I’d anticipated him getting more nervous now that we were actually here. But for the first time that whole weekend, Josh had a smile on his face. A real smile. He was just sitting there nodding and smiling. And he looked totally relaxed.
“Hey,” I said. “You know what? Why don’t I make myself scarce for a while? I’ll go back into the town, get a cup of coffee or something. There was that happy-looking place Mr. Dough-boys. I’ll go back there and get myself a doughnut and wait a bit.”
“There’s no reason to do that,” he said. But he wasn’t even looking at me anymore. He was already unlocking the car door, getting out. I wasn’t sure he knew what I was saying.
Then I heard yelling, and I looked up to see a young woman emerging from the house, telling the dogs to calm down. She was wearing baggy jeans and a white tank top, her hair pulled back in a long blond braid. Even from a distance, I knew she couldn’t be a day over twenty. She was heading toward our car, and then, when Josh stepped outside and she saw who it was, she started to run. Josh started running too, and when he reached her, he picked her up in his arms, hugged her to him.
I wasn’t sure what to do, so I got out of the car too and walked toward them. Up close, I could see that my estimate had been wrong—Elizabeth wasn’t even close to twenty. She was more like fifteen or sixteen, maybe seventeen. Soft blue eyes. Young skin. Immediately I had this feeling that this couldn’t be happening. I wasn’t really here in Rhode Island with these huge dogs and beautiful, baby-style Elizabeth and Josh—who was apparently a very dirty old man. I stopped a few feet away from them, crossing my arms across my chest, standing on the sides of my feet awkwardly.
But then he introduced us.
“Emmy,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Grace Hamilton. Also known as Princess Grace.”
Princess Grace started laughing, and held out her hand to me. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she said.
I shook her hand back, and attempted to say something like nice to meet you too—though my throat was kind of closed up, and it came out wrong, came out only about half-finished, much closer to just, “meet you.”
Josh kept smiling at her, thoroughly enjoying, apparently, seeing her laugh. “Grace is Elizabeth’s daughter,” he said.
Elizabeth’s daughter. Her daughter. I felt myself take a breath, unaware that until then, I hadn’t. This wasn’t Elizabeth. I felt so much relief—so deep-seated and complete—that this wasn’t turning out the way it looked at first that it took me a minute to focus on the implications of what I’d just found out. Elizabeth had a daughter. I was shaking this girl’s hand. All of which meant, that at the very least, this complicated situation had just gotten even m
ore complicated.
I didn’t have too long to wrap my head around it, though. Because right then, the front door swung open and out walked Grace’s older version—same jeans, same braid—heading straight toward us.
Elizabeth. She was darker than her daughter was—with sharper eyes, olive skin. She definitely wasn’t as classically pretty as Grace. She wasn’t as pretty as Meryl either, for that matter, but there was something about the way she was carrying herself—this assuredness—that you couldn’t help but notice. It was almost like she was about to teach you something.
This might be part of the reason why when she first saw Josh, unlike Grace, she didn’t start running toward him. Instead, she stopped moving. So did Josh. The only one moving then was Grace, who was looking back and forth between Josh and Elizabeth, almost frantically.
She kept her hand on Josh’s arm, but I think if she had been thinking about it, she would have let him go. She was obviously looking to her mom for clues as to what she was supposed to do. So was Josh, who—even in the intensity of this bizarre standoff—was still smiling ear-to-ear, like a total and complete dumb-ass.
“Hello there,” she said.
“Hello there,” he said back.
Then she looked toward me, and her face softened a little—the lines around her mouth letting loose. And I could see it—what I had almost missed before I could see what her smile did to her—how pretty she really was.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but I felt the need to do so something. So I uncrossed my arms and gave her a small hip-side wave.
She gave me one back. “Hi, Emmy,” she said.
“Yes, thank you,” I said, which made about as much sense as it sounded like it made.
Then she motioned to Josh, and for a second—just a split second—I could tell how happy she was to see him there in front of her. Almost as happy as he was to be there.
“You should move the car out back behind the house,” she said. “We have someone coming to look at the new litter in a little while.” She was already walking away.
“When is a little while?” Josh said.
She turned back around to face him. “You in a rush to get somewhere else?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“You sure?”
I wanted to hide, anywhere, waiting for him to answer.
“Positive.”