“I wondered if you’d be showing up here at some point,” she said, nodding at Charles to move his foot so she could squeeze past them all and into the apartment. She dropped her briefcase and sat down heavily in one of the leather chairs. “Mom and Dad are going nuts, you know. They seem to think you’ve stolen a car.”
“We did,” Emma said from the hallway. “Two, if you count Patrick’s.”
Annie sighed. “Well, you may as well come in.”
Charles stepped aside, looking on wearily as the dog made sunken paw prints in the plush carpet, crisscrossing the room until he’d examined every inch of it. Peter stood awkwardly beside the couch, and Emma sat down opposite her sister.
“So,” Annie said, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from her wrinkle-free suit, then plucking an invisible piece of lint from the couch. “Did you have a sudden urge to see the White House, or were you just really bored at home?”
“We’re only passing through,” Emma explained. “We were hoping maybe we could stay the night.”
“Passing through to where?”
Emma shrugged, feeling this wasn’t exactly the time to explain about discovering the birth certificate, not with Peter looking so out of place and Charles rubbing his red-rimmed eyes and Annie appearing less than thrilled by the situation in general.
“Are you gonna call Mom and Dad?”
Annie nodded. “I have to.”
“You can’t bend the rules, just this once?”
“Come on, Emma,” she said, which Emma knew really meant Grow up. It didn’t surprise her in the least that before they were formally invited in, before they were offered a drink or told to put their bags in the guest room, Annie was already up and across the room, liberating the portable phone from its white plastic cradle.
“Everyone’s been going crazy,” she muttered as she waited for someone to pick up. “You can’t just waltz in here unannounced and then expect me to … Hi, Mom?”
There was silence in the too-white living room as Emma, Peter, Charles, and the dog all trained their eyes on Annie, who spun to look out the window as she listened.
“Yeah, no, she’s here,” she said, whirling back around as if to be sure Emma hadn’t decided to make a run for it. She cupped a hand over the phone and raised her eyebrows at Peter. “You are Peter Finnegan, right?”
Peter nodded stiffly.
“Yup, he’s here, too,” she said into the phone, then held it out for Emma to take.
“You must be joking,” she heard Mom say, as soon as she put the receiver to her ear. There was a deep grunt of agreement, and Emma realized Dad was on the line too. “Where exactly do you think you’re going?”
“And why?” added Dad.
Mom’s voice came out a few octaves higher than it normally did. “And without asking!” she yelped. “And not even a phone call to let us know you’re okay! You could have at least had the courtesy to pick up when we’ve been trying you over and over and over—”
“I’m sorry; I just—”
“And taking that car!”
“That wasn’t exactly me,” Emma began, but was interrupted again.
“Excuse me?” Mom said. “You think Patrick’s car marched itself out of New York City on its own?”
“Oh, that car,” she said dully. “I meant the other one—”
“Don’t even get me started on that,” Mom breathed, and Dad echoed this sentiment with another hearty grumble. “I’m so sure a nice boy like Peter Finnegan would just take a car from his father’s lot completely unprompted and then just happen to meet up with you somewhere. How are you getting around with two cars anyway?”
“Patrick’s broke down,” she explained. “I left it at the Walt Whitman rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike.”
“ You did what?” Mom said, and Emma closed her eyes to listen as she went on, outlining all the ways Emma had managed to screw up in the past few days. Her parents’ reaction didn’t surprise her one bit, but even as she stood there with the phone squawking in one ear, she recalled the purpose of the trip in the first place. She suddenly missed her twin brother—palpably, like a pain just beneath her rib cage, and she wondered how it was possible to miss someone you’d never even met.
Across the room Annie was watching her with a superior smile, somehow satisfied with the idea of justice being served. Charles was clutching a box of tissues to his chest as if it were a coat of armor, and Peter was looking at Emma with such apparent concern that she forced herself to turn away from her audience for fear of crying.
What had she hoped would happen, coming here? No matter what she’d told Peter, it hadn’t just been about a comfortable bed and a shower. It hadn’t just been a place to stay. A part of her had wanted to sit down with Annie—not the stiff, grown-up version of her sister she’d come to know, but the one she’d glimpsed during rare and unguarded moments, the one who’d giggled with her when they’d nearly knocked over the tree while putting up Christmas lights, or who’d helped with her math project over Easter. Emma realized she’d been hoping to find the sister she wished she had, rather than the one she actually did, and now she felt stupid and disappointed and beyond exhausted, the sheer unfairness of it all bearing down on her.
“… and you’ll drive back first thing tomorrow morning, and if you don’t think you can handle that, then Dad and I will come down and pick you up ourselves.”
Emma sighed. “Tomorrow morning?”
“Maybe we should give them a day to recover,” Dad suggested. “Have them stay with Annie, and they can come back Wednesday morning instead.”
“They need time to recover from gallivanting around the country?”
“You know what I mean,” he said. “They’ve been doing a lot of driving.”
“We really have,” Emma chimed in, only to be met by a stony silence. “Wednesday would give us some time to rest up for the drive back.”
“Fine,” Mom said after a moment. “You stay with Annie tonight and tomorrow night, and then you and Peter drive straight back home the next morning. Agreed?”
All Emma could muster was a weak, “Fine.”
“And make sure Peter calls his dad and lets him know he’s okay too.”
Emma glanced across the room, where Peter was now looking at her with pleading eyes.