Emma sat on the living room floor of the DeLuca home, contact sheets spread out on the coffee table in front of her as she studied the pictures she had taken that morning. A week among family had done quite a bit toward restoring her belief in the basic goodness of humanity but there were still a lot of memories she needed to balance. At least she wasn't undergoing as much of a crisis of faith as she had been when she had first shown up on her aunt's doorstep, uninvited and unannounced.
She leaned back and rested against the front of the sofa, images dancing across her eyelids as she closed her eyes against the insurgence of thoughts and memories that flooded her brain. She had seen far too much, had experienced too many atrocities, to ever forget them.
The sound of footsteps across the kitchen floor jarred her from her reverie, bringing her head up from the sofa cushion in askance at the interloper. Watching the kitchen doorway, she waited for either Amy or Maria to appear and prayed fervently that her intruder wouldn't be Sean. She couldn't deal with Sean at the best of times, and especially not when her life was possibly at its lowest and most complex point to date.
At the first sound of the stream of consciousness monologue, Emma smiled. Maria. She waited for the teen to notice her presence, not wanting to disturb the flurry of thoughts that must have been flying in the girl's head if her words were any indication.
Maria rattled off a list of things to do that evening as she padded from the kitchen toward her bedroom, counting items off on her fingers as she went. She nearly stepped on Emma when she decided to cut between the sofa and table on her short journey. "Hey! Sheesh, chika, how long have you been out of our former laundry room? I thought I saw the "do not disturb" sign up back there."
Emma craned her neck although she couldn't see the laundry room door from her position on the floor. "Hmm. Guess I should fix that... eventually."
Maria chuckled and sat down on the sofa next to Emma's shoulder. "So, are those the shots from this morning?" She peered at the contact sheets her cousin held, trying to make out the images there without the help of Emma's magnifying glass.
"Yup, so go away so I can look at them," she teased, softening the harshness of the demand with a coy grin. "What are you up to this fine evening? Not a date with the gloom-n-doom cook, I suppose."
"No, I'm not going out with Michael, he'd have to actually ask me out for that to happen and since he's done that all of once, forever ago... no date for me."
"A night out with the girls?" Emma wouldn't let the topic of evening entertainment die regardless of Maria's best efforts to the contrary.
"A night in my room with homework is more like it, Emsie."
"That's no way to spend a Saturday night." Emma thought for a moment before suggesting, "How about you and I go see a movie? Amy said she'd be gone until tomorrow night with that convention in Albuquerque. We could have a cousin's night out. Maybe swing by the Crashdown for sundaes after…"
Maria arched her brows, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "That would depend on the movie, I guess."
"Your choice," she relented but quickly amended, "just nothing too bloody. I've seen just about all the blood I can handle for a while."
Maria nodded in understanding although Emma's references of fighting and front line warfare were far from her ability to comprehend. Suddenly, she remembered something Emma had said earlier in the week. "Hey, you never told me about the mystery man in your life."
The comment caught Emma off guard and she stared at Maria a moment before answering, "He's just a friend really, a friend who needs help."
Maria watched Em's eyes, there was something foreign and unreadable there, something that frightened and confused her, almost making her doubt her character assessment of the woman. "What kind of help?"
Ducking her head, Emma began to stack up the contact sheets into a single pile. "The kind of help that'll keep him on the breathing side of alive."
"Oh." She understood that kind of help, had offered it more times than she could count. But the comment gave Maria pause as she considered Emma's words. "Is he still there? In Bosnia, I mean?" Her voice was soft, unobtrusive.
"No," Emma murmured and shook her head. "He and I left together, with another friend.."
Almost as if the entire conversation had been staged, the cell phone that rested on the coffee table began to trill anxiously, causing Emma's hands to jerk and spill contact pages onto the floor. She snagged the device and quickly flipped it open with practiced but unsteady fingers as Maria watched on, curious at her odd reaction.
"Joseph? Oh, thank God. Where are you?"
Maria listened to the conversation, short though it was, and was intrigued by the change in Emma. She had gone from being incredibly tense and intentionally cheerful to being relaxed, obviously relieved. Maria watched as the anxiety and tenseness fell from her face and shoulders, almost as if she had been carrying the weight of the world and had finally been given the okay to set it down for a moment.
"Okay then. Let me know when you do." Emma smiled in reply to something Maria couldn't hear. "I know. Be careful." She pulled the phone away from her ear, the smile lingering on her tranquil features.
Maria grinned. "Must have been good news," she drawled.
"The best," Emma replied. She reached down to pick up the pages she had dropped and set them on the table. "Now, let's go see about that movie."
~~~~~~~~~~
"Oh, you've got to be kidding!" Emma laughed, "You just can't beat Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when it comes to B grade horror flicks." She strolled slowly along the sidewalk away from the aging movie house they'd sat in for two hours while she had forced Maria to endure possibly the worst film ever produced.
Maria eyed her warily. "How did you know it was showing at the old Plaza Theater anyway? You're not harboring any latent psychic abilities are you?"
"Latent?" Emma teased, "No, not any latent ones. Hey look, the Crashdown. Come on, I've got the biggest urge for something huge and decadent."
Maria allowed herself to be tugged across the street and into the Parkers' diner. Emma at least kept her occupied and entertained if nothing else. She plopped down at the counter next to her cousin and smiled at Liz as she came up behind them.
"What's this? Girl's night out?" Liz asked, playfully poking Maria in the ribs. "And why wasn't I invited?"
"Oh I dunno, Parker. It could have something to do with the fact that you're working tonight," Maria answered, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Besides, it was a last minute thing. Emma here doesn't believe in the healthy aspect of brooding alone on a weekend night."
"Glad to hear it," Mr. Parker chimed in. "It's not a good idea to start doing that until you're at least, oh, at least twenty-five. So what'll it be for the two of you?"
"Ice cream," Emma said, a grin spread across her face. "Something wonderfully evil with whipped cream and nuts."
Maria nodded in agreement with her cousin's assessment of their particular nutritional requirements while Mr. Parker smiled and disappeared to prepare their treat. She swiveled on the stool so that she was facing Emma more fully when the other woman's attention was drawn to something outside, her face hardening into an unreadable mask. Curious, Maria turned to follow Emma's gaze to the sidewalk in front of the café.
A man stood near the doors, his dark suit a stark contrast to the summer wardrobes of everyone else who was hurrying past along the storefront. His face was in deep shadows due to the backlighting from the nearby streetlamp and the fedora that was pulled down low on his brow, but it appeared that he was looking straight at them, or rather, straight at Emma.
"Em?" Maria had lived for too long looking over her shoulder for any signs of discovery to brush off the odd man as merely eccentricity.
Emma's eyes were glued to the scene outside the window. "What is it, Maria?"
"There's something else you're not telling me about. Isn't there?"
Emma's eyes returned to Maria's face, her expression blank and unreadable. "There are a lot of things I'd like to tell you, but there's a lot that I can't."
Maria watched Emma rise from the stool and flash a smile at Mr. Parker and their sundae's. "I'll be right back," she called, "I just saw a familiar face."
~to be continued…