This Close to Okay(40)

“Emmett, how much money is in here?”

“Thousands, around ten.”

“Okay, wow. And you had the nerve to ask me if I was afraid you’d rob me blind. Aren’t you scared to walk around with all this money?”

“I don’t care about the money. I was going to leave it on the bridge anyway for someone to find, hopefully put to good use,” he said. “And I’d like to give you more, for everything you’ve done for me.” He began peeling off hundred-dollar bills, a couple of twenties.

“I don’t want you to give it to me. I mean it. Stop,” she said, putting her hand on his. He stacked the money for her neatly and pushed it to the edge of the table. It wasn’t entirely weird for someone considering suicide to drain their bank account or whatever he’d done; saving money quickly lost its importance next to matters of life and death. But she still asked, “You won’t tell me where you got this?” She touched the envelope with the tip of her finger.

“Not illegally. I promise,” he said.

“Why are you walking around with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Tallie raised her eyebrows. She sat back in her chair, frustrated. Leaned forward, frustrated. Drank her tea, frustrated.

“Look, I know how this sounds, but it’s not dirty money, and it’s mine. I saved it, that’s all,” he said.

“And the clothes, the toiletries? You had all this stuff? Why’d you let me think you didn’t?” She touched the plastic inside his toiletries bag, the travel-size items she loved to buy before vacation.

“I don’t have pajamas or anything as comfortable as what you gave me. I didn’t intend to mislead you.”

“Do you have an ID?” Tallie asked, scanning the table and looking inside his backpack.

“Not on me,” he said.

“But you have a license?”

“Yes.”

“Not with you?”

“No, not with me,” Emmett said.

“So you told the police officer what, earlier?”

“Exactly what I said. I told him the truth. My name, my Social Security number. They can look that stuff up.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Emmett.”

“Emmett what?” Tallie asked, annoyed.

“Emmett Aaron Baker,” he said a little slowly, watching her face.

Client Name: Baker, Emmett Aaron.

“Emmett Aaron Baker,” she repeated, lighting up. There it was. Her stomach Ferris-wheeled hearing him say his full name, echoing it in its entirety for the first time. She envisioned herself tapping his full name into Google. “I looked up Emmett and Clementine, Kentucky, and couldn’t find anything. What would happen if I looked up Emmett Aaron Baker?” she asked.

“Nothing would come up,” he said with his eyes stuck to hers.

“You’re the one ungoogleable man left on earth?”

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t put myself out there,” Emmett said. He took his right hand and raked his hair to the left, off his forehead. A move Tallie loved on men.

“I scanned the list of America’s Most Wanted, Kentucky’s Most Wanted, and a few more,” she confessed.

“Good. Sure you did. But you didn’t see me,” he said confidently.

“Right. I did not.”

They drank their tea in silence. The rain fell across her windows like the car wash Emmett had compared it to. She imagined him clapping the ladder against her house, cleaning out the gutters. She imagined telling Lionel. He would’ve noticed they were full next time he stopped by when it was raining. Lionel would’ve looked up and told her in his booming alpha-male, king-of-the-mountain, big-brother voice, “Either I can do it or you need to have someone come clean out your gutters.” She was proud of herself for taking care of it before Lionel could fuss at her.

“And these?” she asked, touching the butterfly wings.

“I’m not ready to talk about those. Or this,” he said, pointing to the coloring-book paper—a treasure from a child.

“What about this?” She lifted the little Bible.

“My grandfather’s, given to him by his parents on the day he was born,” he said, opening to show her the inscription written inside.

To Samuel. Welcome to Earth. March 29, 1933.

“You were raised religious?”

“Baptist,” he said.

“Me, too.”

For someone who’d felt such intense emotion the day before and who had wanted to end his life, Emmett had an aggressive calm about him. Whatever sent him to the bridge must’ve really been truly unbearable. Thinking of what it could have been was like staring into a too-bright light without blinking. Tallie’s eyes watered.

“Does it bother you, talking about God? About religion?”

“Not really,” he said.

“So yesterday you said, ‘What if there’s no God’…Is that what you believe?”

“I think God is there, but indifferent.”

“Feels too cruel to me. Him being there, but not caring. I can’t believe in that kind of God,” she said.

“But when things get dark and hopeless…that’s exactly what it feels like.”