May 2, 1981 was a joyous day in the life of Oliver and Renee Harris. The birth of their first daughter was something they’d been waiting for for a while. You see, the story of Oliver and Renee’s romance was one out of the fairytales… the two met in high school, he was the popular senior and she was the freshmen sister of one of his buddies. She was everything he wanted in a girl, everything he thought he’d need and he was right, and from there everything between them just clicked. College came and went and their romance held strong and it was a few years out when they would find out that Renee was carrying a child, neither could be more excited. And on that sunny March day, Emily Jacqueline Harris was born into the world.
No one would have expected for anything to go so wrong in the lives of this almost picture perfect family, but like most fairytales, there’s always a tragedy. When Emily was only three years old, her parents went out for an evening to themselves, for their anniversary, dinner and a carriage ride around Central Park, a tradition they’d had since college, nothing was more beautiful than New York City at night, or that was what Renee had always claimed. But that carriage ride would be their last. On the ride home, a drunk driver would strike their car and both Oliver and Renee would die that night. So what happened to little Emily? Not more than a week later, she was getting settled in a new room in a new home on the other side of the country. Her parents had been smart and had had a plan should anything happen to them. Renee’s best friend since birth had been chosen as the godmother, her husband the godfather. Only thing was, they lived in Seattle, so it wasn’t very often in the years she had been born that they had seen Emily, so it was an adventure to them all.
There wasn’t a day that went by that Brian and Jackie didn’t show Emily a picture or tell her a story
about her parents, they didn’t want her to forget about them, not in the least, and she didn’t, she grew up with their picture by her bedside and their memory instilled in her brain. Emily had a good life in Seattle; she turned to be much like her father in more ways than one. Thanks to Brian she had grown a love for all things sports, and even though he hated doing it, he bred her being a Red Sox fan, just like her father. And her mother came out of her in Emily’s writing, which she seemed to have a knack for at a very young age.
Emily also became close to the son of Brian and Jackie’s neighbor. By high school, he had become one of her closest friends and she had no problem telling people that, he’d always been there for her and he was quite possibly the only guy to every see her cry, or show any real hard emotion. He stood beside her at her high school graduation and held her when she cried at her parents’ 10-year anniversary service. They went to college together, and it was clear that he had become a very important part in her life that she wasn’t willing to let go of. So after college graduation, they got an apartment together in downtown Seattle.
Now 26 years old, Emily has found her niche in life, she’s a journalist for The Seattle Times, alternating between sports writing and local news, having found she’s very good at both. She’s still one that doesn’t show emotion to anyone who isn’t close to her and rarely lets anyone in close enough to see it. Guarded, yes… though she believes she has a right to be, even if that’s not entirely true. She’s happy though, she’s got a career and friends and people who love her, and that’s all one really needs, right?
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