She shouldn’t be here. She should be sitting in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by jellybeans, spilled like little jewels out of the plastic eggs she found. She and her mother should be choosing flavors and pairing them together to make new ones.
Instead, she was struggling against the dress that cut too close to her neck and itched against her legs. Her father led her by the hand into the room. It wasn’t like the one from the last memorial service. That was a big room, almost like a hotel, in a building that smelled like flowers. Not the pretty flowers on restaurant tables that Dad brought to Mama on her birthday. These were dense, choking flowers that made her throat feel thick and uncomfortable. When her father brought her to this place, it just looked like a house. There was no one else around. She felt strange walking through the door like they should have stopped when they got onto the porch and knocked before they went in.
Her stomach felt empty. She reached in the pocket of her jacket and felt the jellybeans on her fingertips. Cherry and chocolate pudding. Coconut and pineapple. Root beer and vanilla for a float.
Emma wanted her daddy to call out when they stepped inside. If he did, she would know where they were. Even if she didn’t recognize it, a name would give her something to hold onto. But he didn’t. He was quiet when he shut the door behind them and took a breath of air that smelled like lemon cleaner and cold. For a brief moment, Emma’s heart fluttered.
What if this was another secret? Her daddy said Mama was here. That she was going to be at the memorial service. Maybe she was here, and this was just another time that they had to be apart for a short time, but now they would be back together. She would explain to Emma what happened and tell her why she had to go away that night. Mama would say she was sorry, and they’d go home. Or maybe they would spend some time here. Meet some of Mama’s friends and finally celebrate Easter.
But she wasn’t there. They walked into a room with three couches turned toward a table sitting by a big marble fireplace. The couches were empty, but the table had a vase sitting on it. It was a strange vase with no flowers. There couldn’t be because it had a top.
“Where is she?” Emma asked. “You said Mama would be here.”
“Emma, she is,” he sighed, his voice soft.
He held her hand and brought her up to the table. Emma held onto the jellybeans, letting them roll through her fingers. Coconut against chocolate pudding now. Cherry and pineapple. Then vanilla and coconut. Root beer with cherry.
It wasn’t a vase. She recognized it now. It was like the ones sitting on the mantle, the ones Mama used to talk to when she was vacuuming the living room. Emma laughed when she saw that once. Not just because Mama was wearing a bandana around her head and Dad’s sweatpants, rolled over and over to keep them from falling down. She laughed because Mama was having a conversation with the vases on the mantle. She was telling them about Emma and Ian, about their trip to the caverns, and the kitten they just adopted.
Emma was little then. So little, she didn’t know what the vases were. Mama said she’d told her before, but she didn’t remember. So, she sat her down and took the vases with her. Mama called them urns. She let Emma touch them, and she ran her fingers over the names engraved on metal pieces in the fronts. Pieces like the one on the table. Her grandparents were in those urns. They were put in there in Russia and brought all the way here to be with them. That’s why Mama talked to them. They were her Mama and Papa.
People started coming in behind them, but Emma wouldn’t leave the side of the table. She should be home, wherever that was, sharing jellybeans with her mother. But the metal on the front of the urn on the table had Mama’s name on it.
“That’s where she is,” Dad told her. “We’ll have her now. Always.”
“I didn’t see her,” she said when she sat down on one of the couches beside him. “Maybe it isn’t her.”
“It’s her, Emma.”
“But I never saw her face.”
“I did. I saw her.”
“Why did you let them do that to her?”
He hesitated like the words got stuck in his throat somewhere, and he had to convince them to come out.
“Emma…”
“Why would you let them put her in there? I want to see her! Why didn’t you let me see her?”
“It’s what she wanted. This is what she wanted. She told me a long time ago.”
Emma gripped the jellybeans until they crushed and melted into her skin.
“But she was the most beautiful woman in the world.”
Chapter Four Now
“Can you see me?”
“Yep,” Sam nods.
“How do I look?”
“Lovely, as always.”
“Thank you, honey. But I mean, how do I look compared to Martin. Around the same size? Same position?”
“Yes.”
“Kay. Now, I’m going to walk down to the cars,” I tell them. “Let me know if it looks right.”
I make my way across the parking lot, replicating Martin’s movement. When I get to the cars, I walk past where Dean’s is parked, and then to Eric’s right behind it.
“We can see you,” Sam says.
“Now look at Martin. Watch him go behind the car. He pauses, right?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “Like he’s getting ready to put something in the car. The footage isn’t very clear, and he’s behind the car, so we can’t see exactly what he’s doing.”
“That’s alright. I don’t need to know that. I just want to know where he’s standing. Look at it and look at me. Are we standing in the same place?” I ask.
“It’s really hard to tell. The
