Chris and Ashley's house was similar to Sam's in that it was cute and quaint, but unlike Sam's their yard was full of toys and things to play on. There was a red soccer mom minivan parked out front. As Emily swung into the driveway beside it, her tire narrowly avoided crushing an action figure that lay face down on the pavement.
It seemed like a decent neighborhood. A flock of birds were darting around a birdfeeder in the neighboring yard, and a few squirrels scurried up a tree near the quiet street. As she got out of her car and neared the house she could hear muffled boys' voices from inside.
As soon as she knocked on the front door, it yanked open. A strawberry-blonde boy pointed a Nerf gun at her. "INTRUDER!" he yelled.
"Joshy!" Ashley appeared with a smaller strawberry-blonde boy at her side. The smaller boy looked like he'd been crying at some point. "Put that down!"
Josh looked over at his mother, then back at Emily. With great reluctance he lowered the gun. Emily exhaled. Foolish as it was, anyone yelling and pointing any kind of weapon or weapon-like object at her still shook her up inside.
"Sorry," the boy mumbled as he hurried away. Ashley nodded at him as he disappeared deeper into the house. Then she set the other boy, who must have been Chris Junior, down. CJ ran off with his brother.
"Thank you so much for coming, Emily," Ashley said once the boys were gone. "Can I get you anything to eat or drink? Coffee? Tea?"
"No, I'm good." Emily followed her into a small kitchen/dining room combination. She gestured for Emily to sit at one of the four places at what Em assumed by all the ground-in food stains was their dining room table. Their furniture scheme was slightly more coherent than Sam's "I probably buy everything at secondhand stores" aesthetic, but not by much.
"You sure? You don't want a snack or anything?"
"A snack?" Emily sneered. "I'm not one of your kids, Ash."
"Adults can have snacks," Ashley replied, a little defensive.
"Okay, okay. I still don't want anything, though. Just tell me what you wanted to tell me."
Ashley walked over to the cabinets by the oven. Standing on her tip toes, she retrieved a small key from the top of the cabinets above the stove. She stuck the key into a properly small keyhole on a cabinet at the far end of the kitchen. Upon opening it she retrieved a bottle of some kind of cheap-looking Pinot Noir and a wine glass. She tipped the glass toward Emily in offering. Emily thought about it, but after remembering her industrial-strength hangover that morning she decided she didn't feel up to any more alcohol consumption for a while. She politely refused.
Ashley set the glass on the table and poured herself a drink. Then she hastily put the bottle away, locking it tight and hiding the key once again. "Don't want the boys getting into it," she said as she sat down and picked up her glass.
"So you're a wine mom." Emily smirked. She wouldn't have expected that from little goody-two-shoes Ashley.
"Not…all the time." Ashley took a sip from the glass. "Just once in a while."
She hadn't made any attempt to explain to Emily why she'd begged her to come over. "So why did you rush me over here?" Emily asked again.
Ashley swirled the drink in her hand. "Oh, um…"
Emily leaned forward, waiting.
Ashley fidgeted a little, clearly uncomfortable under Emily's stare. "I…"
"Jesus, spit it out."
Ashley winced. "I'm so sorry. I just – I really needed someone to talk to."
"So you chose me."
"Honestly, I don't really have anyone else to turn to. I need to talk to someone from the old group. I never really knew Matt or Mike all that well, not well enough to drop something like this on them anyway, and…I don't trust Sam about this."
"Wait, you don't trust Sam?" That was a first. Everybody seemed to like Sam, at least from what Emily saw. "Why not?"
Ashley sipped at her wine, dragging out her answer. "Chris said he's staying late at work tonight," she eventually said.
"Okay…"
Ashley knitted her fingers together. "That's not too unusual for him, but ever since the reunion he's been acting…strange. He won't stop talking about old stuff. A lot of it about Josh."
Emily waited for her to elaborate before putting forth one of her many opinions.
"All day yesterday he was saying stuff like, 'I just wish we knew for sure what happened to him' and 'I wish we could go back and find out for sure'. Then he asked me a couple of times, 'Do you think he's still up there?' No matter what I said in response he'd ask the same question again a little while later. He never seemed satisfied with my answers."
"Well Sam did bring him up to Chris," Em said. "He's probably on his mind now. You sure he wasn't gay for him or something? Because what Sam said–"
"No, he wasn't. I know he wasn't. That's not my concern." Ashley tilted her head, seemingly listening for something. They heard footsteps tromping around upstairs. Apparently satisfied with that, Ashley continued. "Emily, this might sound a little crazy, but hear me out, okay? You're the only one I can trust to be brutally honest with me."
"You want brutal honesty?" Emily sat back and smirked. "Okay. I can give you that."
"All right." Ashley took a deep breath. "It seems weird to me that Sam just brought the Josh thing up out of the blue. I mean, I know it was a reunion, but would you tell someone you hadn't really spoken to in years that their best friend who died ten years ago was in love with them? Like, it's just sad and painful. Why would you bring it up? Especially when the person's wife is right there?" She gestured at herself.
"Well I wouldn't do that, but you know Sam. She's always been awkward as fuck."
"Okay. Now listen to this. I'm not usually the type to do this, I swear – I-I usually trust Chris a hundred percent. But since he started acting so weird, I – well we have this app through our phone carrier that lets you check all the calls and texts that have been made in the month. You can't read the texts or anything, but you can see who the calls were to and from. Today after he left for work I checked it. Yesterday, while I was out with the boys at the playground, he made an hour-long phone call to Sam."
"So you think he's cheating on you with Sam or something?" Emily honestly had no idea where Ash was going with this at all. "Because I'm pretty sure Sam's a lesbian–"
"Emily, it's not like that." Ashley exhaled. "I'm not worried about him cheating on me, or being gay. I'm thinking about…something else. Look at the big picture. Sam was super enthusiastic to get us all back together. When we get there we meet her wife, whom I honestly thought was Hannah for like, a full minute, she looked that much like her. Then Sam drops that random bomb about Josh on Chris. Chris starts acting really weird, and then they talk – in secret – for over an hour."
Emily stared blankly at her.
"Emily," Ashley whispered, "What if Sam never got over what happened, and she's trying to get us all to go back there or something? I mean, Hannah was her best friend, and Josh was a pretty close second. What if she's still stuck on it and wants to go back, but not alone? It would make sense that she'd try to reconnect us all before trying something like that. Don't you think?"
Emily wasn't sure what to say. It was all so out of the blue, and not at all what she had expected to be discussing. She hadn't come prepared for a conversation like this.
"In your brutally honest opinion," Ashley concluded, "do you think there's a chance I could be on to anything here? Or do you think I'm just being paranoid?"
Emily thought it over for a minute. People rarely asked for her opinion. She didn't want to waste the opportunity by blurting out something half-baked.
"All right," she eventually replied, "here's my opinion. It is a little weird that Sam's married to a Hannah lookalike, and she got touchy about it when Matt and I pointed out the resemblance. The Josh comment was strange. And I noticed it seemed like she was kind of pushing Matt and I together, almost like she wanted to give us both a reason to be invested in the old group again."
"And what about Chris? He's been talking about it literally non-stop."
"Chris is a smart guy, Ash. He has two kids and a wife now, too. Even if Sam was trying to concoct some plan to get us all to go looking for Josh and whatever's left of Hannah, I really don't think he'd piss everything away on a suicide mission."
"But you don't know Chris like I do. Once he sets his mind to something…"
"Ashley, do you really believe he'd give up everything he fought for all this time? Jesus, he was in love with you for years before you two finally got together. And he's still crazy about you. I could tell just by talking to you guys. He's super proud of your boys, too. I could see it."
Ashley seemed to consider that. "You think I'm being paranoid, then?"
"Kind of, yeah."
Ashley rested her chin on her chubby palm. "Maybe you're right…"
"Hey! Give it back!"
"No! I want it!"
Ashley straightened at the sound of her boys fighting upstairs. "Ugh, excuse me a second, Em." She hopped up and charged out the door. Emily watched from the table.
Before Ash could even reach the stairs Josh and CJ bounded down them. Josh was in the lead, and he was clutching some kind of weathered notebook.
Ashley stopped him with an open palm out in front of her. "Joshy! What do you have?"
"It's mine!" He hid the item behind his back and attempted to flee. However CJ, who had caught up in the meantime, slammed into him and grabbed one edge of the notebook. They pulled and tugged on it while Ashley attempted to separate them.
"I want Daddy's book!" CJ cried as he pulled with all his little might.
"You can't even read!" Josh tugged just as hard.
"S'got pictures!"
"I'll read it to you after! But I want it first!"
"Boys!" Ashley grabbed the book and wrestled it from her sons' grabby hands. "Don't touch Daddy's things, they're not yours."
"They're not yours, either," Josh said.
"Daddy and I share our things."
"Really?" Little Josh stared her down. "'Cuz he said not to tell you about it."
By that point Emily was practically tipping her chair over trying to lean and see what the hell was causing so much strife.
Ashley fumbled for words. "He…what?" She held the book up and away from Josh and CJ's reaching hands. As soon as she opened it, her face drained of color.
"E-Emily?" she said hoarsely. "Could you come here a second?"
It was the book. That old notebook they'd found on the mountain. The one the old man with the flamethrower had used to compile information about…the monsters.
Ashley was doing everything in her power not to freak out in front of her kids, but it wasn't hard to see the anguish in her eyes. Emily took her lightly by the arm. "Come on," she whispered. "Let's talk about it privately."
Ashley didn't budge. With shaking hands she opened the book and turned a few pages. Her sons watched her, confused but curious.
"He didn't have this before," she mumbled to herself. "I would have seen it at some point. This is new."
"What is it, Mommy?" Josh looked up at her.
"Ash." Emily pulled on her arm.
Ashley retrieved her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans. Still staring down at the notebook, she touched the screen. The phone dialed.
"Hey hon," Chris quickly answered. "What's up?"
"Come home." Ashley's tone was even, but just barely.
"What? Why?"
Ashley's eyes flicked to Josh and CJ. "Just, come home. Now."
"O-okay. I'll be right there. Is everything all ri–"
She disconnected before he could finish his question.
Emily eyed the front door. "So I guess I'll be going–"
"What? No, please stay." Ashley grabbed her sleeve. The gesture flashed her back to the apartment with Jessica. A wave of internal sickness washed over her.
"Seriously? …Okay, fine."
Ashley wandered into another room, looking lost. Em couldn't help but feel a little sorry for her. That fucking idiot knocked her up – twice – and now he was pulling this shit? Emily may not have been Ashley's biggest fan, but she didn't deserve this.
With Ashley lost in her own world, Emily was left facing down her two boys. Josh and Chris Junior exchanged a look, then turned to stare at Emily.
"What's wrong with Mommy?" CJ asked her.
Emily faltered. She had no idea how much or how little truthful information she could communicate to kids of their ages. Her mother had always addressed her like one of the adults. She didn't know if that was good for all children, especially since it had probably contributed to her inability to relate to her peers as a kid.
She decided to keep it honest but simple. "She's just a little bit upset with your dad. They're going to talk it out."
"Are they gonna fight?" Josh asked. He had a glimmer in his eye. Just looking at him Emily could tell he was highly intelligent. If she attempted to bullshit him he was going to see right through it.
"They might," she said.
The boys exchanged another look, concern painted boldly on their young faces. Great, now you scared them. That was why she wasn't a mother.
Frowning, she took in the sight of their worried little faces. It was amazing how much of their parents she could see in them. Josh had his mother's button nose and rosy cheeks, while CJ had her bright green eyes but his father's big honker. It was almost a little weird. She could still remember when Ashley was convinced Chris would never fall for an awkward, average girl like her. Now Emily was looking into the eyes of their progeny. Seeing their features, so distinct, yet blended seamlessly into two brand new human beings created from their love.
When she was younger Emily used to think about what her and Mike's kids would look like. By the time she got with Matt she was too jaded to ponder those sorts of things, but, thinking about it now, they'd probably be pretty cute. Hell, if Ashley and Chris could make cute kids…
"Don't worry," Emily tried. "They love each other. They'll work it out."
Or at least she believed they would. Who could really tell? She was a force of destruction in other people's lives, after all. A life ruiner.
Ashley's sons disappeared back upstairs as quickly as they'd come. Not sure what else to do with herself until Chris arrived, Emily sat back down at the kitchen table and thumbed through her phone. Matt had given her Jess' number, so now she had Sam, Matt, Mike, Ashley, and Jess. Wow, almost the complete set.
She selected Jessica's number. They hadn't communicated since Em had pushed her to try to venture outside. She thought about starting with a simple "hello" – but that seemed too formal. "Hi"? Too curt. "Hey", maybe, but it could be read in a hostile tone, and the last thing Emily wanted to do was upset Jess any further.
In lieu of a greeting, Emily, on a whim, opened her camera. She hadn't taken a selfie in ages. Making sure no one was around to see her, Em stuck her tongue out and made a ridiculous face at the front-facing camera. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she sent it to Jess.
A few minutes passed. Then her phone buzzed. Jessica sent a photo.
Emily opened the message. A tiny smile warmed her face. Jess had sent back a picture of herself lying upside down on what appeared to be her bed, winking and sticking her tongue out as well. Hi Emily, said the message attached to it.
Guess she isn't mad at me. The thought filled her with relief.
Emily zoomed in unflatteringly close to one eye. She sent the disturbing close-up without comment. A minute later she received a picture of the inside of Jess' mouth. She couldn't help but laugh a little. It was kind of just like old times.
So when are you coming by again? Jess sent another message a few moments later.
Snapped back to reality, Emily sighed and tried to conjure her mental schedule for the week. The weekend was filled up with errands and stupid corporate bullshit. The only time she'd be available was a weeknight. Maybe Friday? But would she be going there alone? In all honesty she was terrified of venturing into such a dangerous area by herself.
Before she could piece together a response she heard a car door close in the driveway. Ashley reappeared near her, wearing a stone-cold poker face.
"Just so you know, I'm staying out of this as much as possible," Emily murmured to her.
Ashley nodded. "I just need a little moral support, I guess."
The front door swung open. Ashley set the notebook out of the sight on the kitchen counter, then strode over to the doorway with a look Em had never seen her wear before.
