“She likes you too,” she said. “I can tell.”
“You think so? That’s nice to hear.” And it was. It was just weird how that could happen—how you could know someone for so little time, but feel like you’ve gotten to know that person in the most important ways. A version of Josh’s five-minutes theory, I imagined. Kind of how you could know someone forever and never really know him or her at all: time not getting to be the only measure anymore of how well you paid attention.
I looked down at my legs, tried smoothing out my wrinkling dress over them.
Then Elizabeth looked over at me. “So, Josh says you are working on a film? About fishermen’s wives, right?”
“That’s right.”
“He says you’re having a little trouble finishing.”
I made myself look at her. “You could say that.”
“Grace and I switched fortune cookies at dinner the other night, because hers said, ‘You can’t finish the things you weren’t supposed to start.’ She was so freaked out that we kept trying to think about all the examples of that not being true. Different relationships or jobs or even movies we’d only sat through half of. A hundred things. But even though I don’t usually take advice from fortune cookies, I have to say, the more we were trying to prove the argument false, the more I started to think there might be some truth to it.”
I didn’t say anything. But inside, I was thinking: This is a reason to dislike her. Isn’t that what I wanted? I had just met her, and who’d asked her to philosophize about my life? Only, looking at her, I couldn’t deny that she didn’t seem to be trying to preach to me. She seemed to genuinely want to help me figure something out. Something about where to go from here.
“How far along are you?” she asked.
I tilted my head from side to side. “Not far enough that I feel like I’m really getting anywhere,” I said. “But too far along to stop.”
She smiled again, the same affectionate smile she had given me outside before, as though she could tell this was the first hard thing I’d said to her. The first thing that was solid. It made the truth seem kinder.
“So the film’s not the reason then?” she said. “That you’re staying in Narragansett?”
I started messing with my dress again, thinking about how to answer that. I could tell her that maybe I was staying in Narragansett because it was so nice there. That would be something she could understand, wanting to live somewhere beautiful. Only, that didn’t sound anything like the truth. “I don’t really know,” I said.
She looked at me and didn’t say anything, but it made me stop fiddling, made me feel comfortable, like I didn’t need to be nervous with her. Like she already knew me. And I couldn’t help but think that maybe she already loved me a little because she loved Josh so much. And maybe I already needed to love her for the same reason.
“I know it’s not my place,” she said. “But be nice to your brother this weekend. You might feel mad at him about all this, but be mad next week. Or the next week after that too, even. This weekend, just try and take care of him a little. He’ll need it from you.”
“Okay.” I said. Then I said something that surprised myself. “Is that when you’re going to be mad at him?”
“I don’t think you get to be mad at someone unless they come through for you. I don’t think you have that luxury. I think you think you can be mad, but really you’re just doing something else.”
“What’s that?”
“Waiting.”
I looked at her, hoping she would give away what she was feeling, but she didn’t seem to be giving too much of anything away. I did see this look in her eyes though, a confident look, like she knew how all of this was going to turn out, like she’d always known, and it was just a matter of time until Josh caught up. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what love was—believing that someone was going to come through, in the end, and that it would still count.
Josh walked back in, and we both stood up as if he had caught us in the middle of something. Grace snuck past Josh in the kitchen doorway and went to stand by her mother. I figured that this was my clue to go and stand next to Josh, but I didn’t much feel like it. I wanted to stay where I was. I wanted to have dinner here. I wanted to go swimming in the lake. Okay, well, maybe I didn’t want to go swimming in the lake, but it was looking a whole lot better than my alternative. But Josh gave me a look like it was time to get going, and so I nodded my head in agreement, because really, what other choice did I have?
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said, turning to Elizabeth, who didn’t really make a move toward him from where we were standing.
“All right,” she said. If I was right, though, and I thought I was, she said it in a way as though she didn’t believe him. Or maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, but more that talking later wasn’t the point. The point had already passed, today, with him not doing something, and they both knew it. This was just what you did afterward.
I started to follow Josh outside, but then I turned back around. I turned back around to face them. “I can’t believe how great it is here,” I said. “I really love it. Maybe more than I’ve ever loved any place in my whole life.”
Of course I didn’t say this out loud—only in my head. Out loud, I still couldn’t seem to say a thing.
Elizabeth did it for me.
“It was good to meet you, Emmy,” she said.
“It was good to meet you,” I said.
Then I turned and looked at Grace. I wanted to run over and hug her, tell her again that she was more than welcome to take the drive forty miles south, and I’d show her around URI. That I’d get some people if it would make her come quicker. I wanted to tell her that even though I’d just met her, I so much wanted to know how things were going to turn out for her—with her bo