Chapter 15 December 15th #2
“Just parking the rental car. I thought we were leaving the snow behind in Colorado!”
“Camryn, this is my daughter, Gail, and my gorgeous granddaughter Marcy. Girls, this is Camryn. I’ve told you about Camryn, remember, Gail?”
Oh, is that so? I imagine it was all kinds of complimentary. I toss Thomas a knowing look as I offer my hand to Gail. “Nice to meet you.” Are you as big of an arsehole as your brother?
Gail breaks away from her father’s embrace, laughing.
If she notices my face, she doesn’t say anything.
“I’m a hugger.” Then she hauls me into her chest, squeezing me, and I have to lift my coffee over my head to avoid tipping it over both of us.
Thomas grins at me as I tense from head to toe, my eyes narrowing on him.
“You sure are,” I say quietly, gently breaking away.
“Well, it was a pleasure.” I face Thomas.
“I’ll catch up with you later.” It’s a threat, and he knows it.
I leave Thomas and his family, going back to my office, holding up my coffee to Debbie as I pass.
She flat out ignores my sarcasm. When I land at my desk, I re-read my husband’s text, as if I need to lower my mood more.
Then I delete it, like I have every other text I’ve gotten from him.
“I don’t give a fuck if you can’t pay the rent and mortgage,” I growl.
“I’m paying my half.” Take out “unreasonable behaviour” and I’ll sign the fucking papers.
I rest back in my chair, my cheek throbbing, and pull out my compact mirror to check the situation, mentally estimating how many days it’s going to take to fade enough to get a good coverage—enough to hide it completely.
Three. Maybe four. If I’m lucky. I snap my mirror shut on a defeated exhalation.
Right now, three or four days not seeing Dec feels like a lifetime.
So when my phone starts dancing across my desk, I’m thrown into a horrible dilemma.
I want to see him. Let him calm my storm.
But I’m quite sure I don’t want to be forced into explaining the tidy cuff on my cheek.
And I definitely don’t want to lie. It’s burning my brain, anticipating explaining the unseen scars when he inevitably unearths them.
I haven’t the capacity to tackle Dec when he inevitably scolds me for being so monumentally dumb for walking home in the dark alone when the streets are deserted.
And, well, my cheek is a mess. So I let my phone ring off and wince when a message pings through.
Sorry I didn’t call you last night. Things ran over. Late lunch?
I chomp on my lip and tap out a reply.
I’ve got a mad few days ahead. I’ll call you Monday.
I’m cringing so hard, I shrink down the chair, and I stay there for a whole fifteen minutes until Dec replies.
Okay.
It’s one word. But it took fifteen minutes to send that one word, and that one word says so much more than okay.
It says: Weird. It says: No, that’s not okay.
It says: What’s going on? It says: I’m suspicious but I’m just going to say okay because I don’t know what else to say.
And it says: You’re too much work after all and I’m bowing out.
God, my head!
I slam my phone down and call Debbie. “Get me the holding account statements.” I hang up before she can tell me I’m two weeks early and get back to my inbox.
Three hours later, my brain is fried. Jeff wasn’t wrong. The holding accounts have been hit hard, but it’s Barbara who’s been the most active. I email Thomas all the details of his wife’s drawings, my mind racing, considering various scenarios, but always coming back to the same conclusion.
She’s taking him to the cleaners.
I obviously don’t say that, it would be a step too far, but I can plant the seed.
He can’t possibly look at this and brush it aside.
I feel like they’re trying to sabotage Thomas’s plans.
Actually, more than that, they’re trying to sabotage Thomas’s business, and that doesn’t make sense at all.
Why rob your own source of wealth that you love to flaunt?
I’ve suspected—been certain—that Barbara and Anthony aren’t all too keen on Thomas’s plans to float TF Shipping.
And I suspect it’s because they don’t like the idea of answering to a wider board.
No more frivolous spending on company cards for personal luxuries.
I hit send and look up at my door when I hear something odd seeping through the wood.
“Surely not?” I murmur, standing, torn between going to the door and checking I’m not going mad, or staying here, not risking it, and hiding under my desk.
The latter is more appealing, and yet my legs carry me to the door and swing it open.
“Ho-ho-ho!”
I step back, trying to take everything in before me. I can’t. There’s too much. And then there are suddenly squeals too. Dozens of them.
Kids.
Everywhere.
Running wild, nipping at Father’s Christmas’s ankles as he stands, large as life, in the middle, surrounded by his believers.
A boulder hits me so hard in the stomach, I’m knocked back a few steps into my office.
The noise. It’s unbearable. I see Debbie look up at me, her smile fading.
Her palms are on the shoulders of a small boy as he looks at Santa in wonder.
“What’s going on?” I ask, not nearly loud enough for her to hear me. “What’s going on?” I yell.
She comes at me with the child, and I back away. “It’s Bring Your Kid to Work Day,” she says, almost in apology.
“Since when?”
“Since the memo that went out yesterday.”
“I didn’t see any memo.” Fuck, I did see a memo. I just didn’t read the memo properly. “I can’t work in this,” I say, on the cusp of outrage. “For fuck’s sake.”
Debbie’s palms rest on the boy’s ears as his eyes bug up at me. I have to get out of here.
I grab my bags and hurry through the chaos, smacking my finger on the elevator call button urgently.
The doors open, and a swarm of more kids come at me, yelling at the sight of Santa Claus.
My whole body tightens, pulling in my limbs, making myself as small as possible, as they dart past me on both sides.
Stepping in, I tuck myself in the corner and only breathe easy when the doors close and the elevator carries me away from the never-ending triggers.
I fucking hate Christmas. The noise. The screaming children.
The happiness everyone else experiences when it’s the time of year that my life fell apart.
And yet, he, of course, can simply move on.
Because he thinks I am unreasonable. He left.
He simply fucking left. I look down at my watch.
Specifically, the date. The nineteenth is only four days away. How the fuck has three years passed?
The elevator is suddenly suffocating, and I will it to move faster.
The moment the doors are open wide enough, I slip through the gap and hurry across the lobby, taking in precious air.
I step outside and look down at my heels in the slushy snow.
“Shit.” Dropping my bag onto a nearby post, I pull out my boots and socks and get them on, before following my feet mindlessly.
I end up at Mum’s care home. It’s all standard—a tight smile to the receptionist, a slow trudge up the corridor, my stomach turning with dread, a cautious peek around the door, my heart falling when I see her.
Her lunch is untouched by the bedside, the room basked in a hazy light, and she’s asleep.
I push my way in and start my obligatory chores, changing the water in her jug, getting rid of the wilting flowers, cleaning the vase and trimming the stems of the new carnations, arranging them just so.
Then I sit down. “You’ve not eaten,” I say, reaching for the fork in her pasta and poking it around the bowl. “Not hungry?”
Her eyes open, and she looks at me, vacant. Nothing behind her eyes. “I could manage a few mouthfuls, Nurse,” she says, straight-faced, nothing in her voice either. Just emotionless words.
I swallow and pull my chair closer, forking a piece of penne and offering it.
Her mouth drops open, her head still sunk into the pillow, and I pop it in, watching her chew slowly, her empty gaze never wavering from mine.
I don’t tell her I love her. I don’t call her Mum.
I say nothing that’ll spike a violent reaction.
I just sit here, feeding her, happy to be simply Nurse.
It’s almost . . . peaceful. The quiet. I take a deep breath, and for a moment, I can let the desperate blanket of sadness go. It’s momentary, but I take it.
She surprisingly manages a quarter of her bowl before she doesn’t open her mouth for me anymore.
“Water?” I ask, offering her the straw. She wraps her lips around it, lips that used to never be without a red tint that would last all day long.
Now, they’re thin and colourless. Lifeless.
They don’t smile, they don’t purse coyly, they don’t smirk when she teases me.
And they don’t speak the words I so long to hear.
Mum’s here, my little buttercup. It’s all going to be all right.
Because she’s not here anymore. And I’m scared all can never be alright again because there’s no longer a soul in my life who loves me unconditionally.
I swallow down the grief and wait until she’s dozed off again before I clear away the dishes and get my coat back on. I dip and kiss her forehead gently so I don’t wake and alarm her. “Love you, Mum.”
“Love you too, buttercup.”
I smile as she squeezes me to her chest, stroking circles across my back with her palm as she breathes into my neck. “Don’t you think I’m too old at thirty to be called buttercup, Mum?”
She snorts. “Never. Whether you’re four or forty, you’ll always be my little buttercup.”
“Okay,” I concede, feeling her hands move up to my hair and start combing through the strands.
“My buttercup,” she murmurs.