Instrumental Emmett #2
Emmett swallows. Takes a breath they don’t need. If they did need it, they think, the stiff spread of stone would stop their lungs from filling all the way. A perfect explanation for the way the world seems to dip and spin, for the tightness in their throat. “Ruthie.”
A rush of air crackles through the line. “Where have you been?”
“Traveling,” Emmett says.
“I know you’ve been traveling, that’s not what I meant. Why haven’t you been answering your texts?”
Even if they could lie to Ruth, who was always so much harder to lie to than anyone else, they don’t want to. “I couldn’t.”
“What do you mean, you couldn’t?”
“Your dad—” Emmett hesitates, trying to find some way to soften the words.
But Ruth isn’t a little girl anymore. And she’s smart. She’s always been smart. “He told you to leave us, didn’t he,” she says. “He told you to leave, and not to talk to us anymore.”
It’s not a question, just a heartsick conclusion.
Obsessed with Nancy Drew and Penny Parker when she was little, Ruth had greedily devoured any story about girls solving mysteries that people didn’t want them to touch.
She wanted to be a journalist. Freelance, she insisted at the dinner table, to Jacob’s poorly hidden dismay, because the mainstream media doesn’t work for the people anymore.
Emmett misses her so much it hurts. “Yes. He did.”
“Why?” She always sounds younger on the phone. “Is it because of—of what you are? Did he think we wouldn’t want you anymore?”
“I don’t know what he thought.” Just what he’d ordered, but then, that wasn’t the same thing.
“Do you think we don’t want you anymore?”
“No. No, Ruthie, of course not.” Whatever else was true, is true, Ruth’s love has never been something Emmett had to doubt. They’ll never forget the look on her face when she came to them with Jacob’s journals in her hands, eyes full of fear and wonder.
Is it true, she’d asked, looking at them like she’d never seen them before, and it had been almost a relief, after so many years of secrets, to whisper, Yes.
“Then, what? You thought I wouldn’t miss you? My dad died, Emmett! And you just left! I thought you were—” Her voice catches. “Were you ever going to talk to us again? Were you ever going to come back?”
“He told me not to.”
“And you have to just—just do whatever he tells you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I know.” Of course it isn’t fair. But they weren’t made for fairness. “He made me for a purpose. He didn’t want me to…” They shake their head. “I left to keep you safe.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that. I don’t know that. I’ve never—he was always there. To make sure.”
She’s silent for a moment. “Because you had to do whatever he told you?” Emmett hums an affirmative. “Shouldn’t you just be able to do whatever you want now?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“How do you know?”
Emmett thinks about the ever-present pull toward the west drawing them insistently closer to the end of the line. They can slow down the inevitable, but that doesn’t mean they can stop it. “I just do.”
Ruth doesn’t respond. In the silence, Emmett can make out the muffled sounds on the other end of the line: a siren, a child’s shout, the blare of a horn.
They can picture her in their mind’s eye sitting on the stoop the way she likes to in the evenings, watching the neighborhood ready itself for the closest thing Brooklyn ever gets to sleep. “That’s not fair,” she says again.
Her voice is small and hurt. If they were sitting on the stoop next to her, Emmett would put an arm around her shoulders. Kiss the top of her head the way they did when she was little. Tell her everything would work out in the end.
Fifteen hundred miles away, all they can say is, “I know. But I’m—I’m trying, okay? I have…I have someone helping me. We’re going to try to…” They search for the right words. “We’re going to try to find a way for me to—not do whatever I want, probably. But to come back and see you.”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to try.”
The door opens. Delilah steps back inside and stills at the sight of Emmett on the phone, eyes going wide with surprise. Emmett holds up a finger, then tells Ruth, “I need to go.”
“Okay. Will you answer again? If I call?”
Emmett closes their eyes. “I’ll do my best.”
A pause.
“I can’t ask you to promise,” she says. “Can I?”
Emmett smiles, despite everything. Clever, clever girl. “Probably not. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Ruth says, and Emmett wonders, not for the first time, what it must be like to be able to lie, but to be so, so terrible at it that it’s probably not even worth the trouble. “Don’t forget about me,” she says. “I love you.”
And that, at least, is the truth. “I couldn’t,” Emmett says. “And I love you, too.”
Ruth hangs up. Emmett holds the phone to their ear until the tone chimes to signal that they should have gotten the message, and then puts it down and looks across the room to meet Delilah’s curious gaze.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you on the phone,” she says. “Is everything okay?”
Emmett opens their mouth to shape out a yes, and says, honest as ever, “No.”