Far From Normal by Becky Wallace

Author:Becky Wallace [Wallace, Becky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2020-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

I’M CURLED UP ON THE COUCH EDITING WILLIAM’S FOOTAGE BY THE time Emma gets home at a little after five.

“Hi,” she says on an exhale, kicks off her nude sling-backs by the door, and sweeps my feet off the couch.

“You okay?” I ask, as she plops down beside me.

Watford tries to climb into the space between us, but there really isn’t enough room. His head is on Emma’s leg; his butt is on me. Neither of us move to push him away even though he’s smelly from his walk home.

“Do you care if we order up?” she asks. “We can still have steak frites, but wouldn’t it be better to eat in our pajamas?”

Nice deflection, Em. “Sounds great to me.” Especially since I’m already in my jams.

She makes the call, and I go back to editing. William’s footage is not as good as mine, so making it look decent isn’t nearly as easy as it was when I was working on my own. He filmed everything at eye level, which is fine for candid things but means I can’t replicate anything I’d already done.

Emma comes out of her bedroom, face scrubbed, hair tied on top of her head. With her sloppy clothes on, she looks younger. Not that thirty-eight is ancient, but without her fancy wardrobe and perfect appearance, she seems more than six years younger than my mom.

She turns on a recorded episode of The Bachelorette, and we eat in front of the TV in near silence. This is not normal.

“Em, did something happen today? You seem off.”

She takes a long time chewing and swallowing one of her blue cheese—sprinkled fries. “Geoff called.”

It takes me a moment to process the name. He stopped being Uncle Geoff before the divorce was even final; I haven’t thought about him with that moniker since the last Christmas they spent with my family. They could have stayed in any hotel, but they always wanted to be part of the Christmas morning experience. Cube was so infatuated with the magic of Santa Claus, and watching him open presents was adorable. Every year Mom bought Em and Geoff plaid pajama pants to match ours, and they sat in the recliner together, whispering about when they’d have kids of their own and the traditions they’d carry on. That last Christmas wasn’t any different than any of the five previous years—except we had more snow than usual, and Geoff helped us build a tunnel the entire length of our backyard.

None of us knew at the time that he was already hooking up with the Olympian. None of us knew that he was the biggest fake that ever existed.

“You mean The Cheating Bastard?”

She cringes like she’d just bit her tongue. “You’ve really got to stop calling him that.”

“Doesn’t make it untrue.” Doesn’t change the sour taste I get in my mouth every time I think about him. Doesn’t change that he hurt my aunt. Doesn’t change the fact that so many of my Christmas memories, my first trip to New York, and my only trip to the ocean are tainted by his presence.

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