For Now and Forever

In a flash, Emily ran out of the room and downstairs to where her cell phone was in its usual perch by the front door. She grabbed it, scrolled through the numbers, and dialed her mom. The sound of ringing filled her ear.

“Come on, pick up,” she muttered under her breath, willing her mom to answer.

At last, she heard the static noise that indicated the call had connected, and then she heard her mom’s voice for the first time in months.

“I was wondering when you’d pick up the phone and apologize to me about running away from New York.”

“Mom,” Emily stammered. “That’s not why I’m calling. I need to talk to you about something.”

“Let me guess,” her mom said, sighing. “You need money. Is that it?”

“No,” Emily said forcefully. “I need to talk to you about Charlotte.”

There was a long, heavy silence on the other end of the phone.

“No you don’t,” her mom said, finally.

“Yes I do,” Emily insisted.

“It was a long time ago,” her mom said. “I don’t want to drag up the past.”

But Emily wasn’t going to let her make excuses anymore. “Please,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to never speak about her. I don’t want to forget. It’s not like we have anyone else.”

At this, her mom seemed to soften. But she was as blunt as she ever was. “What made you decide you suddenly wanted to talk about her?”

Emily chewed her lip, knowing her mom wouldn’t like the answer. “It was Dad, actually. He left a letter for me.”

“Oh, did he now?” her mom said, the bitterness in her voice unmistakable. “How very nice of him.” Emily tried not to feed into her mom’s anger. She didn’t want to get into that old argument about her dad. “And what did the letter say about Charlotte?”

Emily shifted from foot to foot. Even after months away from her nonplussed mom, the old need to please her resurfaced, making Emily feel anxious and agitated. It took her a while to formulate her sentence, to get out the words she needed to say.

“Well, he said it wasn’t my fault that Charlotte died.”

There was another long pause from the other end of the line. “I didn’t know you thought it was your fault.”

“Why would you?” Emily said. “We never spoke about it.”

“Because I didn’t think there was anything to talk about,” her mom said defensively. “It was an accident and she died and that was that. What on earth could have given you the impression that you were in any way to blame?”

Emily felt her mind swirling again. It felt so alien to be engaged in this conversation with her mom after so many years of silence, and so many months of estrangement. She felt a shard of pain lodge in her throat as tears found their way into her eyes. “Because I let go of her hand in the storm,” she stammered through her sobs. “I lost her and then she drowned in the ocean.”

Her mom exhaled loudly. “It wasn’t the ocean, Emily. That wasn’t how she died.”

Emily felt like her world was crashing down around her. Everything she’d believed to be true was shattering. Not only had Daniel betrayed her trust, but now she couldn’t even trust her own memories?

“Then how did she die?” Emily asked in a quiet, nervous voice.

“You really don’t remember?” her mom asked, sounding shocked and bemused in equal amounts. “Emily, your sister drowned in the swimming pool. It was nothing to do with you or the storm.”

“Swimming pool?” Emily repeated in a daze.

But no sooner had the words left her lips than a swarm of memories hit Emily in a flurry. She dropped the phone and ran to her father’s study. There she grabbed the key chain she’d found in the vault, with all its many keys. She raced through the house, the noise of her heavy footsteps distressing the puppies and making them yap in anger.

She ran straight out the front door without bothering to put her shoes on, and up to the barn. Raj had removed the fallen tree from its roof, so she just had to step over the broken planks to get inside. She went past the destroyed darkroom and the boxes that contained the rain-ruined remains of Daniel’s photographs, then up to the door she’d seen the first time she was in here, the door to nowhere. She fumbled with the chain, trying one key after the other, until she found one that fit the lock, turned it and pushed the door open.

It swung open and hit the side, making a bang echo out. Emily peered into the new, undiscovered room. And there it was. The large empty swimming pool in which Charlotte had drowned, and in doing so, changed the course of Emily’s life forever.

She could see her now, her little sister dressed in her Care Bear pajamas, face down in the water. The memories came back to her with the force of a tsunami.

Her parents had told them they were getting a pool put in the summer house. She and Charlotte had kept trying to guess where the pool would be, had tried sneaking into different rooms looking for it, then had finally found it in the outbuilding. Charlotte had wanted to swim right away, but Emily knew they wouldn’t be allowed to without supervision and had reminded her little sister to keep it a secret that they’d found the pool. That evening their mom went out and their dad fell asleep on the sofa. Charlotte must have gotten out of bed to secretly swim. Something had woken Emily, maybe the unusual silence from the lack of Charlotte snoring in the bed beside her. She’d gone looking for her and found her in the pool. It had been Emily who’d had to rouse her father from his drunken stupor.

Emily shook her head, feeling suddenly nauseous She didn’t want to believe it. Was that why she had no memory? Because seeing her dead sister had traumatized her so much she’d blocked it out entirely? And her mind, in attempting to fill in the blanks, had turned the guilt she felt at being the one to rouse her father into a different type of guilt, into blame?

It hadn’t been the storm. It hadn’t been her fault. She had lived under a cloud of guilt for all these years for no reason – just because she’d learned from her parents to ignore her problems, to forget the things she did not like about her past. Because of them she’d repressed the trauma of finding Charlotte floating face down and lifeless in the pool twenty-eight years ago, and her mind had tried to fill in the blanks, to explain Charlotte’s absence, picking the memory that made the most sense.

It really wasn’t her fault.

Emily collapsed to her knees at the edge of the pool and cried.

It was the sound of Mogsy’s frantic barking that finally brought Emily back to her senses. She looked up, not sure how long she had been sitting there at the side of the pool staring into the emptiness, but when she stood up and went back into the barn, the sky she could see through the hole in the roof was black. Stars winked down at her and the moon was hazy. That’s when Emily realized it was obscured by smoke. She sniffed and smelled burning.

Heart racing, Emily rushed through the barn and out onto the lawn. She could see the house ahead and smoke billowing from the kitchen window. Mogsy and the puppies were barking from inside.

“Oh God, no,” she cried aloud as she ran across the grass.

When she got to the kitchen door, she went to reach out for the door handle when a sudden force shoved her out of the way. She stumbled then looked up. It was Daniel, suddenly appearing out of nowhere.

“Did you do this?” she screamed, terrified that he’d committed arson out of revenge.

Daniel stared at her, horrified by the accusation. “If you open the door you’ll create a suction draft. The flames will race toward the oxygen. Toward you. I was saving your life!”

Emily was too panicked to feel guilty yet. All she could think was that her house was on fire and the puppies were trapped inside, their shrill barks echoing in her ears. Through the kitchen window she could see orange flames dancing upward.

“What do we do?” she cried, grasping her hair with panic, her mind blanking.

Daniel ran to the hose that was attached to the side of the house for watering the lawn. He twisted the handle and water began to gush from the end of it. Then he smashed the window in the kitchen door with his elbow and ducked as the flame was drawn toward the source of oxygen, shooting out above him. He put the hose through the window and blasted the flame with water.

“Go to the carriage house,” he shouted to Emily. “Call the fire department.”

Emily couldn’t believe this was happening. Her mind was swirling, filled with confusion and terror. Her house was on fire. After all the work they’d put into it, the whole thing was literally going up in flames.

She made it to the carriage house and pulled the door open. She grabbed the phone and just about managed to pump 9-1-1 into it.

“Fire!” she shouted when the call connected to the emergency operator. “West Street!”

As soon as she’d relayed that information she ran back to the house. Daniel was nowhere to be seen and the door was wide open. Emily realized he’d gone inside.

“Daniel!” she screamed, terror taking hold of her. “Where are you?”

Just then, Daniel emerged through the smoke, carrying the basket of yapping puppies, Mogsy rushing along at his heels.

Emily fell to her knees and scooped the puppies up in her arms, so relieved that they were okay. They were soot-stained. She grabbed Rain and wiped the ash from his eyes, then did the same with the other pups. Mogsy licked her face and wagged her tail as though she possessed the ability to understand the gravity of the situation.

Just then Emily saw flashing lights reflected in the glass. She turned back to see the fire truck screaming along the usually quiet street. It came right up to the house, then the fire officers inside leapt out and sprang into action.

“Is there anyone inside the property?” one of them asked her.

She shook her head and watched, stunned into silence, as they ran in through the kicked open kitchen door.

Daniel came up tentatively beside her. She looked across at him, at his ash-filled hair and soot-stained clothes.

“I’d only just fixed that damned door,” he said.

Emily let out a half sob, half laugh. “Thank you for coming back,” she said quietly.

Daniel just nodded. They turned back to the house and watched silently as the cloud of smoke turned into nothing more than a thin plume.

A few moments later, the fire officers emerged from the house. The lead one walked up to Emily.

“What happened?” she asked him.

“Looks like you had a faulty toaster,” he said, holding up the mangled object.

“Is there much damage?” She braced herself for the news.

“Just smoke damage caused by the melting plastic. You might want to air the place out for a while. The smoke is toxic.”

Emily was so relieved to hear that the house had only suffered some minor smoke damage that she threw her arms around the fireman’s neck. “Thank you!” she cried. “Thank you so much!”

“Just doing my job, Emily,” he replied.

“Wait, how do you know my name?” Emily asked, taken aback.

“From my dad,” the fireman replied. “He’s very fond of you.”

“Who’s your dad?”

“Birk from the gas station. I’m Jason, his eldest. You know next time you have a party, invite me too, won’t you? I don’t think Dad’s had as much fun in all his life as he did that night. If you’re that good a hostess, I want in.”

“I will,” Emily replied, a tad stunned by the events of the evening, and the way everyone knew everyone in this small town.

Emily and Daniel stood and watched the engine drive away, then went inside to assess the damage. Other than the stench, a black smudge running up the wall, and a melted rectangle on the countertop, the kitchen was fine.

“I can pay for the broken window,” Daniel said.

“Don’t be silly,” Emily replied. “You were helping.”

“It was hardly a fire at all. I overreacted. I just didn’t want Mogsy and the puppies to choke on the smoke.” He picked up Mogsy and rubbed her behind the ears and she rewarded him by licking his nose.

“You did the right thing,” she added. “Fires can spread quickly. Thanks to the hose you caught it before it spread.” She looked at Daniel, at his bowed head and stooped shoulders. “What made you come back?” she asked.

Daniel chewed his lip. “You didn’t give me the chance to explain myself. I wanted to clear my name.”

After everything he had done for her, Emily owed him that much. “Okay. Go for it. Clear your name.”

Daniel pulled up a chair and sat down at the kitchen table. “Dashiel is the name I was born with,” he began. “But it was also my father’s name. I was named after him. So I had it legally changed when I walked out of his house because I didn’t want to become a deadbeat alcoholic like he was.”

Emily shifted uncomfortably. Her own father had drunk often. Was that another thing she and Daniel shared in common?

“Those people in town,” Daniel continued. “They remember me as Dashiel because they want me to be bad. They want me to turn into him. To become bad.” He shook his head.

Emily felt herself shrink in her seat with embarrassment. “And what about the women?”

He shrugged. “We all have past relationships, don’t we? I don’t think I’ve had more than would be normal for a young guy in this day and age. Those women are probably suspicious because I never married, you know? They think I’m a lothario because I dated, had some long-term relationships but never settled down. I’m not a monk, Emily. I have had past lovers. But I think you’d be more confused if I hadn’t!”

“That’s true,” she said, feeling even more remorseful. “I’m sorry I let them get to me. That I let them convince me you were a bad guy.”

“Do you see now that I’m not? That I’m not that guy who puts people in the hospital? Who can’t take any responsibility and flunks out? Who would be stringing you along romantically and setting fire to your house?”

When he said it aloud, it did sound kind of ludicrous. “I see that now,” she said in a sheepish voice.

“And you DO know who I am. I’m the guy who sat with you one night in a storm nursing a puppy back to health. Who took you to a secret rose garden on a warm spring day. Who bought you cotton candy. Who kissed you and made love to you.”

He reached out for her hand. Emily looked at it, the palm open and inviting, then slid her hand in his and interlaced her fingers with his.

“Don’t forget that you’re also the guy who saves me from a fiery inferno,” she added.

Daniel smiled and nodded. “Yes. I’m that guy too. A guy who would never want to hurt you.”

“Good,” Emily said. She leaned in and kissed him tenderly. “’Cause I kinda like that guy.”