Once her son had retreated to his room for the night Emma revisited the box.
Being that Henry was 14, it was well after midnight that she managed to shoo him to his bedroom. Even then, she had a hunch he was probably playing some game on his laptop.
Normally, she'd have a problem with that. But tonight, the mysterious box of photos held her attention, and she decided to cut him some slack.
As she rifled through the rest of the glossy pictures, she found no answers, only more questions.
The photo of the couple at the well was still at the top of the stack and Emma quickly set it aside to relieve the pang settling in her chest when she looked at it. She hadn't seen them before in her life, and yet, this picture that hadn't affected her hours ago was bringing an ache in her throat that threatened tears if she wasn't careful.
She shook her head to clear it and shuffled the swordplay and group photos to the side as well, determined to get through the rest of them.
The next photo was nothing special — a shot of a sunset over a pier. The one after that was a picture of the clock tower from the greeting card, looming against a blue sky. Something told her to flip it. On the back, written in handwriting that could only belong to her son, were the words it works again! . She traced the edge of the photo and placed it on top of the greeting card reading broken .
One photo with her handwriting, one with her son's. One photo with them actually in it, and she remembered none of it.
There was that woman again.
The next photo gleamed in her hand, catching the light as she stared. It was Henry, looking no younger than he did now, making a face. That same woman — the one who had held Emma's gaze so tightly from the group photo — stood to his left, laughing, hand braced on the marble island counter before her. The last remnants of a glass of wine sat on the countertop, and Emma could just make out the rim of another at the edge of the photo. The bottle stood to the side, more than half empty. The woman's smile was looser, more free than it was in the group photo, and she hand one hand on Henry's arm.
Something about her was magnetic, and it wasn't just the fact that she was so hauntingly beautiful. A surge of emotion welled in Emma's chest and she found herself tracing the outline of the woman in the photo with her fingertip. She and Henry were both wearing the same outfits from the diner, and for some reason, Emma had the feeling she was behind the camera. Frowning, she shuffled through the rest.
A young Henry smiling atop a rotting wooden playground. A few more shots from within the diner, featuring various assortments of the people from the first. The brunette woman wrinkling her nose at a cup of what looked to be hot chocolate with whipped cream and cinnamon. The elderly lady and the brunette, both behind the bar. The brunette was winking at the camera while the older woman looked on, only her eyes betraying her affection for the other. Young Henry, sandwiched between the pixie haired woman and her — husband? Boyfriend? — the blonde man, both pressing kisses to his head as he wrinkled his nose in mock disgust. Emma smiled to herself, warmth rising in her chest as she looked on at her family, so happy in those times.
Wait.
Her family?
Swallowing uneasily, she stacked the photos again, noting the alarm clock on her night stand reading nearly 1:30 in the morning. She had to be up early for work. Her job was boring, but it allowed her to spend as much time with Henry as possible. Shaking her head, she resolved to attribute the...whatever that had been to the late hour.
She shuffled the pictures absentmindedly, the group photo ending up on top, and despite herself she found herself staring at the brunette again. What was it about her? Everyone in these pictures evokes something within Emma, particularly the pixie haired woman, but there was just something about the brunette that spoke to her. As she stared, she noticed something that she hadn't seen before: her own hand, extending out from behind her son's back, fingers resting gently on the brunette's side.
Heat flashed in her face. Despite the fact that it was a simple touch she knew that there had been something intimate about the gesture. She just didn't touch people like that. Not easily, anyway.
Emma took a shaky breath and slid the photos back into their envelope before placing it gently into its jewelry box compartment. Something in her chest began to ache, and she crawled beneath her sheets with a weight on her lungs and an emptiness beside her in the bed that hadn't been there before.
The next several days passed uneventfully, and Emma forced the photographs to the back of her mind. She dove into her work instead, throwing herself into mountains of paperwork and endless phone calls. Soon, the brunette, and too-old Henry, and the pixie haired woman, and photo-Emma herself and every other strange character faded from her thoughts. She could almost pretend it had been some strange dream. That is, until she came home each evening, and was confronted with the silken jewelry box she had set at the back of her dresser. Upon seeing it a wave of strange emotions would twist at her gut — pain, confusion, excitement — but above all, longing. It was too much to take, and she would turn from her bedroom each time, only pausing to change into lounge pants and a T-shirt before retreating to the living room, away from the haunting beaded eyes of the crowned girl. Five days after finding the jewelry box, five days after that night that she had gone through the photos and left it on her dresser, she shoved it beneath her bed.
Five days after finding it, five hours after trying to hide it, and after five minutes of talking herself into sleep instead of another night spent rifling through the same pictures as if they were going to suddenly make sense, a woman slipped into her dreams.
The woman slipped into her dreams.
At first it was only flashes. A fleeting laugh, dark like red wine, lips the same shade. Wisps of soft black hair, tickling at the back of her hand as she ran her fingers through. Uncertainty, above all — fear, but the kind that felt good. The kind of fear that would curl behind your heart at the crest of a roller coaster. The kind that promises a rush unlike any other, if you can just take the plunge.
She'd wake up sweating, sheets tangled around her legs and the vague sensation of warmth curled around her. And then it would be gone, leaving her with nothing but the cold, uncomfortable darkness of an empty bedroom. Her heart would slow to normal, and she'd flip the pillow to the cool side and close her eyes, only half hoping for quiet dreams.
And every morning she'd wake up to her alarm, shake off the residual longing, get the kid ready for school, go to work, drown herself in phone calls. Come home, make dinner, have a glass of wine, get the kid to bed.
Dream of fingertips grazing her wrist, a trembling hand caressing her jaw.
Rinse and repeat.
"You seem tired."
Emma glanced up from her paperwork. "What?"
The other woman blinked, a small smile on her lips. Laura was her name — Emma's only friend in the office, if you could call her that. Emma didn't really have friends. She had Henry, and a job that paid the bills, and that was enough. Only it wasn't, not since she found the jewelry box. It had been two weeks, and that dark haired woman had taken to haunting her nightly.
"You seem tired," Laura repeated, resting her chin in her hand. She was pretty, but not in a remarkable way, Emma mused. Mousy brown hair, hazel eyes. A bit of a plain Jane, but a kindness about her that drew a person in. "Hot date last night?"
Emma paused for a moment. "Only in my dreams," she conceded, deciding the small admission couldn't hurt.
"I feel you there," Laura laughed, settling back into her chair and glancing at the clock on the wall. They still had another two hours until lunch. "Want to go grab a coffee with me? I need a break." She paused, eyes drifting to the empty paper cups in Emma's trash can. "Not that you need any more caffeine."
"Oh, believe me, I do."
The cafe was busy, as always. They had ordered, and Laura had run off to the bathroom. Emma was hovering to the side and keeping watch for their drinks, trying to stay out of the way as people shouldered past.
"You always did drink too much of that stuff."
The voice came from behind her. A warmth settled in her chest, a smile cracking her lips as she spoke without turning. "So do you," she countered, almost by instinct, and then she stopped, confused. There was something familiar about that voice — and yet, she was so sure she hadn't heard it before.
"Yes, I suppose I did." The woman let out a small laugh.
A laugh, dark like red wine. She whipped around, eyes wide. "It's you," Emma tried to choke out, but the words caught in her throat. Before her stood the woman from the photos, the woman who had haunted her dreams since the night she hid the box beneath her bed. Her hair was longer than it was in the pictures, grazing the tops of her breasts rather than her shoulders and curling gently towards the ends instead of sitting straight and sharp.
That was where the differences ended. Her shirt was silk, a silvery gray, and her makeup flawless. She was wearing heels even though the concrete outside was slick with rain. The tiny scar on her upper lip flashed as she spoke, her dark eyes widening and her hand reaching out to catch Emma's wrist.
"You...remember, then?"
"I…" Emma started, jaw slack.
"Black coffee for Emma."
Emma started, jumping out of her trance and turning to see the barista set the coffee down on the counter in front of Laura, who already had her own latte in hand. Laura picked up Emma's drink and shot her a smile before heading in her direction.
When she turned back, the brunette was gone.
"Who was that you were talking to?" Laura asked, holding out the coffee. Emma took it, letting her hands curl around the warmth emanating from the paper. Her wrist tingled where the other woman had touched her. "She was pretty. Was she a friend of yours?"
"She was…someone I used to know. I think," Emma added. Laura had seen her too. She hadn't imagined it.
She was real.
The pictures were real, then, too, somehow. Emma felt the knowledge settle in the back of her mind, somehow irrefutable despite the impossibility.
"You think?" Laura raised an eyebrow. "She ran off pretty quickly."
"Yeah. She's, uh, just an acquaintance. Was, I mean." She frowned, running her fingertips over her paper cup. "She did, didn't she?"
"Practically disappeared," Laura mused. "You must have scared her off."
"Yeah, that's it." She swallowed, unable to shake the feeling that the brunette had actually disappeared, never mind that that was completely impossible. The coffee shop was crowded, but not that crowded. Not enough for her to slip away in seconds like that.
Emma was restless for the rest of the day, counting down the minutes and pacing between her and Laura's shared cubicle and the bathroom. She'd make rounds to the water cooler and copier before settling back into her office chair -- anything to keep from sitting still. Her mind felt numb, blank, like she was grieving some loss, and yet, nothing was gone. Whatever it was, it wasn't something she'd known, not really. Every time she attempted to focus on some email or other, her thoughts would slip back to her . That nameless woman whose eyes were as dark and rich as the black coffee she'd gone to the shop for. She hadn't seen that in the photos. How expressive they had been, how even in the brief moments Emma had seen her they had traveled from exhausted to a quiet sadness, finally landing on a desperate hope, accompanied by the latching of fingertips to Emma's wrist. How unnatural everything felt, and yet, how familiar.
By the time she made it home she was exhausted. She told Henry it was a free for all with dinner -- which usually resulted in him making himself the least healthy burger Emma had ever seen, and that was saying something, considering the double patty bacon-wrapped monstrosity that Ruby had once made her.
Ruby.
Emma leaned against the doorway to her bedroom and closed her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead.
She didn't know anyone named Ruby.
"Mom, are you okay?"
Henry was standing behind her, brow furrowed in concern. She gave him a tired smile, waving in the general direction of her head and shrugging. "I'm going crazy. You're going to have to take care of me now."
He flashed her a grin, waving the huge plastic spatula she'd gotten him so he'd stop scratching up her pans with their old metal one. "Well, want some dinner? I'm making a burger." Her old apron was tied around his waist, and he held a tray of ground beef in his other hand.
She laughed, the familiarity of the scene before her grounding her back in reality. "No, kid, I'm fine, thank you. I have a headache. I'm going to go to bed early, I think."
He shrugged, depositing the meat on the counter and reaching out for a hug. "Okay. Did you take anything yet?"
Emma shook her head, giving him a quick squeeze before backing into her bedroom. "Nah, I'll be okay. I just need some sleep."
"Okay. I'll be out here if you need me. I love you."
She felt a surge of pride at the caring man her son was becoming. He seemed to have a natural instinct for what others needed. Not for the first time, Emma wondered where he had gotten that from. Not from her, that was for sure.
"I love you too. Goodnight, Henry."
With that she closed the door, stripping out of her stuffy office clothes and throwing on a pair of pajamas. The jewelry box beneath the bed seemed to call to her, but she ignored it this time, opting to go straight to bed.
As she began to fade into unconsciousness butterflies twisted in her stomach. She felt lips graze the back of her neck, more a memory than a dream, and then an achingly familiar voice, whispering just behind her ear.
"I love you."