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Emma was young. Young and lost. She had no clue what she wanted to do with herself. Her entire life, she'd been living in the shadow of her older sister, Jane.
Now, Jane was on top of her life. A type A personality that gave her the drive to shoot for perfection. And perfection she did achieve. Her life looked like something out a shitty novel: finish high school, go to college, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids.
It left Emma wondering if she could ever be as good as Jane. Their parents seemed to have given up on her, but she could tell that Jane was rooting for her from the sidelines. She could turn it all around; get her grades up, figure out what she wanted to do with herself, and be a general successful person. So what did Emma do?
As soon as her parents passed, she decided to use part of her inheritance money to go backpacking across Europe.
It hadn't been her intent to just never come back. At least, that's what she told herself. Though maybe subconsciously it had been the plan all along. She didn't know, and she didn't really need a definitive answer.
What she did know was that her sister had been supportive. Jane had said that it would be a "good experience", and that maybe she could "find herself". With their parents gone, this was Jane's new thing. She would act more like a concerned yet supportive parent instead of an older sister. On some level, Emma knew that it should irritate and infuriate her. Yet here she was, happy that her sister loved her for who she was and that she was insistent on proving that she would be there no matter what.
Maybe that's why it hurt to leave Jane in America.
Maybe that's why, when Jane had contacted her those many times, she couldn't bring herself to come back only to leave again.
Maybe that was why she almost felt more lost that she had with Jane in her life.
And that must have been why it hurt more than anything when she got the call that Jane was gone.
Emma walked out of the airport and onto a busy street. Maybe she could get a cab, and work her way from there? She was uncertain, despite all of her certainties when she purchased her ticket to France. It had seemed like a sound plan.
Start west, slowly make her way east, and buy a ticket back to the U.S. before she entered Russia.
As she pondered what exactly her game plan should be she pulled out her phone. She had it in airplane mode for the flight, but now that she was securely on the ground she could get whatever notifications she had missed for the past eight hours.
As she glossed over the notifications, she got discouraged. Most of them were email chains, notifications that she was close to running out of data, some notifications from her apps. Of course no one had cared to text her. She got to the last notification and paused.
Someone had texted her after all.
Jane.
She smiled to herself as she opened the text and read it silently to herself.
[Jane: You're gonna do great things, Emma! Text me when you land so I know you made it safe!]
The sentiment behind the text was nice. Her smile only widened as she typed out a reply.
[Emma: just got off the plane, about to get a taxi into town]
She jammed her phone back into her pocket and did a last minute check for her belongings. Phone, keys, wallet, backpack that was twice her size...
Content that she had everything, she stepped to the curb to wave down a taxi, and took it about ten minutes into town.
She paid and got out of the taxi in front of a store that had a sign that she couldn't read. Squinting against the sun, she watched as the taxi pulled away.
Her phone started buzzing. She was getting a phone call.
It was Jane.
She answered and pressed the phone to her ear, smiling all over again when she heard Jane on the other line.
The next time Jane contacted her, she was in a hostel near the French/German border. It had been a particularly long day of wandering around and the sun was starting to sink below the horizon.
She has spent the majority of the day just getting miles behind her, and had only stopped a couple of times to either buy food and, on one occasion, to sit under a tree in a park.
So when she reached the hostel where she had planned on staying for the night, she felt a wash of relief. As much as she had gotten used to walking legitimately everywhere, this was the first time she had walked for practically an entire day.
She walked into the building and was met with two walls lines with bunk beds. Staying in places like this made her anxious that her belongings were going to get stolen. Many a backpacker had told her about the time (sometimes multiple times) that their backpacks had been sifted through and looted while they were asleep in a hostel.
But her funds were limited, so she stayed in a hostel whenever she was able. She'd been lucky so far, but was growing increasingly weary of testing how long it would be until the same happened to her.
She chose a bottom bunk in the far corner of the room and immediately plugged her phone in. It was alarmingly close to dying, and she did not want to be stuck without her phone as a crutch and precaution.
Her social media was fairly empty as she scrolled through it. Nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing directed at her. It got to the point where she wasn't even reading posts, but was mindlessly scrolling instead.
It wasn't too much later when she shut the screen off, set the phone on her pillow next to her head, and laid flat on her back, trying to fall asleep. She was far too wound up to sleep.
It felt like probably hours that she laid and stared at the bottom of the bunk above her, where a complete stranger was now snoring rather loudly.
The familiar buzz of her phone sounded rather loudly, directly into her ear.
Emma dramatically held her phone above her face, horizontal to the bed.
As expected, it was Jane. She rolled over onto her side as she answered the phone. Jane greeted her with the same enthusiasm she usually did, and the two chatted about an upcoming baby shower that her sister was going to be having that Emma would be unable to attend. As usual, her sister's voice helped to soothe her into a more relaxed state.
Before they had even hung up, Emma fell asleep. Her sister stayed on and listened to her breathe for a couple of minutes before hanging up and texting a quick "love you, stay safe" to her.
The brunette was relaxing in a café over a cappuccino, reading some magazine that had been at the counter. She didn't speak German, but she needed something to occupy her mind, so she busied herself with flipping through its pages and looking at the various images within.
About halfway through, she settled on a page that had a picture of the United States' president.
How long has it been, she thought to herself. How long has it been since she's been home? It had been long enough that all of the time she had spent backpacking seemed to blur together into one incredibly long month. In reality, she knew had been far longer than a month. At least four or five. Maybe six.
At this point, she had begun telling herself she couldn't go back. If she went back, she told herself, Jane would question why she hadn't returned all of the other times she had been invited. Emma didn't even know the answer to that, so how was she supposed to provide her sister an explanation sufficient enough for missing out on every major life event that her sister had invited her back for. Birthdays, holidays, weddings, baby showers, housewarming parties…
All of it.
She rested her elbows on the table, and her forehead on the palms of her hands. Her face twisted into a scowl. She felt stuck between a rock and a hard place.
As if summoned by Emma's thoughts of her, Jane chose exactly that moment to call. It had reached the point where, when she got a call, she didn't have to check her phone to know that it was her.
She cleared her throat and answered with a fake cheery tone, already coming up for an excuse as to why she couldn't come home for whatever it was Jane was going to ask her about.
She missed her sister, but at this point was too anxious about the whole situation to come back home.
"Hey!" Emma yelled as she ran at her trash can, flailing her free hand above her head in an attempt to scare the coatimundi that was digging through the canister off. Her other hand had a death grip on the full trash bag she was carrying, hoping that it wouldn’t break open. She was nearly on top of it when it decided to turn and run full speed into the tree line behind the tiny house.
She ran her fingers through her hair, flipping it over her head with a sigh.
Why had she chosen to move to Guatemala of all places? There had been no real reason when she decided on it. The universe just seemed to align; the pawns fell into place in just a way that made Guatemala the most logical location she could possibly be. At least she didn't hate it here, and the cost of living was low enough that she managed to live comfortably. Even if there were volcanoes and coatimundis.
With a bit of effort, she hoisted the trash bag into the can and slammed the lid onto it. She knew the lid would likely do nothing to stop more animals from foraging in her garbage.
When she entered her house, she could hear her phone ringing. She scrambled to her kitchen table and grabbed it as quickly as she could, answering it.
Jane wished her a merry Christmas, and reminded her that she was always welcome home for the holidays if she did so desire. Emma tried to sound optimistic on the phone, but came up with her usual excuse.
That didn't stop her from talking with her sister for another two hours.
Emma had been living in Guatemala for years, and Jane had never given up on inviting her in for holidays, though the life events had come to a grinding halt after her son, Tim, had been born. She supposed when you have a child that's just what happens.
She was sat on her couch, watching some new show on Netflix. It wasn't anything she was into, but it was better than sitting alone in silence.
Vibrations hit her thigh as her phone started ringing.
"Right on time," Emma said to herself. It was almost Christmas, so she had been expecting the call for a few days.
She lifted the phone and spoke into the phone. "Hey, Jane."
"Emma?" The voice on the other line was deep. Gruff. Definitely a man's. It wasn't Jane.
"Uh, yeah?" Emma sat up, concern washing over her. "Who is this?"
"My name is Tom," the voice said, though he sounded uncertain. "I'm, uh, Jane's husband."
"Um, yeah, hi." Emma wasn't quite sure what to say, but she was sure there would be an explanation for this whether she asked for one or not. The two sat in an uncomfortable silence while she waited for the man to speak again.
"You need to come home." The man's voice broke, and his following radio silence on the other end spoke a million words.
She sprang up and started throwing her luggage together. She purchased a plane ticket for the following day, knowing full well this was something she needed to come home for.
Emma was coming home, but it wasn't for a celebration.
And now look at where she was. At her sister's doorstep, too nervous to actually ring the doorbell. She stood for several minutes, just waiting.
As if on its own, a hand reached out and her pointer finger pushed the doorbell.
A tall, dirty-blond man answered the door and instantly invited her in. He introduced himself as Tom, the man on the phone yesterday. He seemed more irritated than grateful that she was here, but she wasn't going to focus on that for now.
He lead her into the living room where a small boy was sitting on the couch. The boy looked up at her as she set her bags down and walked toward him. "You must be Tim," she said with a smile as she crouched on the ground in front of him, offering up a hand. "I'm Aunt Emma. I'm your mom's sister."
He offered a small smile and accepted her hand. She ran her thumb over the back of his hand, giving him a forced smile that she was sure didn't reach her eyes.
And now Emma felt bad that she had never met Tim before. That's not to say she couldn't have met Tim if she hadn't been so stubborn, but seeing Jane's son--her nephew--still made her feel uneasy. Looking at him reminded her of Jane. He had her soft eyes, her little nose, and the same round face shape. She stood and ruffled his hair.
Emma was determined to do her best to make up for lost time. She let Tim show her his truck collection while Tom went to the funeral home for some last minute preparations. Under any other circumstance, this would have been a happy occurrence.
Without Jane here to enjoy the moment with her, it all felt hollow.
These feelings and realizations hadn't fully hit her until Tim looked at her with his big, brown eyes and said plainly, "my mom isn't coming back."
Emma swallowed the lump in her throat and fought back tears that welled up in her eyes. They were close, but she refused to let them overflow. "I know." Her voice cracked in a ways she found far too revealing, but then quickly felt stupid for being self-conscious about crying in front of her own nephew. Her hand reached out and squeezed his shoulder. "We're all gonna miss her, buddy."
The boy nodded, not quite sure what else to say. They sat in silence for a couple more minutes, but soon enough Tim started showing off his cars again.
Emma responded by asking him about other, specific cars, that she thought looked cool
She might not have been able to be there for her sister, but she was going to do her damndest to be there for her nephew.