Chapter 34

At first, Saoirse thinks she speaks. She thinks she says his name, threatens him in her take-no-prisoners voice, demands he get off her stoop. It takes her a moment to realize she’s made no sound, that she’s simply stared at this specter from her past, this link to her husband, as stunned and unnerved as if she were seeing a ghost.

“Aidan,” she finally whispers. “Wh-why ... What are you doing here?”

It happens so fast she can’t do anything. One moment, Aidan is on the stoop, staring back at her, and the next, he’s shoved past her into the house. Fear shoots up her spine and down her limbs. Her fingers tingle with adrenaline. She scuttles backward, hits the wall of the foyer, and turns, ready to run. The front door bangs against the frame, closing them off from the outside world, but doesn’t latch.

“Saoirse, wait! I’m not going to hurt you. I’m sorry I barged in here, but this is insane. The way you’ve been avoiding me is insane.”

Saoirse pauses. “How did you find me?”

He has the good grace to look sheepish. “Your MyChart medical records. I wasn’t supposed to access it, ethically speaking, but as a doctor in the same network, I was able to look up the address change you filed with your cardiologist.” Saoirse gapes at him, and Aidan raises his hands. “I’m sorry, it’s just ... we have to talk.”

“No,” Saoirse says. She tries to shout the word, but it comes out half wail, half sob. “No, we don’t.”

“Just listen,” Aidan insists. “I understand. I know everything. You can’t run anymore. You don’t have to. You found Jonathan’s body, right? That’s what you told the police. That you came home after spending four days at your mother’s house, and he was already dead. But I got a text from Jonathan. The night he died. He said your car had just pulled into the driveway and you were home! ”

Saoirse shakes her head. “No. That’s not true. It’s a mistake. Maybe he thought I was, but I wasn’t. I stayed in Connecticut.”

Aidan advances on her, his shoulders hulking in the narrow black coat, eyes fixed intently on hers. “Don’t you understand? I know he wanted to have a baby, and you didn’t. I know what was going on. I’m an obstetrician , Saoirse. Jonathan was confiding in me. I don’t get why you—” He pauses, groans. “Oh, god. It makes me sick.”

He lunges at her, and Saoirse’s vision goes dark around the edges. She screams, ducks. The cherrywood stand falls, sending the potted fern crashing to the ground in an explosion of dirt and terra-cotta. Aidan wheels around, a startled expression on his face. But before Saoirse can run through the front door, it’s flying open. Emmit rushes into the foyer and grabs Aidan around the waist, tackling him to the ground.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Emmit growls, lifting Aidan toward the open door and tossing him through it. When Aidan stumbles onto the stoop, Emmit pushes him again, and Aidan falls to the sidewalk. “I’m calling the police.”

“Please don’t do that,” Aidan cries, at the same time Saoirse says, “No.” She can’t let Emmit call the police, can’t have anyone else knowing what Aidan knows.

Emmit looks back and forth between them, his expression hard.

Please, Saoirse mouths to him.

Emmit relents. “Get the fuck out of here,” he says again. When Aidan scrambles to his feet and jogs off, Emmit slams and locks the door. “Are you okay?” he asks. He is staring at her like he can’t quite believe what he’s just seen. And why should he? Angry men don’t usually barge through the front doors of women’s houses. Women who live alone. Women who harbor secrets. “Who the hell was that?” he asks.

“A friend of Jonathan,” Saoirse says quietly.

“What did he want?”

“I have no idea,” she lies. Because she does know now. She knows what she’s feared since that moment under the willows in Rosedale Cemetery. “He just got aggressive out of nowhere,” she adds, when Emmit’s eyes continue to bore into her.

Finally, he turns from her to shoot a look of disgust at the locked door. “I should have called the police. We shouldn’t have let him get away.”

Maybe we shouldn’t have let him get away. The thought fills her with renewed dread. It’s been almost ten months, and Aidan hasn’t given up yet. How much longer until he does something drastic? Something from which there’s no coming back?

Saoirse closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to think about this now. It’s too much for one night. It’s too much for one lifetime. “I just want him gone,” she says. Even to her own ears, she sounds exhausted. “And now I want to go to bed.” She opens her eyes and looks at Emmit. “What were you doing here, by the way?”

His mouth jumps up in a nervous twitch. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, while it was certainly advantageous that you were here, we didn’t have plans to see each other tonight.” She is grateful he was here, that much is true, but Saoirse can’t quite wrap her head around having to deal with Emmit at present. She may not want to think about Aidan, but she has to. Has to come up with some sort of plan. Has to speak with her mother.

Emmit expels a puff of air. “I needed to see you tonight. More than I ever have before. It was urgent.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, then regrets it. She has a feeling she knows what this is, and it unnerves her. The wrongness surrounding him has been growing since the moment Lucretia turned over those three cards. No, her dread has been growing for much, much longer than that. How have I been so blind to who Emmit Powell is? But even as she poses the question, she knows the answer. Because she wanted to be blind. Wanted to be swept off her feet. After years with Jonathan, worrying about nothing but self-preservation, she wanted to be reckless. To believe herself the princess in the fairy tale, destined for her happily ever after, when all along, she’s been the ill-fated maiden in a poem penned by Poe.

You are a scarred oak, Jonathan whispers, as if her own thoughts aren’t damning enough. And lightning is always drawn to a tree that’s been leveled once already.

“ I’m okay,” Emmit says, interrupting the voices in her head, “but my manuscript is not. I’ve lost my way with it. I’ve lost my way because I’ve lost my way with you.”

His tone worms under Saoirse’s skin. It’s not just the lack of emotion but a lack of concern for her emotions . A blatant disregard for the guilt trip he’s attempting to lay on her, even after what she just went through with Aidan. And she can’t help but worry that Emmit is exhibiting this behavior in increasingly frightening regularity as he discovers he can’t bend her to his will, can’t get her to do exactly what he wants.

You know that tone, Jonathan says. It’s been a while since you’ve heard it, but you know it all the same. It’s the dehumanizing one. The one that says my whims are more important than your personhood.

“Emmit,” she says slowly, as if speaking to a coyote she’s stumbled across on a trail and is trying to back away from, unscathed, “I really am tired. It’s been a long day. A long week. I’m shaken up over what just happened, and I want to go to bed. I’m sorry your writing isn’t going well right now. But I’m sure things will improve.”

Emmit stamps his foot. “But I was with you when the idea came to me. I was with you, talking with you, when everything solidified. I need to stay with you, stay close to you, to keep the momentum going. That much is obvious, don’t you think?” Emmit pauses. “I haven’t told you this yet, but now I have to. You know how I requested an extension? My publisher didn’t take it well. Not at all. They’ve threatened legal action if I don’t deliver this book by the agreed-upon deadline.”

This is certainly unexpected. Emmit is his publisher’s golden boy. Piper Kirby’s words come back to her— I have to star out part of his name, otherwise I’ll be contacted by the legal dept. of his publishing house again with another cease and desist! Might they be sick of dealing with Emmit? Despite this thought, the reflex to give Emmit what he wants flutters through her.

But just as quickly, it’s replaced by rage so sharp she tastes it. It’s the same dead-earth taste of leaves she felt in her mouth when she arrived in Providence. The rot of something that had once been beautiful. She is not married to this man. Not literally, not figuratively. “That’s not my problem,” she says, and the words are a flush of cold water, driving out the awful taste.

“Not your problem?” Emmit’s face drains of color before two small splotches appear in his cheeks. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Saoirse shuts her eyes. “It means exactly what I said. Your manuscript is not due tomorrow, threats of legal action or not. It’s midnight. My late husband’s best friend just broke into my house. I told you I need sleep. Your next line is, ‘Good night, Saoirse.’”

There’s an extended silence. The red splotches in his cheeks grow darker. Then, in a voice so low and rough, it sounds more like a growl, Emmit says, “This isn’t like you.”

“Excuse me?”

“This isn’t like you. Blowing me off? Being sarcastic? Your job is to support me.”

“My job?” Saoirse balls her hands into fists to keep from shouting. “You know what, Emmit, that’s the problem. You say, ‘This isn’t like me.’ That’s because you don’t know me. Not really. We’ve had sex. We bared our souls to one another. But we’ve been seeing each other for a week. A week .” She sighs. “I’m done, Emmit. We’re done here.” She resists the urge to turn her back on him right there and run up the stairs.

“Done?” Emmit’s voice is shrill. “What do you mean, done?”

“I mean—” Panic ripples through her. Is she ending the first thing that’s made her feel whole in as long as she can remember? That thing that’s made her feel undamaged? Worthwhile? That writing, that life, is worth living?

She closes her eyes again, hard. She thinks of her new friends, eccentric as they might be, and of her diabetic cat. Maybe she’s no more damaged than they are. Maybe it’s time to see past the illusion, the magical thinking, the temptation. To turn away from the shards of glass raining down into her eyes.

“What I mean, Emmit,” she starts again, renewed confidence in her voice, “is that we’re not going to see each other anymore.”

Emmit’s hands fly up to either side. “No. No, Saoirse, no, don’t say that.” It’s a command, but it’s the old Emmit saying it, the sweet one. The one who warmed her at the front of the restaurant on their first, impromptu date. The one whose half smiles make her weak with longing. The one who would never say something as enraging as Your job is to support me.

But she will no longer listen to this man, who slips on personas as easily as choosing poems from an endless volume of verse. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I had hoped this was something different. But I won’t lose myself again. I—” Her voice cracks, and she swallows. “I can’t,” she finishes. Then, more forcefully, she says, “Maybe you’re losing yourself too. You missed work. We broke into a house. I’m drinking too much. We took drugs together. Now, this.” She gestures between them. “The way you’re speaking to me. No. It all ends here. Tonight.”

“You can’t do this,” Emmit says and reaches for her.

She pulls back. “I can . And the fact that you’re saying I can’t makes me all the surer I’m making the right decision.”

“No. No, Saoirse, we have something here. Please. You must feel it. I know you feel it. We’re meant for each other. We make each other better.”

“Do we? Or are you using me to make yourself better?”

“You and I ... this is ... supernatural in its rightness. We are following in the footsteps of Poe and Whitman, literally and figuratively: walking where they walked, feeding off the echo of their artistic energy, their carnal energy. It’s like their spirits have possessed us, have elevated us, and you want to sever that connection?”

Saoirse sets her jaw. “If that’s how you want to frame things, then think of this as our moment in the alcove of the Athen?um, the moment in which Sarah discovered Poe’s drinking and called off their wedding.” Her tone is harsh and full of finality. “Goodbye, Emmit.” She unlocks the front door and holds it open. To her surprise, though he opens his mouth to speak again, he says nothing and walks out the door. Slowly, Saoirse shuts the door, locks it, and walks, like a woman in a trance, to the living room, where she collapses onto the settee.

Pluto jumps up onto the arm and tilts his head. She focuses on him, his little face. Studies the way the length of his whiskers varies so she doesn’t have to think about everything that has just occurred. She stands and walks to the kitchen. Forcing herself to abandon thoughts of Emmit and Aidan, she prepares a dose of insulin then gathers the glucometer, test strips, lancing device, and cotton ball. Back in the living room, the brilliant colors of the Zuber panels smear into one another, and she blinks away tears.

“Sorry, little guy,” she says to Pluto as she uses the lancing device to prick a vein in his ear. He doesn’t flinch, just closes his eyes, tolerating the routine procedure. A moment later, the glucometer displays a reading that renders the insulin dose unnecessary. It’s silly, but this makes her feel a little better. That Pluto is settling in so well and his condition is stable is a far greater achievement than some whirlwind relationship with a narcissistic writer. She scoops Pluto up. Holding a cotton ball against the inside of his ear, she walks toward the hallway, wanting nothing more than to climb into bed.

As Saoirse places a foot on the first stair, a noise comes from outside. A glass bottle, exploding against the pavement. She stands another moment, foot poised, temples throbbing. Listening. When no other sound comes, she continues up the stairs. Aidan is gone. Emmit is gone. There are lots of people on the streets at night. Lots of noise. Soon, these sounds will fade beneath a cloak of sleep. Her mind will be wiped clean as thoroughly as a stretch of pavement dotted with dogwood blossoms after a summer rain.

She will not think of Emmit Powell as she lies, restless, in bed. She will not think of Aidan Vesper. Of Poe. Or Jonathan.

She will not think of Emmit Powell as she dreams.