They ate lunch at an outdoor café in Georgetown, squinting at each other across a table that reflected the sun like a spotlight. Once their food arrived, Peter attempted to make small talk—something he was not in the least bit adept at—but Emma still didn’t seem to be making much of an effort, and the silence had become even more noticeable since they sat down.
“So,” he said around a mouthful of turkey sandwich, looking from one to the other. “You guys lived here for a while when you were younger?”
Neither made any sort of move to answer, and Peter swallowed his food, thinking that he now understood why people found his own silences so frustrating.
“We moved up from North Carolina when I was a baby,” Emma said finally. “Just me and Patrick and my parents, though.”
“It was just after I left for college,” Annie explained. “So I was already up in Boston then.”
“Where?”
“Harvard.”
Emma rolled her eyes, but Peter lowered his sandwich and looked at Annie with interest. “What was it like?”
“Peter’s hoping to go there for a degree in Civil Warology.”
“That’s not a thing,” he pointed out. “It would be a degree in History.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “It was a joke.”
“It’s a great school,” Annie told him, ignoring her sister. “But there are lots of other great ones out there too.”
“He could get in,” Emma said, picking the onions off her burger, and Peter sat up a bit straighter in his seat. “He’s almost worse than you guys.”
Annie shot her a look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re smart,” she said. “Guess.”
“What’s it like there?” Peter asked, and Annie shrugged.
“It’s really not all that different from the campus at home, other than being in a city.”
“It must be,” Peter said, though even as he did, he was picturing the little college on the hill, the way the afternoon shadows fell across the buildings as he passed by on the way home from school. He thought of the lake with the swans and the oak-lined paths and the sturdy little chapel that sat above it all.
And he thought of his house just down the street.
“It’s not really about the campus anyway,” Annie was saying now. “Wherever you go will be great, but it’s more just because of what you’re doing there. The place is beside the point.”
“The place is never beside the point,” Peter said matter-of-factly, and Annie shrugged and excused herself to go to the bathroom.
“What’s up with you?” Emma asked once she’d gone.
“My dad wants me to stay home for school.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really? That’s kind of sweet.”
“ Sweet?”
“Yeah, maybe he wants to keep an eye on you.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“He’s a cop, Peter. He’s probably just looking out for you.”
“Yeah, because I’m so much trouble,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t think so.”
“Then why do you think?” Emma asked. “Because of money?”
Peter lifted his shoulders. “Maybe. I’m sure that’s part of it, at least.”
“But?”
“But it’s not fair,” he said, aware of the bitterness in his voice. “I mean, he’s practically ignored me my whole life, and when he does get around to paying attention, he always ends up acting like some ass**le cop. And then all of a sudden he decides I should stick around?”
“Maybe he’s finally changing.”
“No,” Peter said, shaking his head. “He never changes.”
“Well, then maybe he’s always wanted you there. Maybe he’s just never been able to say it,” Emma said gently. “The thing about parents is that you always just assume they’re supposed to be good at their jobs, because they’re parents. But they’re usually not. So this might be the only way he knows how to tell you.”
Peter frowned. “Tell me what?”
“That he wants you to stay. That he’d miss you otherwise.”
“But the whole point of going to college is that it’s your one chance to escape where you’re from. You get to start over.”
“Oh, that’s the point of college,” Emma teased. “Good to know, since I thought you’d had your nose in a book all these years for fun.”
“Well, it was for fun, actually,” he said with a smile. “But you know what I mean. You’re always trying to escape too.”
“Yeah, but you’re just talking about geography,” she said. “And that’s not always everything.”
Later, as they walked back to the apartment, Peter noticed that Annie had picked a different route. He tried not to let this bother him, but as they headed deeper into an unfamiliar neighborhood and farther from her street, it was all he could do not to ask what was going on; it seemed impolite to question her sense of direction when she’d lived here for over ten years. So instead he studied the spidery cracks in the sidewalk, distracting himself by formulating a new map in his head.
It didn’t surprise him that Emma hadn’t noticed; she was too busy pretending to ignore Annie. And so when they came to a stop before a narrow house with chipped yellow paint and a faded blue door, Emma very nearly bumped into her sister.
“What’s this?” she asked, frowning up at the building, which seemed to slump to one side. Through one of the downstairs windows they could see the huddled form of a sleeping cat, and the wind chimes hanging from the front porch tinkled in the breeze.
“It’s where you lived when you were little,” Annie said with a small smile. “It used to be white with blue shutters, and there wasn’t a porch, but …”
Emma’s face changed, her eyes widening, her mouth turning up at the corners, and she began to pace back and forth along the sidewalk, her head tipped back to take it all in. “Oh, yeah,” she said, pointing at the driveway, the lacework of cracks in the asphalt. “This must be where I tripped when I was still learning to walk.” She raked back the hair from the left side of her face to display a tiny scar that Peter had never noticed. “Three stitches. And we used to take our Christmas photo in front of that tree.” She jogged over to the front corner of the house, where the cement showed beneath the wood paneling. “And that must be where Patrick crashed the car.”