"Please, call me Eleanor," Mrs. Glenison said with a smile. "If you'll allow me to call you Emmy. And to thank you for helping achieve this... extraordinary reunion which I had given up on ever taking place. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for your intervention."
"Oh, please, it was all Eric's doing — I just...happened to come along for the ride," Emmy said. “And he's the one that got Owen out of Afghanistan.”
"Maybe," Owen said from across the room, “but Eric made it clear that if it wasn't for you having his back, he probably wouldn't have had the balls to turn up on my doorstep."
"I wouldn't," Eric muttered behind her.
"Oh come on, Eric, like you don't make massive decisions and take risks every day of your life at work, juggling millions of dollars and people's jobs."
"That's business. I can do business. But family? I'm not so good with that. Or with emotions, generally — as you may have noticed."
He sounded so self-deprecatingly sincere that Emmy found herself blindly reaching for his hand.
"You're not as bad as you think," she whispered with a quick squeeze of his fingers.
This was surreal.
"Emmy, I assure you — I have never seen my son look happier," Eric's mom said with an adoring look at her younger son. "And I for one don't believe it's just because Owen has finally come home..."
Her voice cracked as she said her son's name, and both brothers rushed to her side, Eric kneeling at her feet to hold her hands while Owen leaned over the back of the couch and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, burying his face in her hair with a child's abandon. The look on Eleanor's face as she struggled — and failed — to contain tears of joy was enough to make Emmy's throat constrict. No matter what happened, she promised herself, she would never regret helping bring this family back together.
A couple of cups of tea later — and a couple of whiskies for the brothers, both of whom appeared to be on tenterhooks — and Emmy had completely warmed to Eleanor, to the point that she actually managed to use her first name in conversation. She might have been a Senator's wife — and from what sounded like a posh English background — but Eric and Owen's mom was warm, funny, self-deprecating and clearly besotted with both her sons. Throughout their chat she kept checking Owen's progress through the room he prowled around like a caged animal as the prospect of meeting his father neared.
Eric, in contrast, stood by the window, glass in hand, ostensibly looking out over the park but primed for any sign that his father was getting closer. Emmy was convinced that if she were to make a noise — any noise — out of the ordinary, Eric would jump out of his skin.
When the phone rang, though, he was perfectly composed as he answered the doorman.
"Yes, send Senator Glenison up, Jorge," he said, his voice even. Across from him, Owen had stopped in his tracks, and Eleanor's smile faltered briefly. It only lasted a couple of seconds, and the swiftness with which she recovered her composure was impressive. Despite Eric's worries about her vulnerability, it was clear to Emmy that his mother had deep reserves of strength.
The soft ping of the elevator doors echoed in the absolute silence of the room. As she cast her eye around, Emmy couldn't help but feel she was part of a staged tableau, structured around the Senator's theatrical entrance. And, of course, the consummate political beast that he was didn't disappoint, striding out into the apartment with his hands stretched out towards Owen, who hadn't moved since his father's name had been announced.
"My boy," he said, his voice gruff with what sounded like genuine emotion. "You've become a man. I thought I'd never see that with my own eyes. I..."
He cleared his throat, and Emmy reflected that she was probably one of the very few people ever to have seen Charlie Glenison at a loss for words.
Owen, for his part, was looking wary and nervous as he stepped towards his father.
"Hi, Dad," he said, sounding like the teenager he'd been when he'd last spent time with his family.
"Come here, Owen," Glenison said, and the two men embraced awkwardly. What animosity there had been — almost certainly still was, on Owen's side at any rate — between the two was temporarily overcome by the father's