Chapter 29 #3
They’d already been in the car twelve hours; Cecile was taking a shift driving.
And now it was quiet after the boys got into a blowup fight about who got the last package of peanut butter crackers.
Emily had promptly reached into the back seat, snatched the package for herself, and then eaten them, causing Cecile to cast her the worst side-eye.
The crackers felt heavy in Emily’s stomach now, the weight of always, always making the wrong decisions when it came to the boys.
Emily got a text, and she glanced down at her phone. Saw the news about the hurricane, Cara wrote. I hope you’re safe!
Cara had been texting her on and off since they’d run into each other in Santa Monica and up until now, Emily had been ignoring her. But she glanced up at the annoyed look frozen on Cecile’s face. Then glanced in the sunshade mirror at the boys in the back seat, who were both glaring at her.
And suddenly she had the urge to respond. Safe. Evacuating to my sister’s house in MD. Then she added, Thanks for checking.
Keep me posted! Cara wrote.
Will do, Emily responded.
She looked up from her phone, suddenly realizing her face felt hot, feeling like everyone in the car knew what she’d just done, that they could see right through her.
But Cecile was still frowning, her eyes trained heavily on the road.
And Emily told herself she’d done nothing wrong.
There was no harm in a simple, innocent text.
Ted wasn’t thrilled to hear about the unexpected company coming to stay in their already messed-up house, so Julia told him he should leave for the weekend. “Go to Long Island and see your parents,” she told him.
He nodded, suddenly looking weirdly pleased, and Julia wondered if what he’d actually heard her say was that she was giving him permission to leave for the weekend and cheat on her. “What’s that look for? You don’t like your parents that much,” she snapped.
“Julia,” he said. “Don’t be like that. Our marriage has been over for a long time.”
No, she distinctly remembered he had said four years until their marriage would be over. She still had almost a full year left. Nothing was actually over yet.
“We should want each other to be happy,” Ted continued. “We said amicable, remember?”
“We also said no cheating,” she reminded him.
“It’s not cheating if we amend our agreement,” he countered.
“It takes two people to amend,” she spat back.
“Have a nice weekend with your sister,” he said. And he shut the door to the guest room hard enough on the way out that it shook the walls.
She had too much to do before Emily and Cecile and the boys arrived to go after him. She stripped and washed all the sheets in the guest room, and then she told Veronica she’d be sharing her room until Emily’s family left.
Veronica sighed deeply and asked if she could go sleep at her friend Jemma’s for the weekend, pointing out that since her dad left, she should be able to leave too. “Absolutely not,” Julia said. “You haven’t seen your cousins in years.”
“Step-cousins,” Veronica corrected.
“The only cousins you have,” Julia admonished.
“What am I supposed to do with two ten-year-old boys?” Veronica crossed her arms in front of her chest and shot daggers from her big green eyes. Then she tossed her curls over her shoulders in a way that reminded Julia exactly of Nora when she got irritated.
“I have faith in you,” Julia said. “You’ll figure something out.”
After Emily and her family arrived, Julia made a pot of coffee and she and Cecile sat at the kitchen table, sipping from mugs, leaning in close, chatting and laughing like old friends who were catching up after years apart.
Emily watched them for a moment, feeling this strange itch from deep inside of her that she couldn’t quite reach to scratch.
It appeared that Cecile and Julia were getting along better than she and Julia usually did.
Was she happy that her wife and her older sister were acting like besties or was she feeling weirdly… jealous?
In the adjoining family room, Veronica and Mikey and Jim were intensely playing Switch and periodically bursting into laughter. Emily observed them for a few moments too. Veronica seemed to be getting along with the boys with such ease. Why was she the only one who couldn’t figure out how to do it?
“I’m going to the bathroom,” she said. But no one seemed to hear or notice as she walked off down the hallway.
She didn’t really even have to go to the bathroom, but once inside, she locked the door and gave herself a moment to breathe.
Something bubbled up inside of her, stress or anxiety or rage.
She couldn’t distinguish what exactly was making her chest feel so heavy.
They had just fled for almost twenty hours in the car from a fucking hurricane that could potentially destroy everything they owned.
Maybe that was what was weighing on her now, the realization that in a few days’ time there might not be anything left to go back to.
Just stuff, Cecile had said cheerfully in the car as they’d pulled out of the driveway. All our people are safe.
Stuff.
Something peeked out from the edge of the bathtub curtain, and Emily pulled it back.
The bathtub was filled with stuff—Julia had mentioned some renovation or repair going on in her bedroom and that they would have to excuse the mess, but the house had appeared spotless (of course) upon their arrival.
Emily peered into the tub now, with a morbid curiosity about her perfect sister’s hidden mess.
Even Julia’s mess looked organized though—labeled boxes were piled high: sweaters, purses, shoes.
But there was one box that seemed weirdly out of place: a medium-sized Priority Mail box resting right on top of everything else.
Emily picked it up now to examine it. It was addressed to Julia, at her old apartment back in DC, before she’d moved into this house. And the return address was Grandma Vera’s on Ocean Boulevard. The postmark was from March 1999, a few weeks after Vera had died.
Julia must’ve sent herself something from the house when she’d gone to clean it out.
She had sent Emily a box too, filled with books, but Emily had promptly opened it, discarded the box, and still kept the treasured relics from her grandmother on a special shelf in her house.
Shit. Now she wished she’d thought to pack those when they’d fled Tampa yesterday.
But why was Julia’s box here, like this?
Emily tugged at the edge of the tape and realized it was loose, like it had been pulled off before and then pressed down to reseal.
She had no right to be snooping in her sister’s things, and yet, she gently eased the tape off across the box and opened it to see what treasure Julia had taken for herself.
Envelopes?
No… letters?
A sudden chill came over Emily as she thought about Grandma Vera’s armoire.
Had Hurricane Vera swept her right here, in this exact moment, to see this proof that she, in fact, hadn’t hallucinated what she saw at the age of seventeen?
And that maybe there was more to the story than she had ever allowed herself to imagine?
There were so many letters. The correspondence dating back for years and years.
She pulled the top letter out, held it in her hands, examined it closely.
It was postmarked almost twenty years earlier, December 1998, which would’ve been just a few months before Grandma Vera died, a few years after she’d spotted a letter in the armoire.
445 Ocean Lane, Santa Monica, CA 90401 was scrolled in neat cursive in the top left corner.
So, she had misremembered both the street name and number, but what she had seen in the armoire was real.
Her hands shook as she turned the envelope over.
It had been opened before. Grandma Vera had read it once, she supposed, and maybe Julia had too.
Emily pulled out the yellowing paper, unfolded it.
Her heart beat too fast. She didn’t want to read this, she shouldn’t be reading this. Yet, she couldn’t stop herself either.
It began, as if in the middle of conversation, and Emily felt weirdly as if she were eavesdropping.
Well, all hope isn’t lost! Voice-over work is finally going well and it turns out profitable too. It’s not like I was starving to death before, you know, but I’m building up a nest egg and honing my craft.
Emily dug through the pile, pulling out a letter from much further back: 1985. The year they first went to visit Grandma Vera in May.
I’m glad to hear you and Bob figured everything out. I know you don’t agree with us, but please respect our wishes and keep your promise. He’s a good dad. The girls are so much better off without me.
In other news, I got an audition for a Jell-O commercial! Wish me luck—
A knock on the door startled her, and she dropped the paper on the tile floor. “Em, are you okay in there?” Cecile must’ve finally noticed she’d slipped away.
“Uh, yeah. I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute,” she called.
“The boys are hungry and Julia suggested we all go out for pizza. Do you want to come, or is your stomach upset?”
Emily sat down on the closed toilet lid and considered what to do.
She should put these letters back in the box, pretend she’d never seen them, leave this bathroom, and go eat pizza with her wife and sister.
An audition for a Jell-O commercial? That echoed in her head, taunting her now.
And Grandma Vera and Dad figuring everything out?
Grandma Vera keeping a promise, to what? Lie to her granddaughters?
“Yeah, I actually, um, don’t feel great,” Emily lied. “Too much road food. You go on ahead without me.”
“Are you sure?” Cecile asked, concern in her voice. “You’ll be okay by yourself? Do you want me to bring back some Tums? Or ask Julia if she has some?”
Emily was certain that her sister had Tums and every other over-the-counter medicine stocked in full supply in this house. “I’ll be fine in a bit. Just go enjoy your pizza,” she said.
And maybe this was it. Maybe this was the moment her marriage fractured.
Her life fractured. She was lying to Cecile about the very thing that had and would define and ruin so many aspects of her life.
She was choosing to drown in it now, rather than to get up, leave this bathroom, and be present for her family.
Cecile walked away from the bathroom door and Emily stayed behind, sitting on top of the closed toilet seat, reading through the letters, one by one.