You Are Here(58)

“And hey,” he said, “I could come back and pick you up afterward, unless your family …”

“I found my way down here,” Emma said shortly. “I’m sure I can figure out a way back home.”

“Okay, then,” Peter said, gripping the wheel.

Emma nodded. “Okay.”

He turned the key in the ignition and said it again: “Okay.”

As they left, the tires bounced over the unripened crab apples that littered the drive, and the stained-glass windows of the church threw tinted colors on the hood of the car. Emma leaned an elbow on the side and told herself it was for the best, that her reasons for coming down here had had nothing to do with Peter in the first place, and that once he was gone—doing whatever it was he wanted to do, touring empty fields across the South, searching for reminders of something long since erased—she’d finally be able to focus on what was important again.

It was a short drive to Nate’s house, just a few miles farther down a narrow road that cut through the kind of hills that in another season would be perfect for sledding. There were farms with hay stacked like building blocks, battered mailboxes and white fences, bird feeders and bluish grass. Emma hadn’t been for a visit in years, and she’d nearly forgotten the humble charm of the little house, set near a muddy lake with a sinking dock and an overturned rowboat that looked as if it hadn’t seen the water in years.

Peter turned the key and the car went silent, and Emma pressed her nose up against the window to look out at the place they’d carried her home after she was born, the place where her brother had died and her family had begun the slow process of unraveling. The horizon was crowded by the smoke-colored mountains, and from a distance the trees looked like feathers coating some giant, hunchbacked bird, the wind tipping them this way and that like needles on a scale.

The whole world smelled of pine and mulch, and they sat looking out at the house together, neither of them quite sure what to say. Emma tried not to feel so deflated, but this was what she’d come all the way down here for, and it now seemed silly and pointless. What had she hoped to do in dredging up the past? What good could that possibly have done? A part of her simply wasn’t ready for the trip to be over, but another part of her knew it was more than that. She wasn’t yet ready for Peter to leave.

“Well,” she said.

“Well.”

Peter helped gather her things from the trunk, and when they finished, she slung her backpack over her shoulder. “What about the dog?”

They both stared at the mound of white fur sprawled out across the backseat.

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Peter said, rubbing at his jaw. “You should probably get to take him. I mean, you found him. And after all you did this morning …”

Emma shook her head. “You take him.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be staying, or how I’m getting home,” she said. “You two can keep each other company.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We can figure the rest when we get home, but I think he’s gotten pretty fond of that car.”

Peter thumped a fist against the hood and smiled ruefully. “Me too.”

“And me,” Emma said softly, and then they both stood there like that, working up to some kind of good-bye.

“So, good luck,” Peter said eventually, shoving his hands in his pockets and backing up until he ran into the car with a jolt. His cheeks reddened, and he gave a little shrug. “Let me know how things turned out when you’re back home, okay?”

Emma couldn’t bring herself to answer. A small and somewhat ridiculous part of her wished that he might try to kiss her again, because this time would be different. But a second chance seemed too much to hope for now, and so she managed a small nod before turning to hurry up the stone path, where she stood before the front door for a moment, trying to collect herself. Behind her she could hear the familiar rattle of the engine as Peter revved up the car, and then the bleating sound of the tires as it disappeared up the drive.

She kept her back to the street until the noise had given way to a sort of pulsing silence, until Peter was gone, and she was alone, and there was nothing more to be done except kick herself for always choosing the wrong times to be silent and the wrong times to make a fuss, for always managing to get it all so perfectly wrong.

Chapter twenty-four

Though it would continue to happen often over the years, the first time Peter set off to follow Emma without an invitation was in fifth grade. Up to that point he’d spent most afternoons on his own, conducting elaborate battles across his bedroom floor, shifting a shoelace back and forth across the carpet to mark the progress of one side or the other.

But one day after school he noticed Emma heading off toward the college where her parents taught, the lofty grouping of stone buildings that had for some time been the object of intense interest for him. Hoping she might be on her way to see her parents at their offices—places he imagined as grand libraries with antique globes and row upon row of dusty, important-looking tomes—he followed, feeling quite proud of himself as he trailed along carefully behind her.

Emma wove purposefully through the throngs of college students, who all looked on with amusement at the ten-year-old girl with scabby knees and tangled hair who swung her arms with such determination. He was surprised when she walked right past the English building, then Anthropology, and then on toward the dorms, eventually going past the president’s house and beyond, where the path opened up to a long field that was shaped like a comma and overgrown with weeds.