Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
“How is everything, dear?” Alison’s mother asked her gently. “The food, is my meaning. Is it… acceptable?”
Alison said nothing as she prodded her fork lamely at her plate. The food was better than fine, a feast unlike any other, and one that on most occasions would have pleased her beyond words. But tonight… she simply did not have an appetite or the care to pretend otherwise.
“If not, I am certain that staff can make something else,” Lord Pemberton added quickly. “Truly, I should have checked with you earlier. Forgive me.”
“I told you that you should have,” Nerissa said. “Did I not say just that before?”
“A rare time that Nerissa has managed to think of someone other than herself,” Felix said. “And in this instance, I cannot help but agree with her. Alison, would you like more wine? I notice your glass is teetering toward empty.”
“Can I have some wine?” Winnie asked.
“Do not be absurd,” Lord Pemberton said.
“I was just asking…”
“Not now, Winnie,” Alison’s mother chastised her. “What did we speak about earlier? Concerning your sister…” She raised an eyebrow at Winnie.
Winnie bowed her head. “I am sorry, I was not thinking. Sorry, Alison,” she added.
“Well?” Felix asked again. As he did, he looked right at Alison with an expression that might have been mistaken for concern. “More wine?”
To that, Alison said nothing. She offered a vague smile but could not bring herself to respond. She did not want more wine. She did not want more food. What she wanted, as ironic as it was to admit, was to be left alone.
“Would you like to skip to dessert?” Lord Pemberton hurried to say. “The kitchen has worked all day to prepare a gorgeous –”
“Do not spoil it, Father!” Nerissa cried. “It is meant to be a surprise.”
“Oh, yes.” Lord Pemberton grimaced. “My mistake, I got carried away.”
“Pretend he said nothing, Alison,” Nerissa said to her. “Just Father, speaking nonsense as usual.”
“Well, this is lovely,” Alison’s mother beamed. “Is it not? All of us together again. My heart is full from it.”
“As is mine,” Lord Pemberton agreed as he took his wife’s hand and smiled at her. “A most perfect evening, I think we can all agree.”
“I am just happy that we are back,” Nerissa added. Then, she reached beside her and took Alison’s hand. “And that you are here, of course.”
“Same here,” Felix agreed from across the table, raising his glass. “These past two weeks were not the same without you.”
“Where is Pickle?” Winnie frowned, looking around the room.
“Never mind the dog,” Alison’s mother said. “It is Alison for whom we should be concerned. Now, Winnie, tell your sister how happy you are to be back with her.”
It had been this way since her family’s return.
Aware that they had done wrong by her, overly eager to make amends, Alison’s family had doted upon her with such enthusiasm and exaggeration that was it not all so false and forced, she might have relished the fact that for once they took the time to notice her and treat her like one of the family.
But it is not real. They do not care as they pretend to. They do not act this way because they love me. They do it to appease their own guilt, as if a few days of treating me as one of their own will make up for a lifetime of being ignored.
Alison thought to ignore it.
It was Christmas Eve, after all, and the last thing she wanted to do was cause a scene. Get through this evening. Spend Christmas unwrapping presents and enjoying the cheer such a day might bring. Perhaps even hope that this treatment would last and eventually become the norm…
She wanted it so much. She wished for nothing more than to accept their apologies and lean into being seen. But she knew well enough that it was not real, and that they were so darn over the top about it all, made things worse.
“Lady Alison – Alison,” Lord Pemberton corrected himself, going so far as to call her by her first name only, something he never used to do. “What shall we do tomorrow?”
“What?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” he asked again. “It is Christmas Day, and I thought you might decide for us how we are to spend it. In what order we might partake in the festivities?”
“Oh yes,” Nerissa said eagerly. “Tell us, what would you like. Anything you wish for.”
“Good idea,” Felix added. “Tell us, Alison. Do.”
“Please…” She spoke into her chest, unable to take it any longer. “Just… just stop.”
“What?” Lord Pemberton asked. “Stop what?”
“This,” she said in a whisper. “Everything. Just… you do not have to do this. I do not want it.”
“Want what?”
“To be treated this way…” She kept her eyes on her plate of food; her leg shook, her lips twitched. “There is no need for it. I forgive you all, now please, can we move on from this?”
“I don’t understand.” Lord Pemberton laughed nervously. “What are we doing exactly? Is it so wrong for a father to ask his daughter how she wants to spend Christmas Day?”
“Really, Alison,” her mother sighed. “Your father –”
“He is not my father!” Alison exploded suddenly, unable to stop herself.
She snapped her head up and glared at her family, just in time to see them all gasp in surprise.
“I wish that he was,” she seethed. “Oh, how I have tried to make it so. But as I have been reminded for my entire life – as I have been treated! He is not my father, and each of you are only too happy to remind me of this day after day after day.”
Wide eyes looked back at her. Mouths hung agape. A silence swept the room so that each individual droplet of snow falling outside could be heard as they kissed the snow.
Alison looked at her family, the anger gone, but the sadness took her.
“You forgot me. Not just one of you, but each of you. You…” Her chin started to wobble.
“You left me behind. Worse, you did not even realize it. Tell me, how long did it take until you noticed? How long until one of you thought to ask where I was?”
“Alison…” Her mother spoke carefully. “That is not… we were rushed. Winnie was –”
“Do not blame Winnie,” Alison snapped. “And do not act as if that was the only time. Mother…” She looked desperately at her mother, chin wobbling furiously, eyes welling with tears.
“For my entire life, I have lived in this family like a shadow. Forgotten. Treated as an outsider – and why? All I ever wanted was to be one of you, to be daughter and sister… to be loved. But never did any of you allow it.” She looked accusingly at her family.
“And not one time did one of you care to notice. You might act now as if we are happy, as if you see me. But you do not see me. You never did. So please, stop pretending. It is beneath you all.”
Her voice was not raised. Nor was it sharp. Rather, it was defeated, broken in places, the weight of all her woes and all the suffering she had felt finally unleashed upon her unsuspected family in ways they likely never saw coming.
And why would they? That would have required them to know what they were doing.
“Alison…” It was her mother who spoke first. “I… I know what you think –”
“I do not think it,” she cut her off. “I lived it, Mother. Do not tell me it is my imagination.”
“It is not,” her mother agreed, which itself caught her by surprise.
“And you are right. For that, I am sorry, because I am to blame. You likely do not want excuses, and I do not wish to make them. But the way I have treated you… I… I…” She made to reach out, as if to stroke Alison’s face, but brought her hand back. “I only ever did it to protect you.”
“Protect me?”
“After your father died, I did not know what to do or what to say. To bring attention to it, I feared would make things worse, so I chose to ignore it. To pretend as if that part of our lives had never happened. And when I met Wilson…” She allowed a smile for her husband.
“I believed it was best to continue to pretend. But in so doing, I cut you off and ignored your feelings. I thought that…” She sniffed.
“I thought that to say nothing was the only way to allow you to heal.”
“It is not her fault,” Lord Pemberton spoke up for his wife.
“I am as to blame as anyone. The truth is, Alison, I worried that you would never see me as your father – that you would not want to. So, rather than trying to heal that divide, I let it grow. I worried you would resent me, not realizing that by doing and saying nothing, you would resent me even more.”
“I am sorry also,” Nerissa said and took Alison’s hand. “I have not been the best sister.”
“Nor I the best brother,” Felix added.
“But we do see you as our sister,” Nerissa said. “Halfsibling or no, you are one of us, Alison. You always have been.”
“And you always will be,” Felix said.
“You have every right to be angry,” her mother continued. “And we will not begrudge it of you. And leaving you behind…” She sniffed again and wiped her nose. “That action me realize how we have treated you. Tonight, yes, we were a little…”
“Pretentious?” Alison offered, even smiling softly to see how hard everyone was trying.
“But it does not have to be that way,” her mother said. “Please, Alison, let us make it up to you. Give us a chance.”
“We want to get better,” Lord Pemberton agreed. “And if Christmas is not the time for forgiveness, then… well, when else is?”
Alison did not know what to say.
They were just words, and that did not make them true. For all she knew, her family were just saying what she wanted to hear and come next week things would be back to how they were.
But it was the way they spoke that touched her. And the way they all looked at her. For the first time that Alison could remember, each of her family members looked at her with love and hope and a sense of forgiveness that she had been so desperate for her entire life.
This would not fix everything. This would not change the past. What it would do, she prayed, would pave the way for what was to come.
“You said something about dessert?” Alison asked with a smile and laughter.