Chapter 91: History

EMMA

My mother didn't answer right away. The twilight was falling all around us, and crickets were tuning up for their evening concert. The tiki lamps that burned oils to keep away the mosquitos crackled and blazed.

"Did you know that when I met your dad, I was dating Uncle Cal?"

My mouth dropped open. "No. I did not know that. Are you serious? You and Uncle Cal?" Calvin Allan was not my blood uncle; he was a friend of my parents who'd been part of my life as long as I could remember. He'd always been a little bit of an absent-minded professor type, and in fact, he was now the English department chair at William and Mary. I'd always assumed he was my dad's friend more than my mother's, so this was a shock.

"Yes. Cal and I met during our undergrad days, and we were friends for a long time before we started dating. Like you, I thought we made sense. It just seemed right, you know? We had a love of words in common. We could spend hours talking about books and history and things that