What had he done? Had he made some kind of noise complaint? Was there something wrong with the fence line? Had one of the branches from his oak tree come down on her side of the yard again? His second thought, which arrived a few seconds behind the first one, and which he immediately pushed aside, was something else entirely, something he told himself not to think.
He went to bed at 10:00. He was awake at 10:15. He tried again. By midnight, he had read the note three more times, which he told himself was unnecessary, and he knew it was unnecessary, and he did it anyway. Meet me tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. at the old garden bridge. come alone.
Please trust me. Trust her about what Marcus Williams, who had learned over the past four years to keep his inner life very quiet and very controlled, lay in the dark with his heart doing something it hadn't done in a long time. It was racing. He almost didn't go. That morning, Sunday, heavy with summer heat that arrived before 7, Marcus made Lily pancakes and told himself approximately six times that he was not going to the garden bridge.
That was a decision made by someone irrational. And Marcus was not irrational. Whatever Emma wanted to say, she could say in daylight in the driveway like a normal person. Lily poured too much syrup and didn't notice. Dad.
Hm. Is Miss Emma okay? I saw her last night and she looked like how I look when I ate the bad cheese. Marcus paused with his coffee mug halfway to his mouth. What do you mean?
Like she was trying to be normal, but she wasn't feeling normal. Lily speared a piece of pancake. You know, like when you pretend you're not tired. I don't pretend I'm not tired. Lily gave him the look.
I'm not always tired. She gave him a different look, which was worse. Marcus put his coffee down. Miss Emma's fine. Eat your pancakes.
But the thing was, Lily wasn't wrong. He'd thought the same thing. Emma had looked exactly like someone trying to hold something together from the inside while acting like there was nothing to hold. After he dropped Lily at his sister Renee for the afternoon, he drove home and sat in the driveway. 6:48 p.m. The garden bridge was a 12-minute walk.
He sat there. He told himself he wasn't going. At 651, he got out of the car. The old garden bridge was a wooden foot bridge at the far end of Lakeside Park, built maybe 30 years ago, arching over the narrow part of the neighborhood lake, where the water was still and dark and full of lily pads that bloomed yellow every summer. It was the kind of place where older couples walked slowly in the early morning, and teenagers came at night to talk too loud and feel important.
In between, it was usually empty. Emma was already there when Marcus arrived. She was standing at the center of the bridge, both hands on the railing, looking at the water below. She'd changed from the night before different clothes hair down around her shoulders. And even from 20 yards away, Marcus could see the tension in her posture, the way her shoulders were up, and her jaw was set.
She heard his footsteps on the wood before he reached her. She turned and for a moment, 2 3 seconds, neither of them said anything. Marcus stopped about 4 ft from her. "Emma, you came," she said. Her voice was quieter than usual.
"You asked me to." "I wasn't sure you would. I almost didn't." She almost smiled at that. "Almost." "Why did you?" Marcus thought about Lily's observation at breakfast. He thought about lying in the dark at midnight, reading a sentence over and over again. He thought about the way Emma had pressed that note into his hand like it was something urgent and fragile at the same time.
Couldn't sleep, he said. Figured it was your fault. You might as well explain it. That got a small breath of a laugh out of her. Real not polite.
It cracked some of the stiffness in the air between them. Then her face went serious again. She turned back to the railing for a second like she needed to look at the water to find the right words. Then she faced him again. Marcus, I need to tell you something.
She stopped, started again. I've been trying to tell you something for almost 4 years, and I've been, she pressed her lips together. I've been very good at talking myself out of it. 4 years? Marcus repeated slowly.
Almost. He said nothing. He waited. Emma took a breath slow like she was getting ready to jump. Do you remember the winter of 2021 January?
I think there was that ice storm. The ice storm Marcus remembered. It was the worst winter storm the Atlanta area had seen in more than a decade. Roads closed, power out in half the county. Ice on every surface.
Accidents everywhere. Emergency services stretched so thin that response times had tripled. He remembered it because he'd spent most of it terrified about Lily, who was running a fever, and about the tree in the backyard that had been leaning wrong for months. "I remember," he said. "My mother collapsed." Emma's voice was steady, but he could hear the effort it took to keep it that way.