Special Episode: Sounds of Home
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Ellen sits on the wide windowsill in her bedroom, with her knees pulled up to her chest and her nose almost pressed against the foggy glass.
She was working on a drawing - a much better version of her last drawing of Jupiter, she’s pretty sure, since this time the bands of the weather layer don’t just look like flat stripes - but now it sits beside her on her bed, temporarily forgotten. Her eyes are resting on the dark golden leaves slowly, silently falling from the branches of the trees outside.
She had been watching the sidewalk before, hoping to see her dad coming up the street. She sorely wishes that he was home right now. He needs to be at the flower shop later than usual tonight, and she understands that, but - she really needs to talk to him.
She was watching the leaves so intently that her imagination was filling in the whispering, papery sounds of them falling, but now she blinks a few times and looks distractedly at the door of her room, hearing something else. Something real. A rush of faraway laughter.
She slowly drifts up from her thoughts, until all the sounds from inside the house suddenly reach her again at once. The TV is on downstairs, and has been for a while. Ellen can hear the faint sound of someone talking from it. In Spanish.
She gives a startled little jolt, abruptly remembering that the house isn’t empty just because her dad is at the shop. That’s how things were before, but not now.
Without thinking, Ellen pushes aside her colored pencils and her drawing, climbs across her bed, and silently steals out into the hallway. The soft noise from the TV, which floated into her thoughts like a daydream, grows a little louder as she stops to hover on the landing and peer down into the living room.
Her eyes fall on Gabby, who’s curled up in one corner of the couch. Wearing her velvety sage-green pajamas, but with her laptop on the coffee table in front of her and her usual glimmering spread of stuff around her.
Sometimes she apologizes for what she calls ‘spreading out so much’, but Ellen has always liked it. Around Gabby there’s usually a water bottle, a cup of coffee, a little snack, a pencil case, pens and highlighters, stacks of papers and printouts, her phone, half-filled notebooks, and whichever pieces of jewelry she’d taken off so she could type faster. Given Gabby’s taste, these things always glitter with beautiful colors and shiny surfaces, gleaming in the low light from the fire in a scattered, random way that Ellen’s eyes find very pleasing.
It draws her down the stairs, and Gabby turns to look at her in the firelight.
Ellen doesn’t think about her mom too much, but she does remember how things were before she moved out. Ellen had the constant, uneasy feeling that her mom hated being in the house, that she badly wanted to get out. She would even sleep all the way to one side of the bed, pressed to the very edge, like she wanted to be as far away from dad as possible. Like the two of them couldn’t get along anymore even when they were asleep.
But Gabby always seems so cozy and comfortable in the house. She’s curled up with one knee pulled up against her chest and her arm wrapped around it, but her shoulders are relaxed, her elbow resting against a couch cushion. There’s just something relaxed about her presence here, and that relaxes Ellen. Ellen has started to find the Spanish-speaking TV programs Gabby leaves on while she works relaxing, too. If those channels are on, it means Gabby is home, because she’s the only one who watches them.
Ellen pads quietly across the carpet, timidly drawing closer, then stops when she notices that Gabby is on the phone. She starts to back away, but Gabby catches her eye, smiles warmly, and reaches out for her as she says -
“Yes, that sounds fine. I sent the final version back to you, but tell the folks in the press department that I want better pull quotes than that. There are much stronger statements in the text than what they chose to highlight. They’re being shy on my behalf, and I won’t have that.”
“You’ve got it, captain,” says the voice on the other end of the line, which Ellen is now standing close enough to hear. “You’re going to get an earful about this, though. You’ll have to stand by everything you said if people get mad.”
“God forbid!” Gabby looks at Ellen and rolls her eyes, making her giggle. “Did Alix write those closing lines, by the way?”
“She did.”
“I thought that part was very well-expressed,” Gabby says approvingly. “I could tell it was her work.”
“Well-expressed? Oh, I’m telling her you said that. She might pass out, though, and we’ll have to file a report if it happens on City Hall property.”
“Anyways,” Gabby groan-laughs, “I have to run. Someone very important just walked into my office. Buenas noches.”
Gabby tosses her phone aside, then startles Ellen by throwing her arms around her and sweeping her up onto the couch. Ellen giggles in surprise, catching a glittering golden pinky ring before it can tumble to the floor.
“Listen to me, you!” Gabby cups Ellen’s face in her hands and looks at her sternly. “Never work for the government! It’s too many headaches! You’ll have to take too much Advil! Too much!”
Ellen lets out a breathless laugh, still catching her balance. “Why are you working so late on the weekend, Gabby?”
“Oh, I fell behind on my to-do list,” she sighs, taking the ring back and slipping it onto Ellen’s thumb. “There was some foolishness happening in Port Sitka, and I was forced to intervene before anyone could hurt themselves. If I look like an exhausted mess, that’s why.”
“No, you don’t look like that, you look so pretty!” Ellen says immediately and earnestly, watching the firelight gleam on Gabby’s cascade of dark hair and long lashes. “I was just thinking so!”
Gabby blinks a few times, smiles down at Ellen, then narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Are you about to ask me for permission for something your dad would say no to?”
“No!” Ellen insists. “I don’t have anything I want! Except - maybe could we make some hot chocolate? Please?”
The thought has been at the back of her mind for a while, and by now she’s become convinced that a really good cup of hot chocolate is exactly what’s needed to make her feel better.
“But we don’t have to,” she adds hastily. “If you’re busy-”
“No, no.” Gabby stands up and smiles down at Ellen, her bangles making a soft, musical jingling noise as she stretches her arms over her head. “There’s always time to make hot chocolate.”
Ellen eagerly bounds after Gabby towards the kitchen, then slows down to try and copy the way she walks. She has a graceful glide that Ellen wants for herself, although in the end she’s always more likely to go scrambling or sprinting somewhere.
She hovers around Gabby as she lights the stove and pours some milk out into a saucepan. Ellen’s dad usually makes hot chocolate with packets of powder, but Gabby buys hard, circular wedges of hot chocolate mix in a bright yellow box. She breaks a piece off, sets it to melt in the milk, and begins softly grinding it up with a wooden spoon. The little rhythmic sound is cozy compared to the blustering of the autumn wind against the kitchen windows.
Gabby’s eyes follow Ellen as she paces anxiously around the kitchen island.
“Ellen,” she says gently, turning to face her. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. What time is dad coming home tonight?”
Gabby watches her do another lap, then catches her beneath her arms and lifts her to sit on the kitchen island.
“Hey,” she says quietly, meeting Ellen’s gaze as she looks up at her in surprise. “I know you’re used to only talking about personal stuff with your dad, but - ya estoy aquí. You can talk to me, too. I’m happy to listen.”
Ellen blinks at Gabby, taken aback, then nervously bites her lip.
She always tried her hardest never to ask her mom for anything, especially not if she could get the same thing from her dad. She definitely didn’t ask to talk to her about her problems. It seemed like her mom had enough problems to deal with already.
And talking to her about it wouldn’t have helped, anyways. It would have made things worse. They never really understood each other.
But Gabby is gazing down at Ellen with a patient, encouraging smile, waiting for her to say something. Ellen anxiously rubs her elbow, not sure what to do. She really doesn’t want to do anything to annoy Gabby away. She doesn’t think she’s messed up on that so far - at least, Gabby’s given no sign that she has - and she really doesn’t want to mess up now, so it’s probably just safer to wait until dad gets home…
Gabby gently pinches her cheek when she doesn’t answer.
“It’s alright, El. No pressure.” She turns back to the stove, leaving Ellen perched on the kitchen island behind her. “You know, personally I don’t love it when people stare right at me while I tell them what I’m upset about. So I’ll just make this hot chocolate, and you tell me what’s going on if you feel like it. ¿Sí?”
“Okay…”
Ellen fidgets with her pajamas, watching Gabby add some honey to the steaming pot on the stove. She does feel better without searching eyes on her face, and the relaxed way Gabby leans her hip against the counter makes things feel better somehow. Her voice is soothing, too, as she hums softly to herself. Low and warm and quiet.
Ellen anxiously rubs her toes against her ankle until her sock nearly falls off, then blurts out -
“I - I feel really bad, because I forgot Emmett’s birthday.” She winces just to say it out loud, her heart twisting with anguished guilt. “He didn’t forget mine! You remember, don’t you? He came over here and we hung out all day! We had a water balloon fight, and he brought me flowers from the farm and a little cake he baked with his mom, and dad said we could watch a movie if it was over by 8:30, it was great! But - Emmett’s birthday was the day before yesterday, and I totally forgot. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even say anything.”
Gabby pauses, stealing a quick look over her shoulder at Ellen.
“I still haven’t said anything,” Ellen goes on in a breathless rush, before Gabby can answer. “What can I say to him now? I don’t know how to explain what happened! Dad said I should start writing important things down so I remember them, and it’s been helping, but I thought Emmett’s birthday - I couldn’t forget that, right? It was so important that I didn’t bother to write it down! And then I was wondering why he seemed sad at school, and when I got home I realized - because of me. But I can’t tell him it was so important to me that I forgot about it! He won’t think that makes any sense… and he’s told me himself that sometimes he worries since he’s quiet, people forget about him…”
She trails off nervously, twisting Gabby’s golden ring around her thumb.
Gabby thinks about that silently for a moment, pouring the hot chocolate out, and Ellen hastily adds - “I’m sorry, Gabby!”
“Oh, no need to be sorry to me,” Gabby says, sounding a little surprised by that. She turns around and presses a mug of hot chocolate into Ellen’s hands, then lets out a soft whistle as she lifts her own mug to blow the steam off of it. “That’s a tough one, El.”
Ellen pauses, her tear-filled eyes stopped just on the brink of overflowing. Suddenly she feels very grown up, sitting across from Gabby with her own mug. Like the ladies talking in coffee shops she walks past sometimes, leaning in together over their drinks, speaking confidentially to each other about what seems like very important business.
“It is, isn’t it?” she sighs, with a touch of drama, trying to sit up a little taller.
Gabby smiles behind her mug, but her expression is serious and thoughtful. She taps her gold-painted fingernails against the ceramic, then lets out a slow breath, her eyes full of sympathy.
“I know it feels awful to mess up like that, Ellen. But it’s all part of being a kid. One day you’ll be older and wiser, and when situations like this come along you’ll say to yourself - wait a minute. I know better. We’re not making this mistake again. And you won’t. You’ll write down a reminder about Emmett’s birthday, or whatever else it is that time. But you do have to make the mistakes, first. Otherwise how can you learn?”
Ellen absorbs that in solemn silence. A warm wave of reassurance begins to fall over her, but it’s stopped in its tracks by a deep stab of guilt.
“I just wish my mistake didn’t make Emmett sad,” she says softly, dropping her gaze to her cup of hot chocolate. “I don’t want him to ever be sad, not for one minute. He’s… I don’t want him to be sad.”
Gabby tilts her head to the side, watching her with understanding in her eyes.
“Hey, you can always try to make a mistake right,” she says, tapping Ellen’s nose with her fingertip. “Emmett knows it’s tough for you to remember things sometimes, so you could at least try to explain what happened. And why don’t you bring him a belated birthday gift at school next week?”
Ellen’s eyes widen in dismay, and she slaps a hand to her forehead.
“Oh, I should have saved my allowance this week! Why didn’t I? I only have twenty-five cents left… wait - no…” She looks up guiltily at Gabby. “I put it in the gumball machine at the sandwich shop.”
Gabby bites back a smile, then tries - “He brought you flowers from the farm, right? So why don’t you pick him some flowers from your dad’s garden?”
Ellen blinks in surprise. “Do boys like being given flowers?”
“What would stop boys from liking flowers?”
Ellen can’t think of an answer, so she brightens up, fixing Gabby with a hopeful smile. “Yeah, I could do that! And tell him I’m sorry when I see him at school…”
She trails off, realizing that she doesn’t have school until Tuesday, because it’s a long weekend. That’s an agonizing amount of time to wait to apologize to Emmett. She’s never wished for a weekend to be over faster so she could get back to school, until now. Even spending one night with this much guilt wrapped around her heart, wondering what Emmett must be thinking - it sounds unbearable.
Ellen’s face falls, and she lowers her head to hide it. Gabby takes a sip of hot chocolate, watching her thoughtfully.
“Tell you what, El,” she says abruptly. “Why don’t we go to the farm right now? I can drive you.”
Ellen lifts her wide eyes to Gabby, shocked at the offer. “What? Really?”
“Yeah, why not? It’s not that late. We should just change out of our pajamas first. You should get your rain jacket, too.”
Ellen wrings her hands together, shaking her head. “No, but Gabby, it’s really far, and I don’t want to be a bother!”
“You’re never a bother.” Gabby turns around to make sure the stove is off, smiling encouragingly over her shoulder at Ellen as she climbs down from the counter. “I’m all done with work for the night. We should probably pick those flowers before it gets too cold and they all disappear, anyways.”
Ellen stares up at her in startled confusion, then suddenly finds herself reeling with deeply-felt affection. She almost doesn’t believe her.
“What about the hot chocolate?” she asks timidly.
Gabby taps her nose with her fingertip again, making her bangles jingle, then reaches up to open a cabinet. “I’ll get some thermoses.”
~~~~
Ellen finishes up her drawing of Jupiter on the drive there, then stares nervously out of the window, watching the moonlit fields and meadows glide by.
She rearranges the flowers she and Gabby picked from the garden over and over again, until they look just right to her. The bunch isn’t as beautiful as the ones her dad and Jamie and Des make at the shop, but it’s the best she can do. At least she found some floral twine in one of the kitchen drawers to bind them all together.
“That looks nice, Ellen,” Gabby yawns, her soft voice revealing her smile. “Don’t change it around too many times, or you’ll start losing petals.”
“No, I know! I think that’s it.” Ellen gazes down at the clusters of creamy white, bright yellow, and soft blue petals, then knots the twine around the stems. “Oh - that’s the turn right there, Gabby!”
Gabby turns the car onto the low, winding road, then draws it up to a stop in front of the farmhouse. To Ellen’s enormous relief the lights are all still on, pouring a golden glow out into the night, illuminating the faded green paint on the walls. She lets out the breath she was holding, rushing to unstrap herself.
She steps out into a cold and clear night, full of the taste of damp woodlands and rain-drizzled fields. The grass gives a frosty crunch beneath her shoes.
Gabby gets out of the car, her breath puffing on the autumn air, her long hair waterfalling down from her knitted beanie. Ellen catches her hand, then stops in surprise when Gabby doesn’t move.
“Ellen,” she says quietly, her shoulders tensing up, “I think - I think I’ll just wait here while you talk to him, okay?”
“What?” Ellen blinks hard at her, more than a little startled. “Why?”
Gabby glances nervously at the farmhouse, then over her shoulder at the road winding off into the darkness.
“We’re just pretty far away from everything, and I haven’t met Emmett’s parents. I know they like you, but I - I don’t know what, um - what they - how they’ll feel about - me.”
“Oh, no - they’re really nice, and dad’s told them all about you!” Ellen insists, totally in earnest, a little confused. “Of course they’ll like you! Why wouldn’t they?”
Gabby nibbles her lip, then falls into step beside Ellen. “Okay, then we’ll just - okay.”
Ellen lets go of Gabby’s hand to rush ahead the last few feet and knock at the door. The quiet is instantly broken by the muffled barking of one of the dogs, which Emmett jokingly calls the doorbell.
After a moment the door opens, and Emmett’s mom is staring down at her in surprise. Her russet hair is in two waist-long pigtails, her head covered with a pale indigo bandana, and her fingers covered with flour. She’s holding back one of the dogs with her foot.
“Ellen!” she says warmly, wiping her hands on her light blue jeans. She freezes as her eyes lift to Gabby. “Oh - oh!”
Her floured fingers fly up to her mouth. Gabby, who’s hovering a foot or so behind Ellen, watches nervously as a shy smile lights up Emmett’s mom’s face.
“Oh! The City Manager is at my house! I’ve seen you on TV, Ms. Soto!” She extends a hand to Gabby, then quickly takes it back to wipe more flour off of it, her freckled cheeks reddening. “Oh, no, and our house is a mess, and I’m a mess!”
Gabby lets out a quiet, surprised laugh, then comes a step closer. “Please don’t worry about that! I only just changed out of my pajamas, myself.”
“But what’s-?”
“We’re here for something super important!” Ellen interrupts breathlessly, leaning up to catch Sylvia’s eye. “I forgot Emmett’s birthday! I brought him some birthday flowers…”
She trails off, suddenly feeling silly clutching the bundle of flowers. But Emmett’s mom gives her a surprised smile, her eyes softening.
“Is he here?” Ellen asks, slightly shamefaced, her cheeks burning hot.
“I’m not sure where he is, which usually means he’s out with the animals. Hard to keep that one indoors. You can go straight through, Ellen. Ms. Soto, won’t you come in and-?”
“Just Gabby is fine.”
“Oh! Really? Okay, I - just come into the kitchen and I’ll get you something - it’s not normally this much of a mess! Although I should warn you, I might have an earful for you about how hard it is for small farms to get certified as organic by the government…”
“I’m always happy to hear about local concerns,” Gabby says brightly, following her inside. “And that’s a topic I’m not fully informed on, which makes it doubly as welcome.”
Ellen loses track of their conversation as she rushes ahead. She hurries through the warm little kitchen, through the back garden, and out onto the farmland behind it.
The night always seems so big to her out here, on what she privately thinks of as Emmett’s farm. Endless skies, scattered with endless stars. She stops for a second to breathe it in, gazing upwards in wonder, her heart pounding in her throat. Little drops of rain flutter down to kiss her face as she stares up.
After a minute she automatically pulls the hood of her rain jacket up over her hair, then gazes around. The fields are dark, but Ellen knows that they’re planted with onions and beets, carrots and winter squash, rows and rows of other things. She knows Emmett had a hand in planting it all.
The air is cold, and so is the rain. She can hear it falling quietly out across the fields, can see clusters of wavering lights on the distant hills. The leaves and flowers growing quietly around her shiver under the falling droplets. The soil sends up a sweet, rich smell of earth, enough to fill the open air.
Across from her there’s a tall, thin slant of golden light cutting through the darkness. The open door to the barn.
Ellen slows down as she gets closer, her cheeks starting to burn again. She nervously slips her fingers into the golden light and draws the door further open.
She finds herself peeking in on a still, quiet picture. The golden glow of the lamps shines softly on the heaps of yellow hay, and the shiny amber backs of the drowsy horses. The muffled tapping of the rain on the roof fills up the air inside, splashing on the two brimming tubs of water just outside the far wall of the barn. Ellen has been to the farm enough times now that it’s a comforting, reassuring sound, full of familiarity.
When Ellen leans in a large ginger cat in the loft lifts her head and opens her eyes, but no one else moves.
Ellen’s eyes find him after a moment. He’s leaning against one of the horses, resting his head against her neck, absent-mindedly smoothing one calloused hand up and down her nose in slow, soothing strokes. She’s the one who gets nervous in rainy weather, Ellen remembers abruptly, but she seems okay right now. She’s half asleep beneath Emmett’s very gentle fingers.
Molly is fast asleep by his feet, resting her chin on the toe of his muddy boot.
He doesn’t even seem to realize she’s there. He’s clearly lost in thought, gazing across the barn at nothing in particular. He has his back to Ellen, and he doesn’t seem to have heard her come in.
“Emmett,” she calls softly.
He lifts his head, startled, then blinks hard and rubs his eyes when they fall on her.
“Ellen?” comes his quiet, murmuring voice from the half-darkness of the barn, like someone not sure if they’re awake or dreaming.
Ellen has a lot she wants to say, and she doesn’t want to wake up the animals, so she blurts out - “Can we talk out here?”
Emmett crosses through the low golden lamplight to join her outside in the cold and dark. He’s still half lit by it, though, outlined in its glow as he stops just outside of the half-open door.
He always looks like sunshine, Ellen thinks to herself fondly.
He must have been working today. He’s in warm clothes beneath his sun-bleached flannel. His olive-green shirt is ringed with dried sweat beneath his arms, and around his collar, and the faint sunburn always on his cheeks is glowingly renewed. His jeans are just as spattered with clay-red mud as his boots. He has his beanie pulled low over his windblown russet hair, but the glow from the barn shines through it, illuminating all the soft stray strands clustered around his face. The cold air has the curious effect of making his hazel eyes shimmer as he looks down at her.
He’s chewing his gum a little faster now that she’s here.
“What’s-?” he begins, then breaks off sharply as Ellen throws her arms around him.
“Emmett! I’m so sorry I forgot your birthday! I can’t believe myself! It sounds stupid, but it was so important to me that I didn’t think I could forget! So I didn’t do any of the things I normally do to make sure I don’t forget stuff!”
She draws back anxiously, then thrusts the flowers into his hands so fast that it startles him. The careful arrangement gets all messed up, and - were the petals all crushed like that before? Did she do that without realizing it? She must have.
“I won’t do it again!” she goes on desperately, looking up from the ruined flowers to find his eyes with hers. “I know now that there’s nothing so important that I can’t forget it, because otherwise I never would’ve forgotten this!”
Emmett stares at her for a long moment, then slowly looks down at the half-crushed flowers in his hands. A small smile slowly rounds out his cheeks, making Ellen’s fluttering heart finally feel some gasp of relief.
“These are for me?” he asks softly.
“Yes, and so is this.” Ellen hands the folded-up paper to him, then the bag from the gas station. “There’s some ice cream in the bag! The gross raspberry kind that you like.”
He looks up again, his eyebrows dropping low with indignance. “Shoot, Ellen, I’ve told you a thousand times you can’t say it’s gross when you ain’t never tried it!”
“Yeah, no thank you, never! Gabby treated us to it, since I didn’t have any of my allowance left. But the paper is all from me!” Ellen breathlessly gives it a tap with her finger. “It’s a drawing of Jupiter. I didn’t draw it specifically for your birthday, but I wanted to give it to you once I remembered! I think it’s my best one so far.”
Emmett looks down at the drawing for a long moment, his mouth twisted slightly to the side. The little smile returns as he lifts his eyes to Ellen’s face.
“Thanks. I like it.”
“We can have a party or something later, too,” she promises earnestly, overcome with relief at seeing the expression on his face. “Or another water balloon fight. Whatever you want.”
“Okay.” Emmett finds the plastic spoon in the bag with the ice cream, looks at it for a second, then suggests - “Should we have the ice cream together?”
Ellen tries her best not to make a face. “The - raspberry ice cream? But it’s - purple. And pink. It sets off all my alarms.”
Emmett’s eyebrows crinkle up in confusion, but he lets out a soft laugh, dropping to sit down. “You might like it if you just try it.”
Ellen very much doubts that, but she sits down next to Emmett as he settles himself under the roof overhang, in the dry warmth of the scattered hay. Ellen settles down beside him and puts her back to the wall of the barn as he opens up the ice cream. He sets the flowers aside very carefully, gently setting them where they won’t be crushed by accident.
“Are the yellow ones buttercups?”
“Late bloomers, yeah!” Ellen looks with defeated eyes at the ragged flowers. “They looked better before I got here. They were beautiful! I wouldn’t have picked you sad flowers.”
Emmett breathes out another laugh. “It’s okay, I know buttercups are beautiful. They grow all around the far edge of the farm. I should take you there to see them sometime.”
“Oh!” Ellen bites her lip, crestfallen, then reaches for the bouquet. “Okay, let me just take these back, then. I shouldn’t have bothered with this dumb thing - especially if you can get better ones anytime you-”
“No way,” Emmett says immediately, protectively drawing the little bunch closer to himself. “You gave ‘em to me, they’re mine. What’s more they’re about the prettiest buttercups I’ve ever seen, so there.”
Again, Ellen finds herself staring at him with warm relief. She opens her mouth to argue with that obvious lie, then changes her mind.
“So?” She smiles tentatively at him, picking at her shoelaces. “How’s it feel to be twelve?”
Emmett pulls a face, poking at the ice cream with the spoon. “I don’t know. Different. My bones hurt sometimes. My mom said it’s ‘cause I’m growing. I keep having to get new shoes. And a lot of other stuff is suddenly weird, and - feels - weird.”
He ends that sentence awkwardly, like he didn’t say half of it. Ellen waits, watching him curiously, but he doesn’t explain.
“You make it sound super exciting,” she answers, wincing. “I can’t wait. So glad that’ll be me, soon enough.”
Emmett winces deeply, too. “Mom keeps sayin’ what’s happening is ‘perfectly natural for a growing boy’, so maybe you’ll be spared.”
“I hope so! You make it sound awful.”
Emmett lets out a little laugh, but helps himself to more of the pink and purple ice cream instead of answering.
“No, not completely awful,” he says, after a long moment. “Parts of it feel really, um - not awful at all. It’s just I - I never know what I’m gonna get hit with, you know?”
He says it in such a despairing, grown-up voice that an irrepressible laugh bubbles up in Ellen, and infects Emmett. She watches him, a warm glow enfolding her heart at the sight of his smile.
“Were you mad at me, Emmett?” She winds her arms around her knees, still feeling a little guilty. “Is that why you barely talked to me at school?”
Emmett shakes his head, carefully not looking at her. “No, I just haven’t been talkin’ much to anybody, because-”
He stops abruptly as his voice, which has gotten deeper lately, suddenly cracks, and he sounds much more like he did when they first met. Ellen blinks hard, then works very hard not to laugh.
“Because that keeps happening,” Emmett finishes miserably, swiping a hand over his blushing face, looking like he wants to die.
“Oh, okay,” Ellen says, her voice wavering as she tries to hold it together. “As long as you’re not mad at me.”
She really, really expected him to say, I won’t be if you try the raspberry ice cream. She saw his eyes drop to it like he was thinking of saying exactly that, but instead he just answers -
“No, I’m not mad at you.”
“I would totally get it if you are. I’ve been so mad at myself.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner, then? Once you realized? At school, or something?”
Ellen hangs her head in anguish.
“Just - just felt so bad,” she whispers unhappily. “Was trying to think of how to explain that I wouldn’t ever forget about you. I just forgot the date I needed to remember. But you know that, right?”
There’s only silence from Emmett. Eventually Ellen looks over at him with tentative, searching eyes, and he quickly glances away.
Ellen nibbles her lip, then snatches the ice cream and the spoon from his hands. “Fine, you know what? I’ll try it.”
Emmett’s eyelashes flutter as he blinks hard in surprise. “Hey, it’s fine, you don’t have to-”
He breaks off as Ellen braces herself and puts a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. He waits, watching her as she considers.
“Oh, it’s good,” she blurts out, taken by surprise.
“Really?” Emmett lets out a startled, victorious laugh. “I finally got you to say that? Well, that about does it. This is officially the best birthday ever. Thanks for that, El.”
“Stop it!” Ellen giggles, sharply aware of him beaming happily at her as she takes another spoonful of ice cream. “Qué ridículo.”
She feels his warm hazel eyes still lingering on her a moment later, with an unfamiliar expression in them. But he’s looking away by the time she turns her head to look back at him. She hands him over the pint, and he helps himself to another scoop, staining his lips darker with purple ice cream.
Ellen hesitates uncertainly. She’s getting a vague, instinctive feeling that Emmett feels nervous or awkward or something, being around her right now. It’s never been a problem between them before, so she doesn’t know where it’s coming from. His shoulders are all tensed up all of a sudden, and he’s fidgeting with the ice cream spoon.
They both fall silent. There’s just a little wind, enough to make all the plants in the fields add their whisper to the rain.
“You smell nice,” Emmett blurts out suddenly, then blushes and looks at her with a bewildered, mortified expression on his face. Like he doesn’t know why he said that any more than she does.
“Okay,” Ellen laughs affectionately, baffled. “So what should we do for your birthday? We have to do something.”
Emmett - looking infinitely relieved that she didn’t have much to say about what he said - settles his shoulders against the barn wall again, gathering more ice cream into the spoon. “I don’t know. This right here is pretty good.”
Ellen turns to smile at him with fond exasperation. Some of the petals from the crushed flowers rise up into the air, sweeping around him up into the sky. She wonders where her drawing went, and spots a little square of paper poking out of the pocket of his jeans with relief. She was worried it would blow away, but he’s got it somewhere safe already.
He hands her the ice cream and catches the flowers before they can blow away, too. Very softly and gently, he tucks them safely into his flannel, where they can’t get away. Feeling them with his fingertips as he does. He’s always got to feel everything with his hands, Ellen has noticed. Even the animal tracks they find sometimes hunting around the farm, even though sometimes that messes the prints up if the mud is soft.
Speaking of which -
“Hey, I took pictures of some tracks by my house that I’ve been saving to show you,” Ellen tells him, pulling the phone out of her pocket. “Dad said I can use the emergency phone if it’s for science!”
“Oh, I took some for you, too,” Emmett says eagerly. “And a picture of a bird I never seen around here before.”
The awkwardness breaks away, melting into an eager discussion about the tracks they’d found. One buttercup petal has caught on the glossy russet hair escaping from Emmett’s beanie, and Ellen’s eyes keep darting back to it for some reason, but other than that everything feels normal between them again.
When the ice cream is gone Ellen abruptly remembers that she left Gabby waiting for her in the farmhouse. Emmett gets up right away when she tells him that, offering her a hand to help her to her feet.
Gabby was just coming outside to get Ellen, as it turns out. She pauses in the kitchen doorway, smiling warmly when she sees their two happy faces.
“We should get home, El,” she calls softly.
Ellen’s shoes are muddy from crossing the rainy stretch between the house and the barn, so they all go around the side of the farmhouse to get back to the car. Gabby walks ahead of her and Emmett, leaving them plenty of space.
“So - was it a good birthday?” Ellen asks quietly. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he whispers back, sounding like he means it, busy putting a new stick of gum into his mouth. “Only real bad part was when my voice did that right in front of you. I’m glad that shit isn’t affecting my trumpet playing, at least. That was bad before and it’s still bad now.”
Ellen giggles, full of overwhelming warmth for him, grateful for the warmth she sees in his hazel eyes as he looks down at her. The buttercup petal is still caught in his hair. She reaches up and gently takes it out, then suddenly, impulsively leans up on her tiptoes, balancing herself with a handful of his flannel shirt. The hood of her rain jacket slips down from her hair as she gives him a kiss on his sunburned cheek.
Emmett freezes, then stares down at her with wide, shy eyes when she falls back onto her feet. A startled smile is turning up his lips, and his cheeks are twice as red as they were before.
He starts chewing his gum really fast.
Her cheeks burning, Ellen glances at Gabby, and blushes even deeper when she realizes that Gabby saw everything. She’s leaning against the car, waiting for Ellen to catch up, but she can easily see them from there.
Ellen rushes off to meet her, stealing one glance back at Emmett. Her eyes fall on his cheek, and grow very wide. Her lips must be stained from the raspberry ice cream, because she left a print.
“Emmett,” she whispers urgently, pointing to his cheek.
He glances at his reflection in the window, sees the problem, and quickly wipes it off onto his fingers. He gazes down at his fingers for a second, then looks up at Ellen, still just standing there.
“Bye!” she calls out, waving to him.
He waves back, but Ellen is already rushing away, reeling. Some sensation she’s never felt before is taking her over, making her heart beat hard and flutter wildly, pounding in her ears. She’s blushing, too, and for no reason - oh, ridiculous! What’s wrong with her? It’s sort of like how she felt gazing up at the stars earlier, but different…
She fixes Gabby with pleading eyes as she breathlessly joins her at the car. For no reason she can explain, she blurts out -
“Don’t tell dad! You won’t, Gabby, will you?”
“Our little secret,” Gabby laughs affectionately, pulling open the car door. “Come on, let’s go home.”
It’s some time before Ellen can recover even a little bit. Once she calms down, she finds herself feeling surprisingly, glowingly good.
This, she thinks, with certainty in her heart, I won’t forget. I’ll remember tonight forever.
She can recall with perfect clarity how Emmett stared at her as she rushed away down the path. She hasn’t lost one detail, at least not yet.
She sits lost in thought for a while, then finds herself staring gratefully at Gabby. She feels infinitely better, and if Gabby hadn’t taken her here she’d have been miserable until she got to see Emmett. Gabby hasn’t even tried to talk to her while she’s clearly trying to do some thinking. She’s turned on some soft music instead. A Pablo Rozas song that she likes, which has had Ellen relaxing and growing drowsy in the backseat without even realizing it.
“Bienvenida la Luminosidad…” Gabby sings along softly, not realizing yet that Ellen has stirred from her thoughts to watch her.
Moving impulsively again, Ellen leans up towards the front of the car, flings her arms around Gabby’s shoulders, and gives her a tight hug.
Gabby breaks into a surprised smile, squeezes Ellen’s arm with her fingers before she falls back into her seat.
Ellen takes a deep breath, then puts her burning cheek against the cold glass of the window.
“I had an interesting chat with Emmett’s mom,” Gabby says, glancing at Ellen in the rearview. “Unfortunately the problem she was talking about is a federal issue, but it’s good for me to speak with our local farmers directly. I should do it more often.”
“It is?” Ellen asks with half-closed eyes, remembering suddenly how far past her bedtime it is. “You should?”
Gabby begins to explain, and Ellen’s thoughts drift off, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier. Gabby’s voice is quiet but musical. It always sounds like she’s telling a story, no matter what she’s talking about. Ellen smiles to herself, settling her cheek more comfortably against the car door. She can picture her bedroom, her cozy bed and warm pajamas waiting for her.
Sometime later she’s distantly aware of her seatbelt gently being undone, whispering voices around her. Strong arms close around her - dad, she knows it somehow - and lift her out of the car. She’s only half-awake as he carries her inside, if that, but she snuggles up a little closer to him. Vaguely aware of Gabby’s voice saying something, and then her dad laughing softly.
She’s all the way back asleep before he even puts her into bed.
~~~~
Ellen startles awake in the middle of the night. She lays still in the dark silence of her bedroom, confused and alarmed. What woke her up?
After a moment of careful listening, something reaches her ears. Raised voices from downstairs. Her dad, and - Gabby.
Ellen’s heart ices over. Memories flash through her head of the fights between her mom and dad that sometimes woke her up in the middle of the night before. Eventually those were all part of why her mom moved out, and that was okay, but -
The thought of Gabby moving out has a wild, powerful effect on Ellen. Suddenly she’s trembling, breathing so hard she can barely get any actual air.
She has to stop this somehow.
She stumbles out of bed and rushes out into the hallway in her pajamas. Only the low lights are on in the living room, and the fire is burning down to embers. But light is pouring out from the kitchen.
Without a plan, Ellen rushes down the stairs and straight into the kitchen, then freezes where she is, staring.
The kitchen table is full of plates of food, most of it already eaten. A cheese plate with glittering pieces of fruit, half of some kind of roast, olive oil crackers and little bowls of sauces.
Her dad and Gabby are seated at the kitchen table in the low golden light, leaning in together and laughing. Their hands are clasped together on the table, between two mugs of some warm drink that’s giving off sweet-smelling steam.
They both look up when Ellen comes rushing into the kitchen.
“Oh, see what you did, Kent?” Gabby laughs, swatting his shoulder. “Laughing that loudly at this hour! I’m surprised the neighbors aren’t over here to complain!”
Ellen falls back a step as her dad pushes his glasses back up his nose and looks down at her. She’s definitely not supposed to be out of bed at this hour.
“Ellen,” he says sternly, beckoning for her. “You’re out of bed!”
Ellen anxiously comes closer, then giggles in surprise as he catches her by her waist and pulls her up onto his lap.
“I guess you’ll just have to have a snack, then,” he tells her, pulling one of the plates closer. “Look at this, you see this beautiful cheese plate Gabby helped me make? You want me to cut you a piece of the roast?”
Ellen, still reeling with relief and surprised to find herself so hungry, eats some whipped lemon feta on the olive oil crackers, some tender meat, and a few crisp grapes, then curls up drowsily against her dad’s chest. He and Gabby have been talking all the while, laughing more quietly now. Ellen is only half awake, half listening.
“Okay, but seriously,” her dad is saying, “How’d you find out that was happening in Port Sitka?”
“Jamie and Aiden tipped me off. They’re out there camping for the weekend.”
“They just happened to be there. Just in time to warn you.”
“That’s right. They went with Noah and Ralph. Quite honestly I’m surprised the trouble was completely unrelated to Ralph! I’ve been so careful to avoid ever asking what exactly it is he does for work, but last week he was waiting for Aiden to finish up in the Archives, and he was reading 150 Questions For A Guerilla. In City Hall, Kent! He was reading that in City Hall! In Aiden’s office, but still!”
“Don’t know what that is, but knowing Ralph, that sounds right to me,” comes the laughing answer.
“When I asked him what he thought he was doing he said ‘a refresher read’, which was a massive misunderstanding of my question, but - anyway, the point is all that business in Port Sitka will probably be wrapped up soon. I could only do so much from here, so I’m not sure how things will go over the rest of the weekend. We’ll see.”
“So you’re what, waiting for Jamie and Aiden to report back to you about it? Is that normal City Hall protocol? For the archivist and his boyfriend to handle something like that?” There’s a short silence, and then - “There’s something you’re not telling me, Gabs, isn’t there? Some secret you’re keeping. I just hope you know I’m going to get it out of you sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now.”
“Oh, we’ll - we’ll see about that,” Gabby laughs, sounding a little startled.
“Is that a challenge, angel?”
Ellen smiles drowsily to herself, feeling the warmth of the fire and her dad, the warmth of the hot food she ate, the warmth in the voices around her. The sounds of home have been unfamiliar since Gabby moved in. Still, Ellen likes it better this way. It’s nice, all the laughter.
But her mind is, as always, already moving onto other things, and somehow she falls asleep thinking about the raspberry print on Emmett’s cheek.
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