The only thing I take on purpose is the envelope I have of keepsakes from Jesse. I don’t want Sam to look through them. I don’t want him hurting himself by reading love letters I once wrote to the boy I chose all those years ago.
I walk back into the kitchen, saying good-bye to Mozart and Homer on the way.
Sam is in the exact same position I left him.
He stands up to say good-bye to me.
I can’t help but kiss him. I’m relieved that he lets me.
As we stand there, still close to each other, Sam finally allows himself to lose his composure. When he cries, his eyes bloom and the tears fall down his cheeks so slowly that I can catch every one before they reach his chin.
It breaks my heart to be loved like this, to be loved so purely that I’m capable of breaking a heart.
It is not something I take lightly. In fact, I think it might be the most important thing in the world.
“What am I gonna do?” I ask him.
I mean, what am I going to do right now? And, what am I going to do without him? And, what am I going to do with my life? And, how am I going to do this?
“You’ll do whatever you want,” he says, brushing the side of his knuckle under his eye and taking a step back from me. “That’s what it means to be free.”
By the time I pull into my parents’ driveway, it’s almost two a.m. Their front light is on, as if they’ve been waiting for me, but I know that they leave it on every night. My father thinks it wards off burglars.
I don’t want to wake them up. So I’m planning on tiptoeing into the house and saying hello in the morning.
I turn the car off and grab my things. I realize as I step out onto the driveway that I didn’t bring any shoes other than the boots on my feet. I guess I’ll be wearing these indefinitely. I remind myself that “indefinitely” doesn’t mean forever.
I slowly shut the car door, not so much closing it as tucking it gently into place. I sneak around to the rear of the house, onto the back deck. My parents never lock the back door and I know that it doesn’t squeak like the front door does.
There is a small click as I turn the knob and a swish as I move the door out of my way. Then I’m in.
Home.
Free.
I walk over to the breakfast table and grab a pen and a piece of paper. I leave my parents a note telling them that I am here. When I’m done, I take off my boots so they don’t clang against the hard kitchen floor. I leave them by the back door.
I tiptoe across the kitchen and dining room, down the hall. I stand outside my bedroom door and slowly, gently turn the knob.
I don’t dare turn on the light in my bedroom. I’ve made it this far and I’m not going to throw it all away now.
I sit down on the bottom edge of the bed and take off my pants and shirt. I feel around in my bag for something to wear as pajamas. I grab a shirt and a pair of shorts and put them on.
I pad over to the bathroom that my room has always shared with Marie’s. I feel around for the faucet and turn the water on to a trickle. As I brush my teeth, I start to question whether I should have just woken up my parents by calling or ringing the front door. But by the time I’m running water over my face, I realize that I didn’t want to wake them because I don’t want to talk about any of this. Sneaking in was my only option. If your daughter shows up at two in the morning the night that her long-lost husband comes home, you’re going to want to talk about it.
I walk back to my bedroom, ready to fall asleep. But as soon as I go to turn the blankets down, I hit my head against the overhanging lamp on the nightstand.
“Ow!” I say instinctually, and then I roll my eyes at myself. I know that goddamn lamp is there. I worry for a moment that I’ve blown my cover, but it remains quiet in the house.
I rub my head and slip into the covers, avoiding the lamp the way I now remember you have to.
I look out the window and I can see a few windows of Marie’s house down the street. All of the lights in her house are off and I imagine that she, Mike, Sophie, and Ava are sound asleep.
I’m shaken out of it by blinding light and the sight of my father in his underwear with a baseball bat.
“Oh, my God!” I scream, scrambling to the farther corners of the bed, as far away from him as possible.
“Oh,” my dad says, slowly putting down the bat. “It’s just you.”
“Of course it’s just me!” I say to him. “What were you going to do with that?”
“I was going to beat the ever-living crap out of the thief who had broken into my home! That’s what I was going to do!”
My mother comes rushing in in plaid pajama bottoms and a T-shirt that says, “Read a Mother F&#king Book.” There is no way that that shirt is not a gift from my father that my mother refuses to wear out of the house.
“Emma, what are you doing here?” she says. “You scared us half to death.”
“I left a note on the kitchen table!”
“Oh,” my dad says, falsely assuaged, and looking at my mother. “Never mind, Ash; looks like this is our fault.”
I give him a sarcastic look that I swear I haven’t given since I was seventeen.
“Emma, our apologies. The next time we fear we are being attacked in the night, we will first check the kitchen table for a note.”
I’m about to apologize, realizing the full extent of the absurdity of breaking into my parents’ house and then blaming them for their surprise. But my mom steps in first.
“Honey, are you OK? Why aren’t you with Sam?” I swear, and maybe I’m just being sensitive, but I swear there’s a small pause in between “with” and “Sam” because she is unsure whom I’m supposed to be with.
I breathe in, allowing all of the formerly tensed muscles in my shoulders and back to relax. “We might not be getting married. I think I have a date with Jesse tomorrow. I don’t know. I honestly . . . I don’t know.”
My dad puts the bat down. My mom pushes past him to sit down on the bed next to me. I move toward her, resting my head on her shoulder. She rubs my back. Why does it feel better when your parents hold you? I’m thirty-one years old.
“I should put on pants, shouldn’t I?” my father asks.
My mother and I look up, as one unit, and nod to him.
He’s gone in a flash.
“Tell me everything about how today went,” she says. “All the parts you need to get off your chest.”
As I do, my father comes back into the room, in sweats, and sits on the other side of me. He grabs my hand.
They listen.
At the end of it, when I’ve said everything that’s left in me, when I get out every piece I have, my mom says, “If you want my two cents, you have the unique ability to love with your whole heart even after it’s been broken. That’s a good thing. Don’t feel guilty about that.”
“You’re a fighter,” my dad says. “You get back up after you’ve been knocked down. That is my favorite part about you.”
I laugh and say, in a jovial tone, “Not that I run the bookstore?”
I’m joking but I’m not joking.
“Not even close. There are so many things to love about you that, honestly, that’s not even in the top ten.”
I put my head on his shoulder and rest there for a moment. I watch my mom’s eyes droop. I hear my dad’s breathing slow down.
“OK, go back to bed,” I tell them. “I’ll be OK. Thank you. Sorry again about scaring you.”
They each give me a hug and then go.
I lie on my old mattress and I try to fall asleep, but I was a fool to ever think that sleep would come.
Just before six a.m., I see a light come on in Marie’s house.
I take off my engagement ring and put it in my purse. And then I throw on some pants, grab my boots, and walk right out the front door.
Marie is with Ava in the bathroom with the door open. Ava is sitting on the toilet and Marie is coaxing her to relax. The twins are potty trained, but as of a few weeks ago, Ava has started backsliding. She will only go if Marie is with her. I have decided to hang back and stand by the door, as is my right as an aunt.
“You can go ahead and take a seat,” Marie says to me as she sits down on the slate gray tile of the bathroom floor. “We’re gonna be here a while.”