Emilie

Molly was sitting in the living room when her husband Christian came home. He looked at her and she at him, and in their own little way, they knew what the other was thinking… ‘It was a very stressful day’. Christian walked to Molly, pulled her out of the chair she was in, and hugged her. Neither let go for a very long time, because truth be told, they needed it. They wanted the affection they got from one another because without it, they probably wouldn’t be able to raise their gorgeous 8 month old daughter, Emilie.
         “How was Emilie today?” Christian asked as he pulled Molly to the couch and wrapped his arms around her.
         “She was fine. For that matter, she’s sleeping right now. I think she wore herself out when we went to the park, and she tried to crawl after the pigeons. I got pictures, though,” Molly said happily.
         Christian laughed, “You know what I think we need?” Molly just looked at him questioningly. When she didn’t answer he went on, “I’m tired and you’re tired. We need a vacation. Just something to get us all away from New York and all its glories,” he said ‘glories’ in such a sarcastic way, that it caused Molly to laugh. 
         “Emilie’s never been to the beach,” she said in a questioning tone, looking up at him.
         “That’s kind of what I was thinking. We could go to Virginia. I’ve heard that’s a very nice place.”
         As they both agreed that they would spend tomorrow packing and leave for the beach the day after that, they heard Emilie start to cry from her crib upstairs. “I’d better get that,” Molly laughed, as she pulled away from Christian’s grasp around her waist.
         A few minutes later, Molly came back down stairs with baby Emilie in her arms. “There are my two gorgeous girls,” Christian smiled. “Even Emilie wants a vacation, don’t you sweet thing?” he said taking the baby from Molly. Emilie just sat in his arms and cooed, which Christian took as a yes.
         Molly took the baby from his arms and went to the kitchen to get her a bottle. She rocked back and forth with the baby after she ate, and soon found that Emilie had fallen back to sleep, and was softly whimpering. Molly looked down at her daughter curled asleep in her arms, and whispered to herself, “You are so beautiful, and I don’t know what I’d do if I would ever lose you.”
         About that time, Christian came to the kitchen and offered to take Emilie to her crib, but Molly insisted that she was tired, and she would take her up and get ready for bed herself. As the girls went up the steps, Christian made sure the front door was locked, and then turned to follow them up, thinking to himself that it would be impossible to have a better, more loving family than he already had. 
         Later that night, after the family had fallen silent in their own dream world, there was a loud crash of a window breaking, accompanied by the sound of baby Emilie’s crying. Christian and Molly woke to the startling noise and Christian ran quickly to the locked, iron safe in the closet, grabbed a small hand gun, and slowly crept down the hall to find what had broken the window. Molly followed Christian’s orders and stayed in their room, but she found it harder and harder the longer he was away. The baby had stopped crying, so at first, she thought Christian must be putting her back to bed, but he was gone for a very long time.
         When he finally came back to the room, Molly became even more unsettled, because Christian was crying. He walked over to Emilie and put a hand on her cheek, then pulled her out of bed and wrapped her in a hug. While running a hand down her back and through her hair, he told her that the window in Emilie’s room was broken, and Emilie was gone from her crib. Molly started to shake, then she gripped Christian’s arm and began to cry.
         “What are we going to do?” she whispered, still shaking from the tears falling down her face.
         “I don’t know, but I’m going to call the police, and I want you to stay here, okay?” He said slowly, trying to make sure she understood.
         Molly shook her head, unable to talk anymore, and then let Christian go to make the call.
         When the cops came, they searched all through the baby’s room to find anything that would help and then began questioning Molly and Christian, searching to find any possible answers of people who would do this, or people who don’t like the family, or anything at all that could be wrong.
         When the police left, one officer stayed in the house to talk to the couple, and told them that there were going to be officers around the house throughout the night to make sure that nothing else happened.  He told them not to worry and to try to get some sleep. He also made sure to emphasis the point that they would do everything they could to find their daughter, and then he walked out the door.
Molly was holding Christian’s hand so hard that his fingers were beginning to lose their feeling. “Sorry,” she said letting go.
“No, its fine,” Christian said taking her hand back, in his. Both of them fell into a light sleep on the couch curled around each other, after several hours of restlessness, and not being able to sleep, thinking about Emilie.
During the early morning hours, the phone rang, and woke the young couple up out of their light slumber. “H-hello?” Christian said sleepily. All he heard was the sound of his daughter crying, and the call was ended.
*****
Five years later, Molly had taken over a kindergarten teaching job at the school in town, hoping that she could get over the loss of her daughter, her and Christian’s only child. It was the first day of school, and the children were all standing in the classroom, looking around at the posters and desks and bulletin boards full of colorful words and phrases of inspiration. Molly called the kids to sit down, and took attendance. She noticed that only one child was missing. A few minutes later, Molly was telling the class a little bit about herself, when she got a call from the office, saying that there was a little girl crying in the hallway. She looked out the door and could see just a small bit of the girl sitting just around the corner. Molly grabbed a stack of various papers that needed to be handed out to the kids for them to take home to their parents, pulled a near passer-buyer, who was used around the school to help out the teachers if needed, to hand out the papers, and watch the children for a couple of minutes. 
The little girl was sitting just around the corner from Molly’s classroom. She sat down beside the child, and said, “Hello, your name must be Emily. I’m Mrs. Everett.” She listened to the little girl’s crying slowly calm down, just a bit, before continuing. The Emily shook her small head of curly brown hair gently. “Will you tell me why you’re crying, Emily?”
Emily sniffled a few times, before lifting her head to look at Molly. When she did, Molly’s heart skipped a beat. Emily looked so much like Molly, that she almost thought the little girl was Emilie, her Emilie. No, that’s not even possible. There is no way, Molly thought to herself silently. Still, she continued to look back at the small child, while having a battle of yes and no between her heart and her head.
“W-what if they don’t like m-me?” she sobbed.
“What? Why would you think that, sweet heart?” Molly cooed, before she could stop herself. Even though she tried to stop herself, every second she spent with this little girl, she felt closer and closer to her, and she couldn’t get control of it.
“B-because nobody likes me,” she whimpered. Molly tried to protest, but before she could Emily started again, “Even mommy and daddy. That’s why they put me here. They said they don’t want me no more,” she sniffled.
Molly felt the sudden urge to reach out and hug the poor girl, but she knew that she couldn’t. Instead she settled for, “Of course they love you. But you have to go to school. That way, you can get smarter, and you can make new friends, and meet new people. Please, would you come inside and just try for me?”
“What if they make fun of me?”
“They won’t make fun of you, I promise. I won’t let them. Please?” Molly held her hand out to Emily wishing so much just to be able to take her into her arms and hug her, and tell her that everything would be okay. “You know, I have a daughter named Emily too, but her name is spelled differently than yours is.
“Really?” Emily said, getting a little happier. 
“Yup, and I’m sure she would love to meet you sometime. She looks very much like you.” Molly felt bad for lying to Emily, but somehow it eased the pain building in Molly’s chest just a little bit. She was also hoping it would convince Emily to come inside. It worked, and Emily took Molly’s hand and walked inside the classroom to see a bunch of students piling papers into colorful folders.
“Do I get one of those?” Emily whispered to Molly, gesturing to the folders.
“Yes you do, let me go get you a folder and the papers to take home to your parents. Oh, and you sit right here.” She smiled.
After the final bell rang, Molly waited around until the students filed out of her room, to shut off the lights, and then she walked out of the school. As she walked around the side of the building, she saw Emily and who she guessed was her mother, heading towards their car. The mother helped Emily into the car before turning around and seeing Molly walking to her own car. The two looked at each other for a moment, in what seemed to Molly, a friendly way. Then, the mother took on a look of fear and disgust and rushed into her car, and hurried from the parking lot.
“Christian!” Molly yelled as she walked through the door of their home.
“I’m in the kitchen,” her responded.
Molly walked though the kitchen door to find her husband mixing together an assortment of vegetables together with pieces of beef in a crock pot. “I swear one of the little girls today looks just like me.”
“Okay? What’s that supposed to mean?” he adding some salt and pepper to the pot. “Oh, wait. No, Molly, don’t do that to yourself. You know it’s not possible. Please don’t get yourself worked up over her.” He pleaded.
“No, I won’t, but it was just so hard. She was afraid to come into the classroom today because she thought that the other kids wouldn’t like her. Then, this afternoon, her mother was looking at me like I had done something wrong. I’m sorry Christian, it just frustrates me. You know that.”
“Yes I do know that, but I also know that it’s not healthy for you either,” he said taking her into his arms remembering the last time she thought she saw Emilie. Molly ended up in the hospital for a week, because she was so stressed out that she wouldn’t eat or drink anything.
“Don’t worry, I won’t go to any extremes, I promise,” Molly vowed.
The week went by and Molly never saw Emily again. She went to the office to ask about her, when one of the women working there said, “Didn’t you know? Her parents pulled her out. They moved out of town. If you ask me, they shouldn’t have even started the poor girl in this school, if they were just going to move her somewhere else…” the lady continued talking, but Molly just zoned her out, and got a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that told her she was the reason Emily wasn’t still there.
*****
Fifteen years later, Molly is still teaching at the school, and it is Molly and Christian’s 20 year anniversary. “Come on, please. I just want to take you to dinner. It’s not like I’m going to propose to you again or something,” Christian begged.
“Christian, I have papers to grade, and why do you want to do this so badly anyway?” Molly argued.
“Please, we only get 20 years once.”
Molly sighed, but finally gave in, “Okay, okay, okay. Just give me a few minutes to get ready.”
“Yes. Okay, and hey, I love you,” he said shyly.
“Love you too,” Molly said as she walked up stairs.
That night at the restaurant, Christian and Molly were put at a table, handed menus, and a pretty waitress walked to their table. “Hello, my name is Emalie. How can I help you guys tonight?”
Molly stared at the girl so hard it made her head hurt. Christian ordered his food, then nudged Molly’s ankle under the table to get her attention. After writing down the orders, Emalie looked up to see Molly still staring at her.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” she asked quietly.
“Uh, no, I don’t think so,” Molly said quietly, shaking her head. Yet at the same time, she was thinking to herself that Emalie was her daughter. She looked just like Molly, but if she said anything to Christian, he would have another fit about how it’s not possible, and every time Molly saw someone with the name Emilie, even if it were spelled differently, she automatically thought it was their daughter. Molly really didn’t want to deal with that, so when Emalie walked away and Christian asked her what was wrong, all Molly said was, “Nothing, I just thought I saw her somewhere before.”
Two days after the night Christian had taken her out to dinner, Molly went back to the restaurant after work to find the girl. She asked another employee, and they told her, “No, Emalie quit yesterday. She said that her checks were always short, and the boss wouldn’t pay her back what she was missing.” 
*****
Fifteen years later, Molly was retiring from her job as a teacher. She and Christian both agreed that it would be best. Molly was beginning to have a hard time getting around, so they decided that it would only be fitting that she step down. Molly was going to finish out this year, and then another teacher would step in. The new teacher was supposed to come into the class room to observe Molly’s teaching.
One week before Molly’s 60th birthday, the new teacher walked into the classroom, and Molly was teaching the kids a new list of spelling words. “Kids, this is going to be a new teacher. Her name is Emilie Carols, and she is going to be sitting in on our class for the next few weeks. I want you all to be nice to her, okay?” Molly said. When she had read over the paper Emilie had turned in about herself for the school, she remembered how she had stumbled over the name Emilie. She had gone home that night to tell her husband about it, but decided better of it. Looking at the woman now, Molly knew that in her heart, something looked familiar about her, but she still wouldn’t go running to Christian, because she knew exactly what he would say. He would tell her to quit reading too much into things, and to stop forcing herself to remember, because it isn’t like it would matter anyway. By this point, if it were their daughter, Emilie, she wouldn’t remember them anyway.
Molly realized she was still staring, and the kids were waiting on their next word. She shook herself out of her trance and continued before the children realized anything. Molly told herself that she would be sure to talk to Emilie tomorrow, at some point. Even if she wasn’t her Emilie, Molly wanted to get to know her.
That night, Molly died in her sleep. The doctors could not pinpoint a specific reason, but they claimed that her heart just gave out, and she died quietly, and she wasn’t in any pain. Two days later, Christian died from a heart attack, but everyone said he had died of a broken heart.
The next week, their friends and family had a funeral for Molly and Christian. They were buried on top of a hill that overlooked a wide open field, which was gorgeous and filled with bright vibrant colors when the sun set. Everyone was given two red roses, one to put into Molly’s grave, the other to put into Christian’s grave. Someone, who no one else seemed to know, was at the funeral. She not only put a rose in each grave but in each, she also put a note.

I wish I could have known you better.
Unfortunately, now I will not get the chance.
See you in Heaven…
                      -Emily
                        -Emalie
                        -Emilie