That night, I slept. I forced myself to. Knowing I could overanalyze with the best of ‘em, sleep was the only thing that would keep me from relapsing into the land of empty brown bottles and mountain man bad looks.

     And when I woke up at eight o’clock the next morning, I forced myself to go back to sleep because it was eleven hours away from seeing Emma. Eleven hours of staring at the ceiling, wondering if I should have done this, shouldn’t have said that, should have refrained from pummeling the snot out of her boyfriend. Those were questions I didn’t want to agonize over, questions I didn’t want to know the answers to.

     So when I woke up three hours later, knowing sleep was a futile effort at that point, I’d grabbed my favorite board and let the killer surf brutalize me until my mind was empty of everything but achieving oneness with the ocean. And brutalize me it did—I felt like the great Pacific’s sparring partner when I stepped onto solid ground finally.

     I wasn’t one of those guys who could shower, throw on some deodorant, and be out the door in five minutes, so I bid the ocean good night a little before five and prepped myself for a date about which I had no details other than a time and an address.

     Could I have Google earthed it? Easily. Could I have driven by and scoped it out earlier? Of course. Could I have teleported myself there and gotten out just as quickly? Hells yeah.

     Why didn’t I? I was still trying to answer that doozy, but I’m sure it had something to do with liking surprises and, mostly, trusting Emma. Whatever she had in mind for us tonight, she hadn’t felt it important to tell me what we’d be doing or exactly what the place behind the address was, but I knew it was intentional. So I trusted her, although I’d had my thumb positioned over my cell’s send button a dozen times tonight when the debacle of settling on what to wear became almost too much to bear.

     But I refrained and went with a can’t-go-wrong classic slack, a button down shirt—cuffs rolled to the elbows—and a dazzling smile to finish it all off. The Mustang was freshly waxed, had a full tank of gas, and didn’t mind my zeal when I hit the interstate. Technically, I lived thirty minutes from campus, but for me and the Mustang, that was more a round trip time.

     The window was down, the unseasonably warm—even for California—fall weather finishing the job of drying my damp hair. The address Emma had given me was a ways south and east of campus—maybe only an hour or so—but, as with all places one can’t wait to arrive, it took an eternity getting there.

     Rolling down the street of a residential area that had probably been nice seventy years ago, I caught the number I was looking for fading from the mailbox slanting in the front lawn. Where in the world had Emma led me? To some ramshackle house in the middle of the Palo Alto equivalent of the projects? I doubted if anyone even lived here anymore; this was probably just some prank she’d tossed my way for beating up her beloved Ty.

     Even as the thought flamed through my mind, I knew it wasn’t in Emma’s style, though it was nothing I didn’t deserve.

     Deciding I’d get out and check this place out, I cut the engine just as a flood light above a garage that was more tilting than standing blazed on. Four bulging figures immediately stepped into the light, arching basketballs into the net-less hoop hanging above the garage door.

     Scarlett boys. Emma’s four older, rather large, brothers who’d tear off a man’s balls and staple them to the back of their pickups to send a message.

     So I had my answer as to why she’d brought me here. She wanted me dead.

     I hoped it would be a quick one.

     Oblivious to, or ignoring, the red Mustang and its occupant, the guys continued assaulting the hoop, so I grabbed the items I’d picked up on my way over and got out of the car. I’d never been one to run away, and I wasn’t going to start when the end was likely four Scarlett boys away.

     Slamming the door shut, I announced my arrival to a crowd that was either deaf or giving me the brush off. I growled something under my breath, wishing my three brothers were here with me now and we’d settle this the old fashioned way. A game of around the world. Winner takes all—loser’s dignity, lunch money, or underpants, didn’t matter.

     And then I saw Emma. The lights under the porch were shimmering around her, casting her in a beam that was too ethereal to be made of this world.

     She was smiling at me in grand Emma style and dressed up like she was heading to a picnic in the park. Feminine skirt folding around the breeze, a pale tank hugging what it covered a tad too closely for my pulse’s sake that was thankfully mostly covered by the white cardigan hanging on her like it was a size too big.

     She’d never looked more beautiful.

     She waved at me, gesturing for me to come towards her and stop staring like an ignoramus.

     This wasn’t a trick, not a prank, not an attempt to get even—it was merely an opportunity to spend an evening with her family. Families were serious business, the best pieces of us we protected at all costs. You didn’t just introduce anyone to these people you loved more than yourself. The fact that Emma was doing just that did something to my insides. Like she’d just carved away another piece of my heart for herself.

     At the rate she was going, I’d be robbed of it in about six more seconds.

     “You came,” she said, bouncing down the stairs towards me.

     “Of course I came,” I answered, looking at her like she was full on crazy.

     “Hayward!” a voice charged across the lawn at me as one of the Scarlett brothers turned his attention from the game of street ball.

     I tilted my chin in acknowledgement and was about to return the greeting in the form of a hey, what’s up, or how ya doing? when a basketball with a case of terminal velocity decided to cruise my way.

     I would have had to drop the items in my hand to stop the ball before my chest did, but since I’d agonized over my selections, taking a speed ball to the chest was the only option. Just as I was bracing for impact, Emma pivoted in front of me, freezing the ball between her hands.

     “What do you think you’re doing bringing flowers to a girl who has a boyfriend?” rocket launcher asked me, smirking at his little sister.

     Think fast, think fast, think fast. He was right, in his way, but I was right in my way. Emma liked flowers, Ty didn’t see fit to get her any, I—as her pretend/project/wannabe/hopefully future boyfriend—should be allowed to get her some. However, I knew this response would start the night off on, what would you call it? the wrong foot, so I put my fast on my feet thinking cap on and pulled out an explanation.

     “These are for your mom.” I raised the bouquet, lifting my shoulders like it was the most obvious thing.

     “Who’s the fancy box of chocolates for then?” was the immediate response when his eyes moved to the item in my other hand.

     Giving another shrug, I said, “Your mom.”

     “So what did you bring for Emma then?” he said, his smile identical to Joseph’s when he was taunting me in a similar way.

     “Give it a rest, Tex,” Emma said, firing the ball back his way. “And great first impression, by the way. What a way to welcome a guest to our home and lead him to believe we’re nothing other than a bunch of dumb rednecks.”

     “You know I love ya, Emma-Bema,” Tex called out before spinning and landing a swisher. Judging by their performance, four Scarlett boys could have or could still represent the starting lineup for Stanford’s men’s basketball team. That is, if they could keep themselves from fouling out in the first quarter.

     “Oh, and Hayward?” Tex called out while he waited for his ball to bounce back to him. Swinging an arm to the chateau de Scarlett, he said, “Welcome to our humble abode.”

     Emma puffed out a breath of air, shooting a glare at her brother’s back before turning back at me. “So how do I recover from that warm, disjointed welcome? Take two?”   “Miss Scarlett.” I bowed, all 1700’s Southern gentleman like, extending the gifts in my arms at her. “As a token of my gratitude at you and your family’s boundless hospitality,”—I arched a brow at the basketball court—“please accept my humble gifts. Oh, and I might have lied about these being for your mom,” I admitted. “Seemed the best way to stomp out the fuse before it ignited.”

     Plastering on a Gone with the Wind smile, Emma fanned her face. “Why I declare,” she said in a drawl that was as Southern as my manners, gathering up the oldest trick in the man book of gifts.

     I wasn’t one for clichés, but in this case, it was a well proved one. I hadn’t met a woman who wouldn’t melt a degree or two at the arrival of flowers and chocolates.

     “And you’re right,” she whispered in her Emma voice. “The boys would have no qualms over hanging you from the basket by your underwear and leaving you overnight if you would have admitted these were for me.” Weaving her elbow through mine, she led me across the front lawn that was more soil than sod. “But thank you for the gifts. I’m sure my mother will enjoy them,” she said, jabbing an elbow into my side.

     “You know, I’m surprised your brothers need another excuse to draw and quarter me,” I said. “After last night and everything.”

     “I told them what happened. Exactly what happened, not what got blown up by the rumor tank,” Emma said, stopping at the foot of the stairs. “And friend or not, no one talks to their sister like that. By their estimate, you did them a favor by teaching Ty a lesson.”

     “So your brothers like me now?” I asked, thinking they had a strange way of showing it.      “Gosh, no,” she said, making a face. “They still hate you. They’re convinced you’re the big bad wolf and I’m little red riding hood.”   

     “Big bad wolf?” I said, hitching my hands on my hips. “As in a werewolf?” The twisted irony of it was kind of funny.

     “They watch too many movies,” she offered with a shrug. “But even though they’re quite convinced you’re out to get me, they still owe you a debt of gratitude for standing up for their sister’s honor. It’s safe to say you should escape a session of Scarlett Slapping. I think,” she added, her mouth twitching.

     “You think?” I said. “Scarlett Slapping?”

     Climbing the stairs, she said, “Exactly what it sounds like.”

     “Super,” I muttered, following behind her. Our steps made a symphony of creaking all the way up.

     “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. They may outnumber me by three and outweigh me by eight times, but I have secret super powers over the male species.” She smiled at me over her shoulder, kicking a pair of boots to the side.

     “That’s old news to me,” I said. “I’ve been a victim of your power for awhile now.”

     Her shoulders tensed, just barely, but just enough for me to know I was bridging a delicate area. “Dinner’s in five,” Emma yelled across the lawn at the foursome, two of which were swinging from the rim like a couple of monkeys. “If you’re late, exceptionally stinky, or slightly rude, you’ll be eating your dinners on the back porch.”

     A couple of waves and nods answered her while the Scarlett brothers thundered on with their game.

     Emma stalled with her hand on the screen door handle. “Oh, and by the way, my mom is kind of . . .” she paused, brushing her hair behind her ear. “Quiet,” she settled on. “So don’t be offended if she doesn’t respond to your attempts at creating sparkling conversation. Okay?”

     I caught the signs of someone coloring the truth with an easy to swallow color, the lowering of her eyes, the muscles clenching in her shoulders, the tone of the words, but I had secrets too. So did she. At last, a sign that this girl was for real.

     “Well, wait until she gets a load of me then. She’ll be a changed woman after spending fifteen minutes with me.” I placed my hand over her back, in a way I’d meant to be reassuring, but ended up feeling more intimate than anything else.

     She shot me a look of we’ll see as she tossed the screen door aside and stepped inside.

     Following after her, I stepped into Emma Scarlett’s home. It wasn’t what I’d expected. Someone like her came from a two-story colonial with emerald green lawns and pancakes and maple syrup present in the air no matter what time of day it was.

     It was hard to reconcile how a woman like Emma came from a shoebox of a home that was absent of warmth, charm, family photos, and that intangible quality of a safe haven. Even in my mother’s absence, my father had somehow managed to create that sense of peace and safety, but until I’d stepped foot in this home where it was glaringly absent, I hadn’t realized how vital it was to making a house a home.

     A chill weaved up my spine and I automatically moved nearer to Emma, and the chill evaporated. She was my personal sun, without even applying for the job.

     “Mom?” Emma said, passing a nervous smile back at me where I lurked by the front door. “Mom, we have company. You remember the guest I told you we’d have tonight? He’s here.”

     She tip-toed across the decades old carpet, worn bald in areas, towards an upholstered chair floating like an island in the middle of the room. “Mom?” Emma repeated, her hand rounding over something midway up the back of the chair. A shoulder, a woman’s shoulder. I could have jumped from surprise if Emma’s eye hadn’t found mine right then. A woman so frail she looked a few days better fed than a runway model slouched in the chair, eyes focused on the black and white television flickering a few feet in front of her, propped up on a milk crate.

     “This is Patrick,” Emma said, her voice low as she crouched beside her mom. “He brought these for you.” She set the flowers and chocolates in her mom’s lap, but she could have been laying them in a coffin for all the recognition she received.

     Emma glanced at me from the side, where I loomed a foot away from the exit, and I knew what she was experiencing. That her secret, one of them that she’d let me in on at least, would be enough to scare me away forever. This was a fear that plagued me as well.

     Crossing the remaining distance, which was not far, towards Emma and her mother, I planted my best smile on my face and forced myself to act like there was nothing unusual, peculiar, or moderately terrifying about my surroundings.

     “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Scarlett,” I said, kneeling next to Emma. “Thank you for having me here tonight.” Placing a hand on Emma’s knee, I gave it a squeeze. I could feel the relief deflating from her like a balloon. Her eyes were glassy when they met mine. She didn’t say anything—she didn’t need to. It was all right there.

     A buzzer went off a few feet away from us, jolting the both of us, although her mother remained unaffected. Emma flitted towards the kitchen like she was overthrowing Paris, our moment passing us by.

     Defeated by the bell again.

     “Patrick?” Emma called out from the kitchen, as a racket of metal beating metal rang out. “Will you be all right in there? I’m just pulling out dinner and then we’ll be all set.”

     “I’m fine,” I answered her, forcing myself to look—really look—at her mom. “We’ll just chat for a few minutes. I’m planning to press her to divulge all your most embarrassing moments growing up.”

     “Ha!” Emma hollered from the kitchen, right before something clattered to the floor. For all the raucous, she could have been running a metal factory in there. “You’ll get nothing.”

     I wasn’t sure if that was because she had very few juicy moments of her past worth telling or if her mother’s lips were sealed, literally, on the matter.

     “Do you need any help?” I asked when another something clanged to the floor.

     “Just stay out of the way,” she warned, before uttering the first curse I’d heard come from her lips when something that sounded an awful lot like glass shattered. Even at her worst, the best curse word she could pull was crap. If that wasn’t proof for opposites attract, I don’t know what would have been.

     Turning my attention back at the inhaling and exhaling corpse slouching in front of me, I forced a grin. “It really was kind of you to have me here tonight. It’s nice to be able to meet the family responsible for making Emma who she is today.” Okay, a touch wordy and a tad sappy for a non-responsive person in front of me, but it was too late to take the words back.

     “You like my Emma?”

     I wouldn’t have believed the words had come from her mouth had I not been watching her. Everything else about her face and body remained unchanged except for the movement of her mouth. It should have been a relief, but instead Mrs. Scarlett just became creepier.

     However, she was Emma’s mom. And that made her good people. “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, lowering my voice. Not that Emma could overhear me with the cacophony of noise coming from the kitchen. “A whole lot.”

     Mrs. Scarlett nodded her head once, her eyes blinking for the first time. “She’s a good girl. And special too.” Her voice was tight, strained, like it would snap at the slightest disruption in the air, but the conviction behind those words was fierce.

     “Yes, ma’am. She most certainly is.”

     A commercial length silence ensued before she said anything else. “She doesn’t think so, though.”

     I wanted to disagree with her, to tell her the Emma I knew was positively bursting with self-worth and confidence, but I couldn’t lie to the woman who had birthed her. “I’d have to agree with you on that.”

     Mrs. Scarlett sighed, never once looking my way. When her eyes glazed over during the second sigh, I reached for the flowers about to fall from her lap to the floor. “Let me put these in some water for you.”

     I was smack in the center of the kitchen in three strides. It was more of a closet than a kitchen in what I defined as what one would prepare a meal in, but Emma seemed to be holding her own as she pirouetted between the stove, sink, and refrigerator. Her forehead was beading with sweat, and her brow was set in a don’t mess with me warning.

     “Vase?” I asked, short and sweet.

     “That cupboard.” Her elbow pointed at the one beside her as she decimated a head of lettuce. “Top shelf.”

     “Are you sure you don’t need some . . .” The word caught in my mouth when she spun at me, woman crazed look in her eyes, butcher knife raised in warning.

     “I’m. Fine,” she said, before turning back towards taking out her frustrations on leafy greens. “Besides, isn’t it your gender’s general opinion that my gender’s proper place is to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen?”

     I laughed, a full, rolling one. I laughed at the way her weapon free hand had flitted in the air as she’d said it, I laughed at the irony that, in my time, that had been the way it was, although it wasn’t the expectation, it was just the way things were. And I laughed at Emma, trying so hard to be tough and choke her own fit of laughter back down.

     Opening the cupboard door she’d indicted, I pulled the chipped-mouth vase down and decided it was time to press a little luck again. Keeping an arm stretched on the open cupboard door, I reached my other arm around her, pressing myself against her just enough to feel the tension ripple through her body. The cutting board stilled, where it sat balancing precariously on the sink’s ledge, as my arm stretched around her further.

     Turning the water on, I filled the vase until it was spilling over. I couldn’t move, I was incapable of it. I had her in my grasp, protected, shielded, everything I’d ever wanted I held within the six foot span of my arms, and there was nothing the world could throw at me to break this moment.

     Nothing in the world save for her.

     Ducking beneath my arm braced over the cupboard, she dodged in the direction of the oven, but not before meeting my eyes. The widening of her pupils told me she was excited. The narrowing of her eyes told me she was upset, maybe even angry. But what couldn’t be read with everything I’d read and studied pertaining to physical tells was if she wanted to feel the length of my body against hers every day forward.

     “You could have made that easier on yourself, Gumby man,” she said with a half smile before flinging the oven door open.

     “I could have,” I answered in the peaked tone that insinuated everything I wanted to.

     “Patrick Hayward,” she said with a sigh as she pulled a tin-foil covered pan from the oven. “What am I going to do with you?”

     It was one of those rhetorical questions people tended to throw at me a lot, because, let’s face it, I was the rhetorical question, but she’d cracked open a door I was going to bust right through.

     Making sure she was looking at me before responding, I said, “Anything you want.” Peaking my brows a few times, I added, “As long as it involves scented candles and silk sheets.”

     Emma snatched the dishtowel hanging over the stove’s handle and pitched it at my face. “My mother’s in the next room,” she hissed, fighting her smile at every word.

     “And her brothers are coming through the side door,” a voice that was all bass announced immediately after a door screeched open.

     If that wasn’t a proverbial cold shower, I don’t know what could have been.

     Sweeping the chop sueyed lettuce into a bowl, she weaved through the five other, rather large, male bodies packed into the kitchen like we were rammed against the rail at a sell out rock concert.

     “The only time you’re not late is when food’s involved,” she said, situating the salad bowl on the plastic folding table.

     “That’s the only reason to be on time, Em,” Jackson said, dropping a kiss on her head. “Especially when you’re cooking pork chops a la commode.”

     “If you’re all going to cramp my already cramped work space, make yourselves useful,” Emma said, pulling a bottle of dressing from the refrigerator and tossing it at me. “Dallas, you set the table. Austin, you fill the glasses with water. Jackson, light the candles.”

     “We have candles?” Jackson mumbled, fishing a box of matches from a drawer beside the sink.

     “And Tex,” Emma said, elbowing him while she carried a steaming pan of  . . . something. “You’ve got mom duty.”

     From the ensuing groan, I knew this was the least desirable chore in this household, and I could guess why Emma had doled it out on the brother who’d been the majorette of my welcome parade minutes ago.

     “Pork chops a la commode,” I said in explanation, staring at the foreign grayish dish that looked the farthest thing from appetizing. But I didn’t care if it was laced with arsenic—if Emma took time to make me dinner, I was going to eat it. And ask for seconds.

     “Pretty, isn’t it?” Emma guessed at what I was thinking. “The boys called it toilet pork chops when I first starting making it because,”—she motioned at the main course—“that’s pretty much what it looks like. But, taking great insult that they were labeling my best attempts at feeding them such vulgar names, I threatened to never cook for them again if they called it toilet pork chops again. They promised, and I renamed it pork chops a la commode.”

     “Em?” I said. “Did you ever take French?”

     “Only four years,” she said, clearly pleased with herself. “But the boys didn’t.”

     “So you can call it toilet pork chops, just so long as no one else does or knows they are?” Devious wasn’t a word I would have placed in Emma’s characteristic bank.

     “Precisely,” she said, sharing a smile with me. “Just look at that. They are toilet pork chops, but they’re a Scarlett house favorite because they’re filling, cheap, a one pan meal, and most importantly—”

     “They’re freaking delicious,” Dallas offered, dropping the last fork into its spot.

     “Couldn’t have said it any better.” Emma smiled her thanks at her brother.

     “You know, Emma doesn’t make pork chops a la commode for just anyone,” Austin said, from his post at the sink where he filled seven plastic cups of varying sizes and colors. “This is a meal reserved for family birthdays and special occasions. I don’t believe you’ve ever even made this for Ty, have you?”

     There was nothing that hinted Austin was provoking Emma, but the squaring of her shoulders indicated that’s how she took it. “Since the last time Ty stepped foot in this house was the summer before I entered first grade,” Emma said, drilling holes into Austin’s back, “no, I haven’t cooked this for him. Kind of difficult to when he’s got a personal policy against even toeing the line of the bad side of town.”

     There were so many undercurrents in her tone, it was impossible to determine which was the most prominent—irritation, shame, anger—but I didn’t care. I’d take any mark against Ty Emma would give me.

     “Well, it’s not like you invite people over, just like the rest of us,” Austin said, dropping a couple of cups around the table. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time you had anyone—”

     “Austin.” That was all it took, one word, to silence her older, bigger brother mid-sentence. I didn’t doubt the same would hold true with the other three brothers, and that she would yield to them at their first name warning. I knew this because it was familiar, something my family had been forced to adopt as well. When secrets weave together your past, you have to keep the threads from being unraveled.

     Placing her hands over my shoulders, she steered me to a seat. “Patrick, you can sit here by me. As the guest of honor, you get to help yourself first.” She pulled out the metal folding chair for me, waving her hand at the spread on the table. “And you’d better hurry and dish up because as soon as the four hyenas arrive around the table, there’ll be nothing left.”

     “I don’t want to disagree with you, but my mother would probably reach out from the heavens and slap me across the hand if I even thought about sitting down and dishing up before you and your mom had,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. This wasn’t a rule I followed to the letter, but it was one I tried to follow most of the time, and it was one I was going to obey when in Emma’s house.

     Sliding to the chair beside mine, I pulled it out. “Miss Scarlett?” I said, gesturing to the chair.

     The skin between her brows wrinkled, but she was smiling. “Is this whole gentlemen thing you’ve got going on an act or the real thing?” she asked, settling into the chair.

     “Both,” I answered honestly, sliding her forward. “My brothers are more the natural gentlemen in the family where I’m . . . less so, if left to my own devices, so part of the time I have to remind and force myself to be a gentlemen. But the other half of my gentlemen air comes from growing up in the South with a very Southern mother who put manners in the same category as showing up for church on Sunday early. So a lot of it has been pounded so deep into me it comes naturally.”

     Standing behind my chair, I leaned down at her. “Why? Are you impressed?”

     “More like shocked,” she retorted, folding a paper napkin in her lap.

     “I’ll take shocked,” I said, lowering my voice. “As long as you feel something for me. And it isn’t disdain or loathing.”

     A clenched jaw-ed Jackson leaned in between us, clearing his throat as he lit the votive raised on an overturned water cup.

     Forging roads of romance between Emma and me was going to be impossible with four brothers an ear’s and arm’s length away. A thought struck me, one I didn’t want to give credit to, but one I couldn’t dismiss. Maybe, guessing the way I felt about her, and knowing the way her brothers felt about me, she’d invited me here because she knew me putting the moves on her would be as successful as Canada winning a world war.

     My mood and smile dampened simultaneously.

     “Hey, Ma,” Jackson greeted, nudging me further away from Emma before moving away from us.

     Tex helped the still as unresponsive Mrs. Scarlett into her seat and when I saw her in the full light of the kitchen, the flatness stifling her expression became familiar in a way that chilled me to my marrow. Despite Mrs. Scarlett looking nothing like Emma, she had the same dark skin and hair of her sons, that expression of nothing she wore was identical to the one I’d seen shroud Emma’s face before. That faraway look that had landed her in a land of living nightmares and a place that had been sucked dry of all hope.

     I couldn’t look away from Mrs. Scarlett fast enough. I’d seen that look on her daughter one too many times; I couldn’t witness her paralyzed in this dark place too.

     I took my seat, trying to make sliding my chair closer to Emma nonchalant. Her sideways smile indicated she hadn’t bought it. In a combined effort, eight hands lunged towards the nearest food filled plate only to be promptly slapped away.

     “Are you forgetting something?” Emma said, glancing with annoyance at each of her brothers. “Grace?”

     They rolled their eyes like they’d been victim of this rebuke before. Austin, clenching his hands together, looked to the ceiling. “Rub a dub dub. Thanks for the grub,” he said, smirking at his disapproving sister across from him. “And thanks for the sister who knows how to cook it. Amen.”

     “Amen!” was the shouted chorus before those eight hands returned with a vengeance. Piling, heaping, and scraping whatever they could get their hands on, before another set of hands took it, onto their plates.

     So the Scarlett boys hadn’t grown up with a mother who would make them write out, in perfect penmanship, the first chapter of The Iliad if they even considered helping themselves before the women and guests at the table had.

     “Save some for our guest!” Emma shouted, smacking as many hands away as she could. “And the woman who gave birth to you.” She fought a spatula out of Dallas’s hand and shot an elbow into Jackson’s side when he made his move for it. “And for the sister who prepared this feast for you barbarians.”

     Tex slid a full plate in front of Emma, situating the other one in his hand in front of his mom. Being a middle child myself, I understood the need to please at any opportunity. Other than this birth order curse we could share, any man who looked out for Emma was good people in my book. Tex won the award for my favorite Scarlett brother by a landslide.

     “You better get in there,” she said, gazing over what was left. “Before there’s nothing left to get.”

     Women were served, food was in short supply, I was a starvin’ marvin. I didn’t need another invitation. Showing the Scarlett boys how we Haywards did it, I outmaneuvered Austin for one of the last pork chops, scooping up a couple of potatoes swimming in the grey gravy in the same swipe.

     “Nice move,” Austin said, raking up the last pork chop before Jackson made his move for it.

     Once every morsel of food had found its way onto someone’s plate, an orchestra of sighs, groans, and open mouthed chewing ensued. Except for Mrs. Scarlett. She nibbled a bite of lettuce and apparently lost interest after that. Her plate steamed, untouched, in front of her empty face.

     An elbow nudged me. “What do you think?” Emma asked, taking a modest-sized bite and chewing with her mouth closed, a practice her brothers should make use of. “It’s not gourmet Moroccan prepared by a five star chef, but it’s not bad either.”

     I’d been too absorbed in the chaos that was a Scarlett family dinner to have taken a bite of my own dinner, but when I did, I joined in with the moaning.

     “Holy crap, Emma!” I said after a second mouthful. “This could be one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Don’t tell my sisters-in-law,” I said, shamelessly talking through another bite.

     Laughing, she said, “You’d be amazed what a little cream of mushroom soup, whole milk, and garlic can do to a plateful of cheap meat and potatoes.”

     “Well, you’re a genius,” I said, getting why the guys fought over the food like it was Helen of Troy.

     Spearing a forkful of gravy saturated potato, she said, “I am, aren’t I?”

     A raucous of chair legs screeching across the linoleum announced the end of dinner for the Scarlett brothers and set a new world record for food shoveling.

     “Don’t even think about it,” Emma warned, stabbing her fork in the direction of the boys retreating out the back door. “You know the deal. I cook. You guys clean.” Sweeping her eyes over the greasy, goopy pan and plates scattered around the table, she said, “Have fun. Patrick and I are going out for some fresh air.”

     Few things could have tempted me away from finishing the half-eaten dinner before me. One of those things was being alone with Emma in the dark.

     I was out of my chair so fast it nearly tipped back to the floor.

     “Mom?” Emma said, sliding out of her chair and crouching beside her. “Make sure you eat a few more bites. Let the boys know if you need anything.” She planted a kiss on her cheek before turning to find me.

     I was already at the door, holding it open for her.

     “Can I interest you in a tour of our illustrious, expansive backyard?” she asked, pausing in the doorway for my response.

     “Interest me,” I said with a look that was too lingering for the five Scarlett family members feet away from us, four of which would have happily castrated me the old fashioned way.

     I followed right behind her, double checking to make sure I fastened the door tightly behind us. If it wasn’t for the shoebox window above the sink, we would have had complete privacy.

     “My childhood stomping ground,” Emma said, watching me over her shoulder, examining me as I took in the backyard.

     I had tomato gardens bigger than this back in Montana, and this is where five children had spent their formidable years exploring and challenging nature.

     Like the front yard, it was more dirt than grass, but even more so back here, and the only sign that someone had put any effort into the yard was the leaning fence surrounding it with a plank missing every four or five spaces. The fence was the eeriest part of the whole set-up.

     I don’t like fences. I don’t like the premise of them keeping something locked in or out. I don’t like being fenced. I wasn’t sure if that was because I’d lived in wide open spaces my whole life or because that was just me, but I could almost feel the stirrings of hyperventilation when Emma hung her head, toeing the ground.

     “It’s not much, but it was what we had,” she said. “When you grow up without a whole lot, you become very industrious. This was like our own Neverland, somewhere we could escape, somewhere we could be safe. Somewhere we could be somewhere else.” Running a fast hand over her eyes, she smiled into the dark. “We didn’t realize backyards came landscaped and with pools and barbeques and things other than dirt and spotted grass until we got invited over to Ty’s parents’ house when I was in kindergarten.”

     Whether it was the memory or thinking of Ty that had brought a smile to her face, I didn’t like it. Not because she was smiling, this was the steady state I wanted Emma to be in every moment of forever, but because Ty—or a memory of him—had made her so happy.

     “I dig it,” I said, finding it was quite a nice place when the silver light of the moon cast its mirage on her face. The leaning fence, the arid soil, the brown grass, it morphed into a secret garden that was as beautiful as her sweet face and as boundless as her goodness.

     “Come here.” She gestured at me to follow her as she crossed the lawn toward the back corner. “I want to show you what got me through my teenage years.”

     Intrigued by that promise and the sway of her hips floating into the darkness, I ran after her.

     She was already sliding out of her sandals when I reached her, using a metal spring to balance herself on.

     “A trampoline,” I said, crossing my arms. “This has got to be some story if this is what got you through your teen years.”

     Tossing the other sandal to the side, she leaned against the rusting metal, looking up at the sky. “You ever notice when you’re staring at something as vast as the sky, it’s impossible not to feel absurdly small?”

     I didn’t get how this realization had helped a teen who, as a species, is trying to express independence and identity. “Sure,” I answered, “all the time. But how was this your saving grace as a surly teen?”

     “Well, along with feeling utterly insignificant in the scale of the universe, so did my problems. If I was nothing more than a speck in the scale of things, then so were my issues.” Lifting a shoulder, she said, “That’s what got me through when I didn’t think I had anything left to . . . get me through.”

     When she looked at me, that’s when I got it. Really got it. Emma’s life had been tainted by the monsters and black spaces that position, love, and some luck had saved me from. I didn’t doubt those three things were in short supply in Emma’s life.

     Her eyes swept skyward once more, tugging mine along for the journey. “Perspective, you know?” she said. “Sometimes that’s all you need to overcome anything.”

     I had a desperate urge to cross the space separating us and fold her into my arms and attempt to leech out every dark moment from her memory. I was just getting after putting intention into action when a sharp rapping interrupted us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jackson wave a “big brother” hand in front of the window.

     Emma flapped her hand at him in a go away gesture until the window went vacant.

     “You wanna jump?” I asked, wondering how many moments would pass us by before the powers that be stopped wasting them on us. I untied my shoes and tossed them where hers were scattered in the center of the yard.

     Pausing once she had hoisted herself over the springs, she glanced at me before running her eyes down her length. Mine had no issues in following. “Sorry, but girls in shelf bras and wispy skirts don’t bounce on trampolines. At least, not ones who don’t spend their nights working for tips.”

     The heat was too instant and too intense, so I knew it had to be diffusing over my face.

     “Blushing,” she said, surveying me. “I didn’t take you for the blushing kind. Red’s a good color on you.”

     Looking for a distraction, I launched onto the trampoline in one leap, bumping into her not by accident. “So what did you have in mind then? If it doesn’t involve using a trampoline to bounce on. I don’t know why I’d be so foolish to make such a suggestion.”

     She let me hold the non-existent space between us, our bodies rocking against each other as the vibrations of my cannon-ball jump evaporated.

     Without warning, she crashed down on the trampoline, stretching out her legs and crossing her arms behind her head. “I was thinking we could get a little perspective for awhile,” she said, her eyes bouncing between the stars. “I’ll provide the location.”

     I took a giant leap, going supine in the air before crashing down beside her. We’d be feeling the aftershocks of the jump for awhile.

     “And I’ll provide the sparkling conversation,” I said, adjusting my body when it popped up so I’d land shoulder to shoulder with her.

     “I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

     The trampoline quieted beneath us. I wished my heart could have followed suit.  

     “I’m waiting for you to wow me with your vast knowledge of the cosmos,” Emma said at last. “Sorry if my continued silence didn’t make that clear.”

     I pretzeled my arms behind my neck, my elbow overlapping hers. “Forgive me. I’ve never been good at reading minds. Let me clarify. I’ve never been good at reading your mind.”

     “And you have no problem reading everyone else’s mind, is that what you’re saying?”

     “Pretty much. A woman’s mind is a tough nut to crack, although not impossible, but we men are simple creatures who only have one of three things on our mind at any given time,” I said, feeling like I was about to betray some code we kept secret so the women wouldn’t use it against us. “Once you realize that, all you have to do is inspect the eyes and you can tell with one hundred percent accuracy what he’s thinking.”

     “The eyes,” she said like she didn’t believe it.

     “They are the windows to the soul, you know?” I said, bouncing her elbow below mine. “I’ll give you the knowledge—you test it to see if it’s true. So if a man has those wide, kind of manic, kind of desperate eyes, he’s hungry. If he has sunken, glazed over eyes, he’s tired,” I continued, realizing how pathetically predictable we are when I verbalized it to a woman. “And if he has that partially narrowed, pupils dilated, tortured look in his eyes, he needs, wants, or desires sex.”

     “Wow,” Emma breathed. “You men never left your caveman roots behind.”

     Nodding my head, I said, “Sad, but true. Don’t get me wrong though, there are varying degrees of those three male essentials.”

     “How evolved of you,” Emma said, nudging closer to me. Unlike me, she didn’t try to disguise it. “Now that you’ve got me convinced that we’ve got nothing more than a band of suit wearing monkeys running the country, why don’t you get back to telling me everything you know about the stars?”

     “I’m afraid our conversation would end in about five seconds flat,” I admitted. “If you want an astronomy lesson, you want to talk to my brother William. He’s the modern renaissance man you women love, but he’s good looking too—I mean, he’s my brother, so he’d have to be—so that combo makes him irresistible.” Was that a sour ring I just detected in my voice? “I can get him on the phone, provided he has cell reception wherever he is in the world, and you can ask him any star related question you like and he’ll give you a full and informative answer.” The sourness in my words wasn’t because I knew William was a better man than me, it was because I wanted to be the best man I could for Emma. I wanted to be as good as William because that’s what she deserved.

     “Thanks, but I’m good with the present company,” she said, settling her head in the triangle of my arm. I didn’t dare look over for fear of confirming it wasn’t really her head resting in my arm, but a figment of my colorful imagination.

     “Do you mind?” she asked suddenly, when I stayed quiet, tensed and fumbling for words.

     “Of course not,” I said immediately. “My arm, along with any other piece of me you need, is at your beck and call.” My eyes squeezed shut when I realized what I’d said and how it could be construed, especially coming from someone who’d just admitted men had one of three things on their mind. Real smooth, Patrick. Way to pave the path with romance.

     “Thanks,” she said, missing, or ignoring, the double meaning. “Sometimes it’s just nice to be close to someone for the sake of comfort. No expectations, no assumptions, no sense of give and take.” She sighed, like she was preparing to say something else, but nothing else came, so I bridged the silence.

     “Your mom seems nice,” I said, because I couldn’t think of any other way to describe Mrs. Scarlett, and she had to be pretty great to raise a woman like Emma.

     “Yeah,”—another heavy sigh—“I suppose that’s a politically correct way of saying she’s . . . unusual.”

     “Has she always been so quiet?” I asked, chancing a look over at her.

     She was looking at me, her head curved into the slopes of my arm, her expression tight like there was an internal debate waging war deep inside. “As long as any of us can remember. Although when we were younger and needed fed and bathed and such, she was a tad more attentive. Thankfully.” Her eyes stayed on mine as the lines of her face flattened, indicating some side had won the internal feud. “Before she had any of us, she was class president, homecoming queen, valedictorian—the world was at her fingertips, she had only to choose which fairy tale life she wanted.”

     The Mrs. Scarlett I’d met and the be-all-you-can-be version Emma was describing didn’t compute. I couldn’t imagine what could take the life out of a woman previously bursting with it. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, so of course I had to ask.

     “What happened to her?”

     A pause, and then a clipped response. “My dad.”

     “Your dad?” I repeated, really not wanting to go deeper into this tunnel, but I couldn’t let Emma fall alone.

     “He was . . . is if he’s still alive, a violent man. I don’t remember a single dinner without his palm, fist, or boot connecting with some piece of my mom.” Emma was talking more like a robot than a human, her expression just as stilted. “He split after he put her in the hospital the third time and there was really no way to blame the visible size twelve tread stamped all over her body on another fall down the stairs.”

     I was able to trap the shudder before it ran its course down my back so, to keep another one from surfacing, I rolled onto my side and looped my other arm across Emma. The last thing on my mind was what she would think, or what her brothers would if they saw, or if it was appropriate, or any of the hundred other things I could have been worrying about. I did it because it felt right. I didn’t know any other way to comfort this kind of pain than with a physical embrace.

     Instead of stiffening against my hold, she melted into it, her body melding into mine.

     Weaving her fingers through mine, she closed her eyes. “I don’t have a single fond memory of my father.”

     That was the saddest thing I’d heard in a long time. My father, as removed as he could be, had left me with a dresser full of fond memories. Emma’s father had left her with none. Her dad had hit her mom. Her dad had hit her mom . . .

     “Did he ever hit you?” I said, trying not to snarl, although I knew I failed. If he had, I didn’t care where he was or if, when I did find him, he was a blind mute confined to a wheelchair. I was going to beat him within an inch of his sorry life.

     “No, but he did hit the boys every now and then, although I’m sure he would have hit me too when I got older,” she said, her voice fading back from robot to human. “If a man’s conscience allows him to hit a woman, it won’t stop him from hitting a little girl.”

     I wanted to hit something. I needed to hit something. I knew responding to violence with violence wasn’t the answer, but until another option presented itself, I was going to keep my fists curled at the ready for the next thing that presented itself to me to beat. I needed something, her father preferably, to be the outlet for my surge of anger.

     “So dear ol’ dad left, mom did all she was capable of, and the boys and I worked our butts off at everything we did. It was the only way we knew we’d be able to break the cycle.” Her fingers worked against mine, kneading the tension of them away one by one. “I know, I know. We sound like some Oprah Christmas charity special, but you know what I’d ask for if someone said they’d give me anything I wanted?” she asked, tilting her head back towards mine. “Normalcy. Everyone cringes when they hear the word normal, but to me, normal sounds perfectly dreamy.”

     I’d been one of those people. The ones that curled their nose at the normal anything. But I’d never look at the norm again without remembering this conversation. Without recalling the way Emma’s face twisted when she’d bared her soul to me. How normal was a beautiful thing for someone who’d never had a stitch of it to cling to when their world was falling apart around them. When their world had never been put together properly in the first place. Emma wanted normal. After everything, it was what she deserved.

     It was the one thing I couldn’t give her.

     Nothing about my life was normal, other than the image of a college student I was attempting to convey, and honestly, nothing had been exceptionally normal about my life before I’d found myself on the other side of infinite. How could I deny her a life of predictability, mornings of toast and coffee, evenings of walks around the park after dinner, weekends of dinner and movie dates, when the promise of these instances in the future got her through the shadows and trap doors of her past?

     I couldn’t. If I really cared for her, which I knew with every molecule of my makeup I did, I had to want what was best for her. And who knew what was best for her other than Emma? Realizing I could not be any part of the normal future Emma craved was as simple as a game of fill in the blanks.

     A regular day in my life pre-college tour had included finding myself in several continents by day’s end, often near enemy lines, and in between foreign dates with death, I trained newbie Immortals in the arts of combat. I couldn’t imagine a less normal life. Predictability for me was waiting for a summons from the Council or running in the opposite direction of those chasing me, metaphorically speaking.

     There was no place for me to fit in the life Emma wanted for herself.

     A bullet to my gut would have been more pleasant than the ache pulsing from there now. I would know too. A bullet had ended my not-so normal life and been the catalyst for my not-even-close-to normal life.   

     Knowing I’d wandered too far and long down the dark paths of my mind, I forced myself to resurface, not wanting to leave Emma alone with the memories she’d let out into the open.

     Hoping I wouldn’t sound or look like a man who’d just lost a woman, I said, “I’m so sorry, Emma. That’s a sucky, sucky thing to go through.” My arms tightened around her. I might have accepted I wasn’t a part of her future, but that didn’t mean I was ready to let go just now.

     “I didn’t tell you that so you’d feel bad for me,” she said, her eyes shifting over the stars. “I told you so you’d better understand me. Why I am the way I am. Why I’m such a hard nose when it comes to staying on the straight and narrow. I don’t have a net to catch me if I fall. If I fail, I become my mom,” she said, her voice whisper-like. “That’s why I’ve been so hard on you. You’re something of a wild card, and I don’t have the luxury of those in my life.”

     I thought about her roommate and boyfriend and wondered how I got classified as the wild card above them, but she was right. Her instincts served her well in that I quite possibly would have been the wild card of her life if she’d let me into her life the way I wanted to enter it. But, the big but again, just because I was willing to accept I couldn’t make Emma happy in her quest for a life of the norm, I wasn’t going to rest until she’d dumped that life-sucking leech of a boyfriend in the dumpster with the rest of the trash.

     A flash of last night, me straddling his shoulders while I made good work of turning his face into mincemeat, wiggled its way into my conscious. Me, the Immortal hulk, beating a helpless man—a man she loved, misplaced or not—while she watched.

     “Oh my gosh, Em,” I breathed, wondering how pale my face had blanched. “Last night . . . I’m so sorry. You must have seen your father in me when I was going all ape on your boyfriend.” I wanted to punch myself a few times. In fact, I would later on when she didn’t have to witness any more of my violence seeping through. “I’m sorry, so, so, so . . .”

     Her hand molded over my cheek before tilting it until I was forced to look her in the eye. My face was a mess, I didn’t want to imagine how contorted and colorless it was, but hers was peaceful. Peaceful like a late spring day lounging down by the river my brothers and I fished at in Montana. Peaceful like I’d never seen it. Somewhere, in the chaos of revealing her past to me, she’d found a peace I hadn’t after centuries of searching for it. I wanted that face imbedded on Emma forever.

     But I was a realist, most days, and knew that look was meant for girls with pristine pasts and flawless futures.

     “It’s all right, Patrick,” she said, the warmth of her hand radiating through me. “Don’t be sorry. Ty and his guys deserved to get their butts kicked after what they did and said last night.”

     And now, to make this picture of her more unearthly, a breeze shifted our way, swirling the short layers of hair around her face. I was good as falling off the wagon after seeing her this way tonight and realizing I wouldn’t be seeing her this way every night forward.

     “I’m not against self defense or a good old fashioned case of teaching someone some respect because my daddy beat my mommy. Ty deserved it,” she said, her eyes inviting me closer. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”

     Before I could translate why they were inviting me closer, the invitation was revoked. As batty I was becoming, I could have been imagining it.

     “Although, after watching you win a fight against a guy who never even got a hit in and, mind you, this is a guy known for never losing the bi-weekly fights he likes to find himself in,” she said, sliding her hand off my cheek, “evidence is mounting that you’re a government trained super spy assassin.”

     Her tone was light, but a heaviness of truth countered it. So she’d arrived at the conclusion I was something else, something not quite the same as the rest of them. One of these things is not like the other . . .

     It should have been the first clue that I needed to do a better job of blending in or else perform a full scale disappearing act in order to keep the truth of what I was under wraps. Instead, I found myself relieved she’d concluded of her own volition I was something different.

     “But you have to promise me, promise me promise me,” she said, arching a brow, “that you’ll never do that again. Ty and his family don’t take well to being humiliated and have something of a reputation for making people’s lives hell if someone crosses them. No matter what he says or does, you have to just walk away the next time,” she said, while I bit my tongue to stay quiet. “Don’t ruin everything you’ve worked for.”

     “Yeah, I’m not going to be able to make that promise,” I said, rolling my neck side to side.

     “Promise,” she said, not about to concede.

     I could convince most any woman of just about anything. Why, when I’d found the one, was that priceless gift taking a hiatus? “Okay, how ‘bout this? I’ll promise I’ll try—”

     “Promise,” she said, grabbing my shirt and tugging. If she kept that up, I’d promise anything she wanted.

     “Fine,” I grumbled, feeling like the worst kind of pushover. “And for the record, it doesn’t take a pro to beat a few stumbling drunk guys,” I said with a big deal face. “Speaking of Mr. Wonderful . . . remind me again why you’re with him?”

     She wasn’t expecting this abrupt turn in conversation, that was evident from every stiffening of her body possible. The peaceful face evaporated into the wind, making my heart ache something fierce. I would give anything to have that face back, but not before I made her see reason that life with Ty was a one way street to the town of dismal.

     Her lips locked in silence, her eyes narrowing to a spot just behind me.

     “Come on, Emma. He’s got possessive, future abusive husband written all over his elitist, smug-faced file.”

     That was the tipping point. I was expecting a slap, but what she hit me with was worse. She snapped free of my arms and was off the trampoline and jogging across the lawn before I could miss the heat of her body beside mine.

     So I wanted her to see reason, but this wasn’t the way I wanted to end the night. “Emma!” I called after her. “Wait. Come on, wait up.” I lengthened my stride to catch her, grabbing her by the arm and twisting her towards me.

     She didn’t have the face of infuriation I’d anticipated. Instead, it looked close to tears. All it would take was one more insensitive word from me to make the pools forming in the corners of her eyes to spill. I’d wanted her to see reason—I hadn’t wanted her to cry.

     I was an ass.

     “Please forgive what I said,” I rushed, holding my hands over her arms because I couldn’t bear to watch her run away from me again. “It was insensitive, and uncalled for—”

     “And a really crummy thing to say,” she interrupted, sounding like a little girl trying to sound brave. That’s what she was right now, a little girl trying to be brave in the face of her past demons come to haunt her again.

     “I know I’m making a pattern of this, and I promise I’ll try not to make it a hardcore habit, but,”—I tilted her chin up, wiping away the tear before it released—“forgive me?”

     “You’re an idiot,” she added, her shoulders unfurling from their curled forward position.

     I smiled—the Emma I loved was coming back. “I’ve got the t-shirt.”

     She smiled at the ground, wiping a hand over her nose before looking up. “If you want to continue on with what was a perfect date before you brought up an off-limit topic, you have to promise not to mention Ty’s and my relationship again.” Now this was an ultimatum.

     “Ty who?” I said, feeling kind of wicked for skirting the whole promising thing. I made her a promise I wouldn’t make a be-all-end-all promise to her if I couldn’t know with absolute certainty I could keep it. This was one promise I knew I couldn’t keep.

     “Good answer,” she said, retrieving her sandals and sliding them back on. “You like coconut cream pie?”

     This was why I loved her—well, one of the reasons why. Going against centuries of genetic code flowing through her, Emma might have been the one woman on earth who could get into a spat with a man, forgive him a minute later, and forget it two seconds after that. I didn’t want to tell her, but it wasn’t normal, in a very good way.

     “I lust after it,” I said as I slipped into my own shoes.

     Shaking her head at me, she headed for the back door. “Come on, Prince Charming. Pie’s a waitin’.”

     “You think I’m charming?” I called after her, jogging again to catch up.

     Looking at me over her shoulder, she said, “Can anyone stay mad at you?”

     I didn’t have to think about it before answering honestly, “No. At least not longer than a few hours.”

     “Of course not,” she said, nudging me. “I wish I could figure out a way.”

     There were about a million and a half things I wanted to say, and twice that many things I needed to get off my chest, but Emma was hell bent on getting coconut cream pie, and I knew better than to get in the way of a woman seeking sugar.

     The next thing I heard was a shout, followed by the shuffling of chairs and feet. I lunged into the kitchen, ready for anything.

     Anything happened to be Emma charging around the table after two of her brothers. Where the other two were, I didn’t know. But it was clear they were the smart ones.

     “You ate the whole thing!” she hollered, making a lunge at Austin, but he swooped to the side at the last minute. “We have a guest and you brutes can’t save one piece?”

     Now this was something that would have been on my life list had I known it existed. Emma Scarlett chasing down her linebacker sized brothers, to inflict what kind of damage if she caught them I couldn’t guess at, because they’d chowed down on pie.

     I knew it would infuriate her, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t even try to tame the laughter that erupted from me, and she didn’t make any attempts to tame the glare she shot me as the trio made another circumnavigation of the table.

     “No,” Tex’s fake twang accent announced behind me, “we saved you a piece.”

     I saw the slice of extra creamy cream pie arching at me, zeroing in on my face, but I didn’t take what I was viewing and translate into something useful.

     Like ducking.

     The raucous of the room diminished, it was dead silent, right before a quartet of laughter exploded. A round of high-fiving and back slapping ensued, but I didn’t see it. My eyes were glued shut by whipped cream and humility. I’d finally found an adversary that could attack in the midst of my surprise. And it was a piece of pie.

     A delicious piece of pie at that, I clarified as I licked my lips clean.

     “I am officially an only child as of right now,” Emma yelled, the sounds of a wet towel snapping against flesh taking over. “I disown every last one of you.”

     She must have flicked the room free of pie throwing brothers because the room became silent again.

     “Oh my gosh,” she said, her footsteps rushing my way. “I’m so sorry, Patrick.”

Her weapon slash dishrag ran over my eyes.

     “Why?” I said, fluttering my cream coated eyelashes open. “We got the last piece of pie.” Running my finger down my cheek, I held it in front of her. “Want a bite?”

     Turning the dishtowel around, she wiped my nose clean. “Are you always this go with the flow? Unpestered by anything?” she asked, licking the dollop of whipped cream off the tip of my finger. “Go figure. Of course it would be the best coconut cream pie I’ve made to date,” she muttered to herself.

     I was lucky my words came out in the right order and the right language.

     “I try to be,” I answered her, heading over to the sink because I wasn’t sure I could recover from any more finger licking. “Some things are easier to be that way with than others.”

     “I wish I could be that way,” she said, leaning into the counter beside the sink where I splashed water over my face until the water ran clear. She handed me a clean towel when I lifted my dripping face. “I’m sorry. Again. They’re infantile, but I love them.”

     “It’s no biggie,” I said through the dishtowel. “They had to do what they could to intimidate me from making a move on you.”

     When I tossed the towel aside, I saw she was looking at me in that intent way she could, without conveying a single emotion as to what she was feeling so intensely. “Were you planning on making a move on me?” she asked quietly.

     If it wasn’t obvious to her by now, it never would be, and perhaps, after recent revelations, that was for the best. “Hell, Emma,” I said, unable to look into those eyes any longer. “After everything, I’m going to have to plead the fifth on that one.”

     “Yeah,” she said, turning away and tossing the dirty towels to the side. “My favorite constitutional right, too.”

     There was something sad in her voice and she wasn’t trying to hide it, but I didn’t know where that sadness stemmed from. And if I didn’t know the root of it, I couldn’t fix it. I hated not being able to fix something.

     Opening the refrigerator door and investigating its next to non-existent contents, she said, “The guys are staying here tonight, but I can’t stand to spend the night here anymore.”  She slammed the door closed again and turned to me empty handed. “Would you mind taking me home?”

     I tilted my head in the direction of the front door. “Let’s go.”

     She ducked out of the kitchen like it pained her to stay a moment longer.

     “Mom?” Emma said in the next room. “Patrick’s going to take me back to my room. It was good seeing you.” She paused, waiting for a reply that would never come. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

     Emma was tugging on her jacket when I rounded into the living room. Mrs. Scarlett was in the exact same place with the same dead face as when I’d arrived. I didn’t doubt if I came back in a few hours I’d find anything different.

     “Thanks for having me over, Mrs. Scarlett,” I said, kneeling beside her. “Let’s do it again soon, okay?”

     The screen door flapped shut, an empty patch of carpet where Emma had just been. She was in a hurry to leave, and she didn’t need to explain why.

     I leaned closer to Mrs. Scarlett’s petrified form, resting my hand over hers folded in her lap. “You don’t have to worry about her,” I whispered, checking over my shoulder to make sure Emma hadn’t reappeared. “I’ll take care of her.”

     I don’t know why I’d said it. I didn’t have a better reason than it just felt right at the time, but while the words coming from me had been unexpected, the response it elicited from Mrs. Scarlett was unexpected on a whole other level.

     Her eyes flashed to mine, unblinking, watery eyes that paralyzed me. Her hand turned under mine, her fingers grasping mine in return.

     “I know you will,” she said, her voice as hoarse as you’d expect someone’s to be after a night of silence. “You’re one of the good ones.” A trembling hand lifted to my face. “Stay that way.”

     Her hand fell away, clenching back into her lap, at the same time her expression smoothed away. She was a zombie again, the lights of the television flashing like ghosts over her face.

     It could have been another lapse in reality, and I would have written off the whole transaction as such had it not been for the chill that was still prickling over my cheeks.

     “I will,” I vowed as I turned to leave.

     She didn’t hear it, I could tell that right away, but I hadn’t said it to reassure her. I’d said it to remind myself.