Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
I don’t know who laughs first. I have a horrifying feeling that the giggle I hear might have come from Eyebrow Clive. But then Mae is laughing, I’m laughing so hard that I have to lie back down, and Emmett is smiling.
Finally, Mum is laughing; I don’t even know what we’re laughing about anymore.
Probably the fact that life is so ridiculous, if you think about it.
It’s often hard, and it’s often completely absurd until it isn’t, until it’s over.
So maybe the trick to it all is to laugh as much as you can, as hard as you can, until you really can’t laugh anymore.
‘So this is it, you’re leaving then?’ I ask Emmett. We’re standing on the edge of the cliff, our cliff, though there’s no caravan park behind us, but the sea crashes into the rocks, and the wind… it’s just like it was twenty years ago.
I can’t think of another reason for Emmett to bring me here, back to the beginning of the end.
‘You know,’ he says, looking off in the distance, along the cliff, ‘this is what I think Earl painted, this scene. Behind the portrait of you, I mean.’
I nod. I’ve thought that too. ‘Except The Edge was the caravan park, not a cliff edge. I like that we’re maybe the only people who knew that.’
I hadn’t told my Deathers that, not in the blog I’d uploaded after I got out of the hospital a week ago. Mae and Emmett had taken turns watching over me at the cottage, but I’m better now, or relatively so, so it must be time for Emmett to leave again.
‘I think maybe it had a double meaning.’ He looks out at the sea. ‘You know, it seems daft that I hated it so much here. It’s really beautiful.’
It is, I’ve always thought so. It’s early morning and there’s a hint of autumn mist across the ground – the gradual winding down before winter.
‘You didn’t hate the place, just your situation.’
‘I was angry.’
‘You were super angry,’ I laugh. ‘But you had good reason to be. What you went through, Emmett, it wasn’t right.
I knew that, but I didn’t acknowledge it.
Not properly back then. I thought I could make you better, but it doesn’t work like that.
’ He’s turned to face me, and the way my hair blows out behind me, it’s precisely what it was like all those years ago.
I brace myself for what he’s about to say, sure that the pain of it will be etched onto my heart forever.
‘It wasn’t easy for either of us. We neither of us had enough love from the people who were meant to love us the most.’
I look out to sea. It still comes with a side of guilt, the thought that my childhood was lacking. After all, I was incredibly privileged in lots of ways. But two opposing things can both be true. I was privileged and deprived at the same time.
‘I never told you, did I?’ Emmett carries on. ‘What happened that night I left the cottage, after Earl died.’
I shake my head, waiting for him to talk.
‘I just sort of stumbled around at first. I was so confused, like I couldn’t believe what had happened.
I didn’t want to go to The Edge and see Earl’s caravan, and I couldn’t come back to yours, so I went to the studio in the garage eventually.
You know Earl walked home that night he died?
I’ve no idea how he managed it. But he must have left the garage door unlocked. That was when I saw the painting.’
I’m crying again.
‘It was so beautiful. Even then, when I was so angry, and stupid with it, I recognised that it was a beautiful painting. There was a note with it too. For me.’
‘A note?’ This is new information. Emmett reaches into his pocket and pulls it out, gripping it hard against the wind.
‘Can I read it?’ I ask him.
He nods and hands it over.
Emmett, I am leaving you this painting – let it guide you home.
You will do extraordinary things, Emmett, of this I am sure.
No one, I suspect, will write about me. But if they do, I hope they say that you are my most outstanding achievement.
When you are ready, go home, Emmett. My boy, I will see you in whatever awaits us on the other side. EJS.
I’m sobbing now, for everything we lost, and everything we could have had but didn’t.
‘He wanted you to come home,’ I say, eventually.
‘He did. But I don’t think that he meant to Northumberland.’
Emmett wipes his thumbs across his eyes and then reaches to do the same for me. It’s such a tender gesture.
‘I never told you how much I love you, Luna. How much I have always loved you. I didn’t know what to do with it back then, because my love for you has always been so huge.
Like, right from when we were five or something crazy like that.
That’s what Earl was trying to show me. The answer to the question is you, Luna, you’re my home.
And if you’re here, then that’s where I will be.
Right here, with you, if you’ll have me. Will you have me?’
I am… devastated. These are all the things that I’ve always wanted Emmett to say. And now he’s said them, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters because though I’m well in this moment, we both know that I’m almost out of time.
‘But Emmett, I’m not well, you know I’m not well. I don’t know how long I have, but it can’t be long.’ I mumble a few words about tissue type and transplant, which absolutely no one should have to say during grand declarations of love.
‘I’ll never have children,’ I tell him. ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’ I mean, because I wouldn’t be around long enough to see them grow up.
‘That’s not my priority, you are.’
‘No, Emmett, you don’t understand. I’m dying. I’ll be dead soon. There’s no point, we’re too late.’
Emmett has turned to face me, but I can’t look at him. It’s just like before – I need to let him go. It’s the right thing to do. The thing that he desperately needs, if he’s even to have a chance at happiness. I tell him that.
‘You have to go, Emmett. Go back to your life, forget about it here. Meet someone else. Settle down. Have a wonderful, brilliant life.’
I think I’ve convinced him. I sound convincing, even to me, when my words are breaking my already broken heart and crushing my soul.
Here’s what I know. Earl told me that beauty cannot exist without decay, that life can’t flourish without death, but sometimes, death isn’t poetic.
It isn’t beautifully tragic. It’s just sad.
And I can’t bear the thought of all the sadness.
I can’t face it. Dying alone is bad, but with Emmett it would be unbearable.
‘I’m not going, Luna. My life is with you. That’s the way it was meant to be. That’s the way it has to be.’
‘But Emmett, you’re not listening to me.’
‘Whether you’re alive for a week or a year, Luna, I want to be there for it. I don’t care how much it hurts after. I don’t need protecting anymore because I’m not the same person that I was then. I don’t need saving, Luna. I’m already saved.’
All I manage is a sob. It could be true. Maybe Emmett doesn’t need saving.
‘You deserve this, Luna. Let yourself have it. Let me love you, please.’
At his words, the wind takes whatever reservations I might still have, lifts them up high above the cliffs and blows them away. Of course I want this, I’ve always wanted it.
I’m laughing then, crying happy tears finally. ‘You made me go on a quest to Paris when you knew the answer all along,’ I laugh.
‘Of course. I just wanted to spend a week in Paris with you. I love you, I love you, Luna.’ He’s holding the edges of my jacket then, and I’m pressing my lips to his to taste the sea air on them.
‘I love you, Emmett.’
‘For always?’ he asks, through more kisses.
‘Absolutely,’ I agree. ‘For always.’