Pictures of Us Read online

  “I know.” Her eyes widened. “I saw the limo. Cool, huh?”

  I made an agreeable noise to keep from saying anything unpleasant and checked on the mess of her bed for the black evening purse. “You have some money? Do you need anything else? The red lipstick? Gum?”

  “I’m good, Mom.” She surprised me with a kiss, her lips brushing my cheek in a fleeting gesture of gratitude. “Let’s go get the pictures over with, huh?”

  Jesse was waiting in the hall when we came down the stairs, and the dazzle in his eyes when he caught sight of Emma was gratifying. And worrying, to be honest—for a moment I was convinced he would swallow her whole. But he held out the single red rose corsage like a gentleman, and I helped Emma pin it to the strap of her dress before positioning them for a picture.

  “Okay, you two,” I said when it was clear Emma was restless with posing. “Have fun. I’ll expect you at midnight.”

  She managed an “uh-huh” before escaping through the door, where Jesse took her hand to lead her down to the limo. I followed them onto the porch in my bare feet, the camera still clutched in one hand as I debated whether to yell out a reminder about the curfew. It was a humiliating prospect for both Emma and me, and while I was still arguing with myself, they climbed into the car, the door shutting behind them with a thunk. I’d have to trust her—it wasn’t as if we hadn’t argued the point endlessly all week.

  And then they were gone, and Walter and I were alone in the house, a rarity on a Friday evening. Michael almost never traveled, and I couldn’t remember the last time he’d been away on a weekend. As Friday nights were traditionally our at-home night, when we were both too exhausted by the week’s grind to cook or go out—Saturday nights were for restaurants or the occasional movie or party with friends. Fridays were for us, for decadent take-out food and a rented movie popped into the DVD player as we settled into each other on the sofa, idly discussing the week or the weekend to come. It was for going to bed early, as long as Emma wasn’t out babysitting, and learning each other all over again in the quiet dark of our bedroom.

  I had plenty to do to keep me busy until Emma got home, of course. The checkbook was due to be balanced, I had film to develop, and there was always laundry piled somewhere. I didn’t have to let the hollow silence in the house echo in my head. I would make myself busy—and I would start with junk food.

  One gooey, cheesy pizza and two loads of laundry later and I was still at loose ends. If only the phone would ring or my sister would stop by unexpectedly. What I didn’t want was to closet myself in the darkroom downstairs with only my thoughts for company.

  I tidied the living and dining rooms, picking up all the odds and ends that had accumulated over the past few days. I took the upstairs things upstairs and put one of Emma’s books and a CD in her room. The light cotton lap quilt I’d grabbed from the sofa usually lived in the guest room—Michael had brought it downstairs on Monday, when the incessant rain had made the evening chilly.

  We were lucky to have a proper guest room, not that it was used very often. With only one child, though, space wasn’t at quite the premium it was in some of my friends’ houses. I had the small fourth bedroom as my office, and Michael had turned a tiny room off the kitchen into his—both of us liked the cozy confines, and having little space for anything but a desk and a computer cut down on distractions. So the guest room stood empty most of the time, partly extra storage for things, partly home to our oldest furniture.

  I folded the quilt and put in on the end of the bed, then sat down. Lucy had been our last guest, on New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t imagine when the room would be used next, and then it hit me with a jolt—Drew. Drew might like to visit his father, possibly Emma and me, and he would stay here. I glanced around the room in the twilight, and although the gloom softened the rough edges of the mismatched furniture and the few plastic bins of winter clothes that had never made it up to the attic, the unfinished neglect of the room was depressing. There was a project, if I needed one. I could paint, buy a new comforter and some new curtains, frame a couple of pictures for the walls, refinish the dresser Michael had used when he was a kid.

  The idea of undertaking the task was overwhelming. The idea of Drew staying with us was simply surreal. Slightly sick to my stomach, which had to be the result of too much pizza, I wandered back downstairs and curled into the sofa with the remote control. It was only eight-thirty—a few hours of nonsense on television wouldn’t hurt.

  I flipped channels with Walter snoring beside me, and finally settled on an Audrey Hepburn movie on PBS—Roman Holiday, I decided. Yes, there they were at the Mouth of Truth. I put down the remote and lay back.

  When Walter pawed at my thigh, his nails too long for comfort, I glanced up to find a documentary about the Grateful Dead on the screen. Shit—I had dozed off. The house was dark but for the single lamp burning on the end table beside me. Scrambling upright, I looked at my watch. It was nearly one-thirty in the morning.

  Poor Walter, I thought, realizing he hadn’t been out, and then gasped. Emma. Where the hell was Emma?

  She could have come home and decided not to wake me, I reasoned as I bounded up the stairs, still a little dizzy with sleep, my heart stuttering. She could have. It was possible.

  But not true, of course. The door to her bedroom stood open to the dark hall, and when I flipped the light switch inside the room, her bed was empty, the same mass of tangled covers and discarded clothes it had been when she’d left.

  “Oh my God.” I swallowed hard, only vaguely aware of Walter beside me, tail thumping in concern, his doggy breath moist against my calf. “Oh my God.”

  I couldn’t panic. I wouldn’t panic. I would very calmly…Do what? As I stood frozen in the dark upstairs hallway, my mind raced. Who was I supposed to call? Jesse’s parents? The limo company? I didn’t know which one Jesse had used.

  Emma’s cell phone. Right. She had a phone just for emergencies, and this definitely qualified.

  “Of course she could have used it to call me,” I muttered, running back downstairs to the phone in the kitchen and the list of numbers posted on the fridge.

  My hands shook with the rush of adrenaline as I fumbled the phone off the base and dialed Emma’s cell. But even doing that didn’t stop my imagination from producing scenarios. An accident in the limo. Emma and Jesse in the back seat of the limo, parked somewhere. The limo speeding down the parkway to the shore.

  Her phone rang and rang until voice mail picked up: “This is Emma. I’ll call you back!”

  I hung up without bothering to leave a message. If she could hear her phone and wasn’t picking up because she saw it was me, she wouldn’t check her voice mail. And if she couldn’t hear her phone, well…I didn’t want to know what that meant.

  The clock ticking above the kitchen table read 1:45. An hour and forty-five minutes past her curfew. Defiance? Forgetfulness? A boy who looked charming but had slipped a rufie into her fruit punch?

  “Oh God,” I said again, startling Walter. I had to find her. If only to kill her with my bare hands later. I scrambled into the front hall, grabbing a pair of sneakers and jammed my bare feet into them. I was reaching for the car keys I had tossed on the table sometime earlier, when I realized I couldn’t leave. Michael wasn’t here—if I went out to search for Emma, what would happen if she came home? What would happen if the police showed up?

  Just the idea of that was ice in my blood. I swallowed back a panicked sob. Stay calm, I told myself firmly. Stop it.

  I looked at my watch: 1:48. Well, this was what sisters were for, wasn’t it?

  And their fiancés, I thought when Jack answered the phone and croaked out, “Hello?”

  “Jack, it’s Tess.” From somewhere far away, I realized my voice wasn’t trembling. That was good. I was calm. I had to stay that way, even if I was beginning to tremble. “Can you and Nell help me? Emma hasn’t come home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “WHAT THE HELL WERE you thinking?”


  Even I flinched at the vicious bite in Michael’s voice. I had never heard him so furious with Emma.

  I’d dragged Emma with me to pick him up at the airport this morning. After her stunt the night before, I wasn’t letting her out of my sight until she was thirty. Michael had only heard the thumbnail version on the phone, and he’d chosen to wait until we got home to have it out with her and get the details.

  She was slumped on the sofa, her pose, her face oozing defiance. My fingers nearly itched with the need to jerk her upright and tell her to pay attention, but I was almost afraid to move. It felt too much like everything was falling apart—if I didn’t watch myself, I would shatter into pieces, wounding Emma and Michael when I broke.

  “I wasn’t ‘thinking’ anything,” she said sullenly, and crossed her arms over her chest. In her old Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt and faded shorts, she wasn’t anything at all like the young woman who had walked out of the house last night. This morning she was a child through and through, down to her scruffy ponytail and her pout. “I was just having fun.”

  “Oh, well, all’s forgiven, then.” Michael heaved a sigh rich with exasperation and dropped into the chair opposite her, raking a hand through his hair restlessly. “What exactly happened last night?”

  Where to begin? The distance between saying goodbye to Emma yesterday evening and right now felt like years.

  Jack and Nell had arrived right away, Nell in a pair of striped pajama bottoms and a stained white T-shirt, her eyes still foggy with sleep. She would wait at home while Jack and I took separate cars and circled through town—both of us knew well enough how to spot a party. In the meantime, Nell would call one of her friends in the E.R. at the hospital. “Just in case,” she said as I headed out to my car, but her eyes were dark with worry.

  In the end it was Jack who found her, and called me on my cell phone from outside a huge old house way down on Lawrence Avenue, where he had a humiliated and angry Emma already bundled into his car. I pulled into a parking spot on Broad Street for just a second, burst into noisy, relieved tears, then drove home to meet them, my hands shaking the whole way.

  “A party?”

  For a minute, I was actually afraid Michael would launch out of his chair and throttle her—he radiated a blaze already nearly out of control.

  “We just thought we’d go for a little while,” Emma insisted. She’d begun to cry. The tears made jagged silver rivers on her cheeks. “We lost track of time, that’s all.”

  Exactly what she’d told me last night, outraged and sobbing in the kitchen, where Nell had made tea and Jack stood by the back door, as uncomfortable as I’d ever seen him.

  “And what time did you leave the dance?”

  Here was the problem, I thought, rubbing my eyes as I perched on the arm of the sofa. I hadn’t gotten her to admit anything more than the vague “before midnight,” even after Nell and Jack had left. And it didn’t really matter in the end—what mattered was that she hadn’t made curfew, hadn’t even attempted to make curfew, and hadn’t bothered to call and at least let me know she was all right. If Emma believed her father was going to let her get by on a technicality, she was as wrong as a three-dollar bill.

  “I don’t remember. Everyone was going to Billy Needham’s, and we all kind of left together.” She sniffled and wiped at her wet cheeks with the back of one hand.

  “Aside from the fact that you had no business going anywhere after the dance, let me ask you this.” Michael leaned forward, his jaw set tight. “Were Mr. and Mrs. Needham home?”

  She swallowed hard and stared into her lap. “Um, no.”

  “And are you allowed to go to parties when there are no parents present?”

  Instead of answering, she was crying in earnest, the huge, gulping sobs of her childhood, and buried her face in her hands.

  “Go to your room.” Michael stood up, repeating himself when she didn’t move. “Your room, Emma. Now.”

  I winced when she fled past me—as angry as I was at her, I could hear the panic beneath her sobs, and it was tough not to go after her and gather her up in my arms.

  Instead, I was surprised when Michael tugged me upright and dragged me against him to nuzzle his face in my hair.

  “Welcome to the teen years, huh?” he murmured. “I’m so sorry you went through that by yourself. And I’m…Well, I’m sorry we fought. I’m sorry about everything. I think I need to make a sign and wear it on my forehead from now on.”

  I fitted my body to his, breathing him in, winding my arms around his waist. “I’ll get a matching one, then. I’m sorry you had to come home to this.”

  He pulled me with him onto the sofa and I laid my head on his shoulder. The windows behind the sofa were open to the soft day outside—the air was velvety and warm, green with growing things and the promise of real heat as the day wore on. I wanted nothing more than to sit right there, nestled into my husband, and pretend that everything was all right, that nothing had changed.

  Michael had other ideas. “Is it this boy?”

  “Jesse?” I angled my head up to look at him. “It’s partly that. But I’m concerned she’s making more of it than it is. That she’s using him, in a way, as something to focus on instead of…well, everything else. It has to be weird for her, and then there’s the idea that Drew might…die.” I watched as he closed his eyes against the word, as if he seeing me say it was as bad as hearing it. “No one she knows has ever died before. No matter how she reacted at the beginning of all this, I think she’s fascinated by the idea of a big brother.”

  Michael nodded. “I think so, too. I think she’s confused and she’s got all those hormones boiling over. But I don’t know what Drew wants aside from, you know…not dying. God.” He bit his bottom lip, worrying it with his teeth.

  I followed his gaze as it wandered absently around the room. This was our haven, our home—the walls were the deep gray blue we’d argued over together, the woodwork a crisp, creamy white I’d taken days to paint. We’d bought the vintage carpet at an estate sale in Bucks County, and the books lining the shelves were an eclectic marriage of our taste. Everything in the room was familiar, loved, comforting, and nothing was as tempting as drawing the curtains and shutting out the rest of the world, with Michael beside me.

  But for the first time, I couldn’t read his eyes, aside from the anxiety that had appeared there weeks ago. I just couldn’t tell which child worried him more—Emma or Drew. And I couldn’t ask him. The list of things I couldn’t bring myself to say was growing every minute.

  “I could sleep for about a week,” Michael murmured, idly stroking my hair. “I bet you could, too, after last night.”

  “Sleep will have to wait.” I kissed his cheek and untangled myself to stand up. “If you can believe it, I have to go shopping this afternoon.”

  “For what?”

  I sighed as I realized I would need to change out of the grubby jeans and old T-shirt I had been wearing since last night. “Bridesmaid dresses.”

  “ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT to do this today?” Nell asked as she parked the car at the mall two hours later. Despite the sunshine and the bright blue bowl of sky, the lot was packed.

  “Are you?” I raised an eyebrow. “You were up pretty late, too, no thanks to me.”

  “Stop.” She laid her hand on my arm. “I’m glad you called. And anyway, I’m used to the crazy hours at the hospital.”

  We climbed out of the car and she put her arm around me as we walked toward Lord & Taylor. “How is the prodigal daughter today?”

  “Upset, furious, crying, pouting, guilty, confused—you name it.” I shook my head. “I’m beginning to wish tranquilizer guns were an option.”

  Nell shifted her bag higher on her shoulder and tucked a stray blond hair behind her ear. “And what’s her punishment?”

  “Grounded for two weeks, aside from school and the last-minute costume stuff for the play, and no phone in her room.” I sighed and opened the door to the store, br
eathing in the cool air-conditioning. “She’s not happy, that’s for sure.”

  “Of course not,” Nell agreed, and steered me past shoes toward women’s dresses. “No phone in her room means no private commiseration with her friends or the infamous Jesse.”

  “Exactly.” I angled a smile at Nell as she paused in front of a rack of floaty summer dresses.

  “This is pretty.” She held up a pale celadon tea-length dress with a stylish bateau neckline. She hesitated a moment, fingering the seed-pearl trim. “What about Michael?”

  I stiffened as I reached for a delicate print dress in icy blue. No. Not now. I wanted to forget everything but dresses and Nell’s wedding and very possibly a fruity, silly drink with an umbrella in it when we were done.

  “Tess?”

  I faced her, meeting her wide blue eyes. “He’s tired. He’s upset about Emma.” I shrugged, then walked toward another rack, where I slid the hangers over the bar rougher than I should have.

  She followed, the green dress still in her hand. “But how are you two…together?”

  “Nell, please.” I shook my head. “Please, can we not do this right now? I need an hour away from it. For weeks now it’s been all I can think about, all anyone will talk about. I just…I want normal life back for one afternoon. Shopping with you. Lunch with you, if you’re up for it. Maybe even some foofy, silly drink with an umbrella in it. Okay?”

  Sympathy rippled across her face. Even though I hated to see it, hated to be the object of it, I accepted her one-armed hug with a smile. “Deal,” she said. “Okay, seriously, what do you think of this one?” A wry grin twisted her mouth. “It’s a lot better than the one you made me wear all those years ago.”

  My cheeks heated with embarrassment. “Hey, it was 1988. What do you want from me?”

  “A little leeway twenty years from now when you look at pictures of my wedding.” She laughed, and handed me the dress.