She tasted sweet and fresh and familiar. Everything he’d ever looked for without even knowing it. He pulled back far enough to search her face. “Are you saying yes?”
“Yes. As long as you promise to keep kissing me like that.”
He did it again just to prove he meant what he said.
Emory’s head was spinning like a top. Fox and Chris were getting married. She and Alex were getting married. Hell, she was marrying a guy she’d met less than a week ago. If someone had ever told her that would happen, she’d have said they were full of crap. A week ago she wouldn’t have believed it possible for her to keep the darkness at bay long enough to have sex with a guy, let alone fall in love with one.
She was still reeling when the four of them mounted Aunt Maude’s front steps. It was Chris who knocked on the screen door. The thing was hanging crooked on its hinges, the springs creaking every time Chris’s hand struck it.
“Did you call ahead?” Fox whispered.
“I tried, but she never picked up.”
“Did you leave a message?”
“No machine.”
Fox swung around to look at Emory and Alex. “Who doesn’t have voice mail in this day and age?”
“Shut up, Foxy.” Chris nudged him, and Fox promptly snapped his mouth closed.
Alex was a calm presence beside her. Emory was so thankful he’d come with them. Somehow things didn’t seem so scary with his confidence to bolster her. If he was apprehensive about meeting her aunt, he didn’t show one ounce of it.
“Christopher? Is that you?”
A tiny woman was peeking around the far left corner of the house. Chris turned away from the door and held his hands out, presumably to show he had no ill intentions.
“Good Lord above, it is you!” Aunt Maude stepped into full view and Fox gasped. The lady was toting a 12-gauge shotgun in her hands. “Just look at you, all fancy and well-to-do.”
Maude shared her sister Liza’s slight build and dark complexion. The hair tethered in a long braid, once the same shiny black as Emory’s, was shot through with gray. Chris waited until their aunt set the shotgun aside to give her a hug.
“You come for your mama’s funeral, I expect?” Maude brushed her gnarled hand against Chris’s cheek. “You’re a good boy.”
“I brought Emory with me.” Chris finally found his voice.
It had been so long since Emory had seen her aunt. Maude looked so much like Emory’s mother. Like Chris and Emory, Liza and Maude had been twins. It was hard to imagine that one was dead and one was not.
“Why you hiding back there, sweet girl?” Maude peered around Fox and Alex. “These boys are taking care of you, hmm?”
She hadn’t realized it, but they had been. Feeling tight with pent-up emotion, Emory stepped away from Alex toward her aunt. The little woman drew her close, folding her into a hug that smelled of freshly turned earth from the garden and the herbs she grew there. She smelled like Emory’s mother.
Without warning, the tears came.
“Hush, sweet girl. Your mama’s gone on to a better place. Somewhere that bastard can’t hurt her anymore.” Maude smoothed her hands through Emory’s tangled hair. The touch was soothing, reminding Emory of a mother she thought she’d forgotten.
Alex wavered back and forth between feeling included or left out of the conversation in Aunt Maude’s warm kitchen. Yellow-and-white checked curtains hung in the window. The last of the evening light filtered through the glass. Plants filled the room’s corners, and a stenciled border of dancing farm animals decorated the walls. Though he’d never been inside the house before, it held the same homey quality that marked Emory’s apartment. He wondered if it was a trait specific to the women of their family, one of about a million things that made Emory perfect for him.
There was an almost surrealistic quality to what was happening to him. If anyone had told him two weeks ago that he’d be sitting in a kitchen listening to a retelling of years of intense family drama and a history of abuse, contemplating the fact that he was about to marry into this legacy, he’d have told them to fuck off. Alex didn’t do commitments, and he certainly didn’t hang around to solve family problems.
Funny thing was, it didn’t bother him. The idea of settling down with Emory was appealing in every way. She hadn’t just changed all the rules. She was the exception.
“When did she get sick?” Chris asked.
Aunt Maude poured tea from a quaint red china teapot into five cups. “She didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell nearly two years ago that something was wrong.”