“I heard him on the radio last week,” Emily said to Arielle as they sat on the couch dipping monkey bread into sauce.
“Him him?” Ari asked.
Emily nodded. “He’s going by a different name, but I’m sure it’s him.”
She’d looked up the lyrics to the song she heard in the deli, and the artist was named Austin Roberts. He’d grown up in Austin. And Roberts . . . they’d talked about stage names once, about flipping his first and making it his last. And with the sound, with the lyrics, with that voice, with a melody that sounded so similar to “Queen of All the Keys”—it had to be him. She hadn’t looked for a website, though, or any social media profiles. She was worried about what it would feel like to see his face again, after so long.
“Can I hear?” Ari asked.
Emily pulled the song up on iTunes. There was a whole album, she knew. She’d found it that afternoon. But she’d only bought the one song. She hit play and watched her sister listen to the lyrics, listen to him sing. Without even thinking about it, Emily started playing along, her right hand tapping the melody on the back of the couch, her left playing chords on her thigh. She knew it would be nearly three more months until the embryo inside her would be able to hear music—or anything at all—but she wondered if her child would like this song, would love music the way she did.
When the song was over, Arielle sat for a moment. Emily could see her processing, biting her lip as she considered her words. “Is that about . . .” she finally said.
“I think so?” Emily said, her eyebrows crinkling. “I think it’s about me.”
On their first date, he’d called her a crystal queen. It seemed impossible that the song would be about someone else.
Ari was quiet for a moment. “What are you going to do?”
Emily shrugged. “Nothing, I guess? I don’t know.”
“You’re not tempted to email him?” Ari said as she picked up her glass of water. “I would be.”
“Of course I’m tempted,” Emily said. “But that feels like opening up a lot. Like that Greek myth storybook Mom used to read us—I don’t want to be Pandora.”
Ari laughed, a sound that quickly turned rueful. “At least someone gave you a box.”
Emily looked closely at her sister. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Ari took a sip of water. “I turn thirty-six in two months.”
It took about three seconds for the significance to hit Emily. “When Mom got diagnosed,” she said. “Are you having any . . . ?”
Ari shook her head. “I don’t think so, but any time I trip over a crack in a sidewalk or drop my keys, I worry that this is it. It’s coming for me. And then I think about the choices I’ve made, giving up being a math teacher to raise my kids, getting married so young, and I wonder if I’m ever going to get to visit the Great Pyramids in Egypt.”
Ari was all over the place. Emily could barely parse what she was trying to say. She was afraid of getting sick, of regretting her life choices, of never living to see her dreams come true.
“You know,” Emily said, “Dad is sixty-four and totally healthy. If you want to look to a parent to predict your fate, your health could be like Dad’s just as much as like Mom’s.”
Ari ran her hand though her wavy hair, twisting it into a bun and then releasing it. “I feel like I need to plan for the worst-case scenario. Then it won’t be as hard if that ends up as my reality.”
That was one of the differences between the two sisters. Ari always planned for the worst, always had an umbrella in the car and canned food in the kitchen cabinet. Emily, through whatever quirk of personality, always planned for the best. But that meant things hit her even harder when they didn’t go as she hoped they would.
Emily slid over on the couch to hug her sister. “You can go back to teaching,” she said. “And plan a trip to Egypt. If Jack doesn’t want to go, I’ll go with you. No matter when you got married, you found a great guy who loves you and who you love, and same with your kids. They’re awesome. But no matter whether you’ve got thirteen years left or sixty-five, you should make sure you’re living your life the way you want to live it. And that can change, too. If you decide that you’re done staying home, you can work. The boys are older now anyway. Their lives changed, and yours can, too, if you want it to.”
Ari bit her lip. “Do you think someone would hire me?” she asked. “I’ve been out of the classroom for so long.”
“You won’t find out unless you try,” Emily replied.
Ari leaned her head against her sister’s. “Does it feel nice,” she asked, “to be someone’s muse? To be the subject of his song?”
The corner of Emily’s mouth lifted. “A little,” she admitted.
The sisters kept talking until midnight, when Ezra came home and was surprised to find them on the couch together under an afghan, the cold remnants of a plate of monkey bread still on the coffee table.
“I should go,” Ari said, when she realized what time it was.
“But come back, soon,” Emily responded, realizing how rare it had become for the two of them to get time alone to talk, uninterrupted, for hours.
“Yes,” Ari said. “Soon. Because we still have to clean out the second bedroom.”
Emily laughed. “I’d forgotten we were supposed to do that.”
“Next time,” Ari said. “Next time.”