“You’ve come back,” she says, softly, into her hands.
The tractor gets closer, turning from the road to a path leading toward the barn. Emma can see clearly, now.
It is Michael.
“Yeeessss!” she screams, muffling the sound into her hands. “Michael is home.”
She waves.
Michael waves back.
He was looking for her.
She giggles girlishly and smiles, broadly.
Emma resumes her path to the garden, skipping along, while keeping her eyes affixed on Michael riding on the tractor. At the garden, she peers at a tomato plant she’s been watching with two mostly-red Better Boys.
“Well, Mr. Tomato,” she says, cheerfully. “I think your day has come.”
Emma plucks a tomato from the vine.
“Yours too,” she says, prying another free.
She holds them before her face, admiring the harvest. Emma skips back to the parsonage with the tomatoes. Her mother is in the kitchen, cleaning up from breakfast.
“Look mother,” Emma says, showing her the tomatoes. “It is a happy day.”
“I see,” her mother says, noting Emma’s rare smile.
Emma puts the tomatoes in the windowsill.
“Let’s have a tomato sandwich for lunch,” Emma says.
“Very well.”
Emma scampers back to the garden, looking for Michael. She can’t see him now. The tractor is parked near the barn. She assumes he’s there, and skips along that way. Emma crosses the road, hops the fence and sashays to the barn in her yellow dress humming the tune to “Skip to my Lou.”
“Michael?” Emma calls out as she nears the barn.
“In here,” he says.
“Michael!” Emma says, stepping into the doorway.
She sees him in a corner and rushes over.
“Michael!” she cries out, extending her arms.
“Hello, Emma,” Michael feebly responds, half extending his arms for a hug.
Emma leaps into him, wrapping her arms around him and the white t-shirt he’s wearing.
“I thought you would never come back,” she says.
Michael gives Emma a half hug, then a slight shove to get her at arms length.
“It’s good to see you, Michael,” Emma says.
“You too, Emma. How have you been?”
“Same is the same is the same,” Emma says. “Until now.”
“Are you just visiting your parents?” Michael asks.
“What?”
“Your parents. Are you just visiting?”
“Well, no. I…I live there of course, with my parents still.”
“I thought you were getting married,” Michael says. “What was his name…David?”
“Oh, well, yes, I was, but…” Emma says. “That didn’t work out.”
“Why not? You seemed so…happy together,” Michael says, smiling a sly smile.
“You know I didn’t want to marry David,” Emma says. “It was all my father’s idea.”
“But you were planning to,” Michael says, cocking his head slightly to look at the right side of Emma’s neck. “That’s what you told me. So what happened?”
“Oh,” Emma says, moving her right hand to cover the bite mark on her neck, and fidgeting without looking at Michael as she talks.
“Well, there was this accident. Strangest thing. David apparently got some snakes out of my father’s church on Christmas Eve and took them home. He was bitten and died, in his room.”
“He died?”
“Yes, he died. David is dead.”
Michael has a troubled look on his face.
“David, your fiancée, is dead?”
“He’s not my fiancée. But he is dead. Yes.
“Can we stop talking about this? I’m so glad to see you,” Emma says, walking closer to Michael.
“Hold me,” she says.
“Emma, wait. Wait, Emma. I need to ask you something.”
“Something else about David? Please, no. He’s dead.”
“No, Emma. We need to talk about this truck I found back on the road.”
“Oh,” Emma says. “That.”
“Yes. That.”
“Why do you think I know anything about it,” Emma says, looking at her feet.
“Because you don’t seem surprised that I asked about the truck. Because there’s some golden hair strands on the back of the front seat. Because something tells me you do know.”
Emma lifts her head and looks at Michael’s eyes.
“I didn’t mean to,” Emma says. “I didn’t mean to Michael. I really couldn’t help it.”
“Emma,” Michael says, leaning back against the barn wall for bracing. “Are you saying what I think you are saying? Help me understand, ‘I didn’t mean to.’