Page 88 of Binding Their Hearts

Eventually Jay cleared the table, and still they sat and chatted. The last of the sunlight disappeared from the windows. Alice listened with half an ear, memories flitting back. Her grandfather hoisting her in the air so she could touch the lintel above the door for luck. Dad welcoming her grumpy self into his lap while the adults played gin rummy after dinner, because Mom’s lap was taken by her sleeping baby sister. Standing on a stepstool at the counter, plunking fat dollops of whipped cream on the slices of pumpkin pie her aunt cut.

She’d shut the door on all those moments. Severing herself from her family, she’d let Dad’s accident steal the happy times as much as the bad ones. Jay had been so eager this summer to clean the slate with his family. Maybe she needed to settle the old hurts too, so the places inside that felt hollow could fill up again.

“Alice?” Henry brushed her face, and the sudden silence in the room grew dense and heavy. “What’s wrong, dearest?”

She shook her head. Tears falling out of places that didn’t exist, for all the things she hadn’t noticed herself losing—no words could explain that. “I just need a minute.”

She fled the table, through the kitchen and out the back door. Wrapped her arms around herself immediately, because her light dress did not have the chops for blocking the wind. But the cold shook her out of the past, so she couldn’t curse it too much.

The door creaked behind her. She would have to apologize to Henry—no, not apologize, but communicate, somehow, that feeling part of something bigger than herself had sent her haring off into the freezing night. She’d promised not to let fear consume her, and she would keep that promise until the day she died.

A long winter coat appeared to her left, extended in a slender, feminine hand. Emma, wearing her own coat, said nothing as Alice slipped into the one on offer and buttoned the front.

“Thanks.” She tucked her hands up into the sleeves. Squares of yellow light dotted the other houses up and down their block. Maybe Emma had drawn the short straw. “I’m sorry. I feel silly.”

“Feeling silly isn’t what made you get up from the table.” The observation came in a quiet, comforting tone, without a wisp of judgment.

“No. That was just feeling. Just…” Spreading her arms out and up, she tried to encompass an immensity so vast that even the solar system couldn’t touch the edges of it. “Feeling.”

She let her arms fall. Her exhale formed a misty cloud of condensation. “Before I met Henry and Jay, I had kind of…”

Been a zombie? A robot? A robot zombie? She needed a way to say it that wouldn’t sound ridiculous the second it left her mouth.

Emma tucked her hands into her pockets. “Made yourself numb to living?”

Alice carefully didn’t turn her head, pretending the dormant plants and shed at the dark end of the yard were as fascinating as Emma seemed to find them. “Yeah. Big layoffs in Emotiontown. Shut down the factory, padlocked the gate.”

Emma’s breath formed thin clouds, too. “Before hosting the women for your wedding, I hadn’t invited anyone to stay at the house since Victor and Thomas—” She bent her head, bringing one hand to her throat. “Died. Since they died.”

Alice offered her hand, palm out, at her side.

Emma grasped it. She squeezed like she meant to pop Alice’s knuckles and cleared her throat. “It’s deceptively easy to let yourself freeze in one emotional moment. The more time that passes, the more difficult it is to reach the other side.”

“The ice just keeps getting thicker.”

“Yes. I had a feeling you might understand.”

Alice wiped her face on her coat sleeve. “Pretty sure I just melted a glacier out of my eyes.”

Emma’s gentle laugh rippled like bells on the wind. “I’d like to do that, I think. I’ve been remembering this year what living is like. How it feels to pay attention to other people and to be part of their thoughts.” She swung their hands, lightly, her grip no longer in danger of cutting off Alice’s circulation. “Thank you for this day, Alice. In the midst of beginning your life together, of feeling out the shape of it, you have made space for me and for William. I am grateful for your kindness and generosity.”

Alice swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “You’re going to make me cry again.”

“That’s all right. There are no rules about big feelings, save one.” Emma swayed with the wind, her eyes closed. “Let the people who care about you help you when you’re vulnerable.”

One of the hardest lessons to accept when she’d spent so many years believing the opposite—that the only reliable person in her life was her. “I’ve been learning that one bit by bit this year, too.”

Emma turned her head sideways, her eyes open, then faced the yard again. “Movement in the kitchen. They may come in search of us soon.”

She could’ve asked if Emma had volunteered to be the one to chase after her. But she didn’t need to, not really. Friends did that stuff for each other.

Alice tipped her face toward the sky and inhaled the crisp, cleansing air. They had dessert waiting. But she wanted something else now. And her lovers—husbands—were incredibly, astonishingly reliable about giving her what she needed when she remembered to ask. “I bet we could get Henry to make real hot chocolate, on the stove, with milk and melted chocolate. And big marshmallows.”

Emma patted her stomach. “I could make room for that.”

They could always make a place for the things that mattered.

Chapter forty-three

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