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EMERSON
“Hi, Daddy,” I said, sitting down in the Adirondack chair next to him.
“Where’s Lynx?”
I pointed down the beach. “Out there somewhere.”
“He seems like a decent guy, Emme.”
“Decent. Right. The kind of guy you’d buy a used car from.”
My dad laughed and then looked at me in a way I couldn’t stand. “Don’t pity me, Dad.”
“Pity you? It’s him I pity.”
“Why?”
“Because you, Emerson Jane, are formidable.”
“I don’t want to face him in battle.”
“They say love is a battlefield.”
I sat up straighter. “They do?”
“No, probably not, but I did have a huge crush on Pat Benatar when that song came out.”
“You and mom are both weird.”
“She used to look a lot like her.”
“What in the name of God are you talking about?”
My dad laughed. “You sound just like her.”
“Who? Mom or Pat Benatar?”
When he answered, “Both,” I got up and went inside only to find Lynx in the kitchen, talking to my mother.
“Emme, there you are. I was just telling Lynx that there’s no reason for his cousin and family to stay in a hotel, we have plenty of room here.”
Yes, we did have plenty of room, eight bedrooms in fact, in this monstrosity of a house. “There’s room,” I muttered, turning to go upstairs.
Actually, there was no one I could think of that I wanted to talk to more than Nora. I wouldn’t admit that to Lynx, though.
I was in my room with the door closed when I realized I should’ve asked when they’d be arriving.
—:—
“This place is fabulous,” Nora said the next day as we sat on the back porch, watching Lynx, Stephen, Brian, and the twins play on the sand closer to the water. My mom and dad were out there too, and I swear they were sending me telepathic messages about how much they wanted grandchildren. Maybe they could just adopt Stephen and Nora’s kids. It would come with a nice house.
“Oh my God, is that a bed?” she asked, pointing to the screened-in porch where Lynx and I had begun and ended our night. It had only been two days, but it felt like a different lifetime.
“Sure is.”
“I’d love to be able to sleep outside in the summer,” she said wistfully. “Lynx said this house has been in your family for generations.”
I told her the same thing I’d told him about how each generation added their own special something to the house.
