After a night of deep, dream-filled sleep, Emily woke to the sensation of warmth on her skin. It was so unfamiliar to her now to not feel cold that she sat bolt upright, suddenly alert, and discovered a shard of bright sunlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains. She shielded her eyes as she pulled herself out of bed and went over to the window. Drawing back the curtain, Emily reveled in the sight that opened up before her. The sun was out, reflecting brilliantly off the snow, which was melting fast. On the branches of the trees beside her window, Emily saw water droplets trickling down from the icicles, the sunlight turning them into drops of rainbows. The sight made her breath catch. She had never seen anything so beautiful.
The snow had melted enough for Emily to decide it was possible to now venture into town. She was so hungry, as though Daniel's soup delivery the day before had reawakened the appetite she'd lost after the drama of breaking up with Ben and quitting her job. She dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, then put her suit jacket over the top because it was the only thing she had that even semi resembled a coat. She looked a little strange in the ensemble, but figured most people would be staring at the stranger with the beat-up car squatting in front of the abandoned house anyway, so her outfit was the least of her concerns.
Emily trotted down the steps into the hallway, then opened the front door to the world. Warmth kissed her skin and she smiled to herself, feeling a surge of happiness.
She followed the trench that Daniel had dug along the pathway and followed the road toward the ocean where she remembered the shops to be.
As she strolled along, it felt a little bit like she was walking back in time. The place was completely unchanged, the same stores that had been there twenty years previously still standing proud. The butcher shop, the bakery, it was all as she remembered. Time had changed them, but only in small ways-the signage was more garish, for example, and the products inside had modernized-but the feel was the same. She reveled in the quaintness of it all.
Emily was so wrapped up in the moment she didn't notice the patch of ice on the sidewalk ahead of her. She slipped in it and went sprawling on the ground.
Winded, Emily lay on her back and groaned. A face appeared above her, old and kindly.
"Would you like a hand up?" the gentleman said, extending his hand to her.
"Thanks," Emily replied, taking him up on his kind offer.
He pulled her back onto her feet. "Are you hurt?"
Emily cricked her neck. She was sore, but whether that was from falling off the sideboard in the pantry yesterday or slipping in the ice today it was impossible to tell. She wished she wasn't such a klutz.
"I'm fine," she replied.
The man nodded. "Now, let me get this right. You're the one staying up in the old house on West Street, aren't you?"
Emily felt embarrassment creep into her. It made her uncomfortable to be the center of attention, the source of small-town gossip. "Yes, that's right."
"Did you buy the house off of Roy Mitchell then?" he said.
Emily stopped short at the sound of her father's name. That the man standing before her knew him made her heart lurch with a strange sensation of grief and hope. She hesitated a moment, trying to collect her bearings, to piece herself back together.
"No, I, um, I'm his daughter," she finally stammered.
The man's eyes widened. "Then you must be Emily Jane," he said.
Emily Jane. The name was jarring to her. She hadn't been called that for years. It was her father's pet name for her, another thing that vacated her life suddenly on the day Charlotte passed away.
"I just go by Emily now," she replied.
"Well," the man said, looking her over, "aren't you all grown up?" He laughed in a kindly manner but Emily was feeling stiff, like her ability to feel had been sucked out of her, leaving a dark pit in her stomach.
"May I ask who you are?" she said. "How you know my father?"
The man chuckled again. He was friendly, one of those people who could put others at ease easily. Emily felt a little guilty about her stiffness, about the New York surliness she'd acquired over the years.
"I'm Derek Hansen, town mayor. Your father and I were close. We'd fish together, play cards. I came over for dinner at your house several times but I'm sure you were too young to remember."
He was right, Emily didn't remember.
"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you," she said, wanting suddenly to end the conversation. That the mayor had memories of her, memories that she didn't possess, made her feel strange.
"You too," the mayor replied. "And tell me, how is Roy?"
Emily tensed. So he didn't know her father had up and disappeared one day. They must have just assumed that he stopped coming to the house for his vacations. Why else would they have assumed otherwise? Even a good friend, like Derek Hansen claimed to be, wouldn't necessarily think that a person had disappeared into the ether never to be seen again. It wasn't the brain's first inclination. It certainly hadn't been hers.
Emily faltered, not knowing how to respond to the seemingly innocuous yet incredibly triggering question. She became aware that she was starting to perspire. The mayor was looking at her with a strange expression.
"He's passed on," she suddenly blurted, hoping it would cause an end to the questioning.
It did. His expression turned grave.
"I'm sorry to hear that," the mayor replied. "He was a great man."
"He was," Emily replied.
But in her mind, she was thinking: was he? He had abandoned her and her mother at the time they had needed him the most. The whole family was mourning the loss of Charlotte but it was only he who decided to run away from his life. Emily could understand the need to run away from one's feelings, but to abandon one's family she couldn't comprehend.
"I'd better get going," Emily said. "I have some shopping to do."
"Of course," the mayor replied. His tone was more sober now, and Emily felt responsible for having sucked the easy joy out of him. "Take care, Emily. I'm sure we'll run into one another again."
Emily nodded her goodbye and rushed away. Her encounter with the mayor had rattled her, awakening yet more thoughts and feelings she'd spent years burying. She hurried into the small general store and shut the door, blocking out the outside world.
She grabbed a basket and began filling it with supplies-batteries, toilet paper, shampoo, and a ton of canned soups-then went up to the counter where a rotund woman stood at the till.
"Hello," the woman said, smiling at Emily.
Emily was still feeling uneasy thanks to her encounter earlier. "Hi," she mumbled, barely able to meet the woman's eye.
As the woman began bleeping her items through and bagging them, she kept giving Emily the side eye. Emily knew instantly that it was because she recognized her, or knew who she was. The last thing Emily could deal with right now was another person asking about her father. She wasn't sure her fragile heart could handle it. But it was too late, the woman seemed compelled to say something. They were only four items into her overflowing basket. She was going to be stuck here for a while.
"You're Roy Mitchell's eldest daughter, aren't you?" the woman said, her eyes squinted.
"Yes," Emily replied in a small voice.
The woman clapped her hands excitedly. "I knew it! I'd recognize that mane of hair anywhere. You haven't changed a bit since I last saw you!"
Emily couldn't remember the woman, though she must have come in here often as a teenager to stock up on chewing gum and magazines. It was amazing to her how well she had disengaged herself from the past, how well she had erased her old self to become someone else.
"I have a few more wrinkles now," Emily replied, trying to make polite conversation but failing miserably.
"Hardly!" the woman cried. "You're as pretty as you ever were. We haven't seen your family for years. How long has it been?"
"Twenty."
"Twenty years? Well, well, well. Time really does fly when you're having fun!"
She bleeped another item through the till. Emily silently willed her to hurry up. But instead of placing the item in the bag, she paused, the carton of milk hovering over the bag. Emily looked up to see the woman staring into the distance with a faraway look in her eyes and a smile on her face. Emily knew what was coming: an anecdote.
"I remember when," the woman began and Emily braced herself, "your father was building a new bike for your fifth birthday. He was scouring for parts all over town, haggling for the best deal. He could charm anyone, couldn't he? And he did love his yard sales."
She was beaming at Emily now, nodding in a way that seemed to suggest she was encouraging Emily to remember too. But Emily couldn't. Her mind was blank, the bike nothing more than a phantom in her mind conjured by the words the woman spoke.
"If I recall," the woman continued, tapping her chin, "he ended up getting the whole thing done, bell, ribbons, and all, for less than ten dollars. He spent the whole summer making it up, burned himself to a crisp in the sunshine." She started to chuckle, and her eyes were sparkling with the memory. "Then we'd see you whizzing round town. You were so proud of it, telling everyone daddy had made it for you."
Emily's insides were a roiling, molten pit of volcanic emotion. How could she have erased all of these beautiful memories? How had she failed to cherish them, these precious days of carefree childhood, of familial bliss? And how had her father walked away from them? At what point had he gone from being the kind of man who would spend all summer building a bike for his daughter to the kind of man who walked out on her never to be seen again?
"I don't remember it," Emily said, her tone coming out brusquely.
"No?" the woman said. Her smile was starting to fade as though cracking at the seams. It now looked like it was plastered there out of politeness rather than naturally there.
"Could you…" Emily said, nodding at the can of corn in the woman's paused hand, trying to prompt her to continue.
The woman looked down, almost startled as though she'd forgotten why she was there, as though she'd thought she were chatting with an old acquaintance rather than serving her.
"Yes, of course," she said, her smile disappearing entirely now.
Emily couldn't cope with the feelings inside her. Being in the house had made her feel happy and content, but the rest of this town made her feel horrible. There were too many memories, too many people sticking their noses in her business. She wanted to get back to the house as quickly as possible.
"So," the woman said, not willing or able to stop her inane chatter, "how long are you planning on staying?"
Emily couldn't help but read between the lines. The woman meant, how long will you be intruding on our town with your surly face and snappy demeanor?
"I'm not sure," Emily replied. "Originally it was a long weekend but I'm thinking maybe a week now. Two, possibly."
"Must be nice," the woman said, bagging up Emily's final item, "to have the luxury of a two-week break whenever you want it."
Emily tensed. The woman had gone from pleasant and happy to downright rude.
"How much do I owe you?" she said, ignoring the woman's statement.
Emily paid up and grabbed her bags to her chest, rushing out of the shop as quickly as she could. She didn't want to be in town anymore, it was making her feel claustrophobic. She rushed home, wondering what it was exactly that made her father love this place so much.
*
Emily arrived home to discover that an electric truck was parked outside. She quickly put her experience in town behind her, pushing away the negative emotions she was feeling just as she'd learned to do as a child, and allowed herself to feel excited and hopeful about the prospect of having sorted out another major issue with the house.
The truck rumbled to life and Emily realized they were just about to leave. Daniel must have let them into the house on her behalf. She set her bags down and jogged after them, waving her arms as they pulled off from the curb. Spotting her, the driver stopped and cranked down the window, leaning out.
"Are you the homeowner?" he said.
"No. Well, sort of. I'm staying there," she said, panting. "Did you manage to get the electricity on?"
"Yeah," the man said. "Stove, fridge, lights, we checked them all and everything works now."
"That's great!" Emily said, ecstatic.
"Thing is," the man continued, "you've got some surge issues going on. Probably because the house is in such disrepair. You might have mice in there chewing on the cables, something like that. When was the last time you were up in the attic?"
Emily shrugged, her excitement starting to wane.
"Well, you might want to get a service man out to look around up there. The electric system you have is outdated. Kind of a miracle we got it on to be honest."
"Okay," Emily said in a weak voice. "Thanks for letting me know."
The electric man nodded. "Good luck," he said, before driving away.
He hadn't said it, but Emily could hear the rest of his sentence in her head: you're going to need it.
