CHAPTER 58
Emilia
I haven’t gotten better. I’m not even close to okay. The only thing I’ve done is to decide to get better. But I think that may just be enough.
I’m trying to see the magic in everyday miracles now: the fact that my heart still beats, that I can lift my feet off of the earth to walk and that there is something in me worthy of love. I know that bad things still happen. And sometimes I still ask myself why I am alive; but now, when I ask, I have an answer.
***
I get back on a Sunday morning and that evening I walk into dinner at the Leighton house, unexpected, but always welcome. I can tell the music is Sarah’s and it makes me smile because I still hate it, but not her. Everyone is laughing and helping and sniping, and other than the fact that Tierney Lowell is setting the table, everything is the same.
Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn’t tell him I was coming back. He doesn’t say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I’m here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have
and
no
one
interrupts
the
conversation.
“Hi—” Mrs. Leighton says, her eyes wide, when I walk into the kitchen without a stitch of black on me, carrying the same chocolate cake I brought the first time I had dinner here.
“Emilia,” I fill the pause, because everyone is still trying to figure out what to call me. Except maybe Josh, who’s always known.
“Emilia,” she says, and hugs me.
“You have a beautiful voice.”
And maybe some things aren’t the same.
***
“Answer me something,” Josh says, a month after I’ve gotten back. I’m in the chair in his garage and I’m doing homework, not woodworking, because I may never catch up. I could go inside and study in the air conditioning, but I love this place. And being out here, breathing sawdust in Josh Bennett’s garage with him, is worth any amount of sweat.
“I’ve answered everything, Josh. I don’t think there are any questions left to ask.”
“Just one,” he says, laying down a screwdriver and coming over to lean against the workbench opposite me. He pushes his boots out far enough so that they just touch mine.
I close the book and try not to smile at him, because I know what’s coming. It’s the question I’ve been waiting for him to ask since the day I got lost and ended up at his house in the middle of the night, before he even knew what the question was.
“What did you see when you died?” He has that tentative half smile, like he’s almost embarrassed by what he’s saying.
“Because I’m guessing it wasn’t the Sea of Tranquility.”
And when I look at him, I’m not so sure it wasn’t.
“Where did you go?” His voice drops just slightly and he loses even the suggestion of a smile.
He’s watching me like he’s not sure he’s allowed to ask the question, and he’s not even sure he wants the answer. I can almost see his grandfather’s words and Josh’s doubts about them swimming in his head. On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.
I don’t say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at his face before I give him my last secret.
And then I tell him.
“Your garage.”