Page 42 of Time After Time

Papa picks up his champagne glass and takes a long sip. “I wonder which one of us is going to be dead.”

“Darling, why, I can arrange for it to be you,” Mama teases.

There’s more laughter.

If I live in the moment, which I always strive to, everything feels okay.

The rhythm of being home, at the center of this slightly chaotic, yet always entertaining and deeply loving family, is safe and familiar.

But the ache remains. Dull but insistent. Like a bruise under the skin.

Ransom laughs at something Calypso whispers.

I can’t unsee his hands on her. Or the kiss.

I sip my wine, slower this time.

I let my family’s warmth fold around me like a quilt.

I let the firewarm my toes.

I let Thomas run wild with his toy car.

I let myself lean on what I know won’t change—this: my people, my place here.

I won’t let Ransom take my joy away. I can’t control how he feels about me or what he says or does, I can only control my reaction to him and his actions—and I decide to slot the pain, the longing, all of it away.

The man is not available.

He’s never been available to me.

“How about you, Ember?” Papa wiggles his eyebrows at me. “Who do you want to be?”

I laugh.

It’s an old joke.

“What?” Ransom asks, looking from Papa to me, a bemused smile on his face.

“Ember was Thomas’s age, and it was Halloween,” Mama begins, already laughing, her wine glass tilting enough to slosh a little. “We’d been busy and forgot all about it. The older kids didn’t care about costumes anymore”—she pauses, eyes gleaming—“well, Freja did, but she bought her clothes at the hooker store.”

Freja tosses her hair and lifts her glass. “I’d like to remind everyone I was anübersexy nurse.”

Jonathan raises an eyebrow. “You…ah…still have the costume?”

There’s a round of hooting and groaning, and Freja smacks his arm, grinning.

“Anyway,” Papa says, waving the laughter down, “Margot is completely flusteredthat she forgot Halloween. She’s convinced she’s emotionally scarring Ember, running around in a panic, holding a cardboard crown in one hand and a plastic sword in the other, asking over and over, ‘What do you want to be, bébé? A queen? A pirate? A fairy? What do you want to be?’”

Papa’s voice softens, and he looks at me with a love that only makes the story feel more golden. “And our Ember—her little lips trembling—looks up at Margot and says, ‘Mama, can I just be me? Can I just be Ember?’”

The room goes quiet in that sweet, sticky way families get when something true has just been said.

There’s laughter again, but gentler this time. A fewawws. Aunt Tanya reaches across the sofa and squeezes my knee.

I feel Ransom’s eyes on me then, and when I glance his way, his expression is intense, as if I’m suddenly in focus for him.

Flustered, I look away.