August boasted its presence with a heat as fierce as the footsteps that carried Emma on her way. The summer had proved to be an unrelenting one, and this day was to be no exception.

Emma's steps were deliberate: the stride of a soldier marching into battle; the gate of a horse being whipped by its master. Each step held the intent of her mission. Each step made the other people on the street mere intrusions, obstacles to be side-stepped. It seemed as if the entire world disappeared, and all that remained was her mission.

The mission had really begun many hours before when she drove away from the safety of her home. The heat had come with her--every mile of the way. It clung to her. It made her long, blond hair stick to the back of her neck like cobwebs in a corner.

The drive into the small town had left her parched and speechless. As soon as she eased the car next to the curb, Emma felt her feet compelled to complete the next leg of her journey on the hot August pavement.

The metal and glass vendor-box that held the newspapers became like a white fireball as it lost its identity in the noon sun. The change in her hand seemed itself to sweat. Diligently, Emma delivered it, each coin sliding through the slot to help complete the mission. Chink...chink...chachink. She pulled the hot metal handle down and took a newspaper.

Her impatience opened the newspaper before she had even managed to seat herself on the bench next to the machine. She searched each page, looking for it. A fear swelled inside of her: fear she would find it, a fear she wouldn't. This, then, was her mission. This was what had compelled her feet to move.

And there it was--like some foreboding calm before a storm. Right after the Sports Section. Right before the Classifieds. A strange place for what she needed to see, for what she had traveled some two-hundred miles just to look at.

Emma's father's obituary sprawled before her. It loomed as if it owned the page it was printed upon. She had known for two days that he was dead, but had found every reason to disbelieve it. She had found every reason to go on living her life just as she had the moment before the news crackled through the speaker of the answering machine. "Your father's been killed," the recorded voice of her mother began. "The funeral's on Friday. The rest is up to you."

Such a cold message it had been. Such cold news, delivered by what felt to be a stranger. Her mother's voice had seemed so void of all emotion, void of anything but cold news. A weather report. An announcement in some airport. Not words that told Emma that she had just lost someone. Not words that even dignified her. The words weren't personal enough for her to believe, and so she didn't.

But there it was. The smell of the hot ink made it real. Black and white. Official. Undeniable. Uncensored by the child she suddenly felt she had turned into: the child inside of her--bludgeoned by feelings of abandonment and pain. She was certain it was pain she could neither feel the depth of nor comprehend.

And the mission was completed.

Emma read each word of the obituary. She memorized it in a way that would brand it into her senses forever. Her father had been reduced to ink--somewhere between the Sports Section and the Classifieds. A two-paragraph summary of an entire life, placed between the sweet taste of victory and the bitter taste of need.

Emma read each word. She saw her mother's name, her brother's. She flinched at the reminder of the other brother, whose own obituary was made indelible in her soul so many years before. She saw her own name: the only daughter of a man lying cold on some slab in a morgue. She painfully wondered if the inclusion of her name arrived as an afterthought, or as merely another attempt to keep up appearances. Emma the misfit. Emma the black sheep. And the prodigal daughter had returned. But returned to what? And to whom?

For the first time in the passing moments, Emma's eyes looked up, beyond the parameter of the newspaper that had consumed all of her attention. This was the town of her birth. She had learned to talk here. She had learned to suck the sweetness from the honeysuckles that grew in a field on the edge of town. She had learned to respect the unyielding presence of the August sun as it prepared the midwestern crops for harvest. She had learned to walk here, and she had learned to run--from herself, mostly.

Emma's back eased to the contour of the wooden bench as she looked at the main square of a town, the town she hadn't seen in over ten years. She scanned, with eyes that ached in need of tears. She looked for things familiar...

There was the old Five & Dime across the street, boarded up by a new generation--the unsuspecting victim of department stores, of convenience stores. The building wasn't alive anymore, but it seemed to Emma as if she could still hear the creaks in its wooden floors--floors so worn that they had become slippery under little feet that were always in a hurry. Emma remembered how small she had felt next to the shelves that had seemed so incredibly tall back then.

Emma looked down the block to the library that was next to the church. In her mind, she retraced the overgrown path that led between the two, old buildings. The children in town had named it "Spooky Lane" because of all the scary shadows that lived there. Somehow Spooky Lane didn't sound so spooky anymore. She had given her first kiss away in Spooky Lane. To Tommy. Tommy??? Tommy What's-His-Name. Funny, he had seemed so important and unforgettable to a twelve-year-old.

And there...the paint store...where the crotchety old man worked...the man who always smelled like turpentine.

Emma pointed to the bank in her mind. It had gotten a facelift some time in the past years. It seemed to make itself stick out, like a poorly-cliched sore thumb, next to the other store fronts that were as old as the town itself.

And the old movie theater had been boarded up. A few letters still clung to the marquee, marking its passing. Posters still hung in the glass cases, curled and yellowed by too many August suns.

And over there...the drug store with the isle that had every kind of candy known to man. Emma smiled at the "good old days" when it took a half an hour to spend a quarter. She smiled to remember those tiny, brown bags that carried the licorice and the Sugar Babies to the spot by the river...

Ah yes, the spot by the river--where Emma used to congregate with her friends. It was at the end of Main Street, at the bottom of a path that began behind the cannon, and the flag pole, and the plaque bearing the names of the men in town who had been lost to the wars.

Each part of the town became a puzzle piece that Emma snapped into its rightful place in her mind. It was still all there...additions...subtractions...the remnants of a younger day. Changed, it had been, by progress and by fears, but it was still all there. The town of her birth. The main square. The pulse of a community nestled between a roaring river and endless forests that remained untouched by the axes of men.

Emma watched the people on the streets walk to and fro, not noticing her. Their busyness, their destinations were interrupted by the incessant conversation of people who passed. How are the kids? How's the wife? Did you get the corn in? Hot, ain't it?

A Rockwell painting? It looked that way. It smelled that way. Emma even found herself wishing that it had been that way, but she had learned to run here. She had learned, in this quaint little town, that things were not always as they appeared. With this truth deeply embedded in her soul, she finally understood the town square and how it lied to the people who passed through on their way to the big city. It was not a Rockwell. More like one of those sets from a movie--just the fronts of buildings propped up with structured two-by-fours. It offered the image of the perfect town. It provided the right backdrop--but this--this was a town of trickery and of deceit.

Emma folded the newspaper and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. She walked down Main Street, toward the familiar spot by the river. The spot was merely a clearing by big rocks that walled the dam of the river, but yet, there was a time in her life when that spot felt like home, when it felt to be the only safe place in the world. She had spent half of her childhood down there. Throwing rocks and dreaming dreams and sharing sides of herself with friends--sides she never shared again, in all her life.

As she approached the spot, the memories of her life became so vivid that it seemed as if she could reach out and grab them. She could smell the sweat and the innocence of a child who was forever fascinated by the flow of the river. The sun warmed her in the same way it had back then and she wished for Jason and Kevin and Lisa and Kay. She wished so hard that she could almost hear them as she winded her way down the steep path to the river...

"You're late, Em. We been waiting for ya. Kevin got his hair cut. Look at it! Looks like he got scalped by them Indians that live outside of town. Come on, Em!"

Jason's voice, his laughter were so real that Emma instinctively moved faster down the hill. So real, so vivid that she thought to look for her friends, but knew that they were not there. Just memories--she reassured herself--just ghosts.

Emma sat on a rock by the river. The big rocks had seemed so much more majestic when her body was small, but the chill of them felt the same. The chill that could always chase the summer right out of her skin.

Emma had always believed that it was the chill of the rocks and the reflection of the sun on the water that inspired endless thoughts within her, that need to know. Even after the passing years, it still inspired her. It still brought forth that child within her that wanted to grow up, to grow beyond the town of trickery and of deceit.

Was it her age that had made things so different then? Was it the friends with whom she had traded blood with, in that spot by the river? Were things so difficult now because she had surrendered something to the town so many years ago? Where were all the things that the spot by the river had given her? Where was the elm tree that bared their carved initials? Where were the dreams? Lost forever in the river? Like some piece of driftwood to be washed up on someone else's shore? And what was that pain that filled her every time she came near this spot, this town? Why did she feel as if she couldn't breathe and why did she always feel the need to run?

Emma tried to still the thoughts within her. She had not come back to resuscitate any ghosts nor any of those endless questions. Emma had come back to town because her father was dead.

Her father was dead!

She still wrestled with the truth of it inside her mind. So many times in her life she had thought about the day he would die. Sometimes she had even prayed for it. The day of his death: it was a day she had always feared and could never prepare for, but she had speculated about what such a day would make her feel. Sad and angry. Afraid. Empty and filled. Even more alone in the world. And she knew there would come the test. The test of the very fiber of her being. Would it be strong enough for her to let go of him without losing herself? Had the scars healed enough so that they would not be ripped open by wishful thinking and pretense?

Maybe it was the test that had always scared her so. In this test, failure would prove the one true victory, for Emma knew she was expected to be a certain way in this place that was home to her family, to her past. She had thought endlessly about it on her drive to the little town. She was expected to help prop up the image of the town and of the family. She was to be an obedient two-by-four, holding up appearance, as if her life depended on it. Truth was not a two-by-four. Emotion was not a two-by-four. Defiance was not a two-by-four. And anger was an axe.

Her family and the town had moved on without her, and yet, she knew their expectations of her had remained the same. Emma had to meet those expectations in order to be welcomed in the little town, but the very reason she had moved away was because those expectations meant certain death to the very core of her soul. Ten years ago, she had passed on her two-by-four like a baton in a race. She couldn't run anymore. She just couldn't run anymore.