Falling by Jane Green Read Free Book Online

does so, she’s greeted by a surprise.
    â€œHello.”
    There is a small person next to Dominic, holding a toolbox. Emma crouches down to look him in the eye. She isn’t very used to small people. Most of the women she worked with in New York were single, and those who were married tended to keep their families and work lives separate. Emma hasn’t spent very much time with children at all. She sees Sophie’s son, Jackson, from time to time but he is so young, and her time with him sporadic.
    It’s not that she doesn’t like children; it’s that she never feels entirely comfortable around them. She wonders whether it’s better to talk to them the way she hears other adults talk to them—in a singsong voice, like a child herself—or to talk to them as if they were adults themselves.
    Because she is never sure who to be or how to act, she is convinced this awkwardness makes her someone whom children will dislike. She once read that it is good to crouch down to look children in the eye so they see you as being on their same level. Hence her crouching now.
    â€œI’m Emma,” she says, holding out her hand to shake his. “You must be Jesse.”
    Jesse doesn’t say anything, but he takes her hand, even though he doesn’t look her in the eye. Emma wishes she had something fun to tempt him out of his shell. A dog! A cat! Any kind of small animal.But she has nothing other than herself to offer. “I like your haircut,” she says lamely. “Is it a Mohican?”
    Jesse looks at her then. “Mohawk. It’s called a Mohawk,” he says gravely, as if he were the teacher and she the student.
    Emma nods. “In England, where I come from, I think we used to call them Mohicans, but Mohawk it is.” She’s aware that she is babbling and worries that she’s sounding stupid, so she stands up, gesturing them both inside. “I guess you’re going to help your dad?” she says eventually, as Jesse nods and marches past her, lugging the toolbox with him and setting it down in the little room that will be a library, before opening it and extracting a tape measure.
    Emma leaves them to it. They are measuring, and sawing, and sanding. It all seems very professional. Every now and then she hears Dominic talking to his son, as if he were a colleague and not his child. He asks Jesse’s opinion, and waits to hear what he has to say, appearing to seriously consider everything the child offers.
    â€œShould I put this shelf here or here?” she hears.
    â€œPut it higher so she can fit big picture books on it, too,” says Jesse.
    â€œGreat idea,” says Dominic. “I bet she has a lot of picture books.”
    Emma experiences a slight pang when she hears this. She doesn’t actually have many picture books, but she does have an awful lot of hardcover novels, and more than a few coffee-table books. She is tempted to go in and check on their progress but doesn’t want to interfere. Perhaps she should make them some fresh lemonade.
    Emma busies herself in the kitchen, squeezing lemons, adding sugar, then unpacking her pots and pans, the pantry items, putting everything away. Halfway through one of the boxes, she finds her wireless speaker and sets up her playlist on her phone to play the sounds of summer.
    Seconds later the voice of Jack Johnson fills the air. Emma sings along, moving through the tiny galley kitchen. For the first time in a long time, she feels the burdens of work, of banking, the stresses and pressures of the career treadmill, beginning to lift. As she continues to unpack, she swells with the thought that this is her life now. That she has a future filled with all kinds of possibilities. A wave of excitement builds deep inside.
    Dominic comes out of the library and stands in the doorway. It takes Emma a little while to sense that she is being watched; she flushes a bright shade of red when she sees