by Kara Isaac
So maybe somehow, when the dust had settled, he’d find a way to forgive her. Or maybe he’d hate her even more. Maybe he’d take all the condemnation he’d been carrying around and heap it on her. Maybe tomorrow she’d be without a job, a place to live, and some of the best people who had ever happened to her.
“Peter, there’s something I need to tell you.” She curled her fingers around the rim of the step, pressed her palms into the wood of the porch. You can do this, Emelia. He has to know the truth.
Peter looked into the distance, didn’t give any sign that he’d even heard her.
Memories overcame her. The strength of his arms when she fell out of the wardrobe. Dancing with him in the pub. Kissing him. Spinning around with his crazy cat attached to her head.
In a few seconds none of those things would be what he thought of when he thought of her. Emelia would be gone.
“Peter?”
He turned to her with a fierce expression. “How do those people live with themselves?”
“Who?”
“The bottom-feeding lowlifes who call themselves reporters. I’m the first to admit that Anita wasn’t perfect, that she’d made some mistakes, but destroying her life? Just for a scoop? Who does that?”
Emelia opened her mouth. But nothing came out. Instead tears formed behind her eyes. She did. She had.
“She was only twenty-four.” Peter’s jaw clenched. “Lost. What is wrong with people that we take such pleasure in witnessing other people’s downfalls? That entire industries exist to exploit someone else’s pain and publicly humiliate them?”
“I’m sure the reporter had no idea what Anita would do. I’m sure she would give anything she had for it all to be different.”
“No she doesn’t.” He said the words with complete certainty.
“How do you know that?”
Peter ran his hand through his hair. “Because she’s still there. Still bar-crawling. Still preying on people. Still breaking the same sleazy stories.”
Emelia just stared at him, mouth hanging open.
She was what?
Thirty-Six
EMELIA PULLED HER COAT AROUND her as she walked out of the Eagle and Child. Peter’s revelation on his porch had been the thing that had finally broken her nine-month Google fast.
All it had taken was a few seconds to work out what he was talking about. She was no longer reporting, but Mia Caldwell still was. Her ex-boss was still using her byline. There was a different photo, but it was of a blond girl who looked similar enough that the average person probably wouldn’t notice any difference.
Though discovering the truth had taken only a few clicks, finding the courage for her second attempt at telling him had taken weeks. Finally, she’d told Peter they needed to go over some final ball details. And as she was the pedantic spreadsheet queen, he hadn’t questioned it.
The smart move would be to wait. Tell him after the ball. After she’d handed in her notice. But that was months away, and since the moment on the porch where he’d confessed the weight of blame he’d been carrying around and she had failed to give him the honesty he deserved, she hadn’t been able to live with herself.
So she’d sat, in the Eagle and Child for two hours, waiting for him to show up. Checked her phone obsessively. Called him, only for it to go to voice mail. One vodka and soda for courage had turned into two as she’d tried to ignore the pitying gaze of the waitress.
And now she was a little tipsy and vacillating between angry and worried as she paid her bill and stepped outside. She closed the door to the pub behind her and leaned against the stone wall, sucking in a couple breaths of late-summer air. She should’ve stayed home and helped Allie with the final details of the engagement party that was only a couple of weeks away.
Squaring her shoulders, she pulled out her phone to call a cab. All the anxiety and fear she’d brought into the evening still rolled around inside her with nowhere to go. She began dialing, then turned her phone off and started down the street. It was a nice night. Home was only fifteen minutes away, and it wouldn’t get really dark for another half hour or so. Even after a couple of drinks, she could still easily take down anyone stupid enough to try accosting her.
She’d thought the worst that could happen would be if Peter heard what she had to say and said he never wanted to see her again. It had never occurred to her he might not even come.
Emelia walked down the cobbled streets, the warm evening air swirling around her. Up ahead a couple sauntered, arms wrapped around each other, heads close together. They stopped and the woman wrapped her arms around the man’s neck.
Emelia crossed the street. She was not in the mood for navigating around a couple making out in the middle of the sidewalk. When she looked up, she realized her feet had taken her to Turl Street, landing her right outside the antiques shop where they’d first met. She leaned against the glass of the second large window, pressing her palms against the cool surface as she peered into the adjacent room. Her wardrobe still stood majestic in the far corner.
Would she have crawled into it if she’d known everything that would follow that one impulsive decision?
Are you a Susan or a Lucy?
His first words to her rang in her ears. She’d flicked the piercing question off with a quick retort. From the first time she’d met him, she’d been deflecting the truth. She was a Susan. She’d always known it, and life had only confirmed it. She would end up alone. Just like Susan had.
“Emelia!” Her head jerked up as Peter’s voice cut through the dusk. He was running up the street to her left. What was he doing here? He almost slammed into her as he came to a stop. “Please tell me you didn’t wait for me the whole time.” His hair stuck up at all angles off his head. His eyes red rimmed. His navy T-shirt wrinkled. If she hadn’t known better she’d have thought he’d been on a bender.
“Of course I did.” She huffed out a breath. Waited for his excuse. Please let it be a good one.
Peter closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Where were you?” Now that he was clearly okay, anger was gaining dominance over the worry.
“Victor—”
He didn’t even get the rest of his words out because she put her hand up and shoved him in the chest.
“On second thought, I don’t even want to hear it. I could not be less interested in your compulsive need to rescue your drunken lout of a brother.”
“He totaled his car. Wrapped it around a tree. This afternoon.”
That paused her for a second. “Did he hurt anyone else?”
“No. Not even himself, really. He was so blotto they reckon he was saved by the fact he was probably floppy at impact.” Peter’s expression was half of relief, half of consternation.
“Good to know I rank so highly I didn’t even warrant a call or a text. Despite the fact that I left you so many it’s humiliating.” She heard her whiny voice, her self-centered words, and immediately wanted to shove them all back inside her mouth.
Peter pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped down the screen. Even from where she stood, she could see her name appearing multiple times. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been so busy trying to work out what to tell Mum and Dad.”
Whaaaat? His brother had wrapped his car around a tree and Peter was concerned with doing parental damage control? “What does he have on you?”
“What do you mean?” The streetlights around them started to flicker on, showing the stress written across his face in better detail.
“I get sibling loyalty. I do. But from everything I’ve ever seen, he treats you like his little lapdog. And you just take it.” In the distance a siren wailed.
He shoved his phone back into his pocket. “It’s all my fault, okay!”
“All what is your fault?”
“His face.”
“Are you talking about his scar?” Anita’s death was his fault. His brother’s face was his fault. His shoulder was his fault. Was anything not his fault?
“Yes, his scar. The angry, jagged welt that disfigures one side of his face.” His legs gave way, and Peter sagged against the window next to her. “We got into a fight when I was thirteen. A heated one. He came at me. I grabbed the poker from beside the fire. I only meant to fend him off with it, but at the last moment, he dived and it slashed his cheek. It needed thirty-two stitches. Then it got infected. He’s hated me for it ever since.”
“And turned you into his servant as a result.”
“Something like that. It would break my parents’ hearts to find out what he was really up to. He’s the heir. The future Viscount Downley.”
As far as Emelia was concerned, Victor was old enough to look after himself. “You aren’t responsible for him. Or his choices. And you always rescuing him just makes it worse. He never has to face up to his consequences. What if one day he plows into someone? Hurts them? Kills them?” She half yelled the last two questions, just as a middle-aged woman was coming down the sidewalk toward them. She quickly crossed the street to avoid them.
“I don’t know how to let it go, Em. Don’t know how not to show up. Then he’ll really hate me.”
“I hate to say it, Peter, but after all this time, I’m not sure whether your showing up or not is going to make any difference.”
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving another tuft sticking up from his head. “You’re probably right. I guess I just thought if I showed up enough, was always there, one day he might forgive me. That we might find a way to get past the enmity that has always been there. But you’re right. It just keeps getting worse. Now he’ll have a drunk-driving charge to add to the others.” His shoulders slumped in the shadows.
Emelia blinked back the tears that were forming. This guy who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. She knew too well what that felt like. She pressed her lips together for a second. Could she do it? Tell him what she’d never told anyone? Her fingers tapped the window beside them. “Why do you think I hide in wardrobes?”
He glanced around, as if only just realizing where they were. “Because you’re trying to find Narnia?”
“My mom loved Narnia.”
“I remember.”
Emelia sucked in a deep breath. “What I didn’t tell you is that my mom wasn’t well. She . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”
She forced herself to look him in the eyes. Sometime soon she’d tell him the whole truth. He’d hate her. But at least tonight she could give him this. “No. I want to. I want to explain that I know what it’s like to carry the weight of responsibility for something horrible.
“My mom loved Narnia, it’s true. While other moms cleaned houses and made dinners, mine made up complicated stories of us in Narnia. She was Queen Isabelle. I was Princess Emelia. When you’re six, it’s a pretty blurry line between a fun mom and one who doesn’t operate in reality. You don’t know that a person you see as someone who builds the most exciting and complicated fantasy worlds isn’t a great storyteller but someone who suffers from psychosis.”
Peter’s hand found Emelia’s, and he wrapped his fingers around hers. She held on to them as if they were a lifeline.
With a deep breath, she forced herself to focus on what she needed to tell him. “But what I was slowly realizing was that we were different. I didn’t get invited to other girls’ houses on playdates. The other moms came to help at school. But mine didn’t. My mom didn’t like having other kids over to play. She said that I saw them all day at school and that she wanted me for herself after. One day, there was a new girl at school. She lived a few doors down from us. I got invited to her house to play and Mom said no. Sulked. She said that I didn’t need any other friends as long as I had her. I got mad. Told her I was tired of her stupid Narnia games. That I didn’t want to play them anymore.”
She could still see her mom’s face as she spat out her defiant, childish words, wanting to hurt her. Not realizing how much power her words had.
“I ran to Claire’s house and told her mom that it was okay. That I was allowed to play. I had the best afternoon in the world. Until the sirens started. They got closer and closer. And I knew, I just knew that something had happened to her. And that it was my fault.”
Tears dripped down her cheeks. “There were police and paramedics everywhere. Claire’s mom held me as I kicked and screamed and scratched and tried to get to her. She’d taken a huge overdose. She left a note that said she had to find Narnia and this was the only way.”
Emelia didn’t even know until years later that the police were there hunting for her. That when her dad had found her mom and hadn’t been able to find Emelia, he thought she’d done something to her as well.
“You want to know why I hide in wardrobes? The truth is I don’t know. She always told me that if I was ever afraid, the wardrobe would keep me safe. That one day we would find Narnia. And she’s right. Every time I crawl into one of those wooden boxes, even as my fingers scrape the back and I know there’s no Narnia today, for a few seconds I still feel peaceful. I feel like I’m home. And I’m so scared but I can’t stop. Peter, what if I’m just as crazy as she was?”
Peter sucked in a breath. Prayed for the right words. Fast. “Emelia, you are not crazy. You are about the least crazy person that I’ve ever met.” She looked up at him. Even in the fading light he could see her eyes were riddled with fear. If only he could reach in and pull it out. “You’re not crazy.” The words came out as a whisper but seemed to have more impact than his adamant ones.
She peered up, cute freckles smattered over her tanned face. “You really think so?”
“I know so. You are the most beautiful, smartest, most organized ninja I’ve ever met. But you are definitely not crazy.” He cleared his throat. He was a guy. An English one at that. He was not good at this kind of stuff. “C’mon. Let me walk you home.”
She wobbled a smile. “That would be nice. Thanks.”
They walked in silence for a little while. Both deep in their own thoughts. Emelia’s hand tucked into his elbow.
“At least now you know the answer to your original question.” She spoke softly.
His original question?
Emelia tugged at the edge of her long-sleeved top and studied the ground. “About whether I’m a Susan or a Lucy.”
Why was she saying it like it was a bad thing? Lucy was great. She never stopped believing. She had the potion that healed people. She could be fierce and compassionate. Just like Emelia. Susan was great too. She had the magic horn and was an awesome archer. She was brave and resilient. Just like Emelia. Neither option was bad.
“Oh, wow.” Emelia was staring at him like she’d just had a revelation. “You haven’t read it, have you?”
Peter attempted to laugh. “What are you talking about?”
Emelia stepped closer, studying him. “It’s why you never know what I’m talking about when I refer to Susan. You don’t know.”
Peter swallowed.
Emelia’s eyes had narrowed. He could practically see the cogs turning in her head. “You’ve read some of The Last Battle though, haven’t you? Or have you just heard about it?”
“I’ve read some of it.” The words seeped out of him. They’d just turned into Emelia’s street. Were closing in on her house.
“How far have you read?”
“If Aslan gave me my choice I would choose no other life than the life I have had and no other death than the one we go to.” Peter quoted the words of Jewel the unicorn in chapter nine. They were burned into his mind as surely as if they’d been inked into his flesh. The sentence he could never get past.
“The great meeting on Stable Hill.” Emelia said the words quietly, as if to herself. Then she directed a piercing gaze at him. “What happened?”
“What happened?”
“What happened?” She repeated the words again, softly. “You are the only person I’ve ever met who knows Narnia like I do. That’s why none of th
is made sense. Why I couldn’t reconcile you asking me if I was a Susan or a Lucy when we first met. It didn’t make any sense. Except now it does. Something happened and you don’t know how it all ended.”
Peter ran his hand through his hair. “My grandfather died.”
“When?”
“When I was nine. Dad was in the army and posted in the Middle East. So my grandparents moved in to help Mum. Every night, he would read me a chapter of Narnia before I went to sleep. That night he stopped on that sentence. Said he needed to get a glass of water. A few minutes later, he had a heart attack. He died on the way to the hospital. I’ve never been able to read past it.”
“I’m sorry.” Emelia nibbled her bottom lip.
“I know it’s crazy. It’s just a book. He would have wanted me to keep going. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve tried. Sat there and tried to force myself to read the next sentence, to keep going. But I just . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. How could he explain that his eyes just refused to read any farther when even he didn’t understand it?
Emelia was silent as they walked up the path leading to her front door. No doubt thinking it was one of the stupidest things she’d ever heard. Almost twenty years had gone under the bridge and still he couldn’t get past it.
“Do you think he knew?”
“Who?”
“Your grandfather.”
“I don’t know.”
“I think he knew. How else would he have left you at such a perfect place? A sentence on either side would have meant little. It’s like a message for you.”
“I’d never thought of it like that.”
“There aren’t many people who can say that. I would choose no other life than the life I have had.”
“Can you?”
Emelia shook her head. “Most of the time I feel like I would choose any other life than this one. You?”
“If I had any other life but this one, I wouldn’t have met you.” The words kind of fell out of his mouth before he’d had a chance to think them through.