“Guilty conscience,” Emma said.
“Easy, Emma. She might be one of the few people who can actually understand what you’re going through,” he said. “I know you’re not sympathetic, but she had to rebuild her life after you left. And Jock called. Divorced and living in Santa Rosa. He wanted to know if there was any chance you’d be coming back this way when it was all over. He said to tell you that if you need anything...”
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Very sincerely. I’m not his biggest fan, but he did offer support.”
She said nothing. Of course she knew they were both here, Riley and Jock. Back when they were all so young, her best friend and her boyfriend. She’d returned for brief visits a few times after leaving so long ago and had not spoken to them, but she always knew they were still around. When she decided to come back here for good she knew it was possible she’d run into one or both of them eventually.
“Might be time to move on from that haunt, Emma,” Lyle said.
“I have moved on,” she answered. “I’ve moved on from a lot of things. And I’m not going back one step.”
When Emma Catherine Shay was nine years old, a fourth grader at St. Pascal’s elementary school in Santa Rosa, a couple of new kids came to school. Riley and Adam Kerrigan. Riley was in Emma’s class and the teacher asked her to be responsible for helping Riley get acquainted and adjusted.
Emma, known for being friendly and a child who wished to please, was annoyed. First of all, she already had two best friends—Susanna and Paula—and Riley’s hanging around was interfering with her routine. Second, Riley apparently couldn’t talk. She followed along or sat at the lunch table all quiet and nervous. When she did speak, she could barely be heard. Third, and Emma knew this was wrong, but the girl was a rag doll. She wore old clothes that didn’t even fit her right.
Riley’s older brother, Adam, so somber and quiet, waited after school to walk home together so at least Emma didn’t have that chore. And all of it—spending time with Riley—was monotonous. But, so Sister Judith would be proud of her, Emma did the best she could with the odd little creature with the unhappy personality. At the end of the second day Riley surprised Emma when she spoke softly. “I know where to go and what to do now. You can go be with your friends.”
Emma felt like a turd. “We’ll just all hang out together,” she said, hating her overzealous conscience.
Then, over the next few days, Emma learned that Riley, Adam and their mother came to Santa Rosa to live with Riley’s grandparents in their tiny house because Riley’s dad had gotten very sick and died. So now Riley wasn’t just shy and poor, she was also bereaved. Emma was stuck with her.
But Emma couldn’t deny that she was completely sympathetic—she’d lost her own mother, though she had been too young to remember her. Her father had remarried when she was just a toddler, probably largely to have help with his child. He had married Rosemary, an efficient and hardworking widow with a three-year-old daughter, Anna. Three years later they had a baby together, another girl. Baby Lauren. The only mother she had ever known was her stepmother, and of the three children, Rosemary liked Emma least. Emma understood by the time she was ten that it had been a marriage of convenience.
Emma was plotting her escape from Riley when a few things shifted as Riley got more comfortable with her new surroundings. First off, she was hilarious and once they got laughing, they could hardly stop. When she wasn’t feeling scared and lonely, Riley’s voice was strong and confident. She was very good in school and rose to the head of the class quickly. She could help Emma and not the other way around. And Riley’s mother, June, turned out to be the most wonderful, loving, fun and positive woman in the entire world, embracing Emma and making her feel so cherished. Riley’s grandparents acted like it was their lucky day the Kerrigans moved in even though they were stuffed into the little house. They were crowded and money was tight but there was more laughter there than there had ever been in Emma’s house. Riley and Adam wore hand-me-down clothes, their grandparents were elderly, and June Kerrigan cleaned houses and waitressed to make ends meet, but Emma was always welcome, made to feel like a member of the family.
Emma’s home life wasn’t nearly so happy. Rosemary wasn’t abusive in any obvious way but she was emotionally flat where Emma was concerned.
Rosemary complained about how hard she had to work at the DMV, how much stress she had in her life, how messy and lazy Emma’s father was, her weight, her friends and a variety of issues. Aside from Anna and Lauren, there didn’t seem to be much she enjoyed. Although Rosemary always referred to Emma and Lauren as her daughters, there was little doubt that Anna was her favorite. It wasn’t long before Emma was happier at Riley’s house than at her own. And hardly surprisingly, Rosemary didn’t mind her absence at home much.
We were going to be each other’s maid of honor. We were going to have children at the same time so they could be best friends, too.
From the day Sister Judith forced them together until high school graduation, Emma and Riley were inseparable. Riley’s grandpa called them conjoined twins. They stuck together through thick and thin, through the sudden death of Emma’s father when she was sixteen, Rosemary’s third marriage to Vince Kingston, and every issue that plagued teenagedom. Their friendship was cast in iron and they had very few tiffs. Until they fell out over a boy. One Jock Curry. Yes, it was his given name. He was named for a grandfather.
They’d both crushed on him in high school. They thought he was smart, sexy, athletic, funny. Every girl wanted him and he apparently wanted every girl, but once he settled on Emma during their senior year, that was it for him. He said his roaming days were over. Of course, he was all of seventeen at the time. He tried to talk Emma into going to the same community college he’d chosen or at least staying close to home, but she had a scholarship and was going to Seattle Pacific University, known for its interior-design program. Of the two girls, she was the least likely to get a scholarship, but even with one, Riley’s family couldn’t afford any part of the expense of living away from home or attending an out-of-state university. Emma could manage with working part-time, taking out loans, and Rosemary was able to send a little money—fifty here, fifty there. And she had big dreams; she was going to design the interiors of five-star hotels and luxurious mansions!
Riley enrolled in the same community college as Jock, lived at home and began cleaning houses just like her mom always had.
Jock had no specific plans except to get the minimum education, work part time, play a little baseball and enjoy himself.
Emma didn’t suspect anything was going on in her absence until right before Christmas break. Riley was acting strangely. Jock and Riley were hanging out together a lot, but shouldn’t that be expected? Her guy and her best friend, going to school together and everything? She trusted them, after all. Then she had this nagging feeling it wasn’t all right, that it was a betrayal. Riley was different toward her; Jock was a little too much himself—jovial and confident and relaxed. He’d gone from ragging on her about taking more time to talk to him on the phone to not noticing how long it had been since they’d had one of those long, whispery, late-night conversations.
She suspected her best friend was too close to her boyfriend. When Emma confronted her, Riley burst into tears, admitted it, swore it wasn’t entirely her fault, that Jock had taken advantage of the fact that she’d always liked him a lot, that she had been so lonely without her best friend.
Jock had said, “Hey, grow up. It didn’t really mean anything. Besides, what did you expect? You didn’t have time for either one of us.”
Emma never really did understand how something like that just happens, especially when both Riley and Jock insisted they hadn’t meant it to, that it was all a terrible mistake. Then they both turned it back on her, as if it was her fault for going away to school.