by L. D. Davis
“Please, you give it to him.”
I accepted the heavy envelope in my hands even though I still felt unsure about being the one to give it to him.
“You know, Emmet and I aren’t exactly…” I shrugged. “We don’t talk really. We live under the same roof and we share in taking care of all of the kids, but…we don’t chit chat or hang out or anything else.”
“Well, maybe you should,” Casey said solemnly. “Have to start somewhere, right?”
I looked at her. Was she suggesting that Emmet and I get together?
“I didn’t know that he was in love with you when I married him,” she said suddenly in a rush of words. “I know people think that I trapped him, but I didn’t. Emmet was my friend, maybe even my best friend. I had a hard life when I was younger and he helped me become a better person. I got pregnant after only one night of unexpected sex. I would have been okay with raising Owen as a single mom, and I should have said no when he proposed, but I loved him, and I thought eventually he would love me, too, but he never did – I mean not like he obviously loves you.
“For a long time I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with our marriage. Emmet was kind to me, he provided for me, and he’s an excellent dad, but there was something empty about our marriage and I didn’t know what it was. Even after I figured out that you two had once been engaged, I still didn’t think that you had anything to do with my marital problems, because you guys hadn’t been together in a long time. But…” She paused and looked at the floor for a moment.
“Lucas’s party was the first indication of his feelings for you. Then that morning before we went to the spa, the banter between the two of you came easily, and there was never banter between me and Emmet. Not like that. And then later the bracelet…”
I felt like shit for what she had gone through, and I was a little mad with Emmet for putting her through it. I felt guilty for the many times we crossed over that line while Casey was waiting for him to show some interest in her.
“I tried to change for him,” she said, looking out of the storm door absently. “I lost weight, I changed my hair and started wearing makeup. I started wearing designer clothes and getting my nails done and getting waxed.” She looked at me. “I was trying to be enough like you to matter, but it didn’t really work. And it was on a day when I was seriously thinking of surgically altering my body that I woke up. The problem wasn’t me. I was fine. I was more than fine. The problem was that we should have never married in the first place. When he came home from work that day, I had a bag packed for him and a couple of boxes of items I knew meant a lot to him, and I told him I was done. I told him that I deserved a husband who could give me no less than one-hundred percent, that I deserved a husband who loved me like a wife and not a buddy. I promised him that I wouldn’t keep him from Owen. I told him I loved him and then I told him to leave. And you know what? He didn’t argue. He teared up and apologized for taking away years of my life that I could have been with someone who loved me the way I deserved to be loved. He hugged me for a long time…” She stared sadly into that point of time for a moment before her eyes found mine again. “And then he left.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her sincerely. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Look, Donya,” she said in a strong voice. She straightened her shoulders and looked at me intently. “You and Emmet obviously have something that most people in the world only read about in books or see in the movies. I’m hurt, but I’ll be okay and I’ll move on. I still love him and I want him to be happy, and you’re the only one who can make that happen. I’m sorry your husband turned out to be an asshole, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of our marriages fell apart around the same time. I think you and Emmet were meant to be, and those papers are the first step in making that happen. Don’t waste it.”
She pushed open the storm door, gave me a weak smile, and then hurried out the door and across the lawn to her car.
*~*~*
I didn’t want to give Emmet the papers in front of the entire family. I waited until Emmy and Luke were cuddled up on the couch watching a movie and all of the kids were asleep. I was glad that Owen was sleeping in Lucas’s room as I knocked lightly on his door. I knew he was awake because I could not only hear him moving around in there, but of course I could sense it.
“Come in,” he said after a moment of hesitation. He probably wondered why I was coming to him, since I only came to him if it involved Owen or Rosa, and Rosa was drooling in sleepy land on my bed.
I opened the door and stepped inside. Emmet sat on one side of his bed with a law book in his hands, a highlighter and small sticky notes. I tried not to notice the curved muscle of his upper arm that stretched the tee shirt he had on, or how his hair looked sexy and mussed like he had been repeatedly running his hands through it.
“You know, you graduated law school years ago,” I teased, hoping that he totally missed the vibe I had been putting out.
“Unfortunately I lack the brain capacity to retain every law known to man,” he said with a smile. “What brings you to my door late at night?”
“Am I disturbing you?”
“You never disturb me, Donya,” he said softly. I resisted the urge to smile like an idiot and stepped further into the room.
“This is for you,” I said, holding up the envelope. “It’s from Casey. She wanted me to give it to you.”
His eyes zeroed in on the envelope and then he nodded solemnly. “How was she?” He asked after some hesitation.
I gave a small shrug. I didn’t want to tell him what we discussed, so I said “Okay,” I said.
He gave me a suspicious look. Of course he knew I wasn’t telling him the whole story, but he didn’t push. He reached out his hand for the envelope, but a gust of wind swept in through a window that was open a few inches and one of his papers blew to the floor at my feet.
“I got it,” I said and tossed the envelope on the bed, making another few papers float to the floor.
“You know you’re not helping, right?” Emmet teased as I crouched to pick up the papers.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “But why do you have the window…” I trailed off as my fingers touched the corner of a canvas sticking out from under the bed. Absently, I slapped the papers on the bed, but didn’t take my eyes off of that familiar object. My fingers closed around the edges of the canvas and I slowly pulled it out. I held it up and examined it.
“Shit,” I said and felt the need to sit. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding the painting I had done nearly twenty years ago for Valentine’s Day. That night I had fought with Emmet in the parking lot and the following morning his lips and his hands had pleased me and made up for upsetting me the night before.
“Have you always had this?” I asked Emmet without taking my eyes off of the macabre art.
“Yes,” he answered quietly. “It was in Louisiana in storage for a long time, but I brought it back home with me the last time I went down.”
I looked over my shoulder at him. “Why did you keep it?”
“It is an incredible piece of work,” he said with a shrug. “And you made it. That’s reason enough.”
I looked away from him and focused again on the painting. “I was so angry and hurt when I painted this, ramped up on my teenage hormones, totally pissed off with myself for loving you,” I reminisced. Then I turned back to him and said “If it is so incredible and meaningful for you, why is it on the floor under your bed?”
“I don’t have anywhere to put it right now,” he said, looking guilty.
I looked around the room and saw the perfect spot. I got up and put the canvas on top of a chest of drawers and leaned it back against the wall.
“There,” I said with my hands on my hips.
“I approve,” Emmet said.
I looked at him smugly as I walked back over to the bed. “I wasn’t waiting for your approval. What else do you have under this bed?”
“Are you seriously looking under my bed?” Emmet asked disbelievingly. Seconds later, his face appeared at the other side, upside down. “What if I don’t want you looking under my bed?”
“I wasn’t looking for your permission either,” I said and reached for a small box.
Emmet groaned as I pulled the box out. I sat up and leaned back against the bed and crossed my legs.
“I don’t want you to open the box,” Emmet warned as he stretched out across the bed on his papers to try to take it from me.
“What do you have to hide, Grayne?” I teased.
“Donya,” his tone was serious, but I felt compelled to open the box. I couldn’t help it. Something in that box was calling to me.
I took the lid off and just stared for a long time. Emmet was very still behind me.
Inside the box were the scraps from my wedding dress that Emmet had torn off while he was on his knees begging me not to marry Jerry. The two jars I had given him when he went away to college were wrapped carefully in cloth, but I didn’t need to pull the cloth away to know what they were. I carefully took the jars out of the box and set them on the floor beside me and put the pieces of my dress on top of them. There were dozens and dozens of magazine clippings of me in one pose or another, and there were photographs of me when I was a little kid, as a teenager, and more of that day in Emmet’s hotel room just before I gave him my virginity. More prominently, there was a picture of me in my maid of honor dress from Emmy’s wedding.
We were both silent as I looked through some of the clippings and photographs. I didn’t look through all of them, but I did look through a great deal. I was about to put back what I had taken out when something else at the bottom of the box peeking out from under a picture caught my eye. I reached for it, a small red velvet sack. I probed at it with my fingers before opening it and knew before I even opened it what was in it, but I still pulled it open and carefully spilled the platinum engagement ring and its matching wedding band into the palm of my hand. They were so beautiful. I remembered how perfect the engagement ring had looked on my hand and how it felt when he had first slipped it on my slender finger.
“Wow,” I said, swallowing hard as I put the rings back into the sack. I proceeded to carefully put everything else back into the box. “You keep everything.”
Emmet said nothing, though I sensed his sadness. He sat back up as I pushed the box back under the bed. I was about to speed walk myself back to my room so I could think about all of this when two more objects under the bed in the shadows caught my eye. I gasped and eagerly reached for both and rolled them out.
“You kept my old board!” I said excitedly as I got to my feet, holding two skateboards. “And you kept yours!”
Before he could respond, I tossed his board onto the bed and ran out of the room excitedly. I was glad I didn’t pull my sneakers off yet as I hurried down the front stairs and pulled open the front door. I ran outside to the driveway. I put the board down, put one foot on it and wondered if I could still do it or if I would bust my ass. But then I didn’t care. I pushed off and easily coasted down the driveway and into the street. I laughed happily when I saw Emmet come out of the house carrying his board.
“Race you to the end of the street,” I said to him before he could even mount his board, and then took off.
“You little cheater,” he growled behind me.
Soon my hair was blowing slightly in the cool spring air and the feelings of surrender, peace and clarity that I used to get while boarding came back to me. Emmet caught up to me, but he didn’t try to pass me as we neared the end of the block. We rode in a comfortable, but exhilarating silence and continued on to the next block and the next after that. We finally stopped when we reached the main road in the neighborhood. We stood on our boards, facing each other, slightly out of breath because we were old. I grinned at him and he grinned back.
“We should get back,” Emmet said after a minute of us just grinning at each other like fools. “We are parents now.”
“Oh god,” I slapped a palm to my forehead. “I’m such a bad mom. I can’t believe I just left her there like that.” I got off of my board and picked it up and tucked it under my arm and started to walk back.
Emmet did the same, but said “You’re not a bad mom. Emmy and Luke are there and you knew that when you went outside.”
“Yeah, but Emmy doesn’t like black babies,” I said and giggled to myself at an inside joke that had come to be during a heartbreaking experience I shared with Emmy.
“What?” Emmet looked at me like I was crazy.
“Nothing,” I said. “I still shouldn’t have just run out like that.”
“Well, we won’t do it again,” Emmet said and then took my hand.
We walked hand in hand back to the house, talking quietly about nothing serious – like about the box that was clearly all about me, or his divorce, or mine, and we definitely did not talk about our hands linked together and the tether that hummed contently between us.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I tapped on Emmet’s door and walked in without waiting for an answer. He was just out of the shower and pulling a t-shirt on. I watched as the shirt was pulled down over his taut abdomen and felt disappointed that he covered it up.
“Can I help you?” Emmet asked, snapping my attention to his face. He smiled smugly, well aware of what I was looking at.
“Uh…right. Yes,” I said shaking my head to clear it. “Yes, you can. I am taking Rosa and Owen for a walk. Would you like to come?”
“I would love to come,” he said in a low voice that made my whole body tingle.
“Okay, great, I’ll be downstairs,” I said in a rush and hurried out of his room and back downstairs to the kids.
It had been a few weeks since Emmet and I skateboarded off into the night like a couple of teenagers. Our days of politely avoiding one another were over. Conversation came easily for us and there were no more awkward morning goodbyes. We started texting each other during the day while he was working and there were nights when we would sit up talking until our voices were hoarse and one or both of us couldn’t keep our eyes open anymore. We would always retreat to our own bedrooms rather than fall asleep together, but he held my hand when we went out – and that was something new, too. We went out to dinner, lunch, or went to the grocery store together, and sometimes we just took the kids to the park.
Today my walk had a purpose, though he didn’t know that yet. I guided him and the kids around the corner and onto the next street. When we got to a big yellow house with a SOLD sticker stamped over a For Sale sign, I stopped on the sidewalk in front of it.
“What do you think?” I asked Emmet.
“What do you mean?” Emmet asked me as he picked Rosa up into his arms.
With my fingers lazily moving through Owen’s hair, I asked “Do you like it?”
He looked away from me and back at the house. “Yeah, it’s nice. Why?”
“I bought it.”
“You buyed a house?” Owen asked incredulously.
Emmet looked at Owen and then at me. “Yeah. You buyed a house?”
I smiled and shook my head at the father and son. “Yes, I bought a house –this house,” I said pointing to it.
“You sneaky little brat,” Emmet said, staring at me disbelievingly.
“Let’s go inside and look around,” I said and took Owen’s hand.
A minute later we were walking into the spacious foyer and stepping onto a beautiful hardwood floor. Emmet put Rosa down and she and Owen took off to go explore the house.
“Whoa! You buyed a big house, Donnie!” Owen shouted from the living room.
Rosa tried to shout the same thing but it came out in baby babble as she tried to keep up with Owen. I showed Emmet the kitchen with its marble counters and view of Emmy’s back yard which was right up against
mine. I showed him the large laundry room, and the mudroom off of that and we even looked inside the large garage. The large dining room was promising for hosting the family dinners I had gotten accustomed to doing with Luke’s family, since they assimilated Rosa and me into the family almost instantly. There was a full bathroom, a formal living room and a family room, and an office.
We took the kids upstairs and explored the five bedrooms and two and a half baths up there. The master bedroom had a skylight and the on suite bathroom had a large garden tub and a separate shower stall. The kids went in and out of closets, opened and closed doors, and ran back and forth between the bedrooms.
“Rosa this is your room,” Owen said and pointed to the floor. “Stay there and I’ll go to my room.”
He started to walk away and Rosa began to follow.
“No, stay here,” Owen said patiently, gesturing with his little hands. He walked to one side of the room to a door that led to a joint bathroom shared with a bedroom the same size as the one we were standing in.
“Now I’m in my room,” he shouted to Rosa from the other room.
“Wowo?” she called.
“You can come to my room, Rosa, but it’s a boy’s room. So, you can’t always come in here.”
Rosa ran off in her little toddler run to go be with Owen.
Emmet and I stood by the door laughing. As we followed the kids through the house for a while longer, I asked Emmet again what he thought.
“It’s great,” he said, smiling sadly at me.
“Why are you unhappy?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“I’m not unhappy,” he sighed.
I punched his arm and made him stop to look at me. “Hello? It’s me you’re talking to. I know how you’re feeling without even trying.”
