Chapter 8
EIGHT
Emmett
I shouldn’t be here right now. Anyone could come home.
A loud bark sounds off at the opposite side of the house when I push the front door open, and Zipper flies down the main hall ready to attack until he realizes that it’s just me standing in his space.
He greets me with whines and a wagging tail, and I crouch down to scratch him behind the ears, kissing him on his furry cheek before I stand again.
“Hello?” I call out to no one in particular.
I know no one’s here. I came here from the office, where I physically saw Dad and Rowan working with my own two eyes. I’m being paranoid.
Making my way through the main floor of the house, I move for the stairs that lead up to the second story with Zipper following closely behind me while I head for the farthest hall closet.
My dad’s house is pristine ninety-nine percent of the time, everywhere except for this closet.
This closet is the island of misfit junk, where mess goes to die.
“Alright, where are you?”
I sit on the ground and dig out box after box of things that probably could have gone in the trash four years ago, but for some reason, they’re still hanging on.
It takes me ten minutes to finally pull out the box that I’m looking for; worn around the edges and looking as if it might fall apart if I tug on it too hard. The label on it reads EMMETT 0-16.
Pulling the cardboard flaps open, I dig inside, pulling out photos and other little trinkets that my dad kept over the years.
There are so many pictures in here you would think that we lived above a photo development kiosk.
He must have dropped off a new roll of film twice a week.
I skim through a few of the photos, many of which have Anna in them, probably because so many of the ones with just Dad and I in them are set out throughout his house.
Beneath layers and layers of memories sits an old camcorder, still in great condition for its age.
I’ve seen it about a million times before and asked about it a million times more than that, but I was never allowed to touch it.
This entire box was always strictly off-limits to me until I hit twenty-one; then I guess Dad figured I was old enough to decide for myself if I wanted to know what was inside.
I stopped asking about the box somewhere around eighteen, finally deciding that whatever was inside was ultimately none of my business. If he’d been keeping it from me, he probably had good reason to, and I didn’t need to dig out whatever secrets lurked inside of it.
But now…I need answers.
Zipper sniffs at me, pressing his nose against my bicep as if to tell me that I know better; or that I should turn back now. I set the camcorder on the floor next to me and carefully shove the box back into its place, burying it once again beneath the rest of its buddies.
I give Zipper a scratch behind the ear before grabbing the small device and heading back out of the house, hoping that I left no trace behind of my visit.
·
I’ve been sitting on my couch staring at this stupid little camcorder for over two hours; flicking the power on, hovering my thumb over the playback button, and switching it off again.
I know the tape inside was supposed to be for me, but is it really any of my business what’s on here?
Am I going to find some hidden confession from Anna, talking about how much she hated me all along and that keeping me was the worst mistake that she ever made?
Meeting her didn’t help; if anything, it had the opposite effect, in the extreme. I didn’t get any real answers. All it did was bring the darkness knocking at my door.
Taking a deep breath, I steady myself and pull the screen open at the side, switch the power button on and press play, not giving myself another chance to back out.
Seventeen-year-old Anna’s smiling face fills the screen, rubbing a hand over her round belly. Her hair is dyed a darker brown here with thick, chunky yellow-blonde highlights spread throughout.
“Okay, I think it’s going,” Dad’s voice says off camera. He sounds happy – excited, even. He sounds so young.
“Hi, Emmett!” Anna shouts, waving to the camera, and my chest tightens. “I’m your mommy!”
My grip tightens over the camcorder as the video pans around the room.
I recognize it, it’s my grandparents’ basement.
We lived there for a few years until Dad could get us a place of our own, and I went over there after school every day while he was at work or school.
We had dinner there almost every night with my grandparents, and Uncle Davis joined us once he moved out here. It was kind of like my second home.
A wooden crib sits beneath a few wall decals of various cartoon dinosaurs, surely my dad’s doing, and the blanket that I kept until I was eight hangs over the edge of the crib. It’s new in the video, not ratty and falling apart like the way that I remember it.
The video pans back to Anna, and she continues. “We’re two weeks away from meeting you, and we can’t wait! We already love you so much.”
My breath catches in my throat like a razor blade as the video plays through, the two of them giving me a tour of where we lived, showing me the toys that they had for me and telling me who gifted each of them to me.
I’ve heard most of the names before, but a few of them never came up, and I assume they were high school friends who probably stopped being friends once there was an actual baby in the picture and not just the idea of one.
The video cuts abruptly, switching to the inside of a hospital room, showing Anna sobbing on a propped-up bed with a new baby crying on her chest – me.
She holds me tightly against her and tells my dad, “He’s so perfect, I can’t believe he’s really here.
” My throat feels like it’s closing and the world shrinks around me as I watch her kiss my head.
“I love you so much, sweet boy,” she tells me through her tears, and I can make out Dad’s sniffle from behind the camera.
She loved me, at one point.
The video cuts again, now to my dad sleeping on one of those awful hospital couches with me laying on his chest. He looks so young here.
I’ve seen pictures, and I knew he was just a kid when I was born, but it’s still surprising to see him like this on film.
The guy in this video could be my kid brother.
A few more cuts show the first three months of my life; all of the firsts that they were able to capture and monthly updates on my development. By month three, Anna isn’t in the clips nearly as much. She’s there, but not present; not engaging with me like she did at the start.
Months four and five aren’t there.
The video cuts to a clip of my dad holding me on his lap to face the lens with a mouth full of drool and a big, stupid baby grin on my face…
and Dad looks devastated. His features have fallen and there’s a sadness tucked in deep behind his eyes.
He doesn’t even sit up as straight as he did in the earlier clips.
He’s only eighteen here. He shouldn’t look so beaten down.
“You’re six months old today, bud,” he says, “and we celebrated by trying mashed peas. You hated them.” A small chuckle comes out of him, but the smile that comes with it doesn’t meet his eyes. “I think you’re going to be a burgers and fries kind of guy like me. Not so big on the veggies.”
He spends a few minutes talking to the camera – to me, running through the milestones I’d reached, the things that I liked and disliked, what my favorite things were to do. All the while, bouncing me on his knee and kissing me on the head.
She broke his fucking heart. She only left him alone because she was so desperate to get away from me. He should hate me; he should want nothing to do with me, just like she doesn’t.
I ruined his life.
My eyes start to burn and my chest heaves as I slap the screen of the device shut.
I don’t know what would feel worse: if Anna had just never loved or wanted me, or knowing that she did love me and stopped. That was the only time I’ve ever heard my own mother say my name. Just once; and it wasn’t even face to face.
I can practically hear my heart pounding in my ears as the room closes in around me, squeezing every bit of air from my lungs. I’m not crying, I know I’m not, but I feel a tear roll down my cheek, and it drops onto my leg.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t…
There’s an ache somewhere, distant and buzzing, that sends my body sliding down from the couch cushion and onto the floor in front of me.
I’m hollow; and the edges where the rest of me was pulled out are left jagged enough that it rips and tears a hole open. The only thing that can come in now is the silky shadow of darkness that lurked on the outside, waiting for an excuse to climb inside and make itself at home again.
When I can finally move again, I stand and make my way toward the bathroom in the hall, unsteady on my feet.
I reach for the bathtub’s faucet and crank it until the water runs at its highest flow, then adjust the other until it’s just warm enough to closely match my body temperature, like a pool left open in the dead of summer – not blazing hot, but certainly not cold, either.
When I finally step into the tub, I lower myself in to my chin. My clothes stick to me as soon as the water touches them, gluing the fabric to my body like a second skin.
I lower myself further as the water continues to run, taking a deep breath in and squeezing my eyes shut before I fully submerge myself beneath the surface.
All I can hear is the rushing of the water into the tub as I count the seconds in my mind, ticking the time away to see how long I can hold out.
It was easier to do this in the pool at our old house; I could just drop myself into the deep end and count the time it took until I was forced to come up for air, going longer and longer the more frequently I did it.