Authors: Avery Stark
Barbara reached over and grabbed a loaf of bread.
"How are you feeling today?"
It hadn't been long since the painful loss that rocked Emily's world to its core, but she managed to surprise even herself with the resilience that she never knew she had. It still hurt, of course, but the endless busy work around the Inn was enough to keep her mind off of things.
"Okay, I guess. None of this really seems real yet."
"It will in time."
Emily grabbed a handful of strawberries out of a green basket in the sink and plopped them onto her cutting board.
"I don't know if I want it to, honestly."
"I'm not saying that you have to deal with everything now, honey. I'm just saying that you will have to do it eventually. Keeping stuff like that built up will eventually rot your soul."
Emily raised her small paring knife and watched intently as its sharp edge slipped through the berry's blood-hued flesh. To her, it felt good to ignore the rest of the world around her and focus on only the most mundane things. A strawberry, after all, wasn't going to ruin her life.
From just beyond the doorway leading into the living room, Adam's groggy voice wafted through the stagnant silence.
"What are you two ladies up to?"
Both of them turned to look at him, but the look of distress on Emily's face was unsettling all by its self. Adam hated to see anyone in so much pain, though it was even worse when it was a sweet girl like her.
"Just getting some breakfast ready," Barbara said. "Do you want something?"
Adam answered, though he never took his eyes off of Emily's tired gaze, "I'll just take one of these with me."
He grabbed one of the apples next to Emily and then took a couple of steps back.
"I'll be back around lunch time."
Emily nodded and Barbara answered, "Okay."
After that, Adam hurried back to him room to collect his supplies. As hard as things surely were on the young object of his affection, the palpable discomfort was too much for him to deal with.
Back in the kitchen, the two women's conversation had turned back to a somber one.
"You know, I'm sure that your parents would be so proud of you right now."
The only retort from Emily was the steady clacking of the knife against the plastic cutting board.
"Look," Barbara continued as she lowered four bread slices into the commercial toaster and pressed the lever down with a hollow click, "I may not know you very well yet, but it would take a fool not to realize that you are in a bad place and, honestly, you are allowed to be there for a little while. Just never forget that you are capable of handling this. I can see it in you, Emily. You will get through in your own time."
Emily reached up and used the tip of her finger to sweep away a stray tear.
"I guess. It's just that-"
Three hard knocks echoed through the house. Barbara reached out and squeezed Emily's arm.
"Do you want me to get that?"
"No," she smiled with gratitude. "Thank you, though."
Barbara just nodded and gently slipped her hand away.
When Emily swung the door open, she was greeted by a tall, pale, wrinkled old man in a suit. Outside, the summer sun had begun to ramp up the temperature. This was made painfully evident by the glistening beads of sweat that shimmered from underneath the tiny slick of white hair that the man had left on his head. His dark slacks and jacket hung from his body, making him almost look like a child in his grandfather's nice clothes.
How ironic
, Emily thought to herself.
"Hello. May I please speak to, Emily Harper?"
"That would be me," she said. "Would you like to come in?"
The haggard old man adjusted his thick, wire-rimmed glasses and replied, "Yes, please. It is already hotter than hell out here!"
"I can see that." Emily stepped to the side, allowing him to hobble through.
Once indoors, he pulled a handkerchief out from one of the jacket's inside pockets and blotted off his sun-spotted forehead.
"Please forgive me for not introducing myself." He shoved the cloth into his hip pocket and extended his hand, "I am Martin Seville."
Emily shook his hand and raised an eyebrow. Even though she knew his name, she still had no idea who he was or what he wanted.
"I was Carl and Caroline's lawyer."
"Oh!"
Emily let go of his hand and directed him toward the couch a few steps away, "Please, have a seat."
"Thank you, miss."
The two sat down in opposing seats: Mr. Seville settled down into the sagging couch while Emily took up a spot in a chair. They were separated by a low table, which Martin set his briefcase on.
"I am very sorry for your loss, Miss Harper."
"Emily. Emily is fine."
Martin smiled and snapped the lid of the case open. From inside, her pulled out a manila folder and opened it up on the table between them.
"Now Emily," he traced his finger down the page, "I know that the past few weeks have been very hard for you, but there are some legal matters that you and I have to talk about."
Emily didn't like the sound of that. She already had enough to worry about.
"Like what?"
The lanky attorney leaned back into the couch and sighed.
"You know, I was here when your mom and dad brought you home from the hospital."
"Really?"
She had no idea that he had known them for so long.
Martin nodded and continued, "Your mother…oh she was so excited. She had wanted a baby for years but she and Carl had a lot of bad luck. Then you showed up out of nowhere."
He propped his leg up on his other knee.
"You were their miracle."
His words hurt her in a way that she couldn't explain. Emily didn't want to believe that her mother ever loved her. She didn't want to imagine the close relationship between them that they had somehow missed. It was too painful.
"Are you sure about that?"
"Oh yes," he grinned, "she was so enamored with you. I still haven't seen anything quite like it."
Emily wanted desperately for his words to resonate with her in some way, but the lingering shadow of betrayal hung heavy over her head, tainting every emotion that she had.
She quickly changed the subject.
"So, Mister Seville, what brings you here today?"
"Ah yes!"
The old man lowered his leg back down and leaned toward her.
"Your folks had the foresight to prepare for this kind of thing."
The way that he said the last word was so cool and calculated that it made Emily cringe inside. A thing? Like, a pair of shoes or something? Was this the same guy that was just talking about them bringing home their new baby and waxing poetic about how great they were?
"What do you mean?"
"Everything is being left to you, Emily."
She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. After everything that had happened, she hadn't considered the future. Most of her time was spent just trying to get to tomorrow, let alone the day after that. But when Mr. Seville delivered the news, it felt like a sack of bricks hitting her right in the gut.
Reality was setting in and Emily wasn't ready to carry the burden.
The willowy attorney continued, "They didn't have much cash. All of it was tied up here."
She wasn't sure what he was getting at.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it means that you have two options. You can stay here and continue to run the Chickweed the way that your parents did, or you can liquidate and move on with your life."
"You mean sell this place?"
He nodded.
"I don't think…"
Emily didn't have words for what he was suggesting. She looked around the living room and felt the hot tears start to well back up. The fireplace that they were sitting next to was where she had taken her first steps. In the kitchen, where Barbara was waiting patiently, Emily could recall warm, countless memories shared between her and her family. Out back, hidden in the shadow of a fallen spruce, was where she first kissed a boy when she was just twelve.
The heavy memory of all of those things rushed back at once. It made Emily feel, for just a second, like she was drowning in melancholy.
When she finally spoke up, it took everything she had to keep herself together.
"This place is my heart," she stated simply.
"I know," Martin said. "I can prepare the paperwork for either scenario and you can choose which set you sign. You are also more than welcome to find someone else to handle this, Emily."
"No, no," she waved her hand. "I wouldn't want anyone else to do it."
A smile cracked the old man's wrinkled cheeks.
"Thank you, Miss Harper."
He started to pack his things back into the already crowded briefcase at a snail's pace. By the time that he was able to snap the lid shut, Emily could hear that both Gary and Tex had made their way into the kitchen.
They were engaged in a heated debate about the merits of fly-fishing.
Once he was finally packed up, Martin pulled himself out of the couch with a grunt and started toward the door with Emily close behind him.
"I will mail you the papers in the next couple of weeks. All that you have to do is sign and send them back to me. I will take care of everything else."
Emily pulled the door open with one hand and placed the other on the frail old man's shoulder.
"Thank you, Mister Seville."
He was already almost through the doorway but turned around to face her one more time. The sagging skin around his eyes had turned a shade of red that matched the red berry stains on Emily's fingers perfectly. From the corners, little beads of wetness threatened to spill over.
"I truly am sorry for the way that this happened, Emily. They didn't deserve this." He hesitated, allowing a solitary drop of salty water to fall into his tie, before continuing, "You didn't deserve this."
Emily lowered her head and closed her eyes in a desperate attempt to keep herself from losing it right then and there.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Martin Seville patted her shoulder and started back out to his dusty town car.
Emily closed the front door softly and leaned forward until her forehead was resting up against the soft wood. There were moments when reality hit a little too hard on her fragile existence, and that was one of them. Her heart was racing and her head was spinning.
She braced herself against the heavy door in the hopes that the feeling would pass quickly.
"Emily," Barbara's voice cut through the fog soon after. "Do you want to go sit down?"
Emily took a deep breath of the mountain air that bled through the small gap between the door and its frame. For some reason it just didn't seem as sweet as before.
"I need to go up into the attic to get some stuff. Will you go with me?"
"Of course," Barbara said with a smile. "You got it."
Emily somehow managed to peel herself off of the front door and guided both of them up a set of rickety, pull-down stairs near the end of the hallway by her parents' room. She was careful not to go too close to their door as she did so.
That was something she wasn't prepared to handle.
Under the weight of their bodies, the stairs groaned and shuddered.
"These things aren't going to break, are they?"
"No," Emily said with a laugh. "I doubt it."
Barbara mumbled a reply and slowly followed Emily up.
At the very edge of the landing, a series of boxes had been arranged in neat rows on either side, making a kind of path that led to a more open section. From that end, the bright light of day flooded in through a hexagonal pane of glass and illuminated the swirling cloud of dust that the women's presence stirred up.
Barbara grunted, "What are we up here for, anyway?"
"We are looking for a few boxes labeled with the number four."
Barbara crouched down under the low beams that crossed above their heads, "And what's in them?"
Emily crept forward, careful to keep her head down. You only had to forget and run into one of the solid beams once before you learned your lesson.
"Oh, stuff for the Fourth of July party that we're supposed to have on Tuesday."
The two of them shuffled around the attic. In no time, their body heat, mixed with the warm sun coming through the glass, made the wide-but-shallow area sticky, almost swampy. Emily rubbed the growing beads of sweat off of her brow with her forearm and scanned the very back of the room.
"Aha," she said loudly. "I found 'em."
"Now what?"
"Uh," Emily lifted one of the box corners but was quickly dismayed when she realized that it was far too heavy for her and her less than physically fit partner to carry down, "I think we should send Tex and Gary up after lunch."
By the time the older lady hobbled over to where Emily was, the sweat had formed a nice little circle just below the embroidered collar of her billowy, yellow blouse.
"That's probably a good thing. I can't take much more of this heat!"
She fanned her face with one limp hand.
"Are you ready to go down?"
"Sure," Emily responded and motioned toward the entry way. "After you."
Following a safe distance Barbara's large, bouncing rear, Emily absorbed her surroundings. The perfectly arranged boxes (surely her mother's work) and neatly written labels (she knew her dad's hand writing from miles away) not only made her heart hurt, but they also forced the secretly terrified young woman to face the fact that she had been pushing down for days:
There was so much that she had taken for granted.
Even the curly sloping of her father's 'S' made her wish that she could have been there to watch him write it. One more minute in silence would have been enough, if only she could be with him; to be able to love someone right then and there while truly knowing how badly it hurt to have them ripped away. And even though she was not particularly religious, Emily had been spending much of her restless time in bed praying for one more hug, one more word, just one more chance.
"Emily?"
She didn't realize that she had stopped at some point and was gently rubbing a finger over the purple writing. Barbara had already started down the stairs when she called out to her.