Page 4 of Meet Me In The Dark

Something in my chest unclenches.

“Yeah,” I murmur. “We will.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then, because we can’t have too many emotional moments without ruining them.

“I do have one concern,” Emmy says gravely.

“Which is?”

“What if we do have to de-cobweb your vagina?”

I slap a hand over my face. “Why are you like this?”

“Madison is rubbing off on me.”

I shake my head, but I can’t help the small smile tugging at my lips.

If nothing else, at least I have them, even if they’reoverly concerned about my vagina.

Two

Julian

Every time I drive down this street, it feels like slipping backward through time. I’m nine again, angry and alone in the back of a social worker’s car, convinced this will just be another pit stop before they shuffle me off to the next place.

When I saw the house, it was small and a bit weathered, but the garden had flowers—yellow tulips and some pink ones I didn’t know the name of. On the porch, a handmade banner read, ‘We’re glad you’re here.’

It had seemed suspicious at first, but since the family I’d been with before greeted me with a fist to the jaw two days after I arrived, the banner felt like anupgrade.

I park outside that same house now—still small and immaculate. Still stubbornly standing despite my best efforts to convince them to move somewhere I can show my gratitude with something physical instead of words.

They won’t budge.

My mother always says, “This house has good bones. Just like me.”

I slam the car door shut and walk up the path, the garden blooming like it always does. I swear that woman could coax roses out of concrete.

I tap the picture hanging in the hallway. It’s a framed photo of adoption day, with me in a flannel shirt, standing like I’d rather be anywhere else, and my parents smiling behind me.

Behind us, another banner reads:It’s a Boy!

It still amazes me that after years of infertility, they chose me.

“Ma?” I call.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” My mother shrieks from the kitchen. She spins around, wielding a wooden spoon. “Oh my God, Julian! You scared the holy hell out of me. I nearly had a heart attack and shit my pants at the same time.”

“Glad to see your language has improved.”

“Bullshit. I’ve been working on it,” she says before storming across the kitchen and throwing her five-foot frame at me. I wrap her up, inhaling hand lotion and pasta sauce.

She pulls back and pats my cheek like I’m twelve again.

“Where’s Dad?”

She rolls her eyes. “Being neighborly. He’s over atthat bitch Melinda’s house, mending a fence.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you start mending a fence of your own?”