The Book of Second Chances

by Katherine Slee

  Emily sighed with relief that the journey was, at least for now, delayed. It would give her time to think, to consider what it was she wanted to do.

  “I’ll take the spare room, or the sofa, or whatever,” Tyler said. “You know I can sleep pretty much anywhere.”

  Emily nodded in agreement as she remembered Tyler curled up asleep on the floor of the overnight ferry back from France. He was the only one oblivious to the thunder that had ripped through the sky, unaffected by the sickening tilt of the boat.

  “And I promise not to try and force you into any kind of decision. I mean, it’s your life, who am I to tell you what to do with it?”

  Emily walked around the garden, occasionally reaching out to deadhead a bush, listening to all the words that spilled from Tyler’s mouth as he followed. He was still talking to her when she went into the greenhouse to open the vents, about the time she stood up to a playground bully, punching him square on the nose when he dared to call Tyler a “pussy.” It had always been the two of them, all the way through childhood and into adolescence, when it was Emily who had been the daredevil, the leader, the inventor of games.

  Because I don’t know you anymore, she thought as she looked across to see a scrap of paper, marked with black handwriting, caught on the branch of an apple tree. She only knew the boy from before.

  Inside the house, in one of the boxes she had so carefully packed away, was a photo album from long ago. One she had opened, then shut away quickly, because she knew it ended after her thirteenth birthday. It remained half full of blank spaces where all her memories should have been, key moments in life that she had once assumed would include Tyler and his family. But even though his face filled so many of the pages in that album, and his laugh, his willingness to please, were in so many moments from Emily’s past, there was so much more that he hadn’t been a part of, and that was what she was finding hardest of all to forgive.

  Later that evening, when the dishes were cleaned away and the sofa bed laid out, on which Tyler was perched, quietly picking out a tune on his guitar, Emily sat once again at the kitchen table.

  I’ll decide in the morning, she told herself as she tidied away her sketchbook and pen, tried not to think of the half-finished cockatoo.

  She stood and whistled into the dark, waiting for Milton to come for his supper. When he failed to make an appearance, she put a plate of broken pieces of naan bread on the lawn and slid the bolt across the bottom of the door, before climbing the stairs and slipping into bed. The window was open and Emily watched the clouds drift past a moon that was so very nearly full.

  New beginnings. Emily remembered what her grandmother had always said when the moon was round and ripe. The chance to start over, to set new intentions, to begin anew.

  But what if she didn’t want to start again?

  Emily turned from the moon and all its false promises, wrapping her palm around the locket she couldn’t quite bring herself to take off that night.

  Emily had lain awake half the night trying to decide what to do, tossing all the possibilities around in her mind until they blurred into one giant knot of confusion and frustration.

  I can’t stay here, she thought, sitting up in bed and staring across the garden, beyond the church spire to where she knew the tide would be slinking across the beach, across to a stretch of ocean that wrapped itself around the globe, connecting all the dots of land her grandmother had once been so desperate to explore.

  I don’t want to leave. Emily sighed to herself as she went into the bathroom and stepped under the showerhead, let the steady flow of water camouflage the sound of her own doubts. She slowly massaged shampoo into her scalp in an attempt to knead the tension away. Standing at the sink, not bothering to wipe away the condensation on the mirror, she roughly dried her hair, then padded across the landing and back to her room.

  I could go with him, just get on a train to London. She scanned the contents of her wardrobe, taking out a random assortment of clothes and stacking them on the bed. Simple as that, no need to actually do anything more than pretend to go along with the idea, at least until she figured out another way to stop herself from being evicted.

  She could get on the train, take the letter, then get off at the next stop, come back again.

  Emily bit back the idea that if she failed to complete the task, in less than two weeks, there would be no home to come back to.

  Only it didn’t feel like her home anymore. She had sensed it from that very first moment after returning from the funeral four weeks ago, and then every morning, every evening, and all the hours in between. There was no clink of silver spoon that stirred sugar into her breakfast tea, no scent of frying bacon or lavender shampoo, and no hushed words as her grandmother spoke on the phone to her doctor while Emily sat in the next room, pretending not to hear.

  It was the absence of her that screamed loudest of all.

  Emily traced her fingers over the frame of a photograph taken before it all began. Or ended, depending on your point of view. Three generations of women, all in a row. Her grandmother caught midsentence, with mouth open and hand pointing to the sky. Next to her, Emily’s mother with her head thrown back as she laughed, one arm draped around the shoulder of a little girl dressed in a bathing suit and cape, goggles obscuring all but a wide grin.

  Once there were three, but now it was only her. Where else was she supposed to go other than on a crazy adventure with a boy she used to know?

  Tap, tap, against the windowpane and Emily turned to see Milton on the ledge, watching her from outside. She let him in, watched as he hopped inside the suitcase, and she shooed him away.

  “You can’t come.” She opened the top drawer of her dressing table, took out the passport her grandmother had dutifully renewed when Emily turned eighteen, but which had never been used. Was there even any point in taking it? She looked up to see the bird standing with a golden chain caught around its foot, and Emily lifted him gently, fastened the necklace around her throat. Then she picked up a silver brush, pulled it quickly through her hair and tossed it into the case. It was half of a vanity set from long ago, the matching mirror buried at the back of a drawer.

  How many years? She thought of all the mornings when someone else would brush her hair, and then again before she went to bed. How quickly time catches up with you when you’re not paying attention.

  A red dress on a hanger, asking to be chosen. Emily’s fingers hesitated, then moved along to take down a simple blue shirt. She zipped the case closed, looked around the room to see the compact and lipstick her grandmother had given her for her sixteenth birthday on the bedside table. A slick of red on lips, a touch of powder on the nose: Catriona Robinson was always so well presented, putting her best face out on show, but her granddaughter had never used the gift, instead hiding it in a drawer for years. Emily pressed the waxy color to her mouth, her hand hesitating for a second before she put the makeup back.

  “One more clue,” she whispered to Milton. “Then I’ll be back.”

  The bird fluttered its tail at her, hopped back to the window and flew away.

  “Oh, what would you know?” Emily said and banged the window shut.

  Back downstairs, she searched the house, trying to decide what a person takes on a trip to London and then, perhaps, who knows where. Her sketchbook, her pen. Twenty-eight years old and all of her life contained in one place. She’d never needed to go anywhere before, never had any real desire to leave.

  Emily paused in the doorway of her grandmother’s study, saw Tyler hovering by the front door, asking her to please hurry up. She ran her fingers over the shelf filled with red leather notebooks, each of them containing the beginnings of an idea that eventually became a book. She looked but did not see a gap at the very end, thought there was no time to count them all, to see if one of them was missing.

  Is this just another story? Emily wondered as she let the door swing shut behind her. She put her key in the lock and tried not to think about whethe
r she would ever be allowed to return.

  6

  SPARROW

  Passeridae

  There was a man sitting on the station platform feeding a gathering of sparrows. He was whispering to them, but what he was saying wasn’t important. It was the way he spoke, the tone of voice, the pitch and volume and all the nuances in between—it told the birds he was safe, that he could be trusted.

  His torso was bent low over his knees, and the sleeves of his striped blue shirt were rolled up. At his feet rested a leather briefcase, a thin umbrella on top. His suit jacket was on the bench beside him and a paisley tie was tucked into one of the pockets.

  Sparrows are adaptable, Emily thought, watching the scene through the window of the train, sketching it in her mind. They can feed on over eight hundred different types of food.

  She was trying to commit to memory the exact speckles of dark brown on each sparrow’s breast. The shadows that fell at an angle from the man’s legs onto the platform. She wanted to imagine what it was that brought him to that place, at that moment, because the story behind the picture was what always brought it to life.

  As the train pulled out of the platform, the birds scattered, and Emily turned her head, her body, to count them, to follow them until they disappeared from view.

  Catriona had told her that sparrows in the Old Testament were associated with loneliness, that they can swim underwater and live for up to fifteen years. She had taught her so much, and yet Emily couldn’t help but feel there was so much more she never had a chance to share.

  “When was the last time you were in London?”

  On the seat opposite, across from the table that separated them, Tyler was shrugging off his jacket, then taking out his phone, along with a small black notebook and a pair of enormous headphones. He simply dumped them all on top of one another, and Emily resisted the urge to line them up, neatly and in order of size.

  He was relaxed or, rather, relieved. Emily could tell by the way one ankle was crossed over his knee, the tightness at his jaw gone, and his eyes no longer darted from her scar to her mouth and away whenever he looked at her. Which meant he was invested in this little trip more than he wanted her to know.

  Except she knew. Just as she knew he was impatient to get back to London, because he had glanced at his watch and the clock above the sink more than a dozen times while he watched her busy herself about the kitchen, checking for locked windows and that the gas was turned off.

  The fact she made him nervous, no matter the reason why, made her smile a little, despite her own reservations, her own fears, about where exactly they were headed.

  Instead of replying verbally to his question, she held up her hands, fingers and thumbs splayed.

  “Ten years?” Tyler gave a low whistle as he scrolled through his phone. “It’s changed a bit since then.”

  Haven’t we all, Emily thought as she stared at him. She willed him to give up something of himself, something she could use to figure out what was really going on. She wanted to ask him why he was there, and what had happened to make him agree to accompany her on such a ridiculous quest.

  “You still listen to rock music?” he asked without looking up from his phone.

  Emily nodded as she tried to remember which CDs she had shoved into her suitcase. Crossing and uncrossing her legs, she fiddled with her hair, sat on both hands, and tried not to look at the line of light that fell across his face, tried to dampen the urge to ask him to turn a little more to the left, because then the light would cut straight across the bone at his cheek.

  “Guns N’ Roses?”

  “Also Foo,” Emily said, allowing him to fill in what she didn’t trust her tongue to be able to pronounce. Along with Chopin, Miles Davis, David Bowie, and Adele. Her grandmother was the sort of person to try anything and everything at least once, so Emily had been taught to appreciate them all.

  Her days and nights had been filled with sounds from every era. She had been told to listen for the soft crackle of vinyl before the needle found the first note, or the faintest intake of breath before Miss Simone opened her mouth to sing. To hear the story each artist was trying to tell.

  But not opera. Never opera.

  “I used to think you were so cool.”

  “Ha.” The laugh left her mouth before she knew it was even there.

  It used to be for fun, the music. The drums. The way the throb and pulse of it would fill her and make her move. Then it served a different purpose: to block it out. To block everything out.

  “I don’t have anything in your kind of league,” Tyler said as he turned his phone around to show her the playlist he’d been considering. “But I could download something and we could listen to it together?”

  Emily looked at the screen.

  “I like country,” Tyler said with a smile and a shrug. “Doesn’t make me a bad person.”

  She knew he was trying to placate her, trying to work that effervescent charm of his because it was probably always that easy. A smile, a token gesture, and women simply lapped it all up.

  “Letter,” Emily said as she held out her hand, watched his smile fade away.

  “I’m assuming you know where we’re going? Once we get to London, I mean?”

  Emily nodded, waiting for him to rummage through his bag; to take out a crumpled envelope much thicker, more promising, than the one she had been given by the stranger at her house yesterday morning. But a part of her wished she could pretend that she had no idea where her grandmother was leading her back to.

  “Hatchards,” she said, stumbling a little over the word.

  “Where Ophelia found the atlas?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was nice and easy. I half expected a complicated riddle, or a puzzle box, with us running all over London trying to figure it out, like in The Da Vinci Code.”

  She stared at the letter Tyler was holding. There was time, surely? Even if she got one of the clues wrong, there would be time to solve it, because for her grandmother to set an impossible task, with so much at stake, would surely be too cruel. Perhaps the letter was an apology, a note of contrition, telling her it was all just a huge misunderstanding, that she could get off the train, go back home, and forget this day ever happened.

  “Emily?”

  Her hand was poised, ready to take the letter, but now she hesitated, as if she was stuck in limbo. Because what if it told her something she didn’t want to know?

  Emily swallowed away her fear, looked out of the window, at the world rushing by. A green, lazy landscape blurred like a dream, making her feel as if none of it were quite real.

  “Do you want me to open it for you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Suit yourself,” Tyler said as he dropped the letter on the table, sat back, and put his headphones on. One last look passed between them before he closed his eyes.

  Emily placed her palm on the table next to the envelope with her name written on it. There was no clue as to what lay within.

  She glanced at Tyler, allowed herself to examine the way his body moved gently to the beat of whatever song he was listening to. Part of her wanted to sketch him, to use the feeling of pen on paper as a way of delaying what had to come. Running her fingers across the cover of her sketchbook, she thought about drawing that man and his sparrows, the birds taking flight to weave in and out of the shadows, up and over the train.

  “Okay,” Emily said as she sat a little straighter, puffed out her cheeks and blew away the doubt. She turned the envelope over and broke the seal.

  The pages she took out were of the palest blue and thin, not quite as delicate as tissue paper, but not so thick as to prevent the light from passing through. They were covered on both sides in a looping hand that barely resembled the usual neatness Emily had expected of her grandmother. In places, the letters were smudged, or the tail of a “Y” elongated, as if her grandmother had been disturbed, or nudged, as she was writing.

  But it wasn’t a letter at all; i
t was part of a diary. And, given the date at the top of the entry, it was written long before Emily had been born.

  7 April 1965

  “When you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile.”

  I’m on a train, a dog-eared paperback of Anne of Green Gables tucked into the front pocket of my suitcase, with its worn-down pages, my eight-year-old scribbles on the inside cover and all my favorite parts underlined. Because I couldn’t leave without it. Without the book that made me fall in love with storytelling, made me want to be something more. Without this quote, which pretty much sums up how I am trying to feel right now.

  It’s raining. Which is a completely unimportant detail to include, but I feel that I need to write down absolutely everything I can think of until I figure out what sort of diary this is going to be. Because I’m here, or there, or nowhere at all, but the point is I have left. I am gone from that tiny little seaside version of hell that my parents like to think of as home and I’m heading toward London.

  Except I don’t want to just stop there, I want to go anywhere that fate decides to take me. I want to see it all, and not just because Dad says I shouldn’t (although, let’s be honest, that’s a massive part of the reason why), but also because I can. I have absolutely no idea what the future might bring, but it has to be better than staying behind like Violet and Bess (who both think I’m crazy and should go ahead with the wedding as planned, but please, I mean, Henry is lovely and kind and has a “great future ahead of him,” but in ten years’ time, I’d be knee-deep in children, he’d be having an affair and I would be completely miserable and wishing I’d left when I had the chance).

  Anyway, I digress, or am waffling, or using a thousand words when one will do, as Miss Hamilton always liked to remind me during English class. But that’s just it—I want to write, I want to explore, I want to feel something more than just the day-to-day. Because all great writers go on adventures. They actually do something: live, cry, dance through the rain, kiss handsome men on station platforms—I did not do that, but wouldn’t it have been amazing if I did? Just kissed someone without even knowing their name and then run away into tomorrow? Leaving them wondering their entire lives who I was.