Finding Emily

{Chapter 7}

   "Becca?"

  "Becca?"

   When she woke up Kyle was still there, and in dry clothes. He was sitting with her family in the den. It was dark except for the two little lights on the matching inn tables on either side of the sectional. She took in her brother sitting with his head in his hands, her father was standing above her with a glass of bubbling Sprite, and her Mom was at her side and touching her daughter's face with concern and tears in her eyes.

  "Is it her?" Becca asked; her voice hoarse and felt foreign in her ears. "Did they find Emily?"

  "They... they don't know," Delcan said as Pat began to cry and hid her face in her daughter's shoulder.

  "They don't know?" Becca objected. "How do they not know?"

  He didn't explain, but suddenly she understood why. There must not be enough of the body left. She felt sick and had to go to the bathroom to throw up. The same bathroom where she'd just been trying to get her best friend's boyfriend to have sex with her in the shower she thought as her father held her as she sobbed on the cold tile floor. He rocked her and told her he was there. He was crying, and she couldn't stand it. She loved him, but she just wanted to be away from everyone. 

  She kept digging her nails into her thigh and hoping that she would wake up. She remembered that feeling of relief she got whenever she finally woke up from a bad dream. She wanted that more than anything in the world. She wanted her life back from a month ago, and her problems that seemed so pointless and stupid now. She wanted everything back to the way it was.

  "It could be Paige," Steven voiced what they were all thinking as they sat in the den later and waited for a call from the police. Kyle went home after giving Becca an awkward kiss on the cheek and making sure it was okay for him to go. She could tell he didn't want to leave, but he also didn't want to intrude on their grief. He had tears in his eyes. He always treated Emily like a kid sister, and they traded insults like they were on a sitcom Star said once. He called her 'kid' and she called him 'asshole.' Emily always said he was a really cool guy, but she didn't think he was right for Becca.

  "He's crazy about you though," Emily would say, and Becca would deny it, but she was always happy to hear it no matter how many times it was said. She never admitted her feelings about Kyle, but of course Emily knew anyway, but she never teased Becca about it. Her older sister was one of the few people where her gentle side came out.

  They laid so many times on the sectional where Becca was sitting. Emily's legs were usually thrown over her sister's lap. They would paint their nails as they watched marathons of old reality shows and analyze all of the various weirdos as they called them. Now Becca was sitting there with her Mom and Dad and waiting to hear if the bones they had found belonged to Emily.

  No one said anything when Steven mentioned it could be Paige, but it was all in their minds. Becca wasn't sure what she wanted to happen. If it was Emily at least they would know where she was even though the thought was almost unimaginable. She wanted to vomit again thinking about it, but at least they would know where she was even if they didn't know yet what had happened – if they ever would, she thought. She couldn't even think of who would do this. She couldn't wrap her mind around it as her parents talked in low voices, and her brother kept jumping up to pace the room and then sitting back down and hiding his face in his hands.

  It took longer than on those shows Emily and Becca used to obsessively watch. Like Law & Order and every single crime show they could get their hands on. Their Mom said it was gruesome; the fascination people had with murder and depravity. Becca could understand that now.