Page 50 of Beneath the Poet's House

They are in the living room, Saoirse holding a cup of now-lukewarm tea Emmit had made her and contemplating his reactions to what she’s told him, how he berated himself for giving her drugs and alcohol—It doesn’t matter that you didn’t tell me about your diagnosis, I shouldn’t have offered you pills anyway!—and how he sat quietly, staring into the emptyfireplace, when she summarized some of Jonathan’s less heinous offenses. The whole afternoon, his support, is almost enough to make her forget that he’d simply shown up on her doorstep. Almost.

She places her tea on the coffee table. “Emmit, why were you at my house? When I was upset and opened the door, you were already here.”

The crooked smile animates his face. “I had to bring you something,” he says. He digs into his pocket and comes out with a navy velvet jewelry box. Saoirse’s body goes cold. Emmit opens it, and she exhales a quiet breath of relief. Of course there wouldn’t have been an engagement ring in the box. That would have been too impulsive, even for Emmit. There’s something small and flat nestled against the velvet partition. Emmit’s fingers obscure the object, but a moment later, a silvery-gray charm dangles from the end of a chain in front of her face.

“Is that—” she starts, catching sight of the charm’s unusual shape.

“It is,” Emmit replies and releases the clasp. “And you’re never going to believe this, but I was right. This charm is at least one hundred and seventy-seven years old.”

Saoirse looks at him, eyes wide. “So, it’s hers, then. Sarah’s. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Emmit shrugs, but there’s reverent disbelief on his face, as if he cannot believe it either. “Levi, my contact with the historical society, he connected me to the antiques appraiser they use. They confirmed the jewelry’s age and authenticity. As for whether it was Sarah’s, my inclination is to go with the simplest explanation. Sarah was known to wear a coffin charm around her neck. The charm was not recovered with her posthumous belongings, and neither has it been held with her papers at the Athenæum or in any other museum. We were on her former property when we found it.” He shrugs again. “If the coffin fits, I guess you should wear it?”

“But,” Saoirse says, bringing her hand to her throat as Emmit clasps the charm around her neck, “surely your friend felt this had historical significance. Why isn’t it in a museum now?”

Emmit’s mouth twitches mischievously, and he narrows his eyes. “Levi’s a good writer but often too busy to send out his work. I helped him cut through some red tape a few months back and get a story of his published inGranta. He owed me a favor.” He moves from his seat beside her on the settee, slides onto the coffee table, and looks at her appraisingly. “Do you like it? Because it suits you. That’s why I was coming over here. Because I couldn’t wait to see what you looked like wearing it.”

Saoirse fingers the charm at her throat again. For a moment—just a moment—she thinks she hears the antique phone from the séance ringing in the basement.Are you here, Sarah?Saoirse wants to ask.Is this your necklace? And if so, are you okay with me wearing it?

“It’s beautiful,” she admits. “But don’t you think—”

Emmit shushes her. “I think it’s meant to be on your neck. Much more so than on some cold shelf in a museum.”

“Isn’t it a little—”Macabre?she thinks. “Strange?” she asks instead.

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”

She has a feeling this is a quote from a poem of Poe’s in which the narrator moons over one sad-faced, ill-fated maiden or another. Whoelsewould Emmit be quoting? She’s starting to wonder if his interest in Poe is more like an obsession. “Okay,” she says. “Well, thank you. It’s unlike any gift I’ve ever been given.”

Emmit beams. “I’m glad you like it.” For someone as masterful with words as Emmit is, Saoirse’s surprised he doesn’t realize that this isn’t what she said.

Saoirse fidgets, trying to ignore the unnatural feel of the chain around her neck. “How’s the writing been coming?” she asks, anxious to move on from both her troubled past and the necklace.

He shakes his head, eyes cast downward, and laughs in a way that suggests it’s going better than he ever could have imagined. “I wrote eight thousand words last night,” he says. He takes her hand and pulls her up from the settee. “Saoirse, this novel is going to be better thanVulture Eyes. And I don’t just think that. Iknowit. Though, I’m a long way from sending it off to my editor for a second opinion.” He starts toward the door from the living room to the back hallway but stops halfway and turns to face her. “Or, a third opinion, I guess I should say. I’m hoping that, once it’s finished, you’ll be the first one to read it.”

“I’d be happy to,” she says. She stands, follows him out of the living room, and up the stairs. At the top, Emmit turns in the direction of her bedroom.

“The writing, it’s like air,” he says. “Like water. Likeyou. It sustains me.”

Inside her room, he passes her bed and walks to the slider. He opens it, steps onto the balcony, and gestures for her to join him. Together, they look out at the darkening sky and the lights popping on all over the city.

The statue on the dome of the statehouse glints like liquid gold, and a pair of crows caw harshly from the trees above the cemetery still clinging to the last of their leaves. Emmit takes her hand. “Saoirse,” he says, and at the twinge in his voice, she looks up into his face. There’s no flash of the half smile, no jumping eyebrows. “Can I ask you something? Something else about your marriage?”

Chapter 30

Saoirse refrains from flinching and tries to smile. “Okay.”

“It’s just that, Jonathan was wrong to pressure you about having a baby after you’d shared your feelings with him, don’t get me wrong. But do you—”

“I didn’t just ‘share my feelings with him,’” Saoirse says, cutting him off, then forces herself to take a breath. If Emmit wants to discuss her marriage in more depth, she will not get upset or angry. He’s asking because he wants to know her. Truly know her. Because he cares.

“It’s not like he and I never discussed it,” she says more slowly, relieved she’s gotten control of herself. “It’s not like I waited until after we got married to drop this bomb on him that I didn’t want children. Even before I was diagnosed, I was lukewarm on the subject, and he knew I didn’t want to riskdyingin order to have a baby.” Emmit is studying her intently, hanging on her every word, so she continues.

“Six yearsafter we were married, he brought it up again. By then, there were a million other things wrong with our relationship. I thought he was joking. I hadn’t wanted to risk death by having a baby with Jonathan when things weregood. Why would I give up my life so that a man who treated me like an empty vessel for his ideas could have a child? After enduring years of his bullshit, he was lowering me to thestatus of a breeding cow to be sent to the slaughterhouse when he was through with me? No, thank you.

“I dragged him to doctors’ offices. I made him listen to the statistics. At this point, some part of me must have thought something of our relationship could be salvaged. I was still trying to make him see reason. But he wouldn’t let up. Eventually, it started feeling like he didn’t care whether I lived or died. The only thing that mattered to him was that I submitted to his desire to have a child.”

She pauses and looks out over the tombstones in the cathedral’s burial ground, thinks, as she often did back then, of her name carved into a slab of enduring granite, whether Jonathan would bring their child to the cemetery in which she was laid to rest. She shudders, and Emmit wraps his arms around her.

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