Chapter 20 - THE HOUSE EMMA CHOSE
Six months after the pool, Emma asked Christopher if she could open her own lemonade.
He was standing at the kitchen counter of the Westchester house, cutting strawberries badly enough that Yvette had already taken the knife away from him twice.
Christopher stopped.
A small glass bottle of pink lemonade sat in front of Emma.
She had chosen it herself at the grocery store.
Until that morning, anything pink in a drinking glass had made her turn away.
Christopher wiped his hands on a towel.
"You want to open it?"
Emma nodded.
"By myself."
He put the bottle in front of her.
She stared at the metal cap.
Her fingers touched it and pulled away.
Yvette remained at the stove without turning around.
She had learned, as Christopher had, not to rush moments Emma needed to own.
Emma tried again.
The cap was tight.
She frowned.
Christopher reached toward it automatically.
Emma put one hand over the bottle.
"I can ask if I need help."
He stopped.
"You can."
She gripped the cap with both hands and twisted.
Nothing happened.
She tried again.
The cap clicked.
Emma's eyes widened.
Then it came free.
She looked at Christopher as if she had opened a bank vault.
"I did it."
"You did."
She poured the lemonade into her glass.
Her hand shook only once.
Then she took a small sip.
Christopher did not breathe until she swallowed.
Emma looked at the drink.
"It tastes normal."
Yvette turned from the stove.
"Most lemonade has the good manners to do that."
Emma laughed.
Christopher laughed too.
No one announced that the moment mattered.
No one photographed it.
No one told Emma she was brave.
She was tired of adults telling her she was brave whenever she did something ordinary that fear had made difficult.
So Christopher simply returned to the strawberries.
Emma finished half the glass.
That was enough.
The Westchester house had become home almost by accident.
Christopher originally leased it for thirty days.
Then sixty.
Then he bought it because Emma asked whether the apple tree would still be hers next spring if another family moved in.
The house had four bedrooms, a wide kitchen, a small library, and no architectural feature impressive enough to appear in a magazine.
Christopher loved it for that.
The front door had one lock.
The hallways were short.
Every bedroom window opened.
There were no staff passages.
There were no hidden panels.
There was no pool.
Emma chose the yellow room overlooking the apple tree.
Yvette took the room across the hall after repeatedly insisting she was staying only until Emma slept normally.
By the fourth month, Christopher stopped pretending anyone believed her.
"You know you live here now," he told her one morning.
Yvette lifted an eyebrow.
"Do I?"
"Your furniture arrived yesterday."
"A chair arrived."
"Your chair."
"A temporary chair."
"It weighs two hundred pounds."
"Then I chose something sturdy."
Emma had listened from the stairs.
"Miss Yvette lives here."
Yvette looked up.
"Apparently the matter has been decided."
Emma nodded.
"Yes."
And that had been the end of it.
Evelyn lived eight minutes away in a renovated cottage on the grounds of a rehabilitation community.
She rejected three larger homes Christopher offered.
"I spent twelve years trapped in rooms chosen by other people," she told him.
"I am choosing my own square footage now."
Her recovery surprised every physician who had reviewed her old chart.
Once the unnecessary sedatives were gone, her memory improved steadily.
Some gaps remained.
Her balance was imperfect.
She still needed the cane Emma had decorated with tiny silver star stickers.
But Evelyn attended Pierce Holdings meetings twice a month and frightened executives with the enthusiasm of someone making up for lost time.
The criminal cases moved more slowly.
Christopher learned that justice was mostly paperwork performed under fluorescent lights.
There were no dramatic gavels most days.
No perfect speeches.
No moment when every injury became balanced by a sentence.
There were hearings.
Depositions.
Motions.
Evidence conferences.
Expert reports.
Plea negotiations.
And long stretches where nothing seemed to happen at all.
Samuel Hargrove was the first to break.
Faced with his signed statement, the red file, Nora's copied chart, financial records, and the recorded conversation Rachel had preserved, he agreed to plead guilty to charges connected to Rachel's death and testify against Eleanor.
His medical license had long since been retired.
His reputation disappeared in a week.
Christopher felt no satisfaction watching it happen.
A license could be surrendered.
Rachel could not be returned.
Charles Fenwick pleaded guilty to arson and obstruction after investigators matched accelerant from his clothing to the west-wing fire.
He admitted Eleanor had paid him for years to control internal investigations and bury compliance complaints.
He also admitted he had tried to destroy the records office because Eleanor possessed evidence of his own corruption.
Henri Laurent entered a cooperation agreement.
He admitted helping Adrian recruit Juliette into Christopher's life.
He admitted carrying forged court papers.
He admitted participating in Evelyn's abduction.
He claimed he had believed Eleanor would protect his daughter if he remained useful.
Juliette did not forgive him.
Christopher found that darkly appropriate.
Daniel Crane recovered from his injuries and refused to cooperate for nearly four months.
Then prosecutors showed him Eleanor's envelope from the estate safe.
The one instructing him to recover evidence, silence Yvette, and leave the country.
They also showed him a second document found on one of Eleanor's hard drives.
It outlined a plan to report Daniel as the sole architect of the hospital attack if police connected him to it.
Eleanor had never intended to protect him.
Daniel asked for a lawyer and began talking the next morning.
Adrian's case became uglier.
The photograph from the boat, Evelyn's testimony, financial records, and his recorded statements tied him to crimes spanning more than a decade.
He blamed Eleanor for turning weakness into obedience.
Evelyn listened to that argument once during a deposition.
Then she leaned toward the microphone.
"Your fear explains you, Adrian."
Her voice remained steady.
"It does not absolve you."
Christopher wrote the sentence down.
He thought Emma might need it someday.
Juliette's case was the one reporters obsessed over.
Her attorneys emphasized her cooperation.
Prosecutors emphasized the forty-eight seconds measured by her smartwatch.
Forty-eight seconds during which Emma had been underwater and Juliette had followed Eleanor's instruction not to touch her.
Juliette eventually entered a guilty plea to serious charges connected to the pool attack and conspiracy.
At her plea hearing, she asked to speak.
The judge allowed it.
Christopher attended because the prosecutor said he had a right to be there.
He sat in the back rather than beside the attorneys.
Juliette stood in front of the court without looking at him at first.
"I spent most of my life believing fear was something that happened to me."
She swallowed.
"I used that belief to excuse what I did to other people."
Christopher remained still.
"Eleanor frightened me."
Juliette's hands shook.
"Adrian paid me."
"My father pressured me."
"All of those things are true."
She finally looked toward Christopher.
"But I pushed Emma."
The courtroom was silent.
"I heard Eleanor tell me not to help her."
Juliette's voice broke.
"And I obeyed."
Christopher felt no triumph.
Only the strange heaviness of hearing a lie finally stop moving.
Juliette continued.
"I told myself I did not know Emma had been drugged."
"I told myself I thought someone would come."
"I told myself I froze."
She closed her eyes.
"The truth is that for forty-eight seconds I wanted the life I had been promised more than I wanted that child to live."
A woman in the gallery began crying.
Christopher did not know who she was.
Juliette looked at him again.
"I am sorry."
Christopher did not respond.
The apology belonged in the record.
It did not belong to him to make clean.
Emma would decide someday what, if anything, forgiveness meant to her.
Christopher would never make that decision on her behalf.
Eleanor refused every plea offer.
That surprised no one.
She rejected the idea that any court had moral authority to judge decisions she considered necessary for the family.
Her attorneys stopped using the word necessary after prosecutors played the Alder House recording in a pretrial hearing.
Because you were going to change the trust.
The sentence traveled across every news network.
For weeks, commentators tried to turn Eleanor into a symbol of old money, inherited power, family dynasties, and corporate corruption.
Christopher refused every interview.
He had no interest in becoming the public narrator of Emma's trauma.
When a magazine offered a seven-figure payment for an exclusive family story, he sent the email to Yvette by mistake.
She replied with two words.
Absolutely not.
Emma added a third word in purple crayon beneath the printed email.
Gross.
Christopher framed that page in his office.
The Pierce estate remained empty while repairs stabilized the fire-damaged west wing.
Insurance adjusters asked whether Christopher planned to restore it.
Architects sent proposals.
Preservation groups requested access.
Board members suggested converting part of it into an executive retreat.
Christopher rejected every idea.
The place still appeared in Emma's dreams.
He would not turn it into a venue where adults drank wine beneath portraits and congratulated themselves for surviving a scandal.
One Saturday in early spring, he asked Emma what she thought should happen to the big house.
They were planting herbs in wooden boxes near the Westchester kitchen door.
Emma pushed soil around a basil plant with both hands.
"Do we have to keep it?"
"No."
"Can we sell it?"
"Yes."
She thought.
"Can somebody else have the pool?"
Christopher's chest tightened.
"They could."
Emma frowned at the basil.
"I do not want another kid to be scared there."
He sat back on his heels.
"What would make it less scary?"
Emma looked toward Yvette, who was pretending not to listen while pruning rosemary.
"Kids."
Christopher smiled slightly.
"More kids makes it less scary?"
"Nice kids."
"That is a broad legal category."
Yvette snorted.
Emma ignored him.
"Kids who need somewhere to go."
Christopher stopped smiling.
Emma kept pressing soil around the plant.
"Like when Grandma said I had to leave."
Christopher looked at Yvette.
She looked back.
Neither interrupted.
Emma continued.
"If a kid really has to leave their house, maybe they can go there and nobody tells them they are lucky because the house is big."
Christopher felt his throat tighten.
For years, Pierce charity had meant galas, plaques, committees, and photographs of checks.
Emma had just described something simpler.
Safety without gratitude as a price.
He brought the idea to Evelyn.
She listened, then tapped her cane against the floor.
"The child has more sense than the board."
With Evelyn's founder vote and Christopher's support, a portion of the estate was transferred to an independent nonprofit focused on temporary family housing, child advocacy services, and legal support for caregivers in crisis.
Christopher insisted the organization not carry the Pierce name.
The board objected.
Evelyn overruled them.
They named it Rachel House.
Christopher did not tell Emma until the papers were final.
"Mommy's name?"
She asked.
"Yes."
"Did she like kids?"
Christopher smiled.
"She loved you before you were born."
Emma considered that.
"That is a lot."
"It is."
The mansion's private family wing remained closed.
Christopher planned to sell or demolish that portion later.
He did not decide immediately.
For once, he allowed a decision about the Pierce estate not to be urgent.
On Emma's seventh birthday, the apple tree outside her window bloomed for the first time that spring.
She woke Christopher at 5:41 a.m. by standing beside his bed and whispering directly into his face.
"I am seven."
Christopher opened one eye.
"This happened suddenly."
"At midnight."
"Terrifying."
Emma climbed onto the bed.
"Do seven-year-olds get pancakes?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"Whether their fathers can make pancakes."
Emma looked genuinely concerned.
"Can you?"
"We are about to learn together."
Yvette rescued breakfast twenty minutes later.
Evelyn arrived at eight carrying a wrapped box and refusing help with the steps.
Nora came later with flowers.
Thomas brought a small apple sapling from the old estate grounds.
Dr. Ellis stopped by after her shift with a book instead of a toy because Emma had begun reading above grade level during recovery.
There were no photographers.
No board members.
No society guests.
No one wore pearls.
Emma wore purple socks, a yellow sweater, and a paper crown she made herself.
At noon, Christopher remembered the envelope.
Rachel's letter.
He had kept it sealed in a safe at the Westchester house for six months.
Not because Eleanor had told him to wait.
Because Emma's therapist had told him something he needed to hear.
A truth can be safe and still arrive at the wrong time.
Christopher had spent his childhood in a family where information was either hidden forever or weaponized immediately.
He was learning a third option.
Wait until the person receiving it is ready.
That afternoon, Emma found him in the library holding the cream envelope.
She recognized Rachel's handwriting from photographs and cards Christopher had begun showing her.
"Is that Mommy's?"
"Yes."
Emma climbed onto the couch beside him.
"For me?"
Christopher showed her the front.
FOR EMMA, WHEN CHRISTOPHER IS READY TO TELL HER WHO I WAS.
Emma sounded out the words slowly.
Then she looked at him.
"Are you ready?"
Christopher laughed softly.
"I think the question is whether you are."
Emma leaned against his shoulder.
"Will it be sad?"
"Probably some of it."
"Will it be scary?"
"I do not know."
"Can we stop if I want?"
Christopher felt the importance of that question.
"Any time."
Emma nodded.
"Then open it."
His hands shook more opening that envelope than they had opening any contract in his life.
Inside were four pages and one small photograph.
The photograph showed Rachel standing in the Pierce garden while pregnant with Emma.
Wind had blown her hair across her face.
She was laughing at whoever held the camera.
Christopher remembered taking it.
He had forgotten the moment entirely until the image returned it.
Emma touched Rachel's face.
"She looks happy."
"She was."
Christopher unfolded the letter.
Rachel began simply.
Emma, if you are reading this, then there is a chance I did not get to tell you these things myself.
Christopher stopped.
Emma looked up.
"You okay?"
He nodded.
"Keep going?"
"Keep going."
Rachel wrote that she had felt Emma kick whenever music played loudly.
She wrote that Emma had once kicked through an entire charity dinner while Eleanor complained about table settings.
Emma laughed so hard at that line she made Christopher read it twice.
Rachel wrote that Christopher talked to Emma before she was born whenever he thought Rachel was asleep.
Christopher covered his face.
"She heard that?"
Emma grinned.
"Mommy caught you."
"Apparently."
Rachel wrote about fear too.
She did not name Eleanor in the first pages.
She did not burden Emma with adult crimes.
Instead, she wrote that powerful families sometimes made children believe love had to be earned through obedience.
She wanted Emma to know the opposite.
You never owe anyone silence in exchange for belonging.
Christopher's voice broke on the sentence.
Emma waited.
He tried again.
You never owe anyone silence in exchange for belonging.
Emma leaned closer.
Rachel continued.
If an adult tells you that telling the truth will make good people leave you, that adult is asking you to carry something that belongs to them.
Give it back.
Tell.
Christopher looked at Yvette standing quietly in the library doorway.
Tears ran down her face.
Emma saw her.
"Miss Yvette."
Yvette wiped her cheeks.
"I am all right, darling."
"Mommy says tell."
Yvette nodded.
"Your mommy was very wise."
The final page was addressed partly to Christopher.
Kit, if you are reading this with her, please do not turn my absence into another thing you punish yourself for.
Christopher stopped again.
Emma took the letter from his hands.
"I can read some."
She sounded out the next sentence carefully.
Our daughter needs your love more than she needs your guilt.
Christopher looked away.
Emma put one hand on his cheek and turned his face back.
"That means stop being sad?"
"Not exactly."
"What does it mean?"
He thought about it.
"It means being sad should not stop me from being your dad."
Emma nodded.
"You are good at being my dad now."
The word now landed exactly where it should.
Not always.
Now.
Christopher accepted it.
"I am trying."
Rachel's final lines were for Emma.
Your name will come with stories people want you to carry.
You may keep the stories that make you kinder.
You may put down the ones that make you afraid.
You are not an inheritance.
You are a person.
And before anyone tells you what family means, decide for yourself who makes you feel safe enough to be honest.
Love, Mom.
Emma sat quietly for a long time.
Christopher did not fill the silence.
Eventually, she folded the photograph into both hands.
"Can I keep this in my room?"
"Yes."
"Not in a safe?"
Christopher smiled.
"Not in a safe."
She hopped off the couch and ran upstairs with the photograph.
Yvette sat beside Christopher after she left.
"Rachel knew you better than any of us did."
Christopher looked at the letter.
"I wish I had listened while she was alive."
Yvette's eyes lowered.
"So do I."
They sat with that truth without trying to soften it.
There were some regrets that did not need comforting.
Only honesty.
Later that afternoon, Emma asked to go to the old estate.
Christopher almost said no.
Her therapist had warned him not to assume avoidance was always healing.
Emma needed control over whether and when she returned.
"Why do you want to go?"
"My lamb is there."
Christopher remembered the stuffed lamb in the old nursery.
"We can have someone bring it."
Emma shook her head.
"I want to get it."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
That answer made him pause.
Emma looked at him.
"You said I can be scared and still decide."
He had said that during therapy homework.
"I did."
"So I decide."
Christopher looked at Yvette.
She nodded once.
They drove to the estate before sunset.
The main gates were open because construction crews were working on the future Rachel House wing.
The mansion looked smaller to Christopher than it once had.
Not physically.
Psychologically.
It was stone and timber.
Nothing more.
Emma held his hand as they crossed the entrance hall.
She stopped beneath Eleanor's portrait.
The painting still hung above the staircase because conservators had not yet removed the private collection.
Emma looked at it.
"She looks mad."
Christopher glanced up.
"She usually was."
"At me?"
"No."
Emma looked at him.
Christopher corrected himself.
"Sometimes she acted mad at you."
"Why?"
"Because she wanted things from you that no child should have to give."
Emma considered that.
"Like secrets?"
"Yes."
"And the company?"
Christopher was surprised.
"Who told you about that?"
"Great-Grandma."
He made a mental note to discuss age-appropriate explanations with Evelyn.
Then he decided Evelyn was probably impossible to regulate.
"Yes."
Emma looked at the portrait one more time.
"I do not want her picture in Rachel House."
"Neither do I."
They continued upstairs.
The old nursery smelled of new plaster and smoke damage.
The worst burned sections had been stabilized.
The silver-star mobile had survived because police removed it before the fire.
Yvette had returned it to its hook.
Emma walked slowly toward the shelf.
The stuffed lamb sat where Christopher remembered it.
Yvette had cleaned the dust from its ears.
Emma picked it up.
"Was this mine?"
"It was supposed to be."
"Why did I not have it?"
Christopher looked around the room.
"Because after your mommy died, I closed this room."
"Why?"
"It made me too sad."
Emma hugged the lamb.
"Mommy said your sad should not stop your dad."
Christopher smiled despite the sting.
"She did."
"So you should have opened it."
He nodded.
"I should have."
Emma seemed satisfied by the admission.
She did not need him to defend the mistake.
Only own it.
On the way out, they reached the corridor leading toward the courtyard.
Christopher expected Emma to turn away.
She stopped.
Through the French doors, the pool reflected the orange evening sky.
Repairs had cleaned the limestone.
The water was still.
Emma's grip tightened around the stuffed lamb.
Christopher crouched beside her.
"We can go another way."
Emma stared at the pool.
"Is Juliette here?"
"No."
"Grandma?"
"No."
"Mr. Crane?"
"No."
"Nobody bad?"
Christopher thought carefully.
"Nobody who is allowed near you."
Emma looked at the doors.
"Can we go outside?"
Yvette's face tightened with concern.
Christopher kept his voice neutral.
"If you want."
Emma pushed one door open.
The smell of chlorine reached them.
She froze.
Her breathing changed immediately.
Christopher stayed beside her.
"We can go back inside."
Emma shook her head.
"Wait."
So they waited.
One minute.
Then two.
Emma stepped onto the limestone.
She did not go near the water.
She walked only as far as the place where Christopher had performed CPR.
She looked down at the stone.
"Was I here?"
"Yes."
"You pushed my chest?"
"I did CPR."
"Did it hurt?"
Christopher swallowed.
"Maybe."
"I do not remember."
"That is okay."
Emma stared at the pool.
"I remember waking up."
Christopher's eyes burned.
"I remember that too."
"You were crying."
"Probably."
Emma gave him a skeptical look.
"You were."
"Then I was."
She sat on the dry stone several feet from the edge.
Christopher sat beside her.
Yvette remained behind them near the doors.
Emma rested the stuffed lamb in her lap.
"Do I have to swim again?"
"No."
"Ever?"
"No."
"What if I want to?"
Christopher looked at her.
"Then we find a safe place and someone you trust to teach you."
"Not here."
"Not here."
Emma nodded.
The wind moved her dark curls across her face.
For a moment, Christopher saw Rachel so clearly that his chest hurt.
Then Emma stood.
"I am done."
Christopher stood too.
"Okay."
They walked back inside.
No dramatic victory followed.
Emma did not touch the water.
She did not conquer her fear in a single afternoon.
She simply chose when to enter the courtyard and when to leave it.
Christopher understood that was bigger than bravery.
It was control returned to the person from whom it had been taken.
Two weeks later, workers drained the pool permanently as part of the Rachel House renovation.
The courtyard became a garden.
Emma chose the first tree.
A magnolia.
Evelyn chose a bench beneath it.
Yvette chose where the kitchen doors would be widened so children could see outside.
Christopher chose almost nothing.
He found that strangely peaceful.
On the morning Eleanor's trial formally began, Christopher did not attend the opening statements.
He drove Emma to school.
It was her first full day back.
She wore a purple backpack and carried the stuffed lamb only as far as the car.
At the school entrance, she handed it to Christopher.
"He waits with you."
"Understood."
Emma looked toward the doors.
Children moved through the hallway laughing and shouting.
She took one step.
Then came back and hugged Christopher around the waist.
He held her.
"You okay?"
"No."
Christopher waited.
Emma took a breath.
"But I still want to go."
He smiled.
"Okay."
She walked inside.
Christopher stood on the sidewalk until she disappeared around the corner.
Then his phone rang.
Martin.
"The prosecution played the pool recording."
Christopher looked at the school doors.
"I do not need updates today."
Martin paused.
"Understood."
"Call me if something affects Emma legally."
"I will."
Christopher ended the call.
For years, Pierce emergencies had interrupted dinners, birthdays, holidays, funerals, and sleep.
Everything had been urgent because power demanded constant attention.
Christopher finally understood that urgency could be another form of control.
Eleanor's trial could proceed without owning his morning.
He drove home.
Yvette was in the kitchen arguing with a contractor about cabinet hinges for Rachel House.
Evelyn sat at the table reading financial statements and insulting the formatting.
Thomas was outside planting the apple sapling he had brought for Emma's birthday.
Christopher placed the stuffed lamb on the counter.
Yvette looked at it.
"She went in?"
"She went in."
Evelyn lowered her papers.
"Good."
Christopher made coffee.
For once, no one asked him what the company needed.
That evening, Emma came home talking so quickly that half her story made no sense.
A girl named Sophie had traded her crackers.
A boy named Liam had spilled paint.
The class fish was called Captain.
The teacher had a funny sneeze.
Christopher listened to all of it.
Every ordinary detail felt precious because no one was trying to turn it into leverage.
After dinner, Emma carried Rachel's photograph to the back porch.
The apple tree moved in the evening wind.
"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"Great-Grandma says Pierce is my name too."
Christopher sat beside her.
"It is, if you want it."
Emma frowned.
"Can I not want it?"
"You can decide that when you are older."
"Mommy was Lawson."
"Yes."
"Can I be both?"
Christopher smiled.
"Yes."
Emma sounded the names quietly.
"Emma Lawson Pierce."
She considered it.
"That is long."
"Very."
"Maybe just Emma at school."
"That works too."
She leaned against him.
"Grandma cared about names too much."
"She did."
"Mommy said I am a person."
"She did."
Emma looked up.
"Are you a person or a Pierce?"
Christopher laughed.
"I am working on the person part."
Emma accepted that answer.
The sun lowered behind the trees.
From inside the house, Yvette called that it was almost bedtime.
Emma ignored her for exactly thirty seconds.
Then she stood.
"Come on."
Christopher followed her inside.
At the kitchen doorway, Emma stopped and looked back at the yard.
"Daddy?"
"Yes?"
"When the magnolia grows at Rachel House, can we put a swing on it?"
"Magnolia branches are not ideal for swings."
Emma sighed dramatically.
"You always make things complicated."
Christopher smiled.
"We can put a swing near it."
"Okay."
She ran upstairs.
Christopher remained in the doorway for a moment.
Six months earlier, he had knelt beside a pool and begged his daughter to breathe.
He had believed the worst thing that could happen was losing her.
He had been wrong in one important way.
There was another danger almost as terrible.
Keeping her alive while teaching her that survival required obedience, silence, and fear.
Eleanor had tried to build that lesson into Emma before she was old enough to understand it.
Christopher could not erase what had happened.
He could build something different around what remained.
A home where doors were not threats.
A family where truth did not cost belonging.
A name that was optional instead of destiny.
And a father who came back when he said he would.
Upstairs, Emma called for him.
"Daddy!"
Christopher answered immediately.
"Coming."
He turned off the kitchen light and walked toward the stairs.
On the wall beside him hung no portraits of Pierce ancestors.
Only Emma's drawings.
The newest showed the yellow house beneath a crooked sun.
Four figures stood outside it.
Emma.
Christopher.
Yvette.
Evelyn with her silver-star cane.
Beside them was a fifth figure drawn in lighter pencil.
Rachel.
At the bottom, Emma had written one sentence in purple crayon.
THIS IS THE FAMILY THAT TELLS THE TRUTH.
Christopher touched the edge of the paper.
Then he went upstairs to read his daughter a bedtime story.
For the first time in generations, the Pierce family did not belong to the house.
May you like
The house belonged to the past.
And Emma belonged only to herself.
