Page 20 of When We Were Young
As Emily walked away, she felt like she was going to throw up. She thought about going to the bathroom first, but she couldn’t hide from whatever her father wanted to tell her. He must have bad news. Why else would he be here? He was married to another woman and living in Michigan.
Five hours away.
There was no way he was here on a Monday afternoon unless something terrible had happened. Emily forced herself to walk out the front door. She could barely move. Her heart was beating so hard by the time she reached him, her chest was heaving. She could feel herself gasping for air, feel the pounding against her ribs. She found her dad brushing tears off his cheeks.
His face was red now, as if he’d been holding his breath. “Emily...” He looked up at her. “Something happened to your mother.”
“No!” Emily was eighteen, old enough to know better than to argue such a statement. But she couldn’t believe it, couldn’t stand to let him keep talking. “She’s fine! She’s coming home today.” Emily pointed at his car parked in the driveway. Her voice was shrill and loud. “Leave. I don’t want you here. Go! My mom is fine!”
“Emily...” He stood. His own eyes were dry now. Filled more with fear than sorrow. As if his need to tell her the truth was greater than his own sadness.
“Don’t say it!” Emily ran down the steps and to the edge of the front yard. She pointed to his car again. “Leave, Dad! Go!”
Instead he followed her. He came to her and gently took hold of her shoulders. “Emily, your mother is dead. I got word early this morning.”
He was saying something else, something about how he couldn’t let Emily and Clara hear the news from anyone but him. How there had been too much rain this weekend in Texas and a flood had washed away the rental car her mother was driving. How her mama hadn’t had time to get out and how they’d found her body late last night.
There were other details, too. But Emily couldn’t allow herself to hear them. She pulled away from her father and fell to the ground, clutching at the sidewalk and the grass around it. The place where her mother had walked out to the airport taxi just three days ago.
The specifics of that day and the ones that followed were a blur for Emily. Somehow she had found the strength to get up and go inside, to tell Clara what had happened and to hold her weeping sister long into the night.
Her father had stayed for a week, handling her mother’s bank affairs and making sure Emily had an understanding of the family bills and finances. A life insurance policy paid almost immediately, giving the girls enough to live on for several years. Enough for college even.
Emily hated spending that time with her father. What could he possibly have cared about Emily and Clara’s mother or the loss the girls were feeling? He had walked out. Enough said. But they needed help, and so Emily tolerated his stay.
At the end of the week, he asked Emily to talk to him on the front porch again. “I’d like you girls to come live with me. In Michigan.” He looked at the house and then at Emily. “This is too much for you to handle on your own.”
Emily felt her resolve harden. Her father knew nothing of what she could handle. She lifted her chin and said the next words with a strength she didn’t quite feel. “We’re staying here. I can look after Clara. Like I always have.”
There was nothing her father could say to change her mind. Emily was an adult, after all, and already planning to attend Indiana University. In the end their father agreed to make Emily legal guardian over Clara. Not long after, Emily graduated summa cum laude and spent the summer helping Clara remember how to smile again.
The loss of their mother was harder than anything they’d been through, but they survived it together. Sometimes before they turned in for the night, Emily would sit in the chair in Clara’s room and tell her stories of the old days. Every wonderful thing about their mother.
Stories neither of them ever tired of.
One week into summer, on a Saturday night at dinner, Clara set her fork down. “Emily?” Clara had to have a special fork and plate, large enough to catch the pieces that didn’t quite make it into her mouth.
“Yes?” Emily played all the roles by then. She took care of Clara, did the shopping and paid the bills. She made sure Clara was enrolled in the good school again for the coming fall. The one closer to their house with the special training for kids like her. Money from their mother’s life insurance took care of that.
But in that moment, over dinner, Emily was allowed to just be a high school graduate trying to figure out her future. And Clara was simply her best friend.
“Church, Emily?” Clara took another bite and thought for a minute. “Can we? Please?”
Emily hesitated. Going to church again was the last thing she wanted to do. But for Clara... Emily clenched her jaw and forced a smile. “Yes, Clara. We can go.”
Never mind that Emily had struggled to understand why God would allow Clara to have a brain injury at birth, or the fact that she would never grasp the reason God had taken their mother.
When they both needed her so desperately.
But if Clara wanted to be at church, they would go. And so they did. That Sunday dozens of people welcomed them and hugged them, they talked about Emily and Clara’s mother and invited them for dinner. Some of the people had reached out before. But now it was like they could see for themselves how it really was just the two of them.
Two sisters against the world.
The pastor’s sermon wasn’t what stayed with Emily that day. A Bible verse wasn’t what changed Emily’s mind about God. Rather it was something one of her mother’s friends said on the way out. She put her hand on Emily’s shoulder. “You’re an amazing young woman, Emily Andrews.”
Emily didn’t want pity. She nodded and managed a slight smile. “Thank you.”
“Not because of how you love that sister of yours. That’s easy for you, your mama told me that a long time ago. You two are best friends.” The woman paused. “But because you’re here today.”
