When Smiles Fade (22 page)

She thought about Mrs. Tisdale. She had loved that old woman, and if there was still a shred of tenderness in her heart, it had been planted there by her warmth and affection. She loved Gracie and Brianna too, but she had to try very hard to love; it wasn’t a natural feeling for her. Emma had been raised in a loveless home and her parents had no love to spare for their children. A cruel combination of being ignored and heaped with abuse had made her incapable of forming strong attachments to others. She was now almost seventeen years old, without ever having been in a romantic relationship with a boy. On one level, her lack of intimacy bothered her. On another, she had no interest in men at all—until the night she met Ethan Miller.

It was two thirty in the morning and Emma had just arrived home from Doubles. Pulling up to the apartment, she noticed that all of the lights were on and immediately knew something was wrong. She rushed out of the car to find Gracie. Entering the apartment like a gladiator about to take on his opponent, she found her sister sitting on the sofa with a stranger.

“Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in my apartment?” she demanded.

As the stranger looked on, Gracie ran to her sister and threw her arms around her. Finally the guy stood and extended his hand.

“I’m Ethan Miller,” he said simply. “I was walking home when I heard Gracie here screaming. Some guys broke in through the bedroom window and, um, well, I think they kind of roughed her up.”

“Gracie, what happened? What did they do to you?” Emma asked in a calm, firm voice. She held her sister at arm’s length so she could examine her properly.

The side of Gracie’s face was bruised and her shirt was torn. The girl just kept crying. Knowing that her little sister was too upset to speak she turned her attention to Ethan.

“So you busted through my door to save some kid you didn’t even know?”

He nodded his head. “I was just trying to help. That’s all. I’ve seen the two of you around the neighborhood and just wanted to make sure she was okay. I’m gonna roll out now,” he said, heading for the door. Just before he left, he turned to the younger girl and said, “You take care of yourself, Gracie.”

The moment she heard the door close behind him, Emma moved her sister over to the sofa. “Gracie, tell me everything,” she said. “I need to know what the fuck happened here.”

Gracie explained that two boys, older than her, had come in while she was sleeping on the sofa. She had woken up when one boy grabbed her breasts while the other began pulling her pajama bottoms off. She had fought back and her resistance had angered them. They had begun hitting her. Gracie pulled her shirt up and showed Emma the bruises down her right side.

“Did they have sex with you, Gracie?” her sister asked.

“One of the boys was holding me down and the other got my pants off, but that’s when Ethan busted in and stopped them. They got scared and ran.”

Emma was livid that these two boys had thought they could just waltz into her home and harm her sister. Her anger threatened to consume her until Gracie’s sobs broke into her thoughts.

“Emma, please don’t be mad at me!” the younger girl begged. “I didn’t let them in. I did exactly what you told me. I even tried to get to the phone, but it was too late.”

“I’m not mad at you, Gracie,” Emma said gently. “I’m mad at myself for not protecting you. I don’t want you to worry about this. I’ll take care of everything and make sure you’re safe. All right? It’s all going to be fine.”

She had to lie down beside her little sister and soothe Gracie with her comforting presence for a long time until she felt safe. And finally Emma was able to lull her to sleep. She made up her mind to go out in the morning and buy sturdy window and door locks. Leaving Gracie alone at home was a risk she had to take if she wanted to earn a living. So she would have to find the best way to arrange for her protection when she left her on her own in the apartment at night. Emma considered various options: maybe Gracie could stay with Katie when she was at work? Or would Katie and her daughter want to move into the apartment with Gracie and her? Maybe Brianna would consider coming back to live with them? Her thoughts ran around in endless circles, but finally, she concluded, it was up to Gracie and her to find a solution.

The next morning, the girls drove to Deck’s Hardware Store in Ambler and bought brand new locks. Emma had just parked the car outside the apartment when they saw Ethan walking down the street toward them.

“Hey, Gracie,” he called out, “how are you today?”

The young teen looked to her older sister for approval.

“She’s fine,” Emma said, speaking for her. “Can I help you with something?”

Ethan chuckled. “I just wanted to see how Gracie was doing. I didn’t catch your name last night,” he said to Emma.

“That’s because I didn’t give you my name. What does it matter anyway? Gracie is fine. Thanks for helping last night. Now just leave us alone.”

“Whoa!” Ethan said, throwing his hands up in the air and taking a step backward. “I was just trying to be nice. You don’t have to be so nasty. If you want me to go away, I will. No problem.”

Having misunderstood his motive initially, Emma felt she’d been a little too harsh with him. Now she lightened up. “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. We just bought window and door locks. So I need to go. I want to get them installed today.”

“Yep, good idea,” Ethan told her. “Did you get the kind that screw into the wood? They’re stronger. You can also drill holes through the sides of the window frame and put screws in.”

Emma stopped and looked at him as if he had two heads. She hadn’t thought about the kind of tools she would need to screw or drill locks in place. “I, um, I forgot about tools,” she confessed. “We gotta go back to the store. Come on, Gracie.”

“You don’t have to,” Ethan said. “I have tools. I just live a couple of blocks over. I’ll go get a screwdriver and a drill. I can help you install the locks. If that’s okay with you,” he added, giving Emma a warm smile.

Still a little unsure as to whether she should trust him or not, she convinced herself that he seemed harmless enough. “Sure, Ethan, that would be great,” she now said. “By the way, my name is Emma.”

Ethan spent the afternoon helping the girls install their new locks. When they were done, Emma offered to cook him dinner, warning him that they were trying a new lasagna recipe, with no guarantee that it was going to be good. But Ethan was eager to stay anyway. He had made up his mind to tell them he loved the food even if it tasted like garbage.

Over dinner, he asked them many questions. Emma was a little uneasy about the way he was probing, but figured that’s what people did when they were getting to know each other. Besides, she was prepared for such situations and had all the appropriate lies in place. She explained she was twenty-one and that Gracie was her younger sister. Their parents had died suddenly, leaving them orphaned with no other family.

“Wow! That’s a lot of responsibility to take on,” “So what do you do for a living?” Ethan responded, pretending to be impressed, but really only putting on an act so that Emma would trust him. Ethan couldn’t care less about how hard their life had been. All he focused on now was getting into Emma’s pants.

“I dance at Double Visions,” Emma told him frankly and watched as his eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Double Visions? I’ve been in there a couple of times,” he said. “How did you end up stripping?” He sounded more intrigued now than he had earlier.

“We needed the money. So I went to amateur night and have been dancing there ever since.”

Ethan was beginning to like her more and more. First, she was fucking drop-dead gorgeous. Second, she was a stripper. And third, the two girls were living alone with no other family. He was pretty excited about the prospect of dating her and hoped that over time she would start to trust him. He knew that Emma would not be easy to break. She was strong-willed, and it would take a lot of work on his part to win her over and let him into her life.

When Ethan left that night, he promised Emma he would swing by the apartment to keep an eye on things. He picked up on her hesitation. “I won’t go in, Emma,” he reassured her. “I just mean I’ll swing by and make sure nothing is going on outside the apartment.”

Emma agreed, but cautioned Gracie before she left for work, “Don’t let Ethan into the apartment while I’m gone. You get me?”

Gracie nodded. “Yes, Emma,” she said, using exaggerated body language. “I get it, Mom!”

Emma laughed at her baby sister. She was relieved that Gracie wasn’t freaking out about staying home alone, even though just a day had passed since those assholes had broken into their apartment. She wanted the girl to be fearless, just like her. While Gracie was much less fearful than most girls her age, she couldn’t match her daring sister, who seemed incapable of fear. Experience had taught Emma to develop a kind of immunity in the face of danger. Given the aura of invincibility she exuded, Gracie was never afraid in her older sister’s company.

At Doubles that night, Emma told Foster the details of the break-in at the apartment the previous night. By now, she and the bartender were good friends and she enjoyed his company.

He was alarmed, however, at the casual way she had narrated the story. “Emma, that’s serious shit!” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you scared?”

Emma giggled softly. “Look, Foster, when you’ve been through all that Gracie and I have been through, this seems like nothing. Of course I’m worried about my sister’s safety, but I have to earn a living too. And anyway, the way I look at it, it’s more dangerous for us to live on the streets in my piece-of-shit car than in an apartment. And for that, I have to keep working. Besides, I like working here. I never expected to like dancing, but I really do.”

Foster couldn’t really bring himself to share Emma’s nonchalance about the break-in, but was too kind a person to pass judgment on her attitude. “Well, listen, Em,” he offered, “if you and Gracie need to come and spend a couple of days at my condo, you’re always welcome.”

Emma leaned over the bar in a skimpy black lace bra that barely covered her breasts and hugged her friend. “Thanks, but we’ll be fine.”

As she left the bar area and made her way downstairs to the dressing room, Foster’s gaze lingered on her. He had a serious crush on her, but she hadn’t even noticed it. It surprised him to see how absorbed she was in her own world, failing to pick up on social cues. He tried to keep his feelings for her hidden, but even if he hadn’t, he thought ruefully, she wouldn’t have been affected by any of his love vibes. He had always been a ladies’ man and the women usually fell at his feet. His charm had worked with all the girls he had dated in the past, but Emma seemed untouchable, a class apart.

As the weeks passed, Ethan spent longer periods of time with Emma and Gracie. He was extremely kind to them, and for the first time in her life, Emma began to feel the stirrings of attraction for a man. New to such feelings, she was confused and didn’t know how to deal with them at first. But with the passage of time, she found herself accepting the idea of how attached she’d grown to him. He was certainly an attractive man with his broad shoulders and bulging arm muscles. His blond, curly hair, strong jaw, and wide smile, set off by a perpetual tan, gave him the look of a surfer who had just left the beach.

Six weeks after they had met, Ethan asked her out for a date.

“Em, I was thinking we could, um, go out for dinner before you go to work this Saturday night. What do ya think?”

“Sure, Ethan,” she replied innocently, having failed to grasp that he had just asked her out for a
real
date. “As long as we don’t go to a Mexican restaurant. Gracie doesn’t like Mexican food.”

Ethan leaned into her comfort zone. “I meant just the two of us, Emma. We’ve been friends for a while and the thing is I’m pretty into you. I thought you were into me too. Sooooo…I was thinking we’d go out on a date.”

Emma had already acknowledged to herself that she liked Ethan a lot. In fact, she even had a tiny crush on him. “That sounds good,” she said. “We’ll just see how things go.”

Gracie walked into the room at that moment, catching them in an embrace. She stopped short, her eyes wide with amazement.

“What’s going on with you two?” she asked.

“Nothing, Gracie,” Emma blurted out. “We, ah, we decided to go out on a date this Saturday night.”

Gracie sized Ethan up for a moment. “Whatever,” she said without enthusiasm.

Emma knew from her reaction that Gracie wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of her sister dating Ethan. She also knew that her sister could be possessive about her and had always been a little jealous of her relationships with other people, including Brianna and Katie.

By the time Ethan went home that evening, Emma had begun thinking about him in a different way, in a “boyfriend” kind of way. He had been kind to them and was fun to be around. She decided to give the date a real chance and wait to see how the night turned out.

During the week that followed, Emma prepared for her dinner with Ethan. She was nervous about the date, and since it was her first, she wanted everything to be perfect. She had bought a new dress for the occasion that fit her perfectly, accentuating her tight curves and long, lean legs. It had made her feel so sexy when she tried it on in the store that she just had to buy it. As she got ready for their early dinner, her sister walked into the bedroom.