The streets narrowed as Emily walked towards the outskirts of Nevis—seeing as nearly everyone and everything seemed centered around the town’s two blocks of main street, she didn’t have far to go. With every street crossed, houses became sparser, blending into towering evergreens until finally becoming swallowed up by them entirely. Smoke from wood fires, the squeaking of old brakes, street lamps—all of it—faded. Until the only thing that held the forest back was dark road and the perpetual glow customary to the Smiths’ cabin.
Despite being about as far from the middle of town—and therefore Emily’s school—as you could get, their home was always warm. Sylvia’s, as far as Emily could tell, lifelong distrust of technology, meant that the grey stones of their fireplace were never dark. Cheery tongues of flame constantly lapping at their hearth. Centralized heating wasn’t needed when the fire never went out. Wifi, though, would’ve been nice. The data in town wasn’t spectacular, let alone along its edges. The phone Sylvia had only just allowed her to get weighed in Emily’s pocket. She hadn’t known about TVs until second grade, hadn’t driven in a car until about the same time, and Sylvia always masterfully dodged any questions as to why. It was pretty bizarre. Well, at least they had electricity.
The roof, like the rest of the cabin, seemed to sag. The porch creaked under every footfall. It did then under Emily’s feet as she stomped up across it for blood flow. She glanced at the thermometer by the door to find that the air was a crisp negative three degrees.
Which explained a lot.
Emily haphazardly wiped her feet (her legs felt pretty wooden at this point) on their doormat, emblazoned with some Pinterest-esque, motivational quote. It was cheesy, but that was her grandmother. Simultaneously old and full of life.
Emily gave the same three brisk knocks she always did and waited. She began rooting through her backpack after a few moments. Sylvia could be buying groceries or shoveling snow as she did sporadically every week. Yup. At eighty-five, Sylvia often voluntarily shoveled snow in town. Until age seven, at her first “grandparent’s day” at school, Emily had thought that you got more energy as you grew older.
She was rooting through her backpack for the spare key by the time it opened to reveal Sylvia’s lined yet usually perpetually cheerful face. But there was no mandatory hug for Emily to pretend to hate this time, no “how was your day.” In fact, her grandmother’s brows were knit together in an unfamiliar expression on her usually serene features.
Something was wrong.
Wordlessly, Sylvia stood to the side of the doorframe. Emily walked past her cautiously, glancing at her again. That unfamiliar expression was still there. She knew better than to ask about it though, because the answer wouldn’t be an answer at all.
Nothing about the cabin, a mirror image of her grandmother—cozy, cluttered with strewn books and dried lilac from the garden and mismatched furniture—seemed off. The warmth from the fireplace by the doorway slowly brought feeling—pins and needles—to her numb hands. Emily hung her hoodie on a hook by the fire, which let out a flurry of sparks as one of the logs shifted downwards and set down her backpack. Normally, she would then sit on the staircase to the attic to take off her boots.
But today wasn’t a normal day. The air and Sylvia were uneasy, and Sylvia was never uneasy. No, Sylvia ran marathons. She brushed off neighborhood gossip like the dirt on her gardening gloves and hadn’t been afraid to stick it to Mr. Johnson next door when he came to their door that summer, complaining about people taking walks through his “backyard” (the woods).
But now Sylvia seemed frozen, stricken, in the doorway. At the long look Emily hadn’t realized she’d been giving, Sylvia seemed to finally remember herself, wordlessly gesturing a gnarled hand towards the kitchen area.
Sylvia was supposed to have words for everything. Creative, expletive, nauseatingly specific words.
Robotic with an unknown dread, Emily turned and walked to their small kitchen table where Sylvia always had an after-school snack prepared. Sylvia could be doting and protective to the point of suffocation, but Emily had always found it… nice. Especially when she realized that not everyone’s grandmothers or parents did that. Well, nice as long as it wasn’t in sight of anyone she knew. Claire was the one exception.
Today, the table was bare. Emily sat, not feeling hungry in the slightest. Sylvia finally left the doorway. She passed Emily slowly and sat in the chair across from her. There was no smile on her face, and suddenly she seemed… old. Her eyes shone more than usual.
Something was wrong.
Sylvia was never uneasy and she never cried.
Emily swallowed the sudden lump in her throat, “Grandma?”
Sylvia wouldn’t look at her, gaze fixed somewhere above Emily’s head. She tilted her head back, blinking. Sylvia never cried.
“W-what happened?” Emily felt detached, the balance wasn’t right.
It happened in math class when she was afraid to admit she didn’t know how. It happened in English where she was too afraid to raise her hand. It happened when she stumbled over her words in front of a cashier, or a teacher, or a classmate, or a friend even. But never Sylvia. Her grandmother was supposed to keep the scales in check. She was supposed to be the strong, proud rock that Emily leaned against. Always pushing Emily past what she thought was possible. To climb to the top of a tall tree, to talk—at six—to another kid in the park, to dance, to be unafraid to fail. Now the rock was crumbling and Emily had to hold it up somehow. But she had no idea how. Should she lay her hand on Sylvia’s trembling one, splayed out between them? Should she hug her? Should she just sit there?
Emily opened her mouth again, but Sylvia held up a finger. Wait. And so she did. She hadn’t known what she would say anyways.
Minutes passed, the unshed tears subsided.
Sylvia finally looked at her, face set in… it wasn’t customary cheer or pride. It was serious, concerned.
She took Emily’s hand. “I made a mistake.”
Well and truly rattled now, blood was rushing in Emily’s ears, nearly drowning Sylvia out.
“I thought keeping you in the dark would be better,” Her eyes were bloodshot, Emily was pretty sure she was and would be the only person to ever see them this way, “I thought it was out of our lives, that we’d left for good, but I was wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” the cold from outside seemed to be back, seeping into Emily’s bones.
“Oh Emily,” her voice broke, “you know I love you so much, right?”
Emily did know. Sylvia said it every day when she came home from school. It was a mantra repeated over and over to the point where sometimes it lost meaning, but Emily knew. Just like she knew that this “I love you” was desperately important.
“I love you too,” and she meant every word, “but-”
“It spoke to me. It needs you, honey. It’s not done with us.”
“Grandma, what isn’t?”
“It’s-”
Something opened up then, a hole beneath her or maybe in the universe. Maybe she was the hole all along. She fell, and then she fell apart. Sylvia was yelling something as she did.
Comments (0)
See all