Another thing I want to tell you is that I haven’t changed my Facebook password on purpose. I know you log in, I know you check it. I can see when it happens. Is it weird I like that we have the secret connection? We aren’t connected anywhere else…I didn’t know if we’d ever speak again…and then you emailed me.
I hope you do adopt a baby if it’s what you want. And I don’t care how corny it sounds…I hope you have the best life and that you get everything you’ve ever wanted. No one deserves it more. You’ll be an AMAZING mother. You deserve all the love and best things the world has to offer. And my inbox is open to you. No worries if this is the last of our emails, but understand I am deeply （grievingly） sorry for hurting you/us like this. I know these words can never be enough. You’re the complete opposite of broken. And your forgiveness means the world to me.
J
*
He took a shower, not able to get Joel’s email out of his head. End communication with Joel. It was stupid, and it was over. Now Emmett knew things Tallie didn’t, and he wouldn’t tell a soul. He hated knowing her brother’s secret and that he’d kept things from her; her face lit up when she talked about Lionel, even when she was fussing about him.
Emmett turned the shower water up as hot as it would go in an attempt to wash away his sins, got out smelling like Tallie again. He’d taken his small bag of toiletries into the bathroom and bent over to drink water from the faucet after he put a beta-blocker on his tongue. Emmett flossed and brushed his teeth with his own travel toothbrush and toothpaste, used his own woodsy-smelling deodorant to remind him he’d be leaving Tallie’s soon. He put on the navy-blue suit Tallie had hung on the bathroom door. She told him she’d considered returning it but forgot. Thought of donating it instead but never got around to it. So it’d stayed in a zipped bag in the back of her closet alongside her coats and dresses like some sort of dark spirit. A harbinger of exactly what, she said she didn’t know. “Maybe tonight,” she’d said, wiggling her fingers in a supposed-to-be-spooky way that made him smile.
The suit was expensive and slim, a bit tight around Emmett’s waist and a little short in the leg. The jacket sleeves stopped perfectly at his wrists but snatched too much when he held his arms out or up. He looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door and held his arms straight up above him, like an upside-down diver who would make the tiniest Olympic gold–winning splash. Tallie had given him a white dress shirt and a gas-blue tie, a pair of thin navy-blue socks with small ice-blue polka dots on them. Emmett smoothed his hair and beard, leaned forward, and stared at himself for so long he began depersonalizing. To stop it, he closed his eyes and kept them closed.
Tallie knocked on the door. His heart kicked hard, and he was thankful the beta-blocker would start working soon enough and soften it. He’d always been overly sensitive to his heartbeats, recognizing the smallest of normal electrical adjustments it made throughout the day.
“How’s it look?” she asked.
“You tell me,” Emmett said as he opened the door, his heart marching like an entire troop of soldiers.
“Oh, wow, it works! Suited and booted! It looks great on you!” Tallie said brightly from the hallway. She reached behind her to flick the switch. The bulbs on the ceiling cast wide angles on the walls and the slip of floor beneath their feet. Their bodies painted dramatic shadows in the corners like the darkness and light of a Caravaggio painting. She looked him up and down, stopping at his face to make eye contact and smile.
Emmett took her in. Steel-gray suit jacket and tight matching skirt that stopped at the knee. Pantyhose and a pair of black heels almost bringing her nose-to-nose with him. Scully was full-time sexy. Tallie in that suit in front of him? Equally irresistible.
（Happy and pretty in her pencil skirt. Creamy black makeup on her eyes, flicking up at the corners. Her lips are glossy and auburn. Wolf whistle.）
“You look really nice. Um, is that your pencil skirt? It’s the same color as a pencil. Is that why it’s called a pencil skirt?” he asked.
Tallie laughed at him after thanking him for the compliment.
“What? I’m wrong?” he asked, chuckling along. He really had no clue what a pencil skirt was, and apparently she wasn’t going to tell him.
“Men are ridiculous,” she said, patting his shoulder. She handed him the Mulder FBI badge they’d gotten from the Halloween store. He clipped it on to match hers. “Mulder and Scully wear trench coats a lot, and tonight would be a perfect night for a trench coat, but alas, I do not have two.”