A Forever Family

by Jamie Sobrato

  He wasn’t.

  He was going to do this thing. This simple thing that just involved putting one foot in front of the other, stepping out of the house and onto the steps.

  He could do this.

  He could.

  He would.

  Sweat dripping steadily down his ribcage, he forced his feet to move, as if learning for the first time how to walk. One step, then another, and another, and another. Down a step, then he sat.

  His ass hit the wood of the top step hard, as if he’d lost control of his leg muscles, and he was seeing spots. The blinding light didn’t help. He blinked and tried to focus on something close by—the chest—until he got control of his vision.

  Then he realized Emmy was watching him, probably on alert to grab him if he pulled another Scarlett O’Hara. Once he could see straight, he looked up at her and forced himself to smile.

  It probably looked more like a grimace, the way he was feeling, off kilter and on edge.

  “It’s okay, take your time.”

  “This is the first time I’ve been outside since…I don’t know when.”

  It embarrassed him to admit it, but hell, she’d already seen him act like a lunatic on more than one occasion. What did he have left to lose?

  “I can’t think of a better day to change that,” she said, smiling and looking up at the sky.

  Aidan dared a glance upward, and he felt as if he were becoming unhinged from the earth, falling forward into the sky…

  But he wasn’t moving at all. He was just a little dizzy.

  The sky was immense and far more blue and endless than it looked from inside the cabin through the window. The redwoods towered around them, tall, elegant giants, frozen in time. And the air smelled like trees and earth and summer, the best thing he’d ever smelled in his life.

  It all made him sick with fear. And the fear made him loathe himself for not being able to enjoy this stunningly beautiful place.

  “Are you feeling okay? Would you like a glass of water or anything?”

  “No.” No, he wasn’t feeling okay, and no, he didn’t want a glass of water.

  He wanted to be immersed in water. He wanted to jump into the lake and swim until his muscles ached and his chest burned. He wanted to feel the water chill his body while the sun warmed his face. He wanted to splash and dive and play until he was so exhausted he couldn’t move.

  He stared out at Promise Lake, its surface broken by a million glistening ripples, and he hated himself for not being able to enjoy it like any normal living creature would.

  Emmy placed the screwdriver next to him. She lifted the chest so that it sat between him and her, and Aidan took the tool in his hand.

  He could do this. He wanted to know what was in the chest, and he could operate a screwdriver.

  As he began working the screw out of the first hinge, the remaining chunks of dirt began to fall from the chest, and soon he had the screw out. The ancient hinge, having been in its proper place for countless years, didn’t budge, but it would pop right off, he was sure, once the rest of the screws were out. Next he went to work on the second hinge.

  Once he’d accomplished that task, Emmy placed her hands on top of the chest. “Wait,” she said. “We can’t open it until Max is here.”

  Aidan’s gut wrenched. The kid? Here with him?

  “Well, I’d better get back to work anyway,” he said, starting to stand up.

  “No, please. I’d like you to be here, too, to see what’s inside.” She placed a hand on his arm, and chills ran through him.

  He looked down at her hand, and he gave up moving. Her pale skin looked golden against his, which hadn’t seen the sun in far too long. She had skin that reminded him of the expensive china dolls his grandmother collected, dolls he’d stared at as a kid, half bored by them and half fascinated by how eerily real they looked.

  He was struck by a flash of memory, of lying with Emmy some time during college, probably on a lazy Sunday morning, and watching her hand resting on him as she slept, and being filled by the ridiculous kind of allen-compassing love that only naive first lovers could feel.

  Since then he’d lived. He’d had his heart broken. He’d seen death and destruction of the most senseless kinds. He’d never be able to feel that way again.

  Emmy, reading his expression, pulled her hand away. “Please,” she said. “Just stay here a bit longer. The sun is good for you. You need the vitamin D.”

  He said nothing, but he didn’t move, either.

  “Max!” she called toward the cottage. “We’re ready to open the chest now!”

  There was some movement in the cottage’s front window. The kid had probably been watching the whole time, waiting for his chance to come out and see the hidden treasures. In a flash, Max burst through the door and came running across the stone path.

  Aidan could understand the kid’s excitement. Hell, he’d been intrigued enough to set foot outside.

  The kid was barefoot and bare-chested, wearing only an old faded pair of orange swim trunks. He stopped at the bottom step and peered up at Aidan warily.

  “Is it your treasure chest?” he asked.

  Aidan shook his head. “Nope.”

  Max looked as if he didn’t quite believe him. Well, he’d see soon enough. Aidan wasn’t a pirate, and this old chest wasn’t filled with booty. It was probably a bunch of old papers, something someone hadn’t wanted found but hadn’t wanted to destroy either.

  “Max, I’m going to open the chest first and make sure there’s nothing bad in it, okay? Then I’ll let you see inside,” Emmy said.

  “But I wanna open it!”

  “There’s a small chance something scary could be in here.”

  “So what? I don’t care.”

  Emmy sighed. “Just stay back for a second.”

  She bent and lifted the lid. As she peered inside, her expression changed from apprehensive to curious. “It’s okay,” she said to Max. “You can open it.”

  The kid beamed and scurried up the steps to the chest. He grabbed the lid in his scrawny hands and opened it. Then they all stared inside.

  The space inside the chest was about a foot deep and two feet wide, and the contents were wrapped with tissue paper that had yellowed with age. The edges of a bundle of letters could be seen, along with a dried rose that lay on top of the whole bundle.

  Emmy gently picked up the rose and set it aside, then she pushed the tissue paper out of the way to reveal all of the contents. Besides the letters, there was a gold necklace, a small wooden box shaped like a heart, a piece of blue sea glass and some more things underneath that Aidan couldn’t see.

  “What is all this stuff?” Max said, going for the sea glass.

  “It looks like someone’s special treasures that they didn’t want anyone to take from them.”

  “But not a pirate’s treasure?”

  “No, sweetie. I don’t think so,” Emmy said gently.

  Aidan’s throat tightened at the way she talked to her son. He had never seen this side of her before. She’d always been a kind person overall, but she’d also been a spoiled princess when he’d loved her. He’d fallen for her in spite of the way she thought the world revolved around her, and the way she had only been interested in other people’s needs when it suited her.

  Perhaps age and motherhood had matured her, brought out a maternal side she’d been sorely lacking in her younger years.

  Either way, he didn’t really give a damn.

  Digging through the contents of the chest again, Emmy paused. Aidan watched as her face drained of color. She carefully picked up the object that had stopped her in her tracks. It was a small red leather journal, decorated with a baroque design, and it looked oddly familiar.

  Aidan didn’t understand why until she opened it, her hands shaking, and gasped. She turned the open page so that he could see it. The first line was in his own handwriting and read: For Emmaline Victoria Van Amsted.

  The rest of the page was in his h
andwriting, too, but he didn’t need to read it to know what it said. It was a poem he’d written for Emmy all those years ago, a poem he still knew by heart.

  The very thought of you

  Sends me spinning

  You the kite soaring high

  I the spool of string

  Clinging

  Trailing after

  Holding you to this earth

  When you were made to fly above.

  The journal had been a gift from him to her, for her twentieth birthday. They’d passed it back and forth between themselves, writing love notes or silly limercks or passionate poems or whatever popped into their heads. They’d pasted in ticket stubs and favorite snapshots and odd bits of memories from their life together.

  It sometimes amazed him to think back to that time and remember that he’d once been so unabashedly romantic. He felt as if where once his soul had been blooming full of love and idealism, now there dwelled a hardened little black acorn, scorched and lifeless.

  On their last trip here to Promise Lake together, the journal had gone missing, never to be seen again, and Emmy had been heartbroken by its loss.

  So had Aidan.

  His vision went blurry, but not before he caught sight of tears streaming down Emmy’s cheeks.

  “How did this—”

  She didn’t need to finish the question. He wondered the same thing, of course.

  He took a few deep breaths and tried to exhale the mounting tension in his gut. Tried to keep his head calm and clear, free of panic or misplaced emotions he didn’t want to feel.

  Maybe the rest of the contents would offer some explanation of how the journal had gotten into the chest. He bent and pushed aside the tissue paper himself, watching as Max rummaged through the remaining contents, oblivious to the drama that had just played out over the journal. He was more concerned with finding some booty that hadn’t been unearthed yet.

  Aidan took the bundle of letters and examined the address on the first one. It was addressed in a formal, meticulous script to someone named Leticia Van Amsted, and the mailing address was here at the lake cabin. The return address was a W. Elliot, on Scott Street in San Francisco. And the postmark date, barely legible, was October 10, 1945.

  Someone had buried letters from over fifty years ago, with a journal of theirs that had disappeared only twelve years ago?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  “Whose are those?” Emmy asked.

  “They’re addressed to a Leticia Van Amsted.”

  “Oh,” she said, frowning. “That’s my great-aunt.”

  Emmy paled again. Aidan watched confusion play on her face, until he couldn’t take looking at her anymore.

  He wanted to kiss her. He wanted more than anything on this godforsaken earth to kiss her and feel the same love he’d felt when he’d picked out the journal she was holding and poured all his stupid young passion into it.

  No. He recalled their recent kiss, right after she’d arrived at the cabin, and he knew he couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t bear to feel her respond to him then pull away. It was like arriving in heaven for a moment only to be told that there’d been a mistake—you were actually going to hell.

  Maybe that was a bit of an overblown description, but his feelings for Emmy—both the good and the bad ones—had always been epic.

  “Probably somebody gathered up a bunch of stuff that had been lying around in the cabin and—”

  “And buried it in the forest? Why would anyone do that?”

  He looked at the letters in his hand. “I don’t know.”

  “And who would have done it? Certainly not my father, but he’s owned this place ever since my great-aunt died in the late forties and he inherited it.”

  Aidan puzzled over that one for a moment. “Were there any caretakers or maids hired to keep the place up when no one was here?”

  Emmy shrugged. “I imagine so, but why would they bury a bunch of our family’s personal belongings in a chest in the woods?”

  “Maybe the ghost did it,” Max said matter-of-factly, as if it was such an obvious truth they were stupid not to have thought of it. “Isn’t the ghost really Aunt Leticia?”

  “How do you know about that?” Emmy asked.

  “My cousin told me.”

  Emmy sighed. “I don’t believe in ghosts, honey. There’s no proof they really exist.”

  “But what about that teacup?”

  “What?”

  “The teacup that keeps moving out of the cabinet.”

  Emmy stared at him as if he’d just said something disturbing. “The one with the pink roses on it?”

  “Yeah. Every time you put it away, it ends up back on the windowsill.”

  “I thought you were doing that for a science experiment or something.”

  Max shook his head. “Nuh-uh.”

  “Then…how is it getting there? Tell me the truth, Max. This is not a time for joking, okay?”

  “I swear! I’m not moving it.”

  A chill went up Aidan’s spine. He hadn’t seen any evidence of a supernatural presence during his time in the cabin, but he’d had his own mental instability to deal with. Maybe he simply hadn’t noticed.

  No, that was crazy talk. There were no ghosts here, other than the ones that haunted him from within.

  Emmy was shaking her head, looking distressed and puzzled. “I—I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, Max. There are no such things as ghosts.”

  The kid looked as though he didn’t believe a thing his mother was saying, but he didn’t argue. He dug into the chest again, rummaged around, and pulled out a gold ring.

  “Look,” he said. “There really is treasure in here. Maybe some pirates broke into the cabin and took the stuff they liked and buried it in the woods.”

  “That’s about as good an explanation as any I can think of,” Emmy said, staring at the journal again and shaking her head. “Pirates.”

  Aidan’s gaze dropped to her torso, encased in a pink cotton tank top that stretched over her curves, and his groin stirred at the sight of her lush cleavage. He’d always loved her chest, but now it was an entirely different world from the one he’d known. She had full curves where she’d once been a bit too thin, and it made him wonder again how different she’d be in ways he couldn’t see by looking at her.

  Was she more experienced and responsive in bed now? More confident? More uninhibited?

  He felt himself growing hard. What the hell was he doing? Torturing himself? Hadn’t he had enough of that for one lifetime?

  Apparently not.

  The worst thing about surviving any long-term trauma, Aidan suspected, was the habit it formed, the lingering impulse to experience the kinds of pain that felt like normal life to someone who didn’t know any better.

  It made him understand why people sought out abusive relationships after growing up abused.

  If he had a saving grace though, it was that deep down, he didn’t want his months as a hostage to define who he was for the rest of his life.

  He was still trying to escape his captivity.

  Forcing his mind off Emmy brought him back to reality. And his attention turned to the fact that he was still outside—with two other people, no less. When he wasn’t thinking about it, he wasn’t freaking out about it.

  But now…He felt panic stirring in his gut, so he tricked himself by turning his attention back to the letters he was still holding. Emmy had set aside the journal and was reading the inscription in the ring Max had found.

  “To LV, with all my heart,” she read aloud.

  Aidan opened the first letter in the stack. The old paper was delicate, but not crumbling. It had yellowed, and was darker around the edges, but the dark-blue ink was still perfectly legible.

  He began reading.

  My dearest Leticia,

  How long have I ached to be near you? I watch you from afar each day, and I cannot bear to think that soon the summer will be here, and I will be without even the si
ght of you for three long, tedious months. And so I have set the task upon myself to tell you how I feel.

  AIDAN STOPPED at the second paragraph. He wasn’t in the mood to read about unrequited love—or any other kind, for that matter. He didn’t need to know about some poor sap who’d gotten his heart broken by another Van Amsted woman. That was a subject he’d already become an expert on.

  He tucked the letter in its envelope, then tucked the envelope back under the twine that held the bundle of letters together, and he dropped the whole lot back into the chest.

  “This stuff,” Emmy said, “except for the journal, it seems to be mostly Great-Aunt Leticia’s. I just don’t get it.”

  Aidan’s mood turned dark. This Technicolor perfect day…This ridiculously pretty setting…Emmy standing before him looking like a portrait of good health and beauty, of grown-up sexual vitality…This sickeningly cute kid with his brain that was too damn big for his body…

  It all seemed to be conspiring against him, mocking him for being such a head case, laughing at his inability to participate in life.

  “Yeah well, I’d love to sit here and help you sort out your family ghost stories, but I’ve got work to do,” he said and stood.

  Before they could protest, he stomped into the cabin and slammed the door. And there, alone in the cool, dark room, away from the sunlight and the trees and Emmy, he was weighed down by a sadness so heavy, he feared it might crush him if he didn’t escape it soon.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We were held hostage for two months and five days, but I’d only been a hostage for a few hours when I started considering how we would escape. Getting myself and my fellow soldiers out alive occupied my every waking thought, and some of my dreaming ones, for that entire two months. I noted which guards were less vigilant, which had a lazy air about them or a tendency to leave the door open upon entering the room. I mentally noted the sounds I could hear through the windows, trying desperately to orient myself to where I was and where I might go when we escaped.