You Are Here(62)

Emma sat there and listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen, overwhelmed and still a bit stunned to see all of them here at once. She could hear someone cutting vegetables and pulling down pots, the singing of the gas stove, and the screen door banging shut. A cork popped, two glasses clinked, and then a short burst of laughter rang out. It had been so long since her family had all been together: Last Christmas, Nate and Megan had been delayed by a snowstorm, and by the time they arrived at home, Annie and Charles had already left to go back to DC for work. It was always this way; they were always just barely missing each other. But now here they were, all gathered together; each of them had dropped their classes and studies, their jobs and responsibilities, and they’d done it all for her.

Emma knew she was still in trouble, that there were still discussions and consequences to come. But right now it was as if that had all been forgotten. As if the past days had never even happened. She was suddenly surrounded by all the many people who cared about her, in the place where everything had started, which was all she’d really ever wanted in the first place.

So then how was it possible, she wondered—her thoughts drifting to Peter—that in the midst of so many people she could still feel so terribly lonely?

Later, Emma offered to help set the table, escaping into the quiet of the dining room. She could hear the rest of her family joking around in the kitchen: Patrick pelting sponges at Annie, Nate rattling off statistics about energy efficiency in dishwashers, and Mom helping Megan wash vegetables as she explained the basis for her latest research project. Charles had set out after Dad, who’d wandered off to the backyard garden when nobody was looking.

Emma circled the table, taking her time with the silverware, grateful for a quieter task and wondering if maybe she wasn’t cut out for this kind of togetherness. Perhaps her tendency to be alone wasn’t so much because nobody was ever around—as she’d always thought—but rather because she preferred it that way. Maybe she had a natural propensity for silence. Maybe she was doomed to a life of solitude.

“Well, at least your table manners didn’t fall by the wayside when you decided to become an outlaw,” Nate said, and Emma looked up to see him leaning against the doorframe between the kitchen and the dining room. He was the tallest of all of them, skinny and serious, altogether too intelligent for Emma. Patrick was exasperating and Annie intimidating, but Nate had always seemed unapproachable in a way the others hadn’t, like a respected professor who is equal parts admired and feared.

“You could’ve called, you know,” he said, pulling out a chair and watching her circle the table as she laid out the silverware. “I would’ve bought you a plane ticket.”

“That wasn’t the point.”

“No,” he said, looking at her thoughtfully. “I suppose it wasn’t.”

Emma could still feel him watching her as she folded napkins, and it was as if he was weighing something, making up his mind about her.

“Do me a favor, will you?” he asked finally, and she glanced up at him with raised eyebrows. “Can you run down to the basement and grab the silver salad bowl? It’s on one of the far shelves.”

“We already have one,” Mom said, walking in to set down a basket of bread.

Nate shook his head. “I think we need another.”

Mom frowned. “Why?”

“Just go grab it for me, will you?” Nate asked Emma, and she shrugged, heading off around the corner and down the stairs.

The basement was dimly lit, with only a few cobwebby bulbs dangling from between the rafters. It took a minute for Emma’s eyes to adjust, and she blinked around at the musty room, the shelves of drooping cardboard boxes labeled with the names of each of her siblings. This house had been the family’s before it had been Nate’s, and though the upstairs was now quite distinctly his, the basement still held years of unsorted junk, a staggering collection of memories both priceless and worthless.

Emma walked in a slow circle around the room, running a hand along the dusty shelves, her eyes watering. There was a box of dolls with no clothes, old board games with missing pieces, a shoebox full of marbles and pebbles and sea glass. She stood on her tiptoes to unearth an empty fish tank that had grown moldy with years, two deflated soccer balls, and a tiny baseball mitt.

In the back corner she spotted the salad bowl. It was old and tarnished and not something she particularly wanted to eat out of, but she picked it up anyway, measuring the weight of it in her hands. Just before she turned around, she noticed the box underneath it, which had T and E written in faded marker across the side.

Emma wiggled it out from the cupboard, blowing the layer of dust from its lid and setting it on the old corduroy couch that had probably been down here at least as long as she’d been alive. And then—for the second time in just about a week—she held her breath as she opened the box.

Last time, when she’d found the birth certificate, she hadn’t been expecting anything. But now she understood what T and E meant, was aware of the sorrowful implications behind a box so thick with dust; she guessed nobody had been able to bear looking at whatever was inside for a very long time. And sure enough, what she found made her hands tremble too. Nestled inside were two small baby blankets—one pink, the other blue—and two teddy bears, both still soft and new. There were two delicate rattles that looked as if they’d hardly been used, and a pair of matching knit caps, everything in twos, everything a set, as if her family hadn’t been able to bear using one without the other. Emma picked each item up, one at a time, trying to imagine what it must have taken to pack these things away, to have bought them with so much hope, only to abandon them again so soon. It nearly broke her own heart seeing the tiny monogrammed letters across the edge of each blanket.