For Now and Forever

Emily drew back from the window and exited her bedroom. The upstairs corridor was now neat and organized. She’d removed the dusty picture frames from the wall and replaced them with a series of prints by the eccentric British photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose photos were all about capturing movement. She chose the series of dancing women because to her they were incredibly beautiful, the moment of transience, the movement, it was like poetry to her eyes. The finger-smudged wallpaper had also been stripped and Emily had painted the hallway a crisp white.

Emily trotted downstairs, feeling more and more like this was her home. Those years she’d gate-crashed on Ben’s life seemed to now be suddenly very far behind her. It felt to Emily that this was where she was always supposed to have been.

Her phone was in its usual spot on the table by the door. It felt like she’d finally gotten into a routine – waking up slowly, dressing, checking her phone. Now that spring had arrived, she had a new part to her routine, which was heading into town to grab coffee and breakfast before checking out the local flea markets for items that she wanted for the house. Today was Saturday, which meant there’d be more stores open for her to look in, and she was intent on finding more furniture today.

After firing off a text to Amy, Emily grabbed her car keys and went outside. As she crossed the yard she looked around for Daniel but could not see him. Over the last three months his presence had become another source of stability for her. It sometimes felt to Emily as though he was always there, just an arm’s length away.

Emily got into her car – which she’d finally gotten repaired – and made the short drive into town, passing a white horse-drawn carriage on the way. Pony rides were one of Sunset Harbor’s tourist activities – Emily could remember riding in the carriages as a child – and their presence indicated that the town was finally waking from its long winter hibernation. As she drove, she noticed a new diner had popped up on the high street. A little further down the road, the bar/comedy club was opening its doors for longer and longer hours. She had never seen a place transform so utterly before her eyes. The new hustle and bustle reminded her of her childhood summer vacations more so than at any point so far.

Emily parked up in a small parking lot beside the harbor. It was now quickly filling with boats, their masts bobbing up and down with the gentle tide. Emily watched the boats with a renewed sense of peace. It really felt to her like her life was just beginning. For the first time in a long time she saw a future for herself that she wanted: living in the house, making it beautiful, being content and happy. But she knew it would not last forever. She only had enough money to sustain herself for three more months. Not wanting her dream life to end so soon, Emily had made the decision to sell off some of the antiques in the house. So far, she’d only parted with the ones that did not fit with her plans for the house and how it should look, but even selling those was agonizing for her, like she was giving away a part of her father.

Emily grabbed a coffee and bagel from the new diner, then ventured into Rico’s indoor flea market. It was the same place her dad had visited every summer. Rico, its elderly owner, still owned the place. Emily was grateful that he hadn’t recognized her the first Saturday she’d wandered in (due to his ailing eyesight and diminishing memory in equal parts) because it had given her the opportunity to introduce herself afresh, to get to know him on her own terms rather than with the shadow of her father’s presence looming over her.

“Good morning, Rico,” she called as she ducked into the dark shop.

“Who’s that?” a disembodied voice called from somewhere in the darkness.

“It’s Emily.”

“Ah Emily, welcome back.”

Emily knew he just pretended to remember her every time she came into the store, that his memory between each of her visits faded, and she couldn’t help noting the irony that the person who liked her the most in Sunset Harbor only did so because he couldn’t fully remember who she was.

“Yup, from the big house on West Street, just here to pick up that set of dining chairs,” she called back, glancing around her, looking for the man.

Finally, he popped up from behind the counter. “Of course, yes, I’ve got it written down here.” He placed his glasses on his thin nose and squinted through them at the book on the desk, searching for the scrawling handwriting that told him she was indeed Emily and that he had indeed sold her six dining chairs. Emily had learned after her first trip to the store (whereby she’d reserved a large rug only to discover it gone when she went to pick it up) that if Rico didn’t write something down it as good as didn’t happen.

“Righteo,” he added. “Six dining chairs. Emily. Nine a.m. Saturday twelfth. That’s today, isn’t it?”

“That’s today,” she replied with a smile. “I’ll just head out back and grab them, shall I?”

“Oh yes, oh yes, I trust you, Emily, you’re a valued customer.”

She grinned to herself as she went out back. She didn’t know the designer of the chairs, only that the second she’d seen them she knew they were the perfect ones for the dining room. In some ways they looked like traditional chairs – wooden, four-legged, a back, a seat – but they’d been designed in a slightly quirky way, with the backs taller than the usual dining chair. They were painted sleek black, which would fit in perfectly with her new monochrome color scheme in that room. Seeing them again now excited her and she wanted to get them home ASAP so she could see them in place.

The chairs were heavy, but Emily had found that she’d become stronger over the last few months. All the physical labor required around the house had given her muscles she’d never achieved from working out at the gym.

“Great, thanks, Rico,” she said as she began dragging the chairs toward the exit. “Will you be coming to my garage sale later today? I’m selling those two Eichholtz Rubinstein side tables, in need of a bit of TLC. Remember you said you might be interested in taking them and getting Serena to restore them?”

Serena was the spritely, boundlessly energetic young art student who drove two hours from the University of Maine every few weeks just to help out around the store fixing up furniture. She was always in jeans, her long dark hair swept over one shoulder, and Emily couldn’t help but feel jealous of the calm, confident inner strength she possessed at such a young age. But because she was always friendly to Emily, despite the distrustful looks Emily had given her to begin with, Emily was now friendly with her.

“Yes, yes,” Rico replied brightly, though Emily was certain he’d forgotten all about her garage sale. “Serena will pop along.”

Emily watched as he jotted it down in his notebook. “The old house on West Street,” she reminded him, just to make sure he didn’t have to go through the embarrassment of asking her for her address. “I’ll see you later!”

Emily loaded her trunk with the new chairs then drove back home through town, reveling in the sight of the spring flowers, the sparkling ocean, and the clear blue skies. When she pulled up to her house she was struck by how much it had changed. Not just from spring, which had brought color to the place and made the green grass on the lawn lush and thick, but from the sense that it was lived in, that it was once more loved. The plywood was all gone, the windows now clean and freshly painted.

Daniel had already made a good start on setting everything up on the lawn that she was planning on selling today. There were so many things that looked like junk to her but after Googling them it turned out that they were treasure to someone else. She’d cataloged all the items in the house that she didn’t want to keep then checked the Internet to find out their true worth before posting on Craigslist what she was going to sell. She’d been shocked to receive a message from a woman in Montreal who was making the trip down solely to purchase a stack of TinTin books.

During those nights, while Emily had itemized the contents of the house, she’d started to understand what her father had seen in this strange pastime of his. The history of the pieces, the stories they carried with them, it all became so fascinating to Emily. The joy of discovering an antique amidst the junk was a thrill she’d never before experienced.

That wasn’t to say there hadn’t been a few disappointments along the way. An antique Grecian harp that Daniel had unearthed in the ballroom and that Emily had valued at $30,000 was, unfortunately, in such a state of disrepair that the specialist harp servicer said it would never be playable again. But he gave Emily the number of a local museum that took donations, and she was touched to discover that they’d affix a plaque to it to say it was donated by her father. It felt like a way of keeping his memory alive.

Looking at the yard filled Emily with a mixture of sadness and hope; she was sad to say goodbye to some of the items that her father had cluttered the house with, but she was also hopeful for the new house and how it would one day look. The future seemed suddenly bright.

“I’m back,” she called out as she lugged the dining chairs into the house.

“In here!” Daniel replied, his voice carrying from the ballroom.

Emily set the chairs down in the hall and went in to find him. “You’ve made a great start getting that stuff out into the yard,” she called out as she walked through the dining room and in through the secret door to the ballroom. “Anything I can help with?”

As she entered the ballroom, she stopped short, her voice stalling suddenly inside her throat. Daniel was wearing a white tank top and showing off muscles she’d only ever guessed at. It was the first time she’d gotten a real glimpse of his physique and the sight left her speechless.

“Yeah,” he said, “you can grab the other end of this bookcase and help me carry it outside. Emily?” He looked at her and frowned.

She realized she was gaping and shut her mouth, then snapped back to attention. “Sure. Of course.”

She went over to where he was standing, unable to sustain eye contact, and took her end of the bookcase.

But she couldn’t stop her gaze from sliding over to his muscular arms as they strained from the weight of the bookcase as he straightened up.

Emily knew she was attracted to Daniel, accepted that she had been since the very first time they’d met, but he was as much of a mystery to her as ever. In fact, he was more of a mystery now because he’d spent so much time in her company without revealing much about himself at all. All she knew was that there was something in him that he kept hidden from view, some kind of darkness or trauma, some kind of secret he was running from that stopped him getting close. Emily herself knew how it felt to run away from a traumatic past life, so she never pushed it. And she had enough on her plate with unearthing the secrets of the house to even begin to work out how to unearth the secrets that Daniel held. So she left her attraction simmering beneath the surface, hoping it wouldn’t boil over and set in course a chain reaction neither of them was prepared for.

The first customers began to arrive shortly after midday, as Daniel and Emily sat in deckchairs drinking homemade lemonade. Emily noticed Serena amongst them right away.

“Hey!” Serena called, waving, before bouncing over toward Emily and greeting her with a hug.

“You’re here for those end tables, right?” Emily replied as they parted ways, Emily feeling a little uncomfortable at the physical intimacy Serena seemed so able to initiate. “They’re just around the side this way, I’ll get them for you.”

Serena followed Emily through the maze of furniture set out on the lawn. “Is that your boyfriend?” she asked as they walked, looking back over at Daniel. “Because if you don’t mind me saying, he is so hot.”

Emily laughed and looked over her shoulder too. Daniel was speaking to Karen from the general store, still in his white tank top, the spring sun dancing across his biceps.

“He’s not,” she said.

“Not hot?” Serena cried. “Girl, are you blind?”

Emily shook her head and laughed. “I meant he’s not my boyfriend,” she corrected.

“But he is hot,” Serena implored. “You know, you can say it out loud.”

Emily smirked. Serena must think she was a complete prude.

They walked over to the two tables Serena had come to pick up. The younger woman crouched down to look them over, sweeping her dark hair over one shoulder, revealing the sun-kissed caramel-colored skin beneath. She was beautiful in that way unique to young women – with a glow and firmness that no amount of makeup could recreate.

“Are you thinking of making a move?” Serena asked, looking back up at Emily.

Emily almost choked on her breath. “Making a move on Daniel?”

“Why not?” Serena said. “’Cause if you don’t, I will!”

Emily froze, suddenly feeling cold all over despite the spring sunshine. The thought of beautiful, carefree Serena with Daniel filled her with a jealousy so strong it took her by surprise. She could imagine that he would fall for her quickly, because how could he not? How could a man of thirty-five resist a young woman like Serena? It was practically written in their DNA.

Serena suddenly wiggled her eyebrows and flashed Emily a grin. “I’m just kidding! Wow, you looked like I’d told you someone had died!”

Emily couldn’t help but feel a little irritated with Serena for pranking her. Pranks were just another thing the young and carefree could participate in. But for the jaded like herself, it was hard to enjoy.

“Why would you joke about that?” Emily asked, trying not to let her distress be audible.

“I wanted to see your face when I said it,” Serena replied. “To see whether you were into him or not. Which you are, by the way, and you should totally do something about it. You know a guy who looks like that will not stay single for long.”

Emily raised an eyebrow and shook her head. Serena was too young to understand how complicated things could be between two people, or know about the emotional baggage that weighed you down the older you got.

“Hey,” Serena said, looking into the distance. “Have you had a chance to sort through the barn? I bet there’s a ton of exciting things in there.”

Emily looked behind her. Way across the lawn the wooden barn stood in the shadows, lonely and forgotten. She hadn’t yet had a chance to explore the outbuildings. Daniel had told her about the greenhouses and how he’d wanted to restore them in order to grow flowers to sell but that it was too great a cost. The barn and other outbuildings, however, he had not mentioned, and she had simply forgotten about them.

“Not yet,” she said, turning back to Serena. “But I’ll let you know if I find anything you or Rico would like.”

“Awesome,” Serena said, backing up, an end tables in each arm. “Thanks for these. And don’t forget to make a move on Mr. Hot Stuff. You’re still young!”

Emily rolled her eyes and laughed to herself as she watched the younger woman swagger away. Had she been that confident in early twenties? If she ever had been she couldn’t recall it. Amy had always been the confident one, Emily the shyer of the two. Perhaps that was why she always ended up in such terrible relationships, and why she’d stuck with Ben for so long; out of fear of not being able to find another person, of anguish about going through that awkward uncomfortableness of getting to know someone new.

Emily looked up at Daniel, watching the way he spoke to customers, the cautiousness in his mannerisms, and the way he became so quickly lost in his own world the moment he was alone again. For the first time since meeting him, Emily recognized something of herself in Daniel. And it was something that made her want to know him more.

Serena’s interest in the barn had ignited a curiosity inside Emily. Later that evening, once the garage sale was done for the day, she ventured toward the outbuildings. In the fading light, the grounds of the house looked even more beautiful, and the care Daniel had taken over them became more apparent. He’d maintained a rose bush that had been growing on the grounds for as long as Emily could remember.

As she passed the broken greenhouse she had a flash of a memory, of bright red tomatoes growing in pots, of her mom in a floppy sun hat holding a gray watering can. There had been apple and pear trees behind the greenhouses. Maybe Emily would plant some again one day.

She passed the broken greenhouses and went up to the barn. The door was padlocked. Emily held the rusted padlock in her hand, trying to recall any memories of the barn. But she had none. Like the hidden ballroom, the barn was a secret she’d never thought to explore as a child.

She let go of the padlock – it fell back with a clunk – then went around the side to see if there was another way in. The small, grimy window was cracked but not big enough for her to get through. Then she noticed a patch-up job; one of the planks had clearly broken or succumbed to rot and a piece of flimsy plywood had been nailed over the top – a temporary measure that had never been revisited. Emily could picture her father out here, hammer in hand, covering the hole with a piece of plywood, thinking he would be back to do a proper job the next day. Only he never did. Shortly after fixing the damage to the barn, he’d decided to leave and never return.

Emily sighed deeply, frustrated with the intrusion of an imagined memory. She had enough real anguish to deal with; she couldn’t cope with fake pain as well.

With a small amount of maneuvering, Emily was able to pry the plywood away, revealing a larger hole than expected. She got through it easily and found herself standing in the dark barn. There was a strange musty smell in the air that Emily couldn’t place. What she could work out, however, was what was around her. The barn had been converted into a makeshift darkroom, somewhere where photographs could be developed. She tried to remember whether this was a hobby her father had had, but her mind came up blank. He had enjoyed taking photos of the family, that much she could remember, but never to the extent that he’d want to set up an entire darkroom for the purpose.

Emily walked over to the large, long table where different trays sat side by side. She’d seen enough movies to know that this was where the developing fluids would be poured. Then there was a clothesline strung across the table with pegs still on them from when the photos would be hung up to dry. The whole thing seemed very curious to Emily.

She wandered around the barn a little more to see if there was anything else of interest within it. At first, there was very little of note. Just bottles of developing fluid, old canisters for film reels, long lenses, and broken cameras. Then she found a door, which was also padlocked. Emily wondered where it led to and what was behind it. She looked around for a key but could find none. In her search, she discovered a box filled with photo albums, all stacked up haphazardly one on top of the other. She took out the first one, blew the dust from the cover, and opened it up.

The first image was black-and-white, an extreme close-up of a clock face. The next, also black-and-white, showed a broken window and a cobweb strung across it. Emily turned each page, frowning at the images. They didn’t look professional to her, more like they were taken by an inexperienced hand, but there was a melancholy feel to them that seemed to reveal the mood of the photographer. In fact, as she studied each photo, she felt more as though she were looking into the mind of the photographer rather than analyzing the subjects he’d chosen to capture. The pictures made her feel almost claustrophobic, even though she was in a large barn, and deeply sad.

Suddenly there was a noise behind Emily. She swirled round, heart hammering, and dropped the photo album at her feet. There, standing in the gap through which she’d also entered the barn, was a small terrier. He was clearly a stray, his fur matted and unkempt, and he stood there staring at her, bemused that someone was standing in his patch.

That explains the smell, Emily thought.

She wondered whether Daniel knew about the stray dog, had seen him wandering around the grounds at all. She decided she’d ask him about it tomorrow when the garage sale continued – as well as about the discovery of the darkroom – and found herself excited to know she’d have a reason to talk to him.

“It’s okay,” she said aloud to the dog. “I’m just leaving.”

It tipped its head to the side as though listening to her words. She scooped up the photo album to place it back in the box, then saw that one of the pictures had fallen out from between the pages. She picked it up and saw that it was a photo of a birthday party. Young children were seated around a table and there was a huge pink cake made to look like a castle in the middle. Suddenly, Emily realized what she was looking at – it was a picture of Charlotte’s birthday. Charlotte’s fifth birthday. Charlotte’s last birthday.

Emily felt the tears prick her eyes. She held the picture tightly in her trembling hands. She had no real memories of Charlotte’s last birthday, just like she had few memories of Charlotte herself. It was as though her life had been cleaved in two – the first part was life when Charlotte was alive, the second part was life after her death, the part where everyone broke down, where her parents’ marriage finally fell apart after the strain of their silences became too much, and the grand finale whereby her father disappeared off the face of the earth. But that had all happened to Emily Jane, not to Emily, not to the woman she’d decided to become, the person she’d cleaved out of the wreckage. Looking at the photo here, at the evidence of life with Charlotte, Emily felt closer to the child she’d left behind than ever before.

The dog barked, and Emily’s gaze snapped up. “Okay,” she said, “I get it. I’m leaving.”

Instead of returning the photo album to the box, Emily grabbed the whole thing, noting as she did so that the box beneath it was also packed with photographs, then trudged through the barn before squeezing back out of the hole. Her mind was exploding with thoughts. The hidden ballroom, the secret darkroom, the locked door in the barn, the box full of photographs… what other secrets was this old house hiding?