Page 3 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“My dad also says that he needs a kick, right in the ass,” she confessed. “My parents have been pretty patient but it’s wearing thin. The Bank of Dad is now closed, permanently, and he’s not allowed to live at home. But that’s normal for a guy his age.”

“How old is he?” I asked. Seven years before at the age of eighteen, I had left for college and I had gone home only once. I wondered what her idea of normal was.

“He’s twenty-nine,” she said, and I must have looked surprised or maybe disgusted. “He hasn’t lived with them in years,” she quickly added. “But they let him know that it’s definitely not an option anymore. They took him off their cell phone plan and they don’t pay his insurance.”

“Is he homeless?”

“No!” she told me. “He has an apartment. He used to, anyway, with Mary Evelyn, but now he’s staying in my basement for a while. Not for too long, just until he can figure all this out.”

Uh huh. “Well, that’s convenient when you need a ride from him, and it sounds like he has time on his hands to help you.”

“He holds down jobs,” she continued to defend him. “He was even going for his PhD, but…”

Unfortunately, that hadn’t worked out. He’d quit before he’d started to write the dissertation, since his heart wasn’t really in it (and in her opinion, he’d been trying to prolong his education in order to push back the start date on real life even further).

Post-academia, none of his career choices had really panned out, either.

He’d gone to work at what had sounded like a promising business, but she had changed her bullish opinion on its chances of success once she’d researched the founder and discovered his history of two bankruptcies and a conviction for fraud.

Unsurprisingly, that company had failed.

So had the next place her brother chose to work, which folded quietly without any severance for the employees.

Lately, he’d been employed remotely for a business located in the Caribbean, but when they’d wanted him onsite? “His girlfriend Mary Evelyn said no way, she wasn’t moving there,” the woman huffed. “She really stifled him.”

“Too bad.”

“In the end, she was right, because the company closed up shop within six months,” she admitted. “Not that any of these problems were actually his fault.”

Uh huh. Didn’t sound like he’d helped, though. “So he’s nearing thirty, he’s a failed PhD candidate, he just got dumped because his girlfriend thought he wasn’t in her league, he’s never had a job that lasted, and he’s living in his sister’s basement.”

“Holy shit.” Now the woman rubbed her forehead, like maybe I’d given her a headache. “Holy shit. Yeah, all of that is correct. If you met him, though, you’d see that he’s not some kind of nutter. He’s a really good guy.”

Sure.He sounded—

Another employee in scrubs had come out of the back examination rooms and she and the receptionist had a whispered confab. All eyes in the waiting area focused on them and all conversations ceased, including ours.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re really sorry about the delay,” the receptionist announced to us. “It looks like we’re going to have to reschedule some of you.”

And that was great, because they went in order based the appointment times that day, so I was near the end of the line to get a new one. I was now scheduled to come in five weeks, which meant five weeks of possible pain and then the possibility of them giving me more bad news. Optimistically.

I made my limping way to the elevator and down to the lobby of the medical building, outside of which it was a beautiful spring day.

This had always been my favorite time of year when I’d been a little girl in northern Michigan.

I remembered walking through the woods to look at all the buds, and watching for sprouts that were just peeking out of the dark dirt.

But this spring felt different. Since the accident, everything had felt strange—no, a better word was “wrong.” When I’d been in the hospital, I’d thought that I only needed the pain to get better and normalcy would return.

I’d held onto the belief that I would go back to my house and wear my clothes instead of weird, thin gowns, I would eat regular food that wasn’t served on trays, and I would do my job again. I’d see Grant…

Anyway, that was what I’d thought, but I’d waited and waited and so far?

It hadn’t really gotten better. Yes, the pain had lessened a lot, which had been wonderful, and I’d gone back to work as soon as I’d been able to.

But I still felt off. It was kind of like being underwater—like when you put your head beneath the surface.

You might hear the sounds of someone yelling, but the words would be muffled and garbled.

Your vision was also blurry and distorted if you opened your eyes without wearing swim goggles and you couldn’t see that far, not even in the clearest lake.

Darkness crept in a lot closer than it did above the surface.

That was how I was experiencing life, like I was underwater and my senses were muted.

Even the spring seemed toned-down. So did this building lobby, but that might have been because it was decorated that way.

It was just a wide expanse of pewter-colored tile, beige carpet, drab paint on the walls, and nondescript furniture.

I looked down at the outfit I wore, jeans and an off-white sweater, and decided that I was just as nondescript.

Then I pulled a strand of my light blonde hair over my shoulder, and I saw that it also looked different.

It usually darkened some over the winter when I was out of the sun, but now it seemed to have turned a funny color.

It was dull and washed-out, or maybe it was going grey. Everything else seemed to be.

“Well, that sucked,” a voice behind me announced, and I turned to see the woman from the waiting room.

This was going to be awkward—secondary encounters after an information dump from a stranger always were.

In another waiting room, I’d heard from another woman about her infertility, a very sad and very long story (that doctor had been delayed, too).

Then later, while I was waiting for the car to pick me up so I could go home, she’d also had to stand under the same awning.

She hadn’t even been able to look in my direction.

The moment her husband had pulled up, she practically dove into the car and she’d turned away from the window so that she wouldn’t have to see me.

But today, this woman didn’t dive away. She was smiling at me kind of ruefully and shaking her head, but it didn’t appear to relate to the confession that she’d just made about her jackass brother. “Did you get another appointment?” she asked.

“Yes, but it’s far out.” My hand went to my right hip, the one that hurt.

She would have to wait a long time too, she said, and it was going to be a challenge to come back due to her kids, job, et cetera. “You know…” she started to say, but then stopped and seemed to change course. “It’s funny that I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Ava Blanchette.”

“I’m Emerson,” I said. The memory of the receptionist singing “Miss Mary Mack” was still fresh, so I left it there.

“It’s nice to meet you. Are you walking out to the parking lot now?”

“Um, no,” I said. “I’m waiting for a ride.”

“Me too,” she answered, and I remembered that her brother had driven her.

I was a little curious about the guy—I wondered if he was the way I pictured.

Maybe he would tilt his chin when he smiled so that it looked kind of sideways, and maybe he’d wink as he did it.

Maybe he didn’t shave on weekends so that by Sunday night, the dark stubble on his jaw was thick enough to feel scratchy against your cheek…

“Emerson?” The woman, Ava Blanchette, was looking at me expectantly when I came back to attention. “I asked who’s picking you up,” she explained.

“No one. I mean, I’m getting a car,” I answered.

“Where do you live?”

I looked back at her, thinking for a moment before I answered.

One thing I’d learned since I’d come downstate was that things operated differently in a city and its environs.

You had to be a little more careful, but this woman did seem genuine.

“I live in Ferndale,” I said, and her eyes brightened.

“I’m in Pleasant Ridge! We can drop you on our way.”

“What? No, thank you.” With the help of my cane, I took a step backwards.

“Ok, I know that came off as weird,” she told me. “I got the idea that you might want to meet my brother.”

“Meet him?” I echoed.

“So, I’m his big sister ,” she said, which she had already told me. Now she was repeating it with significance. “I’m pretty involved in his life and I’ve fixed him up before.”

“I’m not interested.”

“Because I made him sound like a loser?”

Because, according to what she’d related in that waiting room, he actually was a loser.

But then I remembered: people. I was supposed to be focusing on relationships, building bridges with others that could lead to friendships and bonds.

And who was I to call someone a loser? “I don’t need a ride,” I said but I made sure to speak nicely, using the pleasant voice I’d cultivated over the previous five years.

“I have a different idea,” Ava said. “There’s a coffee shop across the street from here. Why don’t we hang out a little and talk more? He could join us.”

“I thought you had to get home to your kids.”

“I just heard from my mom that they’re all doing fine,” she informed me.

“My dad left work early and went over to hang out, and they’re talking about grilling for us for dinner.

They want to use the steaks that I had set aside for this weekend.

” She did her one-sided shrug. “I have time, if you do.”