Sophie Love - For Now and Forever

“I can’t believe this. And the women? That’s all true too, isn’t it!” She threw her hands up exasperated.

“Women?” Daniel asked, frowning.

“All those hearts you broke! You have a reputation, Daniel. Or should I say Dashiel?” She turned away, tears pricking at her eyes. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

Daniel exhaled with emotion. “Yes you do, Emily. I’m exactly the same person I always was.”

“But WHO is that?” Emily cried, bringing her finger up to his face. “A violent criminal who puts people in hospitals? A sensitive photographer running away from home? Some lothario who uses women up then discards them when he’s done with them? Or are you just the silent, stammering caretaker who is freeloading off me?”

Daniel’s mouth dropped open and Emily knew she’d pushed it too far. But she couldn’t stand to be deceived, by Daniel of all people, after everything they’d been through together. She’d shared so much with him – her dreams, her pain, her past, her bed. She’d trusted him, perhaps naively so.

“That’s below the belt,” Daniel shot back.

“I want you off my land,” Emily shouted. “Out of my carriage house. Get out! Take your stupid motorcycle with you!”

Daniel just stared at her, his expression somewhere between appalled and disappointed. Emily had never thought she’d see him look at her that way. It felt like a dagger to the heart to see that look in his eyes, to know it was directed at her and that her cruel words had caused it.

Daniel didn’t utter another word. He walked calmly to the garage and wheeled out his bike. Then he gunned it to life, gave her one last, stony stare, and drove off.

Emily watched him go, her hands held in tight fists, her heart beating wildly, wondering if that was going to be the last time she would ever see him.

Emily trudged wearily back into the house. The argument with Daniel had taken it out of her, exhausted her. She desperately wanted to speak to Amy, but had recently gotten the feeling that her friend was growing exasperated with her. Their text exchanges had become shorter, less frequent, and days would pass without hearing from her. If she called her now with woes about a man she hadn’t even gotten around to telling Amy she was dating, that would probably be the nail in the coffin for their friendship.

As she walked through the corridor, she felt like everything had been tainted by Daniel. The splotch of paint on the floorboards beside the staircase from when they’d been painting the hall and he’d sneezed. The slightly crooked picture frame they’d spent the good part of an hour trying to get straight before giving up and concluding that it simply had to be the wall that was wonky, not the frame. Everywhere she turned, she had a memory of Daniel. But right now Emily wanted space from him, not just physically but mentally. And that’s when it occurred to her that there was one room in the house that she had not yet set foot in, that was not tainted by Daniel. One room that had remained perfectly preserved, not just for the last twenty years but for twenty-eight years. And that was the bedroom she and Charlotte had shared.

Emily climbed the stairs now, filled with anguish. Ever since she’d arrived here she’d been avoiding the room. It was a habit she’d picked up from her parents, who never went in there again after Charlotte’s death. They’d immediately moved Emily into another room in the house, had shut the door to the room that reminded them of their deceased child, and had simply never opened it again. As if it were that easy to eradicate the pain of her death.

Emily walked right down the corridor and went up to the door. She could see faint scratches and dents on the wood from when she and her sister would carelessly slam the door running through while playing tag. She rested her hand against it, wondering if now was a bad time to do this since she was already in a fragile state, or whether she was going inside as a sort of punishment to herself, a way of causing self-inflicted pain. But she wanted to be close to her sister. Charlotte’s death had robbed her of having someone to confide in. She’d never been able to talk to her about boy troubles or relationship woes. Now she felt like this would be the closest she could get to her sister. And so she gripped the door handle, twisted it, and stepped over the threshold into a room that had been preserved in time.

Walking into that room was like unearthing a time capsule or stepping into a family photograph. Emily was immediately hit with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. Even the smell of it, though hidden beneath the aroma of dust, brought back memories and feelings she had all but forgotten. She was unable to hold back her tears. A great sob ripped out of her and she clutched her mouth as she took a small step forward into the room containing all those precious memories of her sister.

The girls had been given the biggest room of the house. There was a mezzanine at one end and huge floor to ceiling windows at the other with a view over the ocean. Emily had a flash of memory of making her dolls climb the ladder to the mezzanine, pretending it was a mountain and they were intrepid explorers. Emily smiled mournfully to herself at the memory of a time long past.

She paced around the room, picking up items that had remained untouched for almost three decades. A coin bank in the shape of a bear. A plastic neon pink toy pony. She couldn’t help but let out a laugh at all the garish toys she and Charlotte had filled the room with. It must have driven her mom crazy that her daughters were in the most beautiful, stylish room of the house and had filled it with rainbow octopuses. Even the wooden dollhouse in the corner had been covered in stickers and glitter.

There was a large built-in wardrobe on one side of the room. Emily wondered whether their dress-up princess outfits were still inside. They had all the Disney ones. Her favorite had been the Little Mermaid and Charlotte’s had been Cinderella. Emily went over and opened the wardrobe door. When she looked inside she discovered that all of Charlotte’s outfits were still hanging there, untouched since her death.

Suddenly, looking at the clothes caused Emily to have another flashback. But this one was so much more vivid than the scraps of memory that had come back to her as she’d walked around the room. This flashback felt real, immediate, and dangerous. She gripped the wall to steady herself as she saw, with clarity, the moment when her clasp on Charlotte’s hand had slipped and the little girl had disappeared, her bright red raincoat swallowed up by the gray rain.

“No!” Emily cried, knowing how the story ended and desperately wanting to stop the inevitable, the moment when her sister fell into the water and drowned.

Then suddenly the vision was over and Emily was back in the bedroom, her palms slick with sweat, her heart racing a mile a minute. She looked down to find that she was tightly gripping the sleeve of that very same raincoat; its polka dot design was unmistakable. She must have gripped it during the terrifying memory.

Wait , Emily thought suddenly, looking at the tiny red raincoat in her grasp.

She scrabbled around in the wardrobe and found Charlotte’s boots with a ladybug design.

Emily had always believe that Charlotte had fallen into the water and drowned because she’d let go of her hand in that storm. But here were her clothes. Unless her mom had had them dry cleaned after Charlotte’s body had been returned to them, then put them back in the wardrobe along with all of her other clothes, Charlotte must have come home that day, alive and safe. Could it be that Emily had conflated two events in her mind? That the death of Charlotte had come after the storm? Had been caused by something else?