There was a little redheaded girl that used to live in a small brick house in Brooklyn, one in a long strip of houses. It was a nicer section that could almost have been part of a suburb. She was the youngest and quietest member of the home, where her parents argued loudly and her sister caused all sorts of trouble. This little girl barely made a sound, did exactly as she was told, got good grades in school, and seemed to hide from the world. New neighbors were actually surprised to learn the family next door had two daughters, only teen-aged Ally seemed to exist.
It wasn't always this way, only within the last few years did the family turn into something their longtime friends couldn't recognize. Three years ago Ally could be seen playing with her much younger sister in the yard, humoring the child even when she would rather be doing something else. Ally was twelve then, and was more inclined to discuss the trio of cute boys in math class with her best friends Melissa and Becky, than play with her five year-old sister. But Emily was a sweet, well-behaved child even then, and looked at Ally as her role model and hero.
Then Ally came home late from school one day, tears burning her eyes, head shaking in denial, arms pushing away her parents, desperate for the sanctuary of her own room. Emily was frightened, because Ally always came home smiling and gabbing at her baby sister about her day. In borderline hysteria, Ally finally explained what happened to her parents, what her science teacher did to her after class. Emily didn't really understand everything they said, but already a very smart girl for her age, knew that Mr. Mellnick was touching Ally with her clothes off. She knew people weren't supposed to do that, even before her mother began to cry and her father began to shout over the phone.
Then the police showed up and Ally left with their parents, and Emily was left with a neighbor. She didn't sleep that night, but laid crying under the blankets on Maggie Ann Carson's bottom bunk. Her parents picked her up the next morning, and didn't say anything. In fact they never seemed to say anything again; they shouted, but never just talked again. Ally ignored Emily the rest of the day, and barely spoke to her sister for months afterward. When she finally did, it was in anger, and it continued this way until Ally left the house. Ally seemed to suddenly hate her baby sister, and years later Emily would realize that Ally actually did hate her. Though it wasn't because of anything Emily might have done wrong; it was because pretty, sweet little Emily reminded Ally of all the innocence that was stolen from her.
What Ally would never realize is that, that day changed five year-old Emily as much as it did her. Emily started school six months later, and was terrified beyond the typical first day jitters. Ally's teacher had hurt her, Emily knew that, and knew that is destroyed their family. That was all she saw when she looked at her teachers, and that was all she could see in them for years. Everybody knew about Ally, knew that Emily was her little sister, and didn't know how to talk to her, so they didn't. This was fine by Emily, because when she saw the other children, she saw her sister, her first friend, who hated her. How long before these children hated her too?
Whenever a new student came, she would befriend them until they found other friends. But, she didn't trust anybody, and she kept her distance, emotionally and physically. Ally became a teenager, and the older she got, the more she acted out, until at seventeen, she finally just disappeared. She would scream and fight with her parents, talk back to teachers and get caught with boys at school, damage private property when she got angry, and dabble in drugs. Her little sister was forgotten to her, and to everyone else, because they just didn't have the energy to even smile at her when they had Ally to contend with. Some of their neighbors and Emily's teachers wanted to pay her some attention, because she was such a good and obviously lonely child, but she wouldn't really talk to them if they tried. They knew that little Emily would never become a healthy adult like their own children, she was never given the chance.
By middle school Emily had a friend, a boy named Scott Barrett who never yelled at her and was always there when she needed him. She must have written him thousands of letters pouring her heart out, letter her sister found one day and tormented her mercilessly about. But he wasn't real and left Emily alone again in high school, when everybody got mean and treated her like she didn't to breathe the same air as them. Emily turned more inward on herself, distanced herself more from people, lost herself in her books. When her parents called her during her sophomore year at Princeton to tell her that Ally had been arrested again, she didn't flinch, she didn't even blink. She thanked them for calling, hung up the phone and continued reading about Freud.
Emily was a virgin until she was twenty-one, because she'd never had a real boyfriend. They expected you to talk to them, to let them hold you, and she just wasn't able to do it. She couldn't trust people, couldn't bring herself to close that distance. She tried with Andrew Digby, the young man she had sex with for the first time. She was gone the next morning, and spent the next three months ignoring him until he graduated. It took years before she could be in a relationship, years and several guys who undoubtedly recalled her as the headcase they dated. Her few relationships remained sandwiched in between periods of casual sex or friends with benefits arrangements. It was easier and safer.
She hadn't told anybody she loved them since she was five years-old, on the night before everything changed. This was why Emily did show her sister as much sympathy as she might have when she saw her in prison the first time. That day hurt Emily too, but she didn't become what her sister became. Maybe because her soul wasn't quite dead yet, only on life support, whereas Ally's had died the moment Mr. Mellnick pulled down her panties. Emily kept her soul alive for years, at times barely scraping by. But, if the people on her street who were surprised to find out she existed could see her today, they would be even more surprised.
That sweet, quiet lonely little redheaded girl had become a beautiful, successful, outwardly confident woman. To outsiders she seemed like anyone else, actually she appeared to be one of those people that everyone else envied. She had learned to act well, to play the part of a normal, well-adjusted woman better than actually well-adjusted women. The real irony was that along the way, she had actually begun to get there. Only deep in her personal life could the effects of her traumatic childhood be seen. To the men that dated her and the women that became her confidants, it became readily evident that Emily wasn't as perfect as she seemed.
But nobody is perfect, everybody has something in their past that screwed with their head in a way that it changed them forever. Everybody had something they desperately wanted to forget, and secrets they would hold painfully in their hearts and protect forever. This lonely little girl, and emotionally damaged woman somehow found people to except this. It became obvious when this small group of friends didn't abandon her, and her boss and friend lied to protect her. They saw her vulnerable, they learned her secrets, watched her unravel, but didn't leave her, didn't shun her, didn't leave her to crawl back into her shell. They treated her just as they had before her past came out, before they saw her confidence drop like a sheet, leaving her naked.
Even more significant than these people, than their loyalty was a man among them. His dark eyes had watched her carefully through the ordeal, waiting to catch her if she fell, or simply steady her if she wobbled. He was her partner, her friend, her lover. He was one of a handful of men who told her they loved her, but he was the only one she didn't bolt from. Once she would have taken full advantage of the opportunity offered to her at Quantico and fled as soon as those words escaped his mouth. This time she'd didn't, because she'd wanted to hear them, and she had wanted to say them back minutes after that. She couldn't.
Those words hadn't escaped her mouth in thirty years, and she'd never found a reason for them to until then. That's why she had to mask it, to hide it under the guise of a secret. It was too hard for her to just say it, even though she wanted to so much, so very much. She hadn't expected the kind of secret he told her, but something much smaller. But, she had promised to say her own, and didn't back down. Like she had promised, it was something she had never told anybody, even if he didn't understand the significance of that statement then.
Tonight he understood it, tonight he knew they'd passed a milestone in their relationship. When he looked into her eyes, he finally understood what he saw there. They weren't as closed as they had been when they first began dating, weren't as protected. Now he saw trust in them, a willingness to be vulnerable in front of him, and love, something he'd seen even before she said it. But, that wasn't it, he still saw a sadness and a hurt that would stay there forever, residue from a past that would she would never be rid of fully.
That little redhead had finally walked out of that brick house in Brooklyn for good, and against all the odds, became the Emily Lehman of today. Her past was finally in the open, the secret she held painfully in her heart was set free.
"Hey? You okay?" Matt let his gaze wonder from the road to his girlfriend, who was looking pensively out the window.
Emily didn't turn and her mouth didn't move, so Matt looked back to the road for a moment, guiding the car around a curve.
"Thank you," she finally said.
"For what?"
"Being there."
Matt went to speak, but cut himself off, before adjusting and speaking again, "every time Em."
She grabbed his hand and held it between both of hers, offering a little squeeze before moving their joined hands back over the console. He had gone to say, 'anytime', but that didn't seem right, because he would be there for her anytime, he'd be there every time. And, for the first time in years, Emily didn't doubt his words, didn't worry about him leaving. That little girl wasn't lonely or sad anymore.
'Lie to Me' provided a whole new way to look at Emily, one I would have prefered to come earlier, it might have kept interest in the show alive. Anyway, it's going to be interesting to write now, she seems like a much sadder character, with a whole lot more going on. I wish I didn't have three stories brewing and one on the back burner (no I haven't forgotten the series I started), I could write so much just off this episode. This will have to suffice for now. Thanks for reading and reviewing!
AN: I changed the name Abby to Ally, as it should be (I have a story where Emily's sister is named Abby, I think I lapsed into that), thank you Bite Beccy! I also missed the reference to Albany, but I'm going to leave it as Brooklyn.