Find My Way
an excerpt

Emmett awoke with a start and a yell. He sat up in his bed, sweating and shaking, passing a trembling hand through his unkempt hair. It was a dream, he told himself. Only a dream.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling of weight in his arms. He shuddered. Looking around his dark room, passing over his familiar objects, recognizing their shapes in the shadows. His eyes fell on his dresser.

Emmett climbed out of bed and dug inside, in the lowest drawer, way towards the very back, where he kept a very special little shoebox. It had gotten a little gray by now, with age and dust, but Emmett carried it over to the bed with the care and gentleness usually reserved for holy relics.

He set the lid to the side and started rifling through all the little items, letters and cards and even a pressed flower that he had saved… all precious things, things that he and Elle had given each other.

It was a memory box.

Here was a polaroid wedding picture that one of Paulette’s daughters had taken. Here was a wedding announcement. Here was the ribbon from Emmett’s boutinierre. Here was Elle’s graduation program, here was the copy of her speech (all wrinkled from her nervous fidgeting beforehand. It confused Emmett, because she’d never had a problem with public speaking before… but now he knew why). Here was a sample of paint from when she fixed up his apartment, here was a picture of them both dressed up for halloween (Elle had re-borrowed Paulette’s playboy bunny outfit. Emmett had dressed up as Hugh Hefner). And everywhere, everywhere were little letters that they had written to each other. During classes because she was bored, left on the fridge to find when they woke up, tucked into each others pockets when they thought the other wasn’t looking, tucked into Elle’s book bag when Emmett had to leave for work early in the morning without wanting to wake her up and say goodbye. Elle had saved them all, and secretly, so did Emmett. They were all here, in this little shoebox in their dresser.

He picked one up at random, unfolding it’s slightly yellowed pages. He could tell from the whiff of strawberry that it had been from Elle, and he smiled looking down at her tidy little handwriting (his was always an untidy scrawl, which Elle learned to decipher over a rather amusing learning period).

This final is absolutely going to kill me, she wrote. Of course, it would help if the professor taught something even remotely on the topic of the course. I swear, if I didn’t have you to help me study, I don’t think I would ever end up graduating. And if it wasn’t for that one case, I would still be left with no one else thinking that I was worth teaching the material. Hell, not even my own parents believed I had that in me.

Elle

The paper made little crinkly noises as Emmett carefully folded it up, placing it gently back on the pile with the others. As he did, a corner of something caught his eye. He grasped it in his fingertips and pulled it out from the stack.

It was a picture of he and Elle, messing around on Paulette and Kyle’s wedding day. Everyone had been given little disposable cameras to take pictures with, and a friend of Paulette’s from the salon had given this photo to the pair of them.

They were in front of a fountain in the park where the reception was held, horsing around and just a little bit tipsy. Elle was in her fancy dress and Emmett was in his tux, and he was giving her a piggyback ride, one of her arms wrapped around his neck to grab his shoulder— her hair was strewn all over the place, and she was holding up her other arm, pretending to flex. They were both laughing, smiling.

Spinelli creaked open the bedroom door, peeking in, looking surprised at finding Emmett there. “Heartstrong? You’ve stayed in solitary seclusion for some extended amount of time now, the Jackal thought that maybe—“

“I’ve been a fool,” Emmett said, interrupting Spinelli, not looking at him.

Spinelli looked startled. “E— Excuse me?

“I’ve been a fool,” Emmett repeated. “All this time I’ve been so worried about Elle, so convinced that I had to be the one to save her, I forgot why I fell in love with her in the first place.” He looked up at Spinelli with shining eyes. “She is strong, Spinelli. She’s the strongest woman I know, ever since that first day I met her at Harvard Law. She can widthstand anything, I know she can. She’ll survive this. I know it. I know it!” he looked down at the picture, trembling in his hands. “I love her.”

The phone rang. Spinelli looked at the phone and back at Emmett, standing there with the photo in his hand, and then went to answer it. “Hello?”

He was quiet for awhile. Then his jaw dropped.

He ran back into Emmett’s room. “Emmett!” he said. “There is news of the most startling nature!”

Emmett did not look up, but Spinelli continued. “They found the Ex Senator Derrick’s evil lair, and reports of a nearby fishing villiage verify the news. Elle is gone! The guards reported that she escaped, disappeared five days ago! No one has seen her since!”

Emmett looked up and smiled, tears streaming softly down his face. “That’s my girl,” he said. “That’s my girl.”