Love, Artifacts, and You by Sarah Ready
2
Emma
I dropmy beat-up canvas duffel bag on the knotty pine floor of the old 1930s three-season cabin and look around at my new home. Three-season means that this old place is going to be uninhabitable come winter. But that’s alright, beggars can’t be choosers, and I’ve dropped below beggar status. The duffel bag contains all my worldly possessions, a few pairs of jeans, shirts, a pair of boots, my excavation tools, notebooks, and a few pencils filched from the golf pro counter at Justin’s country club.
“What do you think?” Justin asks. He walks through the low pine-framed door. The wood has taken on an orange hue with age. He has two brown paper grocery bags in his arms. The bags are full of enough beans, rice, peanut butter and powdered milk to last me at least two weeks. He insisted on buying groceries and some cleaning supplies at the quaint grocery store in town.
“I love it,” I say. And I mean it.
It has a roof and a door and a bed. That means I love it.
“I didn’t realize it was quite so worn-down when I offered for you to stay here,” Justin says. As of two days ago, I’m homeless, and Justin came to my rescue. He sets the groceries on the low varnished wooden counter. A layer of dust floats up into the air and then slowly settles back down.
The kitchen, like the rest of the one-room cabin, hasn’t been updated since it was built in 1939. The cabin is on a small plot of land at the edge of Romeo, New York’s state forest. The walls are made of wide pine logs. The front door leads right into the kitchen. There are three kitchen cabinets painted faded yellow and trimmed in blue, and the floors are red and white checkered linoleum tiles, some are cracked and peeling at the corners, but it’s mostly intact. A tall blue pie cupboard stands against the wall next to a white ceramic sink. On the counter is a gas camp stove. There’s no refrigerator, just an old ice-chest. But there is a black cat clock hanging on the wall. The type that swings its tail to count the seconds.
I wander to the living room. The carpet is matted dark brown and when I step on it the smell of must and engine grease fills the air. There’s a brown fabric recliner, probably from the 1980s, in the center of the room. A cane with a brass eagle on top leans against its armrest. A TV dinner tray holds a TV guide from 1997 and a remote for the old tube TV across the room. There are a few cobweb-covered wooden shelves on the walls filled with dozens of decorative plates and ceramic-handled spoons that name tourist destinations—Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Everglades National Park.
The only other item in the room is a stained twin mattress on the floor with a gray blanket wadded at its base. The mattress is in the back corner under a small window. I walk to it and look out at the yard. There’s a small meadow full of tall silver grass that within five yards meets the edge of the forest. But in the grass there’s an overgrown cement block-lined firepit, a long-handled water pump, and, yes, a wooden outhouse.
“I was wondering where the bathroom was,” I say. I smile and turn to Justin. He walked up behind me a few seconds ago.
For some reason, I like this cabin. It makes me feel a spark of something I can’t name. The little town, Romeo, did too. I liked it.
He shakes his head. “No. No. That’s it. You came. You saw. Now you can come back to the city and stay with me.” He puts his hands over my arms and squeezes. “You’re not staying here. When I learned my uncle left me his hunting cabin I didn’t realize it was a heap of rot that should be demolished. I never should’ve offered for you to stay here. Stupid, idiotic idea.”
“It’s not that bad,” I say.
He squeezes my arms and his lips lift in a sardonic smile. “Em, there are saplings growing from the roof, there’s a family of mice living in the ice-chest, there’s no bathroom—”
I jerk my head toward the outhouse.
“No indoor bathroom. And that mattress is something out of a horror movie.” He lets go of my arms and takes my hand. He rubs my left ring finger and I swallow a lump.
“I’ll be fine,” I say in a chipper voice. “Remember, I spent my childhood living out of a tent. I’ve slept in much worse.”
“Em,” he says. There’s a sad, resigned note in his voice.
I take my eyes away from the window and look up at Justin. Really look at him.
His face is as familiar to me as my own. Clear, forthright, blue-gray eyes, neatly trimmed wavy blond hair, a straight nose and chiseled jaw that represent generations of breeding wealth with good looks. Lips that turn up at the corners. Justin is always on the verge of a smile. He was born into wealth and privilege, just like me. Our mothers were best friends, they spent their summers together on Martha’s Vineyard. He could’ve turned out rotten and entitled, but he didn’t. He’s honest and generous. And for the last nine years, he’s been my closest friend.
“I can’t,” I say.
He searches my eyes and then drops my hand. He runs his fingers through his hair. It ruffles then falls flat again. He’s in a navy pinstripe suit. He left his law office early to drive me here and didn’t take the time to change. He’s partner in his family’s firm, the legal giant of New York City.
“Please come back with me,” he says. “This was a mistake.”
I start to shake my head no but he continues. “I’ll have a guestroom made up, you can have the whole second floor to yourself.” Justin lives in a four-story townhouse near the American Museum of Natural History. He got it for a steal—eight million dollars. I always suspected he bought it because he knew I haunted the halls of the museum almost daily. We’ve had a ritual for nearly five years that I stop by and stay for dinner anytime I’m at the museum.
“I won’t ask you to marry me again,” he says in a quiet voice.
I look down at the brown carpet. Last week Justin asked me to marry him.
“You asked for time to think, and I’ll give you as long as you need.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s not that.”
Justin lets out a ragged sigh. “It’ll blow over,” he says. “It’ll be forgotten by Christmas.”
He may believe it. In fact, I can see in his eyes that he does, but he hasn’t seen what I have. It won’t blow over. The name Castleton is now synonymous with cheating, lying, morally and financially bankrupt scum.
I’ve always been honest with Justin. At least, I have since the night of the charity gala nine years ago, when he found me sobbing in a side room, right before I was to present the Heart of the Empress. He patted my back, listened to my half-sobbed, mostly indecipherable story about a boy I loved who was now dead, nearly a year gone and dead, and he told me that he’d stay with me. He said he wasn’t adventurous, or interesting, and that he’d never run into a jungle, so I could count on him to be boring and around whenever I felt like crying. That he’d be fine if I just wanted to sit next to him and scowl.
He was calm, and forthright, and didn’t expect anything of me at all.
My father expected me to forget Andrew, Rigo, the jungle. He wanted me to learn the ropes of running the family business. He immersed me in everything I’d ever need to know to be as successful as him. It was like he was possessed.
I barely managed to pass my last year of high school. Dad bullied my admission into university. He couldn’t manage Oxford. The low grades of my last year of school and my lackluster interview saw to that. Instead, I went to NYU. Justin was uptown at Columbia. I dropped out after my freshman year.
A week later Dad had a stroke and I took over Castleton, Inc.
Looking back, I can see the beginning of the end. Two years ago we started being denied dig permits, investors dropped us, museums questioned the authenticity of our finds, I overextended on projects and lost millions of dollars. Until finally, our debts were called in, and it was discovered that a series of bad investments and using our personal property as collateral meant that Castleton, Inc. was bankrupt. Completely broke.
Last week, I lost our family estate, our New York apartment, my dad’s condo in Naples. All our possessions were auctioned off to pay our debts. Everything was sold.
I have no home, no car, and six hundred, seventeen dollars and fourteen cents in my bank account.
Two days ago, the news came that my latest find was a forgery. I pulled the artifact out of the ground myself and guaranteed its authenticity. But it looks to everyone in the world that I tried to foist off a fake as one last grasping, dishonest bid to hang on to a crumbling career.
I’m not sure how in two years I ruined what took my father thirty years to build, but I did. My life was like a line of dominoes just waiting to fall down and that first dig permit denied was the flick that started the collapse. Or maybe it started before that. Ten years ago, when I hid in the bushes and didn’t try to save Andrew or his uncle. Not even when the men dragged them away. Maybe it all started when I learned that I’m a coward. Because I sat frozen under those bushes for hours. Hours. I didn’t come out until the sun rose and I heard my dad yelling my name.
“Where’d you go just now?” asks Justin.
I look up at him and try to smile, but can’t. “I was just thinking,” I say, “I once said that I’d be happiest living my life in a tent, dirty and exhausted from digging.” I gesture around the cabin. “Just think, this is near to my nirvana.”
Justin looks around the room and shakes his head. “I know you might not see it now, but I’m glad you lost Castleton.”
I look at him sharply.
He shrugs. “It was an albatross around your neck. You can’t tell me that in the years you’ve run it you’ve been happy.”
“No one is happy in their job,” I say.
“I am,” he says. “I love my job. I just won a two-hundred-million-dollar settlement. It was invigorating. When’s the last time you were invigorated?”
I pinch my lips together.
“I’ll tell you when,” he says. “The last time I saw you invigorated was right before you left to find the Heart.”
I look away from him. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” he says, “it’s not fair that you’re still holding on to it. Let it go. I think…” He pauses and I look up at him. “I think if Andrew were still alive, he’d want you to be happy. He’d want you to move on. It’s time. Castleton, Inc. is gone, good riddance. You’re free. You can have a fresh start. You can move on.”
I feel dried out, brittle like a leaf in winter. I’ve felt that way for years. It took me a year after I lost Andrew to start living again. And I learned how to live again, but I never learned how to be alive. My heart is all dried out. Justin thinks better of me, he thinks I can bloom again.
He reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a blue velvet jewelry box. I know what’s inside it. A family heirloom, his great-grandmother’s engagement ring—a two-karat pink diamond set in platinum: my engagement ring, if I accept his proposal.
“Justin,” I say.
He shakes his head and sets the box on the tray table. “I’m not asking,” he says. “I’m just leaving it here for you to consider. I care about you. I want to see you happy.”
“But we’ve never dated. We’ve not…” We kissed, once at New Year’s five years ago, and once at a charity gala three years ago when I wondered if maybe I could love twice in my lifetime. “I don’t love you,” I whisper. He deserves my honesty. He deserves more.
Justin nods, completely unruffled. “I know. Em, you know me. I’m not looking for love. I want a wife I respect, someone I love spending time with, who I can picture growing old with. You’re my closest friend. I don’t want messy love and outsized emotions. I’m a lawyer, I like logic. You don’t want another grand flame either. I get it. But I want a marriage and someday kids. I think you do too. I wouldn’t expect you to give anything you can’t.”
Like love.
I step to him and wrap him in a hug. I was so lucky the day he decided to be my friend. I lean my head on his chest.
“You’ll think about it?” he asks.
My heart thuds painfully against my ribs. Could I marry Justin? Let go of Andrew? Is Justin right? Would Andrew want me to be happy? Would he want me to move on?
“Yes,” I say, “I’ll think about it.”
