You Are Here (28 page)

“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.

Beneath these was a small silver-edged photo album, and Emma breathed in at the sight of the engraved names: Tommy and Emma. She found herself almost smiling; she’d known somehow that he would have been a Tommy. And if he’d never had the chance to become any of the other things she’d imagined for him, she was happy that at least he’d had that.

The pictures inside had been taken mostly in the hospital: Mom smiling wearily from the bed, a baby crooked in each arm; Dad kneeling beside her with a goofy grin; Annie as a teenager, kissing baby Emma on the forehead; Patrick, lanky and buck-toothed at fifteen, holding up Tommy’s hand in a miniature high five. In the back of the album were a few pictures taken on the front lawn of this very house, of Mom and Dad each holding one of the twins up to the camera, bundled so that just their noses were visible. There was something different about her parents here; their eyes hadn’t yet misted over in the look Emma had always thought of as a kind of distant dreaminess, but which she now recognized for what it was: the scar left behind by their loss.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she heard footsteps on the sagging wooden stairs, and she thought about leaping into action, shoving the box back in its place and lunging for the salad bowl, pretending none of this had ever happened, but instead she stayed where she was—beside the open box, holding a photo of the entire family: Mom, Dad, Nate, Annie, Patrick, Emma, and Tommy—and waited until Mom appeared, pausing on the bottom step with a look on her face that was impossible to read.

Emma wasn’t sure what to expect. Her family wasn’t accustomed to delving into anything too far outside the realm of academia, and now that she’d uncovered the one subject that had been kept the most quiet of all, now that the lid was—quite literally—off the box, Emma wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed.

But if what she’d expected was another lecture, another point-by-point explanation dictated by logic and reason, then she’d been wrong. Instead, without saying a word, Mom crossed the basement and sat down beside Emma on the couch, leaning over to plant a kiss on her forehead. She didn’t say she’d been wrong, and she didn’t tell Emma why it had been kept a secret. She didn’t apologize, and she didn’t explain. Instead she took the photo album gently from Emma’s hands and opened it up to the first page. And then she began to talk.

“This was just a few hours after you were both born,” she said, her voice soft and thick. “I was in labor for twelve hours. You two were worse than any of the others.”

Emma watched her mom’s face as she flipped the pages, the lines that gathered at the corners of her eyes like a map of their shared past.

“You came out first,” she said, tracing the edges of the picture with her thumb. “And then he …” She cleared her throat, then started again. “And then Thomas—Tommy—was next. His face was all pinched like he was already annoyed at being last.” She smiled and blinked hard. “He would’ve been a real handful. He was already stubborn as anything. It’s amazing how much you can tell, even in such a short time.”

Emma leaned in closer to look at the pictures, so close that their elbows were touching, and after a few minutes she rested her cheek on her mother’s shoulder, looking on as Mom colored in the pictures, filling in the missing pieces.

When she paused, Emma sat up to look at her.

“I study anthropology,” Mom said, her eyes focused across the room. “I lecture about grief, about burial rights and the way people mourn.” She turned to face Emma. “There’s no right way to do it. Some people need to talk, and others just can’t. Some need to remember, and others to forget. It’s different for everyone.”

Emma nodded, and Mom shook her head and smiled.

“And some need to steal a couple of cars and drive a few hundred miles.”

“Some do, I guess,” Emma said ruefully.

There was another soft thud from the top of the stairs, and they both looked over to see Dad’s loafers, and then a moment later his balding head, as he ducked to see who was below. And by the time he reached the bottom step—his face already changing as he realized what they were looking at—Patrick was pounding his way down as well, muttering all the while about how hungry he was before falling silent when he saw the scene on the couch. One by one they were joined by the rest of the family, until all of them were huddled together in the damp coolness of the basement. Nate nodded at Emma from where he sat on the arm of the couch, and she smiled at him gratefully. Upstairs the burgers were burning on the grill, and the salad was growing limp in its bowl. But no one seemed in a rush to leave as Mom began to speak again.

There were no asides about poetry or statistics, no interruptions or jokes. They were too busy listening and remembering, digging through the old collection of memories, the lost history that belonged to each and every one of them. It almost felt as if the story couldn’t have been told until now anyway, until they were all gathered here together like this.

And just like that, Emma knew what she wanted for her birthday.

chapter twenty-six

When Peter woke the following morning, it was to discover two state troopers leaning against the blue convertible and regarding him suspiciously. Their patrol car was parked just behind it, the squawking of the radio interrupting the otherwise quiet morning. Beside him the dog lifted his head and then—seeing nothing of any great interest—rolled back over in the soft grass with a contented sigh.

Peter ruffled the back of his hair and yawned, stumbling to his feet. His clothes were wet with dew, and when he glanced out over the battlefield, he found it hidden by a low-hanging fog.

“Morning,” Peter said with a nod, ambling past the officers. He fumbled for his keys, then opened the passenger-side door and reached in to grab his cell phone, which was making a series of faint beeps, its battery nearly dead. He rested an elbow on the roof of the car, scrolling through his missed calls, his heart picking up speed when he guessed it was Emma who had been trying to reach him.

One of the troopers cleared his throat a bit too forcefully, and Peter glanced up at them over the top of the car. He raised his eyebrows and tried his best to look polite, though all he felt was impatience. There suddenly seemed about a million places he should be, a thousand things he needed to say and do, and two people he wanted desperately to talk to. He didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries with two cops in pointy hats and overly tight pants.

“Everything okay?” the taller one asked from behind aviator glasses that made him look like a bug. Peter slipped his still-beeping phone into his pocket and nodded.

“Are you lost, son?” the other asked, and Peter couldn’t help laughing at this, shaking his head and grinning like an idiot, because for once in his life he
was
lost, yet somehow, as unlikely as it seemed, he’d never felt quite so sure of himself.

“I’m okay,” he told them, feeling a lot like Emma, bold and spontaneous and unafraid. “Just passing through.”

“Where to?”

Peter shrugged, still smiling. “I don’t know yet.”

“Right,” said one of the troopers, reaching for his walkie-talkie. He glanced at his partner, rolling his eyes in Peter’s direction with a remarkable lack of subtlety. “Your call, Joe.”

Joe was now working a sesame seed out of his front tooth with his pinky, having apparently lost interest. He shrugged. “Don’t let it happen again, kid. This is a historical site, not a hotel. If you can’t tell the difference, I suggest you get yourself a map next time.”

Peter nodded, just barely managing to keep a straight face. “Thank you, sir,” he said, appropriately solemn. “I’ll do that.”

The messages had been left only minutes apart, all of them late the night before. In the first she didn’t even bother with a greeting, instead launching right into a recitation of the names of important battlefields—in alphabetical order—until the phone cut her off. In the second one all she said was, “Those are all the places I promise to go with you on the way home if you’ll just do me one last favor.” Then there was the sound of yelling in the background, and a whistle, and then muffled laughter before the message came to an abrupt end.

Peter had pulled over to the side of the road once he was far enough away from the state troopers, and he now jabbed at the numbers on the keypad, impatient for the next message.

“Sorry about that,” it began, and Peter smiled almost reflexively when he heard her voice again. “I think my brothers have somehow reverted to whatever age they were when we last lived in this house. Anyway, this is my version of an apology. I know it’s not great, but I’ve messed up everything else so far, so why not this, too?”