Always Emily

by Mary Sullivan

  The first guard had retrieved her knapsack and her violin case from the belt and carried them into the room. He dropped them onto the table and she reacted before she could think, yelling, “Hey, be careful. That violin is old.”

  He paid no heed while the second guard took his time checking her passport and documents. “Why did you think you would be able to fly while you are so ill? Did you not consider the other passengers? They would not want to get sick.”

  She wouldn’t lose her cool. There had to be a way out of this. “I didn’t feel this ill when I left my apartment. It came on suddenly.”

  A firm knock sounded on the door.

  “Come,” one of the men said.

  A man Emily recognized stepped into the room—tall, handsome Dr. Damiri. Everyone on the dig used his services when they were ill. “Doctor! What are you doing here?”

  “More to the point,” he said in his soft, sensible voice, “what are you doing here? I was in another lineup and saw you get ill.”

  He turned to the guards and handed them his identification. “I am her doctor. May I check her out?”

  The first guard scowled, but the second returned Damiri’s ID. “It’s okay. I know him. He is my sister’s doctor.”

  Dr. Damiri felt Emily’s forehead. “High fever,” he murmured. He examined her throat, pressed on her stomach and asked endless questions, at the end of which, he pronounced, “Malaria.”

  “What?” She hiccupped a tiny sob, playing the pity card, willing to do whatever it took to save her skin. Maybe they would let her go through without checking her bag. “But I just want to go home.”

  To the guards, the doctor said, “It isn’t infectious. She can fly.”

  To Emily, he instructed, “It won’t be a comfortable trip home, but you can make it. You will have fever. Chills. Great fatigue.” He smiled gently. “Maybe more vomiting.”

  “My brain wants to pound out of my skull.”

  “Yes, headache, too.” He wrote on a pad of paper he pulled from his briefcase. “In my estimation, you have uncomplicated malaria. There’s nothing you can do but ride it out. In America, go to your doctor and get a prescription for this medication and take it to prevent a reoccurrence.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes. That’s all you can do.” He handed her a small vial of pills. “Take these.”

  “What are they?”

  “Anti-nausea tablets. I always carry them when I fly, but you need them today more than I do.”

  With a wink, he was gone and she was alone with two unhappy guards and a stolen artifact in her luggage.

  Emily stood, her brain so foggy she didn’t know whether to come or go. “I can return to my apartment and get better, and then take a different flight another day.”

  For the second time, the guards ignored her suggestion.

  “The doctor has cleared you to fly. You will go today.” He reached for her bag. No!

  She retrieved her cosmetic bag, leaning close to breathe in his face. “I vomited. I have to brush my teeth before I get on the flight.”

  Screwing up his nose, he waved her away.

  In the washroom, she entered a stall and locked the door. The washroom might have cameras, but the stalls wouldn’t. After she pulled the prayer book out of the bag, she took a moment to examine it, a little beauty in good condition. The papyrus had yellowed with age and the tiny paintings had faded, but it had obviously been cared for and well-loved by its owner.

  She dumped her small toiletry bottles out of the zipped plastic bag she’d stored them in, put the book into it, secured the edges together and stuffed it into her bra, protecting it from the sweat of her fever.

  After using the toilet, she washed her hands and made a show of brushing her teeth carefully, because she needed to, but also in case they watched her. She chewed a mint from her makeup kit.

  Back in the room, the guards had emptied her bags and were searching every object, every item of clothing. Shivering, she picked up a pashmina she’d bought on her travels and wrapped it around her throat, dropping the ends to cover the slight bulge in her bra.

  Thanks to Dr. Damiri’s list of symptoms, they wouldn’t find her behavior suspicious. She hoped.

  One of the guards took her makeup bag and searched it. The other left the room, presumably to search the bathroom. When he came back, he gave the guard a surreptitious shake of his head.

  She was allowed to repack her belongings, while feeling an inexorable sense of losing control. Not for long. She would fix this. Somehow.

  They led her to the departure lounge and left her there. This was too wrong. Taking an artifact out of its native country, out of its home, went against every ethic, every part of her moral code.

  Nausea rose into her throat, and she took one of Dr. Damiri’s pills.

  She had no choice but to leave. At the moment, self-preservation was more important than ethics. And didn’t that suck? The prayer book belonged here, not thousands of miles away in Colorado.

  Jean-Marc had known exactly what he was doing. Her rat of an ex-boyfriend had ruined her plan for a clean break. The prayer book tied her to him.

  An hour later, she was on the first of many flights that would take her home, curled under a blanket with chills that had nothing to do with inflight air-conditioning, and everything to do with a smuggled artifact burning a hole in her chest wall, so far up shit creek without a paddle she wasn’t sure how she would recover.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EMILY CAME HOME to Accord angry, railing against men and their perfidy, and scared.

  She’d returned to answer the toughest questions of her life—who was Emily Jordan? Who had she allowed herself to become? And how did she find her way back to being a better person?

  And what on earth was she going to do with the rest of her life?

  The hand she ran across her forehead came away damp. She’d been sweating for three days. The fever had to break soon.

  She stood in front of her father’s house. Another year come and gone and nothing to show for it. She didn’t even have her own home.

  She wrapped her arms around her violin, pressing the case hard against her breastbone, anything to stop the shudders that wracked her body.

  Cars lined the long driveway to her dad’s house, a white sanctuary in a sea of green conifers, lit up like a birthday cake. As it should be. Today was his birthday—the big five-O—and she didn’t even have a birthday present for him. Was I always this self-centered? Then again, she was sick and had other things on her mind.

  Where were the years going? How did her father get to be fifty already? How could Emily herself possibly be thirty-one, and what did she have to show for it?

  At her age, her dad had been a parent for twelve years, had already made his first few million and had owned a big house in Seattle.

  Emily had the knapsack on her back, the violin she clutched to her chest like a treasured doll and a career as an archaeologist she would never pursue again.

  She’d left the dry, dusty heat of the Sudan behind as though she were a mummy shedding her wrappings, one difficult twist at a time.

  Too bad it felt as if those wrappings still clung to her, like a ribbon stretching between Colorado and the Middle East, sticking to her pores like the sand of the desert during a windstorm.

  She imagined one long thread of decaying but tough fabric winding its way across the earth from her to Jean-Marc. With that one artifact he’d hidden in her bag, he’d bound her to him.

  “Get lost,” she whispered to the mummy wrapping. It didn’t listen. Resigned to that tug toward a man and a part of the world she had rejected, she opened the front door and stepped into a wall of sound, light and warmth, of conviviality and happiness—the most beautiful, welcoming homecoming she could imagine. And
it felt all wrong.

  Oh, the things she’d done. She didn’t deserve these people.

  “Emily!” The voice belonged to Laura, who rushed down the hall toward her with arms spread wide. If Dad was fifty, that made Laura fifty-three. Wasn’t it a crime for a woman her age to look so good when Emily felt like crap?

  Laura had a body men drooled over, albeit a little thicker around the middle than it used to be. Her chestnut hair, threaded now with silver but still thick, fell past her shoulders and framed a face with a few more wrinkles.

  A crocheted sweater fell off one shoulder, revealing freckles that dotted pale skin, and a filmy flowered skirt floated around her ankles. Earth mother.

  “Nick!” Laura called toward the kitchen. “Our girl is home!”

  Enveloping Emily in a hug, she cloaked her in a cloud of patchouli and incense, the scent so familiar and dear it brought Emily to the edge of control.

  She’d been awful to Laura when she’d first met her, a twelve-year-old witch who’d wanted her father all to herself, but Laura had persevered in creating a lasting friendship. Thank God.

  Emily didn’t think of Laura as a step-mom. More like a second mom. Emily’s first mom lived outside Paris, and Emily visited when she could. Laura pulled back from Emily, puzzlement wrinkling her brow. “Are you all right? You feel—”

  A fine-boned hand touched Emily’s elbow. Pearl. Her baby sister had grown up. Last time Emily had been home—one year, one month and three days ago, but who was counting?—Pearl had been eighteen. Now, at nineteen, adulthood showed on her face in quiet, elegant bones that spoke of blossoming maturity and dainty beauty.

  She had her mother’s striking thick chestnut hair rather than Emily’s tawny richness, almost overwhelming her delicate features, and striking blue eyes with the odd ring of hazel that she’d inherited from her Grandpa Mort, as Emily had. Oh, you beauty. The guys at college must be falling like dominoes.

  Emily’s features and body were sturdier than Pearl’s. Or usually were. At the moment, Emily was as weak as a kitten.

  Her little Pearl had grown up. Hard to believe Emily had ever resented Laura’s pregnancy all those years ago when it had produced such a devoted sister, and a too-perceptive friend. Pearl watched her with a knowing gaze. “What is it, Emily? What’s wrong?”

  “What? No greeting?” Emily said, voice brittle and too bright. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Emily,” Pearl admonished. She valued honestly.

  Emily deflated and said quietly, “Malaria.”

  Laura gasped and Emily touched her arm. “It’s okay. It’s uncomplicated.”

  “What does that mean?” Laura frowned. “Isn’t malaria bad? We need to get you to the doctor.”

  “I stopped at the hospital in Denver when the flight landed.” She dropped her knapsack and violin at the bottom of the stairs. She’d take them upstairs later, when her legs stopped feeling as heavy as stone sarcophagi. “I picked up medication, but it’s just to prevent further attacks in the future.”

  “What can we do this evening?” Pearl brushed hair back from Emily’s forehead.

  “Nothing. It has to run its course.”

  Laura placed a cool hand against her cheek. “What do you need?”

  “Water. Lots of cold water.” She’d returned to the land of plenty, where reaching for a glass of water was as natural as breathing. There were no shortages here, no rationing.

  Laura took her hand and dragged her to the kitchen, threading their way through the crowd of friends and family saying hello. Her father looked up from slicing something at the counter, saw Emily, grinned and dropped what he was doing.

  Scooping her into his arms, he spun her around.

  “When did you get here? Why didn’t you call? I would have driven into Denver to get you.”

  She held on to her father, breathing in his familiar scent and taking in his strength. Oh, Daddy. She was a girl again, protected and cherished. Nothing bad could happen to her here.

  She was safe.

  The tug of that mummy wrap tying her to the past, to dusty old digs and dried relics, to pain and betrayal, tugged her to the past, but she resisted. She’d stayed in the land of the dead too long.

  These people were vital. Alive.

  Laura handed her a glass of cold water and she downed it in two gulps, giving it back for a refill. Only after she drank three glasses could she answer questions.

  Yes, this time she was home for good. No, she wasn’t going back. Yes, she was ecstatic to be here. Yes, she had missed everyone. No, she was no longer with...him. Silence fell over the group that surrounded her.

  Laura broke it. “You need food.”

  Ah, yes, the answer to everything. A plate of food. A bowl of soup. As though any of that were going to fix what was so badly broken in Emily’s life.

  “We started early and a lot of the buffet food is eaten, but I’ve got one of your favorites here,” Laura chattered. Nerves. Laura was so seldom affected by them; Emily must look really bad.

  Laura handed her a cup of tea and one of her bakery’s cinnamon buns. Emily’s first bite buried her cynicism, and she sighed. Yes, maybe food was the answer.

  She ate half the bun, but she’d put so little into her stomach in the past few days it had shrunk. She handed the rest to her little brother, Cody, though little was a misnomer. At eighteen and six feet tall, he might better be described more accurately as simply younger.

  Cody finished the bun in two mouthfuls. Where Pearl’s features were delicate, Cody’s were strong, his jaw square, his trademark Jordan dark brown eyes beneath dark eyebrows and hair a replica of their father’s. Cody was well on his way to being a good-looking man, like their dad, and Uncle Gabe, and Uncle Tyler, all of whom converged on Emily for hugs. So did their wives. And their children.

  Oh, those Jordan men could hug, could administer love and support and affection like no one else on earth.

  It suffocated her, the bosom of her family too accepting of her at a time when she knew she shouldn’t take it.

  Perceptive Pearl saw through her shaky smile, took Emily’s hand and led her down the hallway toward the stairs. She picked up Emily’s knapsack from the bottom step.

  Emily retrieved her violin case and followed Pearl up two flights of stairs, to her small, private apartment under the eaves on the third floor. Dad had designed it for Emily when he’d built the house nineteen years ago just after Pearl’s birth.

  It ran the full length, with the roof’s slanting edges cutting off height on the two long sides, and white wainscoting running under soft mauve walls.

  Emily set her violin on a chair and glanced around. In the sitting area overlooking the garden, sketchpads and pencils were strewn over the sofa and coffee table and chintz armchair.

  She picked up one of Pearl’s sketchbooks and thumbed through it. Her sister was good—very good—the scenes of small-town life accurate, unsentimental, and yet attractive. Pearl had also sketched life around Accord, the forests, farms and ranches of Colorado.

  Emily turned the page...and there it was. The Cathedral. Her name for the Native American Heritage Center, because it seemed beautiful and holy to her. Salem’s Cathedral. Emily had first named it the Cathedral after it was built, and the name had stuck with everyone. Most people in town called it either the Cathedral or the Heritage Center.

  Pearl had captured perfectly the lighting of a dying sunset as it glinted from glass walls. Longing expanded Emily’s chest, but Salem had told her to stay away, and so sadness replaced her yearning.

  “I’m sorry. I spend too much time up here.” Pearl started to gather up her work, but Emily stopped her.

  “This should be your room now. You’re old enough to have your own space.”

  “Where would you stay when you come home?” Pe
arl dropped what she’d gathered onto the table.

  Emily shrugged. Her head hurt too much for thinking right now. She took a tissue from a box on the bedside table and wiped sweat from her forehead. “How’s school?”

  “Good. You know me. I’m keen. I like school. I like learning. I’m a nerd.”

  A pretty nerd who the boys liked, no doubt.

  “How’s the art going?”

  Pearl’s face lit up. Even as the tiniest child, art had made her happy. “Great. I’ve had interest from a couple of advertising firms.”

  “Finish school first,” Emily warned.

  “I will.”

  Dreams shone in Pearl’s eyes. Emily used to have dreams, too.

  Pearl placed one of the pillows on the bed up against the headboard and leaned against it, curling her legs into the half-lotus yoga pose and laying another pillow across her knees.

  She smiled and patted the pillow. Emily couldn’t help but return that serene smile. As a child, Pearl had spent many hours up here visiting Emily with her head in her sister’s lap.

  Laura would come upstairs to find Pearl asleep and Emily reading a book while she stroked her baby sister’s hair.

  Emily laid her head into the dip in the center of the pillow, where it rested on Pearl’s calves. The pupil had become the teacher.

  Pearl touched her cheek. “Your skin is clammy. Are you cold?”

  “Cold and hot.”

  “You’re pale, but your cheeks are bright red.”

  “I have fever and chills.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “Another day or so.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong, Emily.”

  Pearl didn’t mean the malaria. She was right. That was a surface thing. What was wrong with Emily went bone deep. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself.

  “Everything.” She sighed.

  Pearl stroked her hair. “You should sleep.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  Emily thought about it. Solitude? Was that what she needed? She’d give it a try. “Yes.”