Chapter Twenty-Seven
EMERSON’S HOUSE WAS silent as Baz came through the front door. Ollie wandered lazily out of Brennan’s room to greet him, stopping in the living room to go down on his forearms and stretch with his butt in the air. A watchdog, he was not.
“Hey, buddy,” Baz said quietly, petting him. “What’s your mama up to? Napping?” He took off his boots and went to peek at Brennan.
Ollie settled in on the floor by the crib. Brennan was sleeping on his back, knees and elbows bent like a frog, his little hands on either side of his head. His head was turned toward his right thumb, which was sticking out but not touching his mouth as he suckled in his sleep. Baz had a hell of a time going one night without seeing him. He couldn’t imagine not holding him for four months, but he’d gone for a motorcycle ride before heading over to Emerson’s, and the wind therapy had helped put things in perspective. Stewing over a commitment he made would do no good for any of them, and the more he thought about why he was going, the more it solidified that he was doing the right thing.
He put his hand to Brennan’s cheek and the baby leaned into it. He brushed his thumb over his soft skin. After weeks of holding his tongue, worrying it was too soon or would scare Emerson off, Baz couldn’t hold back anymore, and he whispered, “I love you, Little B. I’m pretty sure I’ve loved you from the second you slipped into my hands.” Brennan smiled in his sleep, and Baz’s chest constricted. He took his hand off his cheek, and the corners of Brennan’s mouth twitched into a frown. Baz’s fucking heart took a hit. “It’s okay, little buddy. You’re okay.”
In the next breath, Brennan was suckling again, relieving some of the tension in Baz’s chest. He turned and crouched beside Ollie. “I love you, too, Ol.” It struck him that he was telling the two beings who couldn’t understand the weight of his words, and he had yet to tell the woman he needed to hear them most. “I’m counting on you to watch over them while I’m gone, Ol.”
Ollie licked him, tail wagging.
“Good boy.”
Baz headed out of Brennan’s room and opened Emerson’s door as quietly as he could in case she was napping. But the bed was empty, and Emerson was sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back to him, surrounded by piles of pictures, papers, knickknacks, and other things. The flaps on the boxes marked P ERSONAL stuck up at odd angles, as if she’d started opening them, and the contents had flown out like a flock of birds.
“Em?” He took a step forward, careful not to step on anything, and she lifted her head, turning with tears streaming down her cheeks, gutting him.
“I opened the boxes.” Her voice was shaky and thin, and she was holding what looked like a piece of paper.
“ Aw , Em.” There was no place for him to step without crushing something, so he dropped to his knees where he was, reaching over the piles between them to hold her. “Whatever it is, we’ll get through it. It’ll be okay.”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “I’m not sad. I’m happy . They were so in love, and they loved me so much.”
Relief gusted through him. He quickly and carefully cleared a path between them, moving closer to pull her into his arms.
“I’m okay,” she said softly. “I promise.”
“I know you are, darlin’.” He cradled her face between his hands, wiping her tears with his thumbs, holding back the words that held the power to upend, or complete, her night. That was a risk he wasn’t willing to take on what was probably the happiest night of her adult life, so he said, “ I needed that hug.”
“Why? Wait. Is something wrong? I thought you were going out with the guys tonight.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to spend as much time as I can with you and Brennan before I go away.” He pressed his lips to hers. “Show me everything.”
She smiled and looked around them. “Where do I start?”
“Wherever you want, baby. I want to know all of it.”
“Okay, well , I don’t think I told you that my mom was from Iowa.”
“She was a farm girl?”
“Not really. Her dad was a bookkeeper, and they lived in an apartment in town, not on a farm. But I did see a picture of her wearing overalls.” She laughed softly and went on to explain how her parents had met when her mother was visiting the Big Apple with her grandparents. “I knew my parents had kept in touch after that, but I didn’t know my dad wrote her beautiful love letters. And he never stopped writing them. I found them in there.” She pointed to a three-ring binder, eyes glittering. “There are hundreds of them, and you can feel how much thought he put into them. It’s a shame nobody writes letters anymore. Texts are great because they’re instant, but they’re also cursory. Nobody sits down and writes a three-page text about the color of your eyes or how it feels to hold your hand.”
“Guess I’d better work on my penmanship.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“If my girl wants handwritten letters, she’s damn well going to get them.”
“Really?”
“Haven’t you figured out yet that there’s nothing I won’t do to see that smile?”
“Thank you.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him. “That gives me something to look forward to, and I’ll write back to every single one of them.”
He was digging that idea, too.
She showed him some of the letters her father had written, and she was right. The emotions in his carefully crafted words hit differently than any text Baz had ever gotten. They looked at birthday and anniversary cards her parents had given each other and spent the next hour going through pictures.
There were pictures of her parents when they were little with Emerson’s grandparents, and of them as young adults, her mother’s head resting on her father’s shoulder, and dressed up like each other when they were college age. Her father wore a wig and miniskirt, and her mother sported fake facial hair and men’s clothes. There were pictures from her parents’ wedding, her mother smushing cake into her father’s face, both of them laughing, the love in their eyes radiating off the image. They laughed at her family’s annual pictures in matching outfits, and Emerson told him the stories she remembered behind some of the pictures, like the one of her doubled over in hysterics beside her father, who had face-planted in the snow on a ski vacation. Baz’s heart melted at photos of Emerson when she was a little girl, doing a horrible job of putting makeup on her mother and beaming at the camera while her father carried her over one shoulder, her arms outstretched, legs straight out, like an airplane.
Every picture told a story, bringing back happy memories, which Emerson shared with him. Like the one of Emerson sitting in a Barbie car on the sidewalk, her father standing beside it, pretending to write a ticket. There were pictures of Emerson and her mother delivering cookies, and with their dog at a dog park, and just as many pictures of Emerson and Gwen having sleepovers and baking with her mother.
Her mother hadn’t been kidding about capturing every moment, and he was so glad Emerson had them.
“Look at this picture of mine and Gwen’s parents.” She held up the picture.
He recognized Gwen’s parents from the pictures on the mantel, only they were much younger in this photo, in their twenties, maybe, their clothes dusted with flour, white handprints on Gwen’s mother’s hip and her father’s chest. The four of them were standing arm in arm, while other people milled around the kitchen.
“Her parents don’t look like the sticks-in-the-mud you described.”
“I know. It’s weird to see them like this. It looks like they were at a party. My parents used to talk about how much fun they had together, but as long as I’ve known them, her parents have never been anything like they are in this picture. Gwen’s going to go crazy when she sees it.”
She set the picture aside and showed him her mother’s handwritten recipe cards and baking books, her father’s degree certificates and other professional commendations, and several of her mother’s journals. Baz tried to organize as they went through things, making stacks against the wall so Emerson would know where everything was.
“You know, I was just thinking. Zeke made digital copies of all of Leah’s family pictures so she’d never lose them. I’d like to ask him to do that for you if you don’t mind.”
“That would be amazing.”
“Great. I’ll take care of it.” He got up to set another stack of pictures with the others and peered into one of the moving boxes. “Hey, babe, there’s a sweatshirt and a big metal box inside this. Want me to bring them over, or have you already gone through this stuff?”
“I didn’t get to that one yet.”
He withdrew the metal box with the sweatshirt on top of it and carried them over to her.
EMERSON SNAGGED THE faded gray sweatshirt off the top of the metal box before he even set it down. She shook it out and held it at arm’s length, her heart filling up at the sight of C ORNELL written across the front in red. “This was my dad’s favorite sweatshirt. I used to steal it from him and wear it for days. He’d complain, and then out of the blue he’d steal it back and wear it to dinner, or plop down on the couch beside me and wait for me to notice. I’d beg him to give it back, and he’d make a big deal about how great the sweatshirt was, but he never handed it over.”
“But he let you steal it again, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t let me. I was sneaky.”
“Or he was. Maybe that was his way of keeping it special.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you never met my father? Because that is definitely something he would’ve done.” She pressed the sweatshirt to her nose, inhaling deeply. Her father’s spicy scent infiltrated her senses, making her long for him. “ Mm. It still smells like him.” She pressed it to her face again, breathing it in. “God, I miss his smell. It’s so comforting.” She held it up for Baz to smell.
“It smells spicy.”
“He always smelled like that. I used to love walking into the den because it smelled like him. You should get used to seeing this sweatshirt. I’m going to wear it every time it’s cold, and when I’m sick, and when I want to feel closer to him.” She bundled the sweatshirt in her lap and ran her hand over the metal box. “I’ve never seen this box before.” She lifted the top and found something wrapped in a towel. She unwrapped it carefully, revealing a plaster circle the size of a dinner plate. T HE L OCKHARTS was etched in an arch, above a large handprint with a smaller one inside it and a tiny baby’s handprint inside that one.
“Baz” came out sounding as awestruck as she felt. He touched her back as she lifted a shaky hand and placed it over her mother’s handprint. It was a perfect fit. Her gaze flicked up to his, and a smile stretched across her face.
“What a gift.” He kissed her temple.
Heart racing, she closed her eyes, imagining her parents holding her when she was Brennan’s age, pressing each of their hands into the plaster and then doing the same with hers. She wished she knew what they’d said in that moment. What they’d felt. But she realized their words didn’t matter, and she knew what they’d felt. Love.
As she opened her eyes, she found Baz watching her with the warmest expression.
He rubbed her back. “Are you okay?”
“ Yes. I just…I feel closer to them now. I have pieces of their life, things I can show Brennan when he’s older. I feel like I know them so much better now, even though all of this is just a flash in the pan, and not indicative of all that they were.”
“No, it’s not, darlin’. It’s the essence of who they were, just like you are.”
She swiped at tears, nodding. “I was so afraid to open the boxes. Afraid of what being up close and personal with pieces of my parents’ lives would do to me, and afraid it would all feel too final. But I saw your mom today at the coffee shop, and she told me about when she went through Ashley’s things.”
“That was a rough time for all of us, but in the long run it helped.”
“That’s what she said. I feel lighter than I have in forever, like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I don’t know how Gwen’s mother knew what to keep, but I’m so glad she did.”
As she rewrapped the plaster in the towel, he said, “I’ll ask around and find out the best way to preserve that. We can get a display case or something to protect it.”
“That would be great.” She handed it to him, and he placed it on the dresser.
After a few deep breaths, she reached into the metal box and withdrew a stack of birthday cards and crayon drawings she’d made for her parents when she was young.
“One day Brennan’s going to make those for you.”
She had a feeling, a hope —and boy, that hope felt good—that Baz would still be in their lives and Brennan would make them for him, too.
They looked through a number of trinkets she’d also made for her parents when she was young, and when she took the last of them out of the box, they found a smaller wooden box about the size of a paperback with her mother’s initials engraved in the top.
Emerson opened it, and her heart stumbled. It was full of the sticky notes Emerson had given her throughout the years, with I’m sorry scrawled on them.
“She kept them” came out as a whisper. “I can’t believe she kept them.”
“I can,” Baz said gently. “Those were your love letters to her. I’m sure she treasured them as much as she treasured your father’s love letters.”
Tears sprang to her eyes, her throat thickening painfully. My love letters. He couldn’t be more right.
Baz took one out of the box. “She folded the sticky part over so they wouldn’t stick together. Did she write what the fight was about, or did you?”
“What?” She took the note from him and saw her mother’s right-leaning handwriting on the back. She read what she’d written. “ I made you change out of shorts that were too small. One day you’ll thank me. ”
“I would’ve liked your mom.”
“She would’ve liked you, too.” She took another note out of the box, reading the back aloud. “ You cut class to get ice cream with Gwen and two boys. ”
“You naughty girl,” Baz teased.
“I wasn’t that bad. I didn’t get caught. I felt so guilty, I told my parents I had ditched class, and I asked my teacher for extra homework.”
He laughed and hugged her, before plucking another note from the box and reading the back. “I wouldn’t let you wear lipstick to school. You’re 13!”
“I remember that. I didn’t even like lipstick. But the popular girls were wearing it, so Gwen and I wanted to try it. The reason I got in trouble was that my mom said I wasn’t allowed to wear it, so I went to school without lipstick and came home with it…and more.”
He arched a brow. “Gwen?”
“ Yup. She snuck her mother’s cosmetics bag out of the house, and we basically made each other look like clowns.”
“Like the picture of you putting makeup on your mom?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I was a late bloomer. I didn’t really hone those skills until I was about eighteen.”
They read the rest of the sticky notes, each one making her realize her mother’s love really was unconditional. They started cleaning up, and as she pushed to her feet holding the wooden box, a sticky note floated to the floor. She bent to pick it up and saw ladybugs across the top. Her knees gave out, and she stumbled back, lowering herself to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Emerson? Emerson , what’s wrong? You’re shaking.”
The panic in his voice jerked her out of her trance. “ Ladybugs ” was all she could choke out, and it came on the tail of a half laugh, half cry. She probably sounded a little off her rocker as she said it again, louder and drenched in disbelief. “Ladybugs.”
Baz looked confused.
She held up the sticky note with the ladybugs on it, tears sliding down her cheeks. “This is the note I left in my room that night. She saw it, Baz. My mom knew I was sorry. She knew .” She turned it over in her trembling hand, but fresh tears spilled from her eyes, so she held it out to Baz. “Can you read it?”
“’Course, darlin’.” His eyes were brimming with emotion, too. “ You wanted a midnight curfew. I said 11. I want that last hour with you. I’m not ready to lose you to boys and secrets yet. ”
She laughed and cried, and he pulled her into his arms. She clung to him. “All these years…”
“I know, baby.” He held her tighter, pressing his warm lips to her cheek.
“I feel like I can finally breathe, and I’m so glad you were here with me when I found it.”
“Me too. More than you know.” He kissed the top of her head. “I wish I’d known about the ladybugs from the start.”
“Why?”
“Because she was with you when you gave birth to Brennan.” He took out his phone and navigated to the picture he’d taken right after she’d given birth. She watched him make it bigger, and there in the tangles of her hair was a bright red ladybug.
“She was there.” Her voice cracked.
“She’s always here. They both are.”
He embraced her, and there in his arms, surrounded by her parents’ most treasured belongings, she felt the pieces of her fractured heart coming back together.