Chapter Thirty-Seven
Emma sipped the hot cocoa on the front steps of her porch, overlooking the fields in front of her. The warm sun bearing down on the forests of Harbordale had melted all the snow, and Emma found it unsettling to see the town in its new light. The white, harsh snow had given way to soft, supple earth from which delicate blades of grass had begun to pop through. It was bizarre grappling with the fact that two months had gone by in a blink. She had been waist-deep in winter when the ‘incident’ had happened, and now she was sitting outside in seven degrees Celsius. There was still a brisk chill that blew in from the north east, skimming the surface of the water as it did so, but the sun was so bright that it nearly canceled it out. The evergreen trees in the forest looked greener than usual, as if basking in the warmer weather.
The chocolatey goodness warmed up her throat as she tried to wake up for the day. She would be lying if she said that she was completely back to normal. Her muscles still ached when she woke up, and she was likely to get out of breath when moving for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. She was getting better though, and Sarah kept reminding her that that was all that mattered.
As much as she wanted to say that she’d had a relaxing few days once returning to her dad’s home, she couldn’t. People, who she had thought were mere acquaintances were streaming through her front door as if they’d been friends for years. Apparently, Shelley, who lived in the farm next door, had been “meaning to drop some freshly baked homemade bread” off to her since she’d learned of her arrival, but it was only now that shed actually gotten around to it. Nick, along with the kitchen staff from the town pub had swung by with a Keg; the book club ladies (60 years old and older) had come by with a scarf they had knit for her. The town mechanic, Jefferson, had driven her car to her and had shown her all the fancy new add-ons he’d installed into her mini jeep, before his wife had invited her for dinner. Kat had been buzzing around, along with Sarah, keeping her company and accepting the miscellaneous ‘get well soon!’ gifts and food items that had been pouring in since she had come back. Apparently, guilt was a powerful way of making people act nice. Ever since the town had learned that one of their own had gone out of their way to hurt Emma, and murder an innocent victim in doing so, people had been working overtime to alleviate a bit of how bad they had felt in being so unwelcoming to Emma. If she wasn’t simply so exhausted, she would have probably felt a bit smug. It felt nice knowing that she wasn’t the most hated person in town anymore. But in all honesty, she was just glad that it was over.
She wasn’t fully recovered in the proper sense of the word. She had nightmares nearly every night, of being taken, and held prisoner in someplace that she didn’t want to be. She constantly woke up after dreaming that she had fallen into a swimming pool, or lake. There was even a night where she had woken up gasping for breath, after dreaming that someone had cut off her oxygen supply. Sarah had woken up to her screams and night terrors, so that was something she was still working through. The therapist had said it was PTSD, and that it would be a while before that calmed down. There also fleeting moments where she would think of Detective Jackson, and Clayton, and feel a strong surge of betrayal that would blind her to anything else she was feeling. She couldn’t fully comprehend the sickening way they had taken advantage of her friendship, to only use it against her. Her trust in others had definitely been chafed, and she found herself constantly uneasy around the thought of being left alone with anyone that wasn’t Sarah or Kat.
But at least the uncertainty was over.
No more guessing what was going to happen. No more guessing who was after her, or who wanted her gone. No more walking around feeling as if she’d have a gun pointed at her throat any second. It was finally over, and life was going to return back to normal.
Whatever that normal was.
The door behind her swung open and Kat came out, holding a cardboard box, “where do you want this one?”
“That one can go in Sarah’s car, I think,” Emma said after a thoughtful pause. “Right with the…” she trailed off as she saw Kat’s expression. Her friends’ eyebrows had shot straight into her forehead. “What?”
“Um…” Kat pursed her lips, “I’m just going to… wander… over…”
“Kat?” Emma watched Kat as she pivoted on her heels and walked directly into the clearing of trees to her left.
“Hey.”
Emma stilled at his voice, and her body locked in place. Looking to what had made Kat flee, Emma saw him for the first time since the incident.
He looked fairly disheveled; his beard had come in and hadn’t been shaved, and his hair was looked messy and unkempt on the top of his head. His eyes struck her in her heart. Despite not having seen him in weeks, she felt like it would be just as easy as ever to get lost in those pools of blue. He was standing at the end of the driveway, his hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket, a light leather zip-up which was not the puffy winter parka she had grown accustomed to.
She had run this moment over in her head a thousand times over, when she inevitably ran into Hunter. Emma would barge off and tell him to go fuck himself for not visiting her after she’d awoken, or she’d hit him for being so stupid to go in after her in the water, or she’d yell at him for not even calling.
Despite all of these ideas, all she did was sit there with the cup of hot chocolate in her hands.
“Am I interrupting?” He asked, motioning to the boxes that were stacked on her front porch.
She glanced at them briefly, and then looked back at him. She felt like she had lost all ability to speak.
“You look well,” he finally said after the moment dragged on between him.
She felt so mad. Mad at him for being so handsome. Mad at him for being able to make her feel the way she did about him. Mad at him for walking around so unaffected by everything, as if everything was normal and nothing had happened between them. Mad that he had saved her and had visited her every day in the hospital when she’d been in the coma.
“You know, even though you’re not saying anything, I can tell when you’re about to yell at me. That’s how well I know you,” the familiar mischievousness glinted in his eyes, which only made Emma madder.
Shaking her head, she simply sighed in frustration, stood up, turned around and barged into her house.
She was in the kitchen by the time he followed her inside. Packing up the cutlery that was in the drawers, she didn’t look up as his body framed the kitchen door.
“I thought I’d give you time to sort out everything while you recovered,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. Emma didn’t look up at him and carried on packing the spoons away. “You had mentioned you wanted to leave Harbordale, so I didn’t want to make this any harder on you than it would be.”
Finally, she spoke, “You give yourself way too much credit.”
“Glad that almost getting killed didn’t take away your spirit.”
She rolled her eyes, “You managed to avoid me for a few weeks and now you’re avoiding the conversation. Congratulations. You’ve mastered the art of having any type of relationship.”
“Oh come on, Emma.” Hunter furrowed his eyebrows as if actually unable to understand what she was saying, “Are you actually angry with me?”
“I was in the hospital for days after I woke up from my coma, Hunter!” She slammed the spoon that was in her hand down onto the counter, “how many times did you visit me?”
“I had work.”
“Oh, right. I forgot. You must have been really busy.”
“In fact, I was. We were busy putting away one of our own detectives -.”
“I thought we were friends,” she snapped. “Even if this – whatever it was between us was confusing, I thought at the base of it all, we were friends.”
He looked alarmed, “We are.”
“So then what’s your excuse?” Emma watched him open his mouth to flounder but cut him off, “No – you don’t get to have one. I’ve been home for a solid week. I can see your house from up here. You’ve been home every night -.”
“Have you been spying on me?”
“Yes, I’ve been spying on you. What else is there to do in this god damn town?” Emma didn’t even care how ridiculous she sounded, “your lights have been on. Don’t give me bullshit about how you’ve been busy. You could have driven here and seen if I was ok. It takes five minutes to drive from yours to mine. What’s your excuse for that?”
Hunter sighed, running a hand through his hair, “I just…” he trailed off, and then looked at her squarely in the eye, “I… I don’t know.”
She scoffed, “You don’t know?”
“I just… couldn’t come here.”
“You just couldn’t?” If looks could kill, Hunter would be six feet under by now. “Well, sorry Hunter. I’m so sorry that you just couldn’t get up off your couch and -.”
“I didn’t want to make it harder than it had to be,” he cut her off, “Look. You were always going to leave. We both knew that. You said as much before everything happened. I didn’t want to make it harder for you to leave.”
She put a hand on her hip, feeling a sense of dread sinking in, “excuse me?”
Hunter recognized the look in her eyes, and it was clear he sensed that he had waded into dangerous territory. “Look, it’s not important. All I wanted was to come here and make sure you were okay.”
“No, finish your earlier sentence. You didn’t want to make it harder for me to leave?”
“Emma, I don’t want to fight before you leave.”
“No, I want you to finish that,” she felt a swell of emotion building up inside of her. “You think I’m some love struck woman who can’t take saying goodbye to her crush, and so you thought you needed to protect me from all these big, sad emotions?”
He groaned, “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what is it that you’re saying?”
“You just always need to fight.”
“Well maybe if you communicated, it wouldn’t end up like this.”
“Fine,” Hunter unfolded his arms, “Then tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that you don’t have feelings for me. That I was wrong about staying away, because being together would make things harder for you.”
Emma felt like crying. Why did this feel so wrong? “And so what if I do? Don’t you?” The silence between them hung so heavy that she felt it sitting on her chest. He was staring at her so darkly, that she almost wanted to turn away.
Finally, he spoke. “Look. I can’t give you what you want. I’ve never been able to… give that, to anyone.”
“Give what?” Emma felt like the floor under her was slipping away, even though she was holding firmly onto the counter. “What is it that you think I expect from you?”
“I’m not sure. A house, a family, a commitment. My home is here, in Harbordale, and here you are packing up to leave. We’re polar opposites. I’m practical, your head is all over the place. I like a schedule; you’re always going wherever your heart takes you. I like to stay at home, and you’re… nearly a decade younger than I am. We’re both stubborn, hot-headed, and… I was supposed to hate you. Your father destroyed so many families here. The fact that I’m even here, explaining why I can’t be with you… I didn’t expect this, let alone the idea of… settling down. There are a thousand reasons it wouldn’t work between us.”
Of all the scenarios that Emma had run through her head, this hadn’t even occurred to her. She felt sick, and she was fairly certain that she was about to cry soon. Before she could even show him that weakness, she turned away, “Well. Thanks for making that clear, Hunter. I’m glad you came by to say goodbye. If that’s all, I have a lot of packing to do.”
“Emma -.”
“Bye,” she said and left the room without getting a final look at him. Her heart was hurting, and she wanted to remove herself from the main cause. She busied herself in the living room and began to mindlessly put random ornaments into an empty box. She heard no movement come from the kitchen and then, a heavy sigh before a series of footsteps. She waited until the front door closed shut before finally sitting down against the wall.
“That was painful to listen to,” Sarah said as she walked down the stairs. Kat swung the backdoor open and trickled in beside Sarah. “I’m sorry, Emma.”
“It was bound to happen,” she murmured as her two friends sat down beside her, pulling her into a side-hug. “I don’t know why it feels so crummy,” she said into her palms as her eyes began to well-up with tears.
“This has been a bitch of a winter, hasn’t it?” was all Kat sat as Emma burst into tears, cradled by the hugs of her two best friends.
x.x
It took the rest of the day to pack up her belongings. Since she had inherited her father’s home, she had decided to take whatever was useful to her back home with her. Sarah had offered her apartment in Toronto for her to crash in until she found her own place, where she would eventually store all the things that she was taking with her. The living room rug that she grown fond of, pots and pans that she had never owned before, toiletries, and even the old TV that she had initially hated. It was a two-day drive back to the city, so it wasn’t likely that she would be making a second trip back to collect anything she left behind. She wasn’t sure if she would ever come back.
She had buried the conversation that she’d had with Hunter deep into the depths of her heart, where she ignored everything else that had caused her pain and hurt. She didn’t want to try to understand why he was being so cold to her, or why he had blamed his distance entirely on her, and her feelings towards him. He was right, she did have feelings for him – but why did he need to frame it so negatively, as if it was a nuisance that needed to be rid of?
She hadn’t seen him in months, literally. And their one encounter had resulted in yelling. She felt like someone had ripped a bandage off a deep wound, making it hurt even harder. She hadn’t realised how close she’d felt to him.
She had allowed herself to cry for an hour or so, before telling herself that she would never shed a tear for that guy again.
It was clear he didn’t value their relationship even nearly as much.
“Ready to call it a night and drive off in the morning, Em?” Sarah stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was holding a taped-up box, that she placed by the front door. “It’s all over.”
“It’s all over,” Emma repeated, as she looked around at the house. Half of the things were boxed up, and it looked just as empty and sparse as her first day here. “I’ll probably go to bed in a little bit. I still want to look around and make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“Sounds good, don’t stress about anything – ok, Em?”
Emma smiled at her, trying not to let how she was feeling show. She couldn’t explain why she felt so sad, or why something felt… wrong.
It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. She needed to move on.
Taking a deep breath to comfort herself, she continued packing her stuff, slowly moving through the living room, kitchen and bedroom.
It was nearly midnight when she found it.
It had happened innocently enough, and completely by surprise. She was staring at the only picture frame her father had kept of their family. She had seen it on her first day in Harbordale and had discarded it upon sight. It was of her as a kid, with both her mum and dad around her, smiling into the camera. The familiar seascape of Harbordale glittered behind them, with the edge of the lighthouse faintly in view.
She thought back to her obscure dream while she had been under. It was one of the only dreams she remembered from the time, of her walking endlessly in the snow, searching for someone, something. She had come across her father and had a conversation.
For the first time in years, looking down at the picture of her dad, she felt something other than anger.
It was sadness. Sadness at the pain he must have been in to turn to alcoholism in the way that he did, and sadness at the loss of her family.
He had loved her as much as a father could, and hadn’t been able to run from his demons to the detriment of those that loved him.
Wanting to keep a reminder of a moment of happiness the three of them had shared, she popped the photo out of the frame.
And that’s when she found it.
The will.
The god damn will that had started this entire mess. The will that Jackson and Clayton had been prepared to kill her for.
It had been in front of her the entire time. She had walked by it a thousand times.
It had been right here, in her home, in the same frame that held a photo of her family.
Speechless, she unfolded the will and read the contents.