Always Emily

by Mary Sullivan

  “You can sit in on every lesson. I would appreciate your support and guidance.” Emily held out her hand. “Deal?”

  “Deal.” They shook on it.

  “I’ll go to the hardware store tomorrow and pick up supplies.” Floating on a cloud of ecstasy, she asked, “Can I see the inside?” Things were coming together quickly.

  “This will work for the summer,” Violet said.

  “If I get enough clients to earn a living, would you mind if I winterize in the fall?”

  “You can do whatever you need to do, my dear. I’ll love having you around.”

  Ten minutes later, Emily weighed the amount of work needed. The place would have to be fumigated and cleared out and scoured and painted and, and, and...

  She would need help. “Do you think Mika and Aiyana would want to make a little money helping me to fix up the garage?” she asked Salem on the drive back to town.

  “Get rid of the pests first and clean, then they can come.”

  Emily smiled the rest of the way home. She retrieved her shampoo and conditioner from the backseat, shouted her thanks behind her and ran into the house fired up by her new project.

  The family sat around the dining room table. “I wondered whether you’d make it home in time for dinner.” Laura went to the kitchen and filled a plate for Emily. “Sit.”

  Throughout the meal, Emily told everyone her plans, how they were firm now that she had a place to teach.

  “You’ll need a car eventually, but we can juggle until we find something for you.” Her dad helped himself to a piece of the rhubarb pie Laura had passed around. His tummy was getting a bit pudgy. How could it not with Laura cooking for him? “You’ll continue to live upstairs.”

  “Just until I’m sure I can make a living doing this, then I’ll get an apartment in town.”

  Laura dropped the spoon she’d been using to stir her coffee. “An apartment in town when you have a perfectly good one upstairs?”

  “I’m thirty-one years old. I shouldn’t be sponging off my dad.”

  “You aren’t sponging,” he said. “You’re living with your family.”

  “But what about Pearl? Isn’t it time she got to use the attic?”

  “I like it up there, Emily, but I like even more that you’re here.” Pearl wiped a smudge of vanilla ice cream from her upper lip. “Stay. Please. I like having you here with us.”

  So. It was settled. She would still live here with her family while she taught music in Violet’s garage.

  She’d spent too many years shunting from pillar to post, from one dangerous spot to another, and always with an unsympathetic man with whom she was never in sync. If she were the crying type, the unconditional support of her family would bring her to tears. What she did instead was smile, a shit-eating grin echoed by everyone else at the table.

  Healing, thy name is family.

  * * *

  ON MONDAY, EMILY shopped at the hardware store for environmentally friendly cleaning products and tools for fixing up Violet’s garage.

  She booked an appointment with a pest control company in Denver to come out that afternoon. Emily wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have seen a bat hanging from the eaves. Bats might help organic farming by eating harmful insects that cause agricultural damage, not to mention pesky mosquitos, but Emily preferred her Vespertilionidae to live outside, not in. But she did love them. Maybe he would hang around outside.

  She drove her supplies to Violet’s homestead and found the woman waiting on the veranda.

  “I thought you might show up this morning. You were excited yesterday.” She and her three dogs approached the car, with the dogs jumping joyfully around Emily when she got out. “What can I carry for you?”

  Emily handed her a bag of cleaning supplies and carried the tools around the back of the house to the garage. It looked even more forlorn today with dark clouds hovering on the horizon.

  Rusty from disuse, the door creaked when she opened it. She made a note to pick up oil for the hinges.

  A faint scurrying heralded their arrival. Emily studied the brown lump she’d spotted in the rafters. Yep, a bat. She loved bats, flat-out adored them, and used to get her dad to take her around the state to study them when she was young.

  “Oh,” she said, stepping directly beneath it. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s a cave myotis. What’s he doing this far north? By himself?”

  “What do you mean?” Violet had joined her to stare up at the lone bat.

  “They’re usually found in Colorado only on the Mesa de Maya.” She couldn’t put him out when he had found a home here.

  The interior dimness was emphasized by the approaching storm clouds.

  “These windows need to be scrubbed if you want to see what you’re doing in here.” Violet rummaged in the bags. “You didn’t buy window cleaner?”

  “I’m using good old-fashioned vinegar. I did, however, get these super-duper, microfiber, glass-cleaning cloths for cars. I figure if they’re good enough for autos, they’ll work on these windows.”

  “I remember my mother used to use newspaper.”

  “Do you want to clean the inside while I do the exterior?”

  “Yep. You go on and get out there before the rain starts.”

  Emily had just finished the last window when a huge drop of rain fell on her head. Violet came outside. “Let’s go into the house for lunch. This rain isn’t supposed to last all day.”

  They had lunch, finishing just in time for pest control.

  “Can you get rid of the mice by trapping them?” Emily led the exterminator to the garage. “I know I sound a bit loony, but I don’t want them killed. I just want them out of the garage.”

  That way, there would be no unhealthy toxic residue left in the building once she started teaching, and her myotis velifer wouldn’t die. Surely her students and one bat could coexist. She would be religious in cleaning guano every single day. She could keep the space healthy, no problem.

  The owner of the company checked out every nook and cranny. “You’ve got signs of a healthy mouse population. Give me this afternoon to set a bunch of traps. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll collect them and release the mice elsewhere.”

  He stood with his hands on his hips. “I don’t see signs of insect infestation.”

  Emily pointed above their heads. “Thank my little buddy.”

  “He’s not that little. What’s he doing this far north?”

  Emily shot him a surprised look.

  He grinned. “I know my pests.”

  “You sure do. I want to keep that pest, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  Two days later, she and Pearl scrubbed the inside of the garage until their fingers pruned.

  On Tuesday afternoon, the pest control guy had carried out dozens of traps filled with mice and had left Emily literature on how to clean up after them, and on how to prevent new critters from moving in.

  She’d hunted in every corner of the large room and in every piece of furniture. She didn’t know what the guy had used for bait, but it had been effective. Not a single genus Mus remained in the garage.

  Today, they’d gone through four pairs of heavy-duty PVC-coated gloves just cleaning out mice poop. After that, they’d scrubbed the walls and the floor and had worn holes in the remaining two pairs of latex gloves, so her hands were wet anyway.

  When they’d finished, they stripped off the old clothes they’d worn and bundled them into a garbage bag to throw out. She drove home to have a shower and change into more old clothes. Pearl was meeting friends so Emily picked up more supplies, including another half dozen pairs of gloves.

  She returned to the garage for more cleaning.

  Then she called in reinforcements.

  * * *

&nb
sp; SALEM DIDN’T BELIEVE for a minute Emily would last in the music-teaching business. Even with her passion for the music, how could she? She’d visited exotic lands, had partied with celebrities and had sampled the best of many cultures. In a few months, Accord would bore her and off she would go again.

  Yet despite his lack of faith, here he was driving Aiyana and Mika out to Violet’s house. Apparently, Emily had called them after school to ask for their help.

  Finding that dead body with her had shaken Salem’s ordered world, had given him a different perspective. His life went on in the same way and yet, he lay awake at night with the memory of those pale skeletal fingers reaching toward the sky as though grasping for another chance at life. With that desperate imagery haunting him, he felt changed, moved by this sudden strange development to look at things in a new way. Some poor schmuck had been murdered, his life snuffed out, while all Salem did was worry about the future, about what might happen someday, when the smart thing to do was to live in the here and now. Maybe that dead body was a wake-up call urging him to appreciate every moment for the gift it was. Perhaps the wisest way to live was to experience the moment and deal with consequences later.

  He saw clearly now that the relationship between Emily and Aiyana had a life of its own that he couldn’t control. He was smart enough to realize that trying to break it up would cause more damage than Emily’s inevitable departure. Aiyana would be okay because she would still have him. He would never leave.

  So, with a feeling of giving in to the inevitable, he drove his girls out to help Emily.

  “I’m so happy Emily’s doing this, Dad.” Aiyana brushed her dark hair then returned her brush to her purse. “I really want to learn a musical instrument. Remember you promised I could?”

  “Sure, Aiyana.”

  “Me, too,” Mika piped up from the backseat.

  “What instruments are you interested in?”

  Mika shrugged, but Aiyana already knew her own mind. “Violin. I loved how Emily played hers.”

  “How can I know what I want if I don’t try a whole bunch of different instruments first?” Mika met Salem’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “How can I do that, Dad?”

  “I can take you into Denver and we can check out the rental instruments. Okay?”

  The corners of Mika’s dark brown eyes crinkled when she smiled. “Yeah, I want to do that.”

  Emily waited for them on the veranda, her hair a wild halo around her.

  “You look like you’ve been pulled through a bush backward.” Salem thought she looked cute as hell.

  “I’ve been working.” Her overalls were ancient. One knee poked out through a large hole. The T-shirt underneath was miles too big for her. She must have raided Cody’s closet. The sleeves, which should have been short, hung down nearly to midforearm.

  A smudge of dirt on her nose obscured the few freckles Salem had always wanted to lick.

  Hey, none of that. No X-rated thoughts about this heartbreaker, got it?

  Yeah, I got it.

  Sometimes, though, as had happened the other day when they’d driven out here to talk to Violet, the truth of his feelings burst out of him, like steam exploding from a pressure cooker. Then he had to be careful to not do anything rash.

  Even so, he wiped the dust from her nose, just to touch her, even that briefly.

  “Come see how much work I’ve done.”

  They followed her around back. “There’s still a lot to do,” she warned, “but you can see the potential now.”

  They stepped inside and Salem’s first thought was, what potential? But that was Emily. Always the optimist. He, on the other hand, was cautious. It saved a person from a world of heartache down the road.

  “The place needs work, Emily.”

  “Don’t rain on my parade, Salem. I have a vision.”

  “What do you need from us today?” Us. He’d only planned to drop off the girls. So why was he staying? Because of Emily’s infectious excitement. Because the girls had picked up on it and were exclaiming over the bat Emily had pointed out to them.

  “You’re going to leave it there?” He couldn’t believe she would do that. “I thought you were going to teach children.”

  “Yes, and if they ask questions about the bat, I’ll answer them. Not only will they learn music, but they’ll also get a science lesson.”

  Salem didn’t care about science lessons as much as keeping his daughters safe. “He won’t hurt anyone?”

  “Bats are the gentlest creatures. They don’t attack people. They don’t come down to sit in your hair. They don’t bite. It’s only old myths and nonsense about vampires that have scared people for so many centuries.”

  She brushed a few strands of hair from her face, adding another smudge of dirt to her forehead. “Otis won’t hurt a soul, and he’ll keep the building free of insects. Considering Violet lives on the edge of these grain fields, that’s a good thing.”

  “Otis?” Mika asked.

  “Myotis velifer. His scientific name.”

  “Otis.” Mika laughed. Salem tapped her on the shoulder. “If you see any raccoons out here, no feeding them, you hear?”

  His Intelligent Raccoon scowled. “But, Dad—”

  She fed raccoons regularly, leaving Salem to become more and more creative to keep the critters out of his garbage cans. They thought of his house and property as theirs. Damn pests.

  Mika had managed to shoot a lot of cell phone videos of raccoons rolling his big plastic bins all over the driveway, trying to get them open. She thought it was hilarious. Salem? Not so much.

  “No buts,” he said. “It’s okay for me to handle them at home, but we don’t want to leave Violet having to deal with them here.” He softened his voice. “It would be hard for her. Okay?”

  Mika eased her defiant stance. “I understand.”

  Not for the first time, Salem marveled at how reasonable his daughters could be when he just explained things to them.

  “What should we do?” Salem took the pair of cleaning gloves Emily handed to him. She also gave gloves to Aiyana and Mika.

  “We need to get these old pieces of furniture out of here so I can paint.” To the girls, she said, “After school tomorrow, do you want to help me look at paint chips for the walls?”

  “Yes,” they chorused.

  “If it’s all right with your dad, I’ll pick you up after school and we’ll head over to Turner Lumber. Okay?”

  “What are you going to do with the floor?” Salem asked. “This cement is only going to keep kicking up dust unless you finish it somehow.”

  “Like how?”

  “How about staining it? Acid cement stains will make it look like stone.” He crouched down. The floor was level. “It will look really good. What color do you want it?”

  “How about something dark, like a chocolate brown? Do they have dark colors?”

  “You can stain it whatever color you want. I can do it for you.”

  Emily’s eyes widened. “You would do that?”

  “Yes.” He would do just about anything for Emily— anything but have a relationship with her.

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “I’ll pick up the stain on my way to work tomorrow and then leave work a bit early later to come here.”

  “You left early today, too. Isn’t that a problem for you?”

  “Since the body was discovered, no one is coming into the Heritage Center.” It pained him to talk about it. “They all drive over to look at the hole in the ground. The case has attracted rubberneckers from all over the state.”

  Emily frowned. “I’m sorry, Salem.”

  “It is what it is.” He’d long since learned to tamp down his feelings when he couldn’t control the world around him.

  “Any wor
d from the police on who it was?”

  “No. DNA testing will take a while.”

  “Okay, if you would stain the floor tomorrow, I would really appreciate it.” She clapped her hands once. “Let’s get to work.”

  They carried furniture out into the sunlight. “Most of this will go to the dump. Violet’s already given me permission. But look at this piece.” They had just carried out an old desk. “It’s solid wood. I’m going to strip, refinish it and use it. What do you think?”

  Salem liked that she asked his daughters for their opinions—first, that she cared enough to ask and second, that she listened.

  They cleared everything out of the building so they could sweep and then vacuum the floor. By the time they left, the concrete was ready for Salem to stain.

  The next day, he found himself in the garage doing just that. He’d picked up a chocolate stain, as Emily had requested.

  It looked good. He backed himself out of the building through the side door just as he heard a car drive up. A minute later, the girls and Emily came around the house carrying gallons of paint, brushes and trays.

  “We’re going to paint tomorrow after school, Dad.” Mika set her load down in the too-tall grass surrounding the garage.

  “I can drive you over. Does Violet own a lawn mower?”

  “She must.” Emily rubbed her hands where the paint can handles had dug into her palms. “Her lawn out front was mowed sometime recently, but it’s getting a bit ragged. The backyard is decidedly rough, though.”

  “When I drop the girls off to paint after school, I’ll cut everything.”

  Emily pulled open the large doors. “Let’s make sure Otis isn’t exposed to too many chemicals. Ooh, look at that beautiful color. Salem, it’s gorgeous.”

  As if Mika had conjured a raccoon from midair, one sauntered around the corner, not the least bit intimidated by them all milling about.

  “Eek!” Emily squealed. “Don’t let him walk on Salem’s freshly stained floor.”

  They chased the raccoon away, shooing him farther and farther into the field, laughing like a bunch of children.