I’ve had a range of involvement with charities in Los Angeles. I’ve spent the last few years working as a journalist but am looking for a career change. This seemed like a role that would be a good fit for my skills.”

  Ms. Bradman tapped a tapered finger on the sheet of paper in front of her. “You have an American accent, yet your application states you have the right to work in the UK. Is that correct?”

  “I’m a British citizen. My mother was British.” The only thing her mom had left her that turned out to be any use. “I have my passport with me if you’d like to see it.” She reached for her purse, but Ms. Bradman waved her hand.

  “Why the sudden desire for a change from journalism?”

  Because I was the type who made headlines out of other people’s misery. Because somewhere in the last five years, I lost myself in pursuit of scandal. Because someone is dead because of me. Because this job is my one chance to make some kind of atonement.

  The thoughts flashed through her mind, robbing her of breath for a second. She forced herself to push them back, to focus on the task at hand. Emelia framed her response carefully. “I enjoyed the
work that I did with charities back home and when I read this job description it looked like a great fit for me.”

  SpringBoard focused on getting books to kids at poor schools. Not unlike thousands of other charities around the world. But their point of difference was they then connected every book they provided with experts who came in and talked to the classes, made them real. Academics, historians, archaeologists, even a few of the authors themselves were listed on the honor roll on the charity’s website.

  “I see.” Ms. Bradman looked her up and down. Emelia was thankful she’d worn the most conservative outfit she owned. Black skirt and jacket, blue shirt. Finally, a sigh escaped. “I’m not going to lie. We are not in good shape here. The last executive officer quit without notice a few months ago. I’m filling in temporarily as a favor. The board has given us until the end of the year to turn things around. You seem like a perfectly nice young woman but I can’t afford to make a hiring mistake. And the truth is that Americans and the English are very different. I’m not sure I can trust our one chance to someone who doesn’t even know the English way.” She started to push her chair back as if to signal the end of an interview that hadn’t ever really begun.

  A streak of desperation surged through Emelia. She was in Oxford for this job. She had burned her bridges, had nothing to go back to. It could not already be over after less than ten minutes in a closet-sized office. “I knew Anita.” She just blurted out the words from between her lips, causing her chest to constrict.

  Something crossed Ms. Bradman’s face. She didn’t say anything but paused, seeming to really look at Emelia for the first time.

  Emelia scrambled to explain without lying. “We weren’t close but I promise you, I will do everything in my power to get her charity back on its feet.”