by J. H. Croix
“So you said you had a plan for all this?” Emma asked, gesturing to the zucchini Susie was already washing in the sink.
“You get to choose. We shred it in a food processor, or we just slice it up. Either way, we freeze it. What’s your preference?”
Emma shrugged. Sula leapt softly onto one of the stools by the counter between the kitchen and living room and looked solemnly at Emma before she began cleaning her feet.
Susie’s ponytail came loose when she tilted her head to the side, rolling her eyes. “You have to have an opinion. Come to think of it, you hardly ever seem to have an opinion. Have I mentioned that before?” Susie asked with a knowing smile.
Emma returned Susie’s eye roll. “You have, in fact, pointed that out. I would argue I do have opinions, but I’m just not as outspoken as you. I mean, you’re…you.”
“Well, duh. Of course, I’m me. And I know most people would consider me outspoken. I’m just saying that unless someone prods you into it, you don’t offer your opinion.” Susie said with a shrug.
Susie was right, and Emma knew it. What she didn’t want to get into was that she’d developed the habit of keeping her thoughts and opinions to herself when she’d been married. It was just easier that way. Rather than getting into that with Susie, Emma thought for a moment about what she wanted to do with the zucchini.
“Shred it,” she said firmly. “My mom used to make casseroles with it like that.”
“And I can give you my mom’s awesome zucchini bread recipe. Where’s your food processor?” Susie asked, immediately on task.
A few hours later, Emma sat on her back deck and watched the sun set over Kachemak Bay. Susie had helped her get the zucchini shredded and ready to freeze before taking off. The sun was falling in the long, slow slide of summer sunsets in Alaska. It was going on nine at night and the light was just beginning to fade. The mountains across the bay were darkening as the pink orb of the sun slid behind them—lavender, pink and gold rays arced into the sky. Diamond Creek was a small town in Southcentral Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. The town was situated on the shores of Kachemak Bay, one of Alaska’s most treasured coastal areas. It was famous for its breathtaking beauty, which included ocean views, mountains on all sides, glaciers, and volcanoes in the distance. Mount Augustine was the lone volcano that sat beyond the entrance to Kachemak Bay in Cook Inlet, the long inlet that stretched inland from the Pacific Ocean to Anchorage.
Along with its beauty, Kachemak Bay and Diamond Creek offered world-class fishing and hunting, which drew tourists from all over the world. What could have been a quiet, middle of nowhere town had phenomenal restaurants, art galleries and a busy social life. Year-round residents were tight-knit. Emma had been welcomed into the community of Diamond Creek, her acceptance eased by her connection to Hannah who’d grown up here.
Emma took a last look at the view. She was still adjusting to the joy of not feeling tied up in knots inside, which is how she’d felt for most of her marriage—the marriage that had thankfully ended before she moved to Alaska. The sense of home and freedom she felt here was such a blessing it overwhelmed her at times. When she walked the spiral staircase into the loft, Sula was seated on the railing and leapt down to follow her into the bedroom.
Chapter 2
Three years prior
No one ever told you that you could make stupid decisions when your mind and heart were screaming at you every step of the way. That’s what Emma thought as she stood with her back to the locked bathroom door, flinching with each strike of a fist against the door.
“Stupid bitch! Open the damn door, or I’ll break it down!”
Miracle of all miracles, the bathroom door was fairly sturdy and had a decent lock. Despite Greg pounding on the door for a solid five minutes and trying to wrench it open, the door held its ground. He gave up and left the apartment, slamming the front door on his way out. Emma crept to the window, remaining in the shadows, and cautiously looked out to the parking lot.
She watched Greg shift from the person he was inside the privacy of their home to his public persona as he offered to help a neighbor carry groceries inside. Nausea welled. She was disgusted with his façade and more disgusted with herself for staying with him as long as she had. She waited, her breath quiet and slow, barely moving, until he got into his car and drove away. He was most likely headed to one of his preferred bars where he would drink and send a series of texts to her. The texts would start angry and attacking, shift to apologetic and then syrupy sweet. He’d come home drunk and fall into bed. She would lie on the far side of the bed and wish herself away, wondering night after night just how she ended up here.
Tonight was different though. After Emma was certain Greg was gone, she slipped out of the bathroom, moving quickly and quietly. Within minutes, she walked outside with a small duffel bag that contained all that she could carry with her from this life. The drive to the Boston airport was several hours away. She and Greg lived in western Connecticut, but she’d decided on Boston because Greg wasn’t that creative. If he tried to find her trail, he’d start at Bradley International Airport in Hartford and then perhaps New York. Pushing further north would hopefully throw him off. Roughly two hours into her drive, she exited off of the highway in Massachusetts and turned into the used car dealership she’d visited last week. They’d already drawn up the paperwork to purchase her car.
Emma had to give the dealership points for efficiency. Inside of another fifteen minutes, she was walking outside, her old car no longer hers. With a car rental place another block away, she drove away in a rental car, trying and failing to push thoughts of Greg out of her mind. When they’d met, she’d fallen for the charming, solicitous man he’d seemed. The first few months of their relationship had been marred by a few of his explosive episodes of anger, though he never touched her. It was only after she moved in with him that he became violent. She’d become the master at hiding bruises. Although, and this is the part that she hated to contemplate, Greg was adept at not hitting her in obvious places. He never struck her face.
Emma had been married to Greg for over two years now. She’d never imagined that she could feel so isolated from her family, but the unease her parents gave off when they visited was strong and pushed her further into herself. Greg had family in Connecticut, so she’d moved with him, too far away from her parents in North Carolina. Prior to her relationship with Greg, Emma had been close to her parents. No matter how hard she tried to stop it, Greg managed to chip away at her connection to them. There was always one reason after another why it wasn’t a good time to visit. He interrupted her calls with them, usually for innocuous reasons.
Emma had always felt lucky when it came to parents. She had known for as long as she could remember that she was adopted and knew this made her special. She had no recollection of how her parents originally told her she was adopted, but she’d turned it into a fairy tale—that she’d been chosen by them. And they’d been amazing parents, always supportive. Until Greg. Now she felt anxious calling them, worried they judged her, worried they knew what was really happening with Greg. She also knew that Greg would likely try to find her if she went to them just now, so going there wasn’t an option.
Out of the blue, she’d finally dug up the information on her biological family that her parents had given her years ago and posted on an online forum. A few weeks ago, she’d gotten a response from a woman named Hannah who might be her biological sister—in Alaska of all places. This possible link from so far away was a doorway out of her situation. Hope blossomed in the barren soil of her heart. Though she wondered every other minute if she was crazy and if she could pull it off, she booked the ticket to Alaska. As the plane lifted into the sky, Emma felt free in a way she hadn’t in years.
Chapter 3
Emma quickly typed up a note from her last session. She was a therapist at a local community mental health program, Kachemak Bay Counseling. When she’d decided to move to Diamond Creek, she’d worri
ed about how she’d find work in her field. She had a graduate degree in social work and had worked in various positions as a clinical therapist. Her training made her experience with Greg even more shameful for her. She should have known better, or that’s what she told herself over and over.
She was finally reaching a place of acceptance that her personal experience wasn’t unusual and wasn’t her fault. Domestic violence had bedeviled researchers, treatment providers, courts and law enforcement for years because it crossed every imaginable social boundary. Being an educated woman with actual training around domestic violence didn’t help her when she became a victim. She was merely another statistic. Rich, poor, middle class, every color of skin, every culture, every religion, every city, town, state, country, continent and more had victims, overwhelmingly women. Despite the massive social problem domestic violence was, society still didn’t have a reliable way to prevent it, to effectively support victims and keep them safe, or to effectively prevent perpetrators from repeating the pattern. A history of domestic violence often traversed through multiple generations of families—perpetrators and victims.
Emma abruptly stood from her desk, wondering if she’d ever stop reciting statistics about domestic violence to herself. She often told herself to treat herself the same way she’d treat a client. She’d tell them it wasn’t their fault, that this was how domestic violence happened, it slipped into one’s life before they saw it coming, the hints were only obvious after the fact, and most of all, they shouldn’t blame themselves because it wasn’t their fault they gave someone the benefit of the doubt.
Once again, she forced her thoughts back to this moment. Just in time because her phone beeped, the receptionist letting her know her client had arrived. Moments later, a teenage girl named Stella Walsh slouched in the corner of the small couch in Emma’s office. Emma sat across from her in a chair, a coffee table between them. Stella had been coming to see her for about six months now. She was a bit like a cactus at first, all bristle and prickle. If Emma touched on something too close for comfort, Stella would lash out. These days, Stella was only cranky for a few minutes, the façade a coat she needed a few minutes to shed. After that, it was all Emma could do to get a word in edgewise. Like so many troubled adolescents, Stella desperately needed to feel like someone was listening to her, like what she had to say mattered. With the hubbub around evidence-based treatments, Emma found time and again that the power of listening without judgment could be immensely healing and was often the most powerful thing she could offer clients.
“So do you think I should try out for that recital?” Stella asked, an abrupt shift in topic. A moment ago, she’d been a solid few minutes into a rant about how horrible boys were, particularly when they thought they were ‘like men or something.’
“Catch me up here. What recital are we talking about?” Emma asked. She mentally riffled through the recent sessions she’d had with Stella and couldn’t think of any recital mentioned.
Stella sighed dramatically and started chewing on her nails. She tended to go for a combo outdoorsy goth look. Today, she wore practical hiking boots paired with black leggings and a denim mini skirt. A scarf of black fabric patterned with skulls hung haphazardly around her shoulders atop a practical raincoat. She never wore makeup and had creamy skin with rosy cheeks. Her dark brown hair and eyes stood out against her complexion. Much as Stella was loath to admit it, she was a beautiful girl. She’d once said, “No one would think I was cute if they knew where I grew up. It was the dump of all dumps.”
Stella had been in foster care for two years. She’d been removed after years of reports and investigations about drug abuse by her parents and concerns about the condition of the home. Her mother had died of an accidental overdose, and her father didn’t fight the removal. He’d drifted in and out of jail. She’d flat refused to attend therapy until she had a brush with the wrong crowd and almost gotten nailed for dealing drugs at school. Not because she was dealing them, but because someone had decided her locker would be a good place to hide them. The only thing that got her off the hook was the cop who noticed the gap in the surveillance recording from the hallway. Turned out that the vice-principal’s son happened to be the one that put the drugs in Stella’s locker. Diamond Creek might be rural, but it was pretty high tech. All of the school surveillance recordings were backed up to an off-site server.
Once the investigator got the backups, Stella didn’t have to worry about legal problems. But she was in a world of social hurt. She’d spent most of her childhood as a social outcast—the kid who came to school dirty, sometimes smelly and who never had the right clothes. Bringing friends home was out of the question. When she’d finally been placed in foster care, she’d gotten a bit lucky, if there was such a thing in that situation. She’d been placed with a single foster mother, Janie, who was experienced at dealing with troubled teens, completely imperturbable and the perfect combination of blunt and warm. Stella respected and cared about Janie and had slowly started to bloom there. But her social naiveté made her vulnerable.
After the incident at school, Janie had dragged Stella into counseling. Stella paused from chewing her nails and tilted her head to the side.
“Well?” Stella asked again.
Emma pursed her lips. “I don’t think you mentioned this recital to me. What do you think my answer would be?”
Stella sighed dramatically again, rolling her eyes for good measure this time. “Usually you say something about how you’re not here to tell me what to do.” Stella couldn’t hide her smile.
“That sounds like something I would say,” Emma replied, returning Stella’s smile. “What do you think about the recital?”
Stella sighed and this time it wasn’t for effect. The sigh sounded tired and vulnerable. After a long silence, she spoke, her voice small. “I want to try out for the piano part. Mrs. Cooper—she’s my music teacher—says I’m really good. Janie signed me up for lessons all summer, and Mrs. Cooper says I keep getting better. It’s the fall recital, so they have tryouts this summer so we can start practicing. But I’m scared. I’ve never done anything like it. Not even close. And who will come to see me if I get in?”
Emma waited a beat before responding. “If you want to try out then you should try out.”
“Brilliant,” Stella said. “That’s genius. How come someone can’t give me instructions? I’d like instructions for life.”
Emma smiled ruefully. “Because there aren’t any. And when I tell you that I’m not here to tell you what to do, it’s because I’m not. Aside from pointing out the obvious, I don’t think you’d listen to me if I told you what to do. Back to the recital, it sounds like it might matter to you. Feeling nervous about something like that is pretty common. It’d be weirder if you weren’t nervous. And to answer at least one of your questions, Janie would be there, along with everyone in her family. And you have to admit, her family is huge. They think of you as part of their family and would be heartbroken if you thought they wouldn’t come to your recital.”
Stella sat up a little straighter, the barest sheen of tears in her eyes. “Janie would come. Grannie too. And lots more…” she paused and took a breath. “Guess I have to just blow through this. What if I get stage fright?”
“Well, you won’t know if you’ll get stage fright unless you try.”
Stella wrinkled her nose, chewed her nails, but didn’t slouch again. She finally made eye contact with Emma again. “K…I’m gonna try out. It’s next week before my appointment with you. Can I call you to tell you if I don’t get in? That way, if the news sucks, I can get it over with.”
Emma nodded. “Of course you can. I’ll send good vibes. Plus, if your music teacher thinks you’re really good at piano, you’re probably really good.”
Their conversation moved on. Emma considered bringing up the issue of Janie’s family again, but decided against it for today. Emma thought a sense of belonging would be incredibly healing for Stella. At sixteen, Stella had to co
nsent to her own adoption. With her mother deceased and her father long gone, his parental rights had been terminated, so there weren’t many legal hoops to jump through for an adoption. So far, Stella had resisted the idea. She claimed it was stupid for sixteen year olds to get adopted. Janie had told Emma many times she’d love to adopt Stella, and she made sure to tell Stella that even though Stella brushed it off.
Stella had come a long way in six months, so Emma had high hopes Stella might take a few more steps that could help her. At the end of their session, Stella skipped down the hall, turning for a last wave to Emma just before she pushed through the door to the waiting area. Emma loved working with adolescents. They lived in that odd mix of child and adult, the tug of war between those parts of the self.
***
Stopping by the grocery store on the way home, Emma was perusing the fruit section when she heard her name. Turning, she was startled to see Trey. Instantly, her heart jumped. Don’t be an idiot, Emma. There’s no way he’s into you.
She promptly dropped the apple she held. “Oh!”
She leaned over to pick it up, only to have her purse swing as she moved and bang into the edge of the produce shelf. Apples and oranges rolled off the shelf, hitting the floor in a series of thumps.
Emma stood, the lone apple she’d originally dropped back in her hand. Blushing furiously, she glanced up at Trey.
