The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River)

by London, Julia

  He tossed a twenty onto the table and stood up.

  “What about your St. Christopher?” she asked.

  He picked it up, took her hand, and pressed it into her palm, then folded her fingers over it. “You keep that.”

  “I couldn’t. It’s yours—”

  “You need it more than me. And when you look at it, I want you to remember what could have been.”

  Emma’s heart stopped. She wanted to say what Cooper wanted to hear. But Cooper wasn’t waiting for her to find the right words, to try and put some spin on it. He put his arm around her waist and walked with her out to the car.

  Neither of them spoke on the short drive back to the airport. At the curb, Cooper looked at her, his gaze moving over her face, searching for something. Could he see how close she was to tears? Could he feel how certain she was she would disappoint him? Could he understand how hard it was to let him go?

  “You’re not coming back to LA, are you?”

  Emma shook her head. If she spoke, she would cry. She would not cry. Because if one tear fell, she would melt, right there in front of the airport, melt away into nothingness.

  Cooper closed his eyes a moment, and with a shake of his head, he reached for the door handle.

  “I don’t want to disappoint you,” she whispered. “And I will. I will disappoint you so badly you will hate me, and I can’t do that, Cooper. I can’t bear that.”

  He suddenly twisted in his seat and cupped her face. “That’s where you’re wrong. You told me you don’t do ordinary love, remember?”

  Emma nodded, her vision starting to blur with tears that were building behind her lashes.

  “I told you I was strong enough for you, and I meant it. I am strong enough for your extraordinary love, Emma. I’m strong enough for both of us. So this is your loss.” He let go of her then and got out of the car. He stepped up onto the curb, then turned around and tapped on her window. Emma rolled it down. “And your sister, Laura? She is no friend of yours,” he said. “She’s a snake in the grass around you, waiting for a chance to bite. Steer clear of her.” He straightened up and walked into the terminal without looking back.

  She watched him disappear inside, watching him through the plate-glass doors, certain she could still see him.

  A policeman knocked on her hood, gesturing for Emma to move on.

  She put her car in gear, her mind twirling around his warning about Laura, but mostly, hearing the same thing reverberate in her head. I am strong enough for your extraordinary love, Emma.

  She gripped the St. Christopher medal in her fist as she drove.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Emma drove back to Homecoming Ranch without stopping, even when fat lazy flakes of snow began to fall. As she climbed up over the mountains, the snowfall was heavier, and she had to slow down.

  It was ten o’clock when she pulled into the drive at the ranch. She was exhausted, starving, and emotionally spent, having replayed everything Cooper had ever said to her on the long road back.

  The snow had spent itself by the time she reached the ranch and was falling very lightly when Emma stepped out of her car. She paused to pet the dogs that had come out from the garage to greet her, then hauled herself up the porch steps and inside. In the entry, she braced herself against the wall and pulled off her boots.

  “Emma, is that you?” Libby called from the kitchen, and a moment later, she was standing in the hallway, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Hey, where’d you get off to today?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Is there any food?” Emma asked.

  “There’s some sandwich stuff,” Libby offered. “So where’d you go?”

  “Denver,” Emma said, and walked into the living room.

  Madeline was on the couch under a throw, a notebook in her lap. “Denver!” she said, and yawned, stretching her arms high above her. “How come?”

  Emma halted her drive toward the kitchen and looked at her sisters. “Cooper was flying through and I went to meet him.”

  Libby’s face suddenly broke into a grin. “See?” she said gleefully to Madeline. “I told you!”

  “It’s not what you think,” Emma said. “I stole a St. Christopher medal from him that his grandfather had given him. He wanted it back.”

  Libby’s very gleeful look faded. “Huh? You stole what? You stole something?” she asked, as if those words made no sense to her.

  “A St. Christopher medal. A charm,” Emma said with a flick of her wrist.

  “But didn’t you take something from that other guy?” Libby asked uncertainly.

  “Yes,” Emma said. She felt very weak, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. In fact, she felt herself swaying a little.

  “I don’t get it,” Libby said.

  “Hey,” Madeline said, frowning. She sat up, tossing the throw over the back of the couch. “Are you okay?”

  Emma couldn’t help the sour laugh. “No,” she said. “I am really, seriously fucked up,” she said, and her legs gave out. She crashed to the floor in a heap. She heard Libby and Madeline shriek, felt hands and arms around her.

  “Damn it, Emma, when was the last time you ate?” Libby demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Emma said, and rubbed her forehead, only now realizing that she had a biting headache as well.

  “What is the matter with you?” Madeline cried and jumped to her feet, running into the kitchen.

  Libby tried to help Emma up, but it required Madeline’s help when she came back from the kitchen. Together, they put Emma on the couch, and Madeline shoved a banana into Emma’s hand. “Eat it,” she ordered. “Eat it now.”

  Emma took one bite of the banana and began to cry. “I’m so hungry,” she said tearfully.

  Libby disappeared and returned a moment later with a bag of chips. “Eat that! I’m making you a sandwich!”

  Emma choked down the banana and a few chips before Libby returned with a slab of ham between two thick slices of homemade bread. “What happened?” Libby asked Emma, stroking her hair.

  “I’ll tell you,” Emma said, tears streaking her cheeks. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  “What else is new? Just tell us,” Madeline said. “It is very possible that we could help, you know?”

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” Emma said sadly between bites of food. “Maybe with Grant.”

  Madeline and Libby exchanged a look.

  “You can’t really be surprised,” Emma said flatly.

  “I’m not,” Madeline said. She settled back onto the couch beside Emma and had a few potato chips as Emma began her story, beginning with the year Grant and Libby had come to Orange County.

  She told them how she had been envious of Grant’s attention to Libby, and then had felt so overlooked when he had sent Libby back to Colorado. No one had told her, no one had warned her Libby was leaving. Soon after that, he left, too, without a word to Emma. Not even a goodbye.

  Madeline uttered something under her breath about that, but motioned for Emma to continue.

  So Emma told them about her mother and Wes, and Laura, and how she’d adored Laura, had wished she was like Laura. So had her mother, apparently, always comparing Emma to Laura, wanting Emma to be more like her stepsister.

  “That’s horrible,” Libby muttered.

  Emma told them about the summer of her seventeenth year, when Grant had returned to her life, wanting to be the father he’d never been. She had thought him so dashing, and she confessed how excited and hopeful she’d been. “I always wanted him to want me. Always.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Libby sighed.

  She told them about Laura and Grant, how she’d discovered them. “It’s horrible, right?” Emma said.

  “Of course it’s horrible!” Madeline shouted angrily. “What a pig. What a damn pig.”

  Emma told th
em how it was Laura everyone felt sorry for, that Laura was the one who had been devastated by the things Emma’s father had done. And how difficult it had been to live with that, and how she’d begun to understand that summer that she’d been playing second fiddle to Laura for years.

  Emma admitted that she didn’t know when her relationship with men had begun to spiral out of control, but somewhere along the way, she’d begun to lure older men in, men old enough to be her father, and then take something from them. She told them about Grif, a rough man with rough appetites.

  Emma could tell by the look of alarm on Libby’s face and the shock on Madeline’s how disgusted they were by her behavior and it made her feel awful. “Believe me, I hate me, too,” Emma said. “I feel so dirty all the time.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Libby said instantly. “But . . . you didn’t do that to Cooper, did you?” she asked, wincing as she anticipated Emma’s answer.

  “No. I mean, not at first.” She told them about running into Cooper in Beverly Hills, and how amazing she’d thought him. And then here, in Pine River, even though he’d known what she was, he had still cared about her. “He was able to see something in me that no one else had ever seen,” she said, her voice sounding as dead to her as she felt.

  “Then for God’s sake, what happened?” Madeline exclaimed.

  “Me! I happened! What we shared that day was . . .” She sighed to the ceiling. “There are no words for how incredible it was,” she said. “And he . . . he wanted something more. But I knew, I knew in my gut that even if I wanted it, I would not be able to live up to my end of the deal. I would do something to disappoint him. So I told him to go back to LA. I honestly wanted him to go back to LA. But then, I took his St. Christopher.”

  “Oh my God, why?” Libby exclaimed.

  “God, Libs, if she knew that, she wouldn’t take them,” Madeline said.

  Emma looked at her with surprise. “That’s what I said. But I think I know why now. I think I took it so he would come back.”

  Madeline and Libby regarded her solemnly. “Well? He did, he came back, right?” Libby said hopefully.

  “He did. And we talked. And we . . . well, me—I was honest. I told him the truth about myself.”

  “Oh, Emma,” Madeline sighed.

  “I had to, Madeline,” Emma said. “Isn’t it better that I tell him up front instead of him finding out down the road about the things I’ve done and all the issues I have? I love him. I really think I love him. But I’m my own worst enemy, and a leopard doesn’t change its spots, does it?”

  “It does if it’s important enough. But you’ll never know, thinking like that,” Libby said, sounding angry.

  “Why are you mad?” Emma asked.

  “Because!” she said, casting her arms wide. “So far, you’ve told us about Grant, who we all know is a loser, and these other men who are so disgusting I can’t even think about them, and this Grif guy, who you chose because he was bad news. Don’t you see, Emma? You’ve never been with one decent guy in your life. How do you know you’d disappoint him? How do you know it wouldn’t be the best thing that ever happened to you? How do you know that it wouldn’t change you somehow and make you a better person? How can you know anything until you’ve at least tried it?”

  “You can’t upend years of behavior,” Emma argued. “You can’t suddenly become socially adept. You know me, Libby,” Emma said. “I know me too well. I’ve been wanting to be wanted for so long that I . . .” Without warning, Emma burst into tears. Big, thick tears and gulping sobs, for all that she’d lost today.

  The unexpected part of it was that Libby and Madeline wrapped their arms around her and cried, too.

  “You’re not the only one,” Madeline said with a swipe of a tear beneath her eye. “Grant left me with the worst mother on the planet. And then threw you two at me after he’d died. I can see now that even as a kid, so much of my life was out of control that I had to control something.”

  “Me, too,” Libby said. “I got moved around so much as a kid that I kept looking for that one place I actually belonged, you know? I needed a family, and when I finally had one, I couldn’t let go.”

  “Did you tell Cooper you love him?” Madeline asked.

  Emma shook her head. “I thought it would only make things worse. You know, the old, I-love-you, it’s-not-you-it’s-me shtick.”

  “Yeah. Bad idea,” Madeline agreed.

  “It’s so screwed up,” Emma said morosely. “The worst is knowing that it’s so twisted and not knowing how to untwist it.” She smiled sadly at Madeline. “I’m sorry that I’m the sister you got.”

  “Me, too,” Madeline said gravely.

  Libby gasped.

  “Seriously,” Madeline said. “All those years of wanting sisters, and then I get one who bashes pickups with a golf club and spends a week in a psych hospital, and somehow manages to turn that around and build an amazing rehabilitation center for war vets. Plus manages to raise money for Leo’s van. And then another one who is amazingly beautiful and a straight-shooter, which I happen to like, and takes care of Leo every day—for free—and makes big donations to afterschool programs and who finally, finally found a way to open up to us. Yeah, I definitely got screwed.”

  “You!” Libby scoffed. “What about me and Em?”

  “Oh, definitely screwed,” Madeline said, nodding. “A super–control freak who goes around highlighting little chalk outlines around you two.”

  Emma couldn’t help a sad laugh. “It’s not funny, because it’s so true. You’re very controlling.”

  Madeline snorted. “God, Emma, never stop being you, do you promise? I think you’re the only one in my life I can trust to never beat around the bush.” She suddenly took Emma’s hand and Libby’s hand. “Look at us. Three misfits, three sisters. Three women who had one really shitty father. And somehow, I couldn’t have created better sisters myself.”

  “You know what?” Libby said, her voice shaking a little. “I couldn’t ask for better, either.” She laid her head on Emma’s shoulder.

  “Christ, I told you guys I wasn’t going to let you turn this into some Lifetime movie,” Emma complained, but she didn’t protest at all when Libby put her arms around her to hug her.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Emma, Madeline, and Libby stayed up late, sharing a bottle of wine, exchanging tales of their lives until the wee hours of the morning. Before they turned in, Libby asked, “What are you going to do about Cooper?”

  “Nothing,” Emma said, resigned. “He’s given up on me.”

  There was nothing for her to do but figure out where she went from here, a process that Emma wasn’t sure how to even start. But she was determined—she meant to turn her life around, whatever it took.

  She was late to work the next day, and she was prepared for Leo to give her a hard time about it as he was wont to do. She dashed up the steps—cleared of the light snow by Bob first thing, she noted—and was reaching for the door when it opened.

  Bob was standing there. He had deep circles under his eyes and looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. “Dante passed away early this morning,” he said low.

  Emma gasped. “No!” she said. “I thought . . .” She didn’t know what she thought, really, other than the fact that Leo was always talking about him. “But he went to the game!”

  “Yeah,” Bob said, and rubbed his face. “Guess he was sicker than we knew.”

  “How’s Leo?” Emma asked.

  Bob shrugged. “Can’t tell with him, sometimes. The Methodist ladies are with him now.”

  Emma nodded and walked in, putting her bag next to the little Christmas tree. She straightened her jacket and took a breath before moving on to Leo’s room. She poked her head into the room and lifted her hand. “Hey, Leo. Ladies.”

  “There she is,” Leo said, his voice lacking the usual gaiety. “I
told you she’d make it.”

  The Methodist women—four of them today—looked rather glum as they said hello to her.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Emma said. “The roads were slow going.”

  “Gee, what’s a little snow,” Leo said. “Emma, can you make my lunch? If you could whip up some crème brûlée and that delicious liver Dad was eating the other night, I’d really like it.”

  She looked at him strangely. He had a protein shake for lunch every day.

  “Is it lunchtime?” Deb Trimble asked. She stood up, looking at her watch. “We better go, girls. We want to get to the Rocky Creek Tavern before the noon special sells out.”

  Leo gave Emma a faintly victorious smile.

  Emma made him a protein shake while the Methodists prayed over Leo and said goodbye. They gathered their coats and purses and paused to speak to Bob on the way out.

  Emma returned to Leo’s room with the shake. She adjusted his bed and fit the container into a contraption Bob had installed on the side of his bed, then moved to insert the straw into his mouth.

  “Not yet,” Leo said.

  “It’s not liver,” she assured him.

  “I’m not hungry. And anyway, isn’t it time for Wheel of Fortune?”

  Emma picked up the remote and turned on the television. She put down the remote and considered him a moment. “Leo?”

  “I’m not upset about Dante, if that’s where you’re headed,” he said instantly, and drew a labored breath. “I mean, yeah, it sucks, and I’m really going to miss him. But he’s in a better place.”

  “Yes, of course,” Emma muttered.

  “No, don’t say it like that. I’m not saying he’s in a better place just because that’s the kind of thing you say when someone dies. I mean I know he is. I’ve seen it. And it’s awesome that he’s going to be there when I go.” He smiled a little. “Kind of selfish, right? But I always hated going to a party alone.”

  Emma’s heart sank like a rock in her chest. She tried to swallow her grief, but with no success. She sat on the edge of his bed and laced her fingers through his curled ones. “I’m sorry about your friend.”