Always Emily

Emily’s soft chuckle filled the interior of the car. He’d missed her laugh, and how it could lighten his darkest moments. “You’ve always been one for getting lost in a book. Remember when I used to sit in your office and say outrageous things about you and you would be so immersed in a book you wouldn’t hear a thing?”

He remembered, with enough pleasure that he drove right past the turnoff to her dad’s house to take her home with him.

Crazy fool, letting her use you like this.

Yes, I’m a fool, but I like having her close. This is just for tonight.

It had better be. You know how she breaks your heart when she leaves. Every time.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“I left him. For good. Just like you said I should.”

“What about work?”

“I left that, too.”

“For how long? A couple of weeks?”

“For good.”

She was leaving her career? The light from the dashboard wasn’t strong enough to tell much more than that she had her eyes closed.

The nature of the silence in the car changed, became laden with censure, as though Emily were holding up a giant No Trespassing sign, making it clear that she’d said as much as she was going to.

Salem didn’t know how he knew this when she hadn’t said a word, but he knew, and held his tongue. Did he believe she’d left Jean-Marc for good? Not a chance. Had she left archeology for good? Never.

On the far side of town, he turned down his street and pulled into his driveway, where he helped her into the house. He led her to the kitchen. She plopped onto a chair and rested her head on her folded hands on top of the table.

His father wandered in. “Emily, hello.”

She raised her head. “Hello, Mr. Pearce.”

“You don’t look good, girl.”

“Feel awful,” she said with a wan smile. Here in the brightly lit room she looked even worse than she had in the dim Heritage Center office. Her skin was as ghostly as her voice had sounded in the car. Fever painted round red spots like old-fashioned rouge on cheekbones that didn’t use to be so sharp. She put her head back down on fragile-looking wrists.

Salem should go to the Sudan and kill the bastard who did this to her, and that puzzled him. Emily had always been able to take care of herself. She’d never needed him to fight her battles for her.

“She has malaria, Dad.”

“You need fattening, girl,” Dad said. To Salem, he directed, “Warm her some of that soup I made yesterday.”

Salem took a container of chicken soup out of the refrigerator and heated a bowl in the microwave. Old wives’ tale or not, his father figured it was good for anything that ailed a body. He made a fresh pot every week.

Emily lifted a spoonful of soup, but the effort cost her. She needed to be in bed.

“Give me,” he said. He took the utensil from her and raised soup to her mouth.

“Not a child.”

“I know, but if I leave it to you, we’ll be here all night.” He got most of it into her before she batted his hand away.

“So tired,” she whispered.

“Okay, let’s get you to bed.” He carried the bowl to the sink to wash it, but his dad took it from him.

“Take care of her,” he said with a jut of his jaw toward Emily.

Salem led her upstairs to his bedroom and left her there while he went to the closet in the hallway to get fresh sheets. When he returned to his bedroom, Emily had stripped to her underwear—plain white cotton panties and bra.

He could probably wrap his fingers around her waist. There was a time when he’d craved her tight little body, but not tonight. Every part of Emily had been stripped down to bare essentials.

“Do you have a spare T-shirt?” She pulled back the covers.

“Of course.” He took one out of his dresser then turned his back while she finished undressing. He heard her climb into bed.

“Wait.”

She stopped with her knee on the mattress and watched him warily, her strange blue eyes with the odd hazel rings huge in her drawn face.

“I need to change the sheets.”

She made a sound—a cross between a raspberry and an old-fashioned pshaw—and finished scrambling under the blankets.

The second her head hit the pillow, she closed her eyes.

By the time Salem returned the clean sheets to the closet and came back to the bedroom, Emily was asleep.

He grabbed a T-shirt and flannel pants, and washed up and changed in the bathroom. When he finished, he laid a fresh towel and facecloth on the counter beside the sink and hoped neither of the girls used them in the morning before Emily got up, or before he could warn them he had a visitor.

From his supply of spare toiletries he kept under the counter—toothpaste, deodorant, tissues—he grabbed a toothbrush, unwrapped it and did a double-take. He held a child’s toothbrush in his hand. With a sick sensation, he realized he was still buying his girls small toothbrushes when they were no longer children. They were adolescents.

He placed the foolishly small brush onto the facecloth. He also needed a fresh bar of soap, but couldn’t find any under the counter. They were all out. He headed toward his younger daughter’s room. She owned a collection of small soaps.

The light bleeding around the partially closed door of his older daughter’s bedroom caught his attention. He pushed it open and said, “Hey, kid, time for lights-out.”

Aiyana slept in a tight fetal ball on top of her bedsheets, her fingers curled over her shoulders—an egg with hands and feet. Where were her blankets?

“What the heck?” They were a tangled mass in the corner. He picked them up, straightened them and covered her, tucking them close around her body until they cocooned her, as he used to do when she was little.

She used to giggle and say, “Make me a mummy, Daddy.”

She didn’t laugh with him these days. She no longer called him Daddy, but he still thought of her as his little baby, a child who was growing up too fast.

He stared down at his daughter. No, she wasn’t a child. She was becoming a woman, too quickly. He thought of those children’s toothbrushes he’d been buying. He knew Aiyana went to the store and bought her own feminine products. Yes, she was becoming a young woman.

He’d missed turning points in his daughters’ lives, and that made his chest ache.