You Are Here(47)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

Chapter twenty-three

Of all the things Emma had been expecting to feel when she finally arrived at her dead brother’s grave, this—this sudden urge to laugh—certainly hadn’t been one of them.

After spending so many days first brooding, then stewing, she’d walked up here as if playing a part, solemn and reverent and grief-stricken, her back straight and her head held high as she crisscrossed between the scattered headstones. She’d spent days thinking about her brother, imagining what she would say when she arrived here, contemplating this recent addition to her life, who had been subtracted before she could ever come to count on him.

But now that she was here, standing before a headstone marked with a name so similar to hers—thomas quinn healy, born july 11, died july 13—she found she had nothing to say to him. Most unexpectedly, all those things she did have to say, the ones she’d kept quiet about and the ones she didn’t have the words for yet, all these things and more now seemed to belong instead to Peter Finnegan.

And for some reason this seemed wildly comical, like some sort of joke the world had played on her, the kind of fated, cosmic comeuppance her father might write about in one of his poems.

But when the humor of it all began to fade, Emma was left staring down at the moss-covered stone, feeling very small beneath the cottony sky. The air smelled of rain, cool and sweet, and she closed her hands one finger at a time, knuckle by knuckle, until they were tight little balls at her sides. Though she had plenty of practice at being wrong, she’d never quite become accustomed to all that came along with it, the prickle of guilt that worked its way through her like a foul-tasting medicine.

But she knew now she’d been wrong about Peter.

It was okay to find his obsession with maps a little odd, and it was fine to think he was weird because he preferred a good documentary about the Civil War to a night out at the movies. But it had been more than that. Emma felt suddenly wide awake, here among the rotting crab apples and the twisting grass. She could see now, for the first time, why she’d been so awful to him. It was one thing to count on someone who was dead and gone, to rely on an idea or a memory, a person with no real influence over her life outside of her imagination. But it was another thing entirely to have someone actually want to be there for you, unfailingly and unquestioningly, someone who listened carefully and told you the truth and waited patiently until you were ready to be there for them, too.

And something about that scared her.

So what she unexpectedly found herself thinking about now—as the blossoms from the trees twirled down all around her, as the wind picked up and the birds hung suspended in the sky like misshapen kites—was Peter’s mother.

Because how many hours had she spent with him in uncomplicated silence, ignoring or humoring him, thinking herself generous for enduring his company? And not once had she asked about his mom. Not once had she even thought about it.

Emma had known about her brother for less than a week, and Peter had been so quick to rush to her side when she needed him. In so many ways his loss was far greater than hers, a lifelong absence. He’d been carrying the weight of it the whole time she’d known him, and somehow Emma was only just now realizing how selfish she’d been.

She’d asked so much of him, and he’d been generous even when he didn’t have to be, even when she didn’t deserve it. He’d forced her to slow down and taught her to think before opening her mouth. He’d seen her impatience for uncertainty, all her bluster for lack of balance, and he’d helped her right herself again. He’d stolen a car and driven all this way; he’d pointed them in the right direction, true and unwavering as a compass, and now here they were.

All her life Emma had felt somehow incomplete, like a piece of her was missing. But standing here at the resting place of her brother—her twin, her missing piece—all she wanted to do was walk back over to the car and see Peter. Because a piece of him was missing too, and she understood now that this was why they were meant to fit. It was that simple, like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle clicking into place, the satisfying snap of it, the long-awaited focus.

It wasn’t her brother that she’d needed to make herself whole again; it was Peter. And now that she knew, now that she finally realized it—in the same manner she came to realize most things: gradually, stubbornly, and then all at once—it was like she’d always known it, like there was never any other way it could have been.

The dog was barking from inside the car, and there was an urgency to it that made Emma feel suddenly anxious, like she’d waited too long for something that was now in danger of slipping away completely. Flustered, she knelt down beside the grave and ran her fingers along the rough stone, tracing the curved letters of her brother’s name.

“Look,” she said. “This isn’t really a proper hello. Or good-bye. Or whatever it was supposed to be. I had a lot of things planned, and a lot I wanted to talk to you about. Our family, for one. And our birthday. And everything else. Seventeen years worth of stuff, actually.”

She glanced over at the car, where Peter was leaning against the hood, his arms folded and his head cocked to take in the great map of the sky overhead, the uneven terrain of clouds and the oceans of blue in between. She turned back to the grave.

“So I guess I should be thanking you,” she continued, feeling somewhat ridiculous talking to a stone. “For getting me to drive down here. It helped somehow. I think I figured out some of the stuff that needed figuring. And so I guess I just wanted to …” She paused, trying to figure out how to phrase this. “I guess I just wanted to meet you.”

Emma sat back and blinked at the grave. The damp grass was cool against her bare knees, and she raked her hands through the dirt, wishing she’d remembered to stop and buy flowers. There was so much she’d intended to do, so much she’d planned to say; a week’s worth of driving to consider it, a lifetime’s worth of loneliness to prepare her.

But none of that seemed to matter anymore. She’d done what she’d come here to do. She’d said hello and good-bye; she’d met him and then let him go. And maybe it wouldn’t change anything with her family, and maybe it wouldn’t even change her. But Emma felt different all the same: lighter somehow, less alone. And the cause of that—Peter or her brother or her family, the many miles between here and home—didn’t seem as important as the feeling itself.