Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Billy stood and moved closer, but didn't invade her space. "I'm sorry. That was crass. It's been a lot of years for me, and I guess now, it doesn't feel quite so…tragic?"
Rosa turned and found her just a few inches away. Her eyes were soft, vulnerable—the same look from all those years ago.
"I still love you," Billy said. "I never stopped loving you."
Rosa flinched, shaking her head. "No."
"No?"
"Yes, NO!" Rosa said, raising her voice and moving past Billy to go back to the couch, but didn't sit. She picked up the mug and took another long swig. "You can't say that to me now."
"I can't? Why not, when it's the truth?"
The heat burned up Rosa's neck. "Because you can't…
you can't have loved me and stayed away for so long.
Months of you flitting in and out, and then years not knowing where you were, who you were with, what you were doing…
then you waltz back in like nothing happened, with someone else in your life, wanting to be a parent again…
Did you love me when you were fucking her? All the others?"
"Okay. I can see there is a lot to unpack there so…" Billy blew out her cheeks and joined Rosa at the couch. She sat down, leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, her ankle balanced on her knee. "Do you want me to explain?"
"Yes! Every day of my life since you left, I've had nothing but questions." Rosa sat down again. "I didn't dare ask. I was scared you'd spiral…that you'd leave again. That I wouldn't like the answers."
Billy nodded. "I was like that when I first went into therapy. Mum told me I had two choices—I got help, or I accepted she'd be attending my funeral, and if that was my choice, she'd never forgive me."
"Trust Meredith to make it all about her."
"Yeah, I guess it could look like that, but the reality was…someone cared enough to make me stay."
"I—I cared," Rosa said. "You think I didn't care?"
"Back then, I thought nobody cared. I didn't care," Billy said.
"Those months of me flitting in and out…
I was so lost. I wanted you. I wanted our life, Imogen…
and I just couldn't find a way to have it.
And each year that passed, she'd get a little older and…
she had no idea who I was…not really, and I felt huge amounts of shame for that.
Shame and self-hate that my own daughter didn't know me.
" She paused, looking away. "That was when I tried to… "
Rosa's eyes closed.
"Mum made me see something—hope, I guess, and I was lucky that she and Schultz could afford an inpatient program here in Austria, away from everything and everyone I knew.
I was there for six months, and when I finished, I went into outpatient therapy.
I no longer wanted to die, but I still needed help to lift the depression.
There were a lot of medications. Some worked okay for a while, others had detrimental effects on my ability to be cognitive. "
Rosa didn't interrupt.
"Before I knew it, too long had passed, and although I had regular updates from Mum…" She paused. "Thank you for that…for not cutting them out of Imogen's life."
"I saw no reason to," Rosa said. "Mostly, Immy had my mum and dad on an almost daily basis. I couldn't afford childcare without them, but I figured with your parents around…she had something of you still in her life."
Billy nodded.
"Sorry, please…go on. I want to hear you."
Their eyes met and held as Billy processed the words she had longed to hear.
"Yes, I… Where was I?"
"A lot of medications, and updates from your mum."
"Yes. I suppose I just assumed, rightly or wrongly, that you were doing okay. Imogen was happy and hitting all her milestones and didn't really remember me… I still had a lot of 'everyone was better off without me' to deal with."
"What changed that?"
Billy smiled. "Time." She nodded and continued, "There are things in life, we all have…
things that leave a mark. The small t—little traumas that nobody notices, but they're busy building away in the background, brick by brick, until one day you turn to do something, and boom," Billy clapped her hands, "you hit the wall. "
Rosa flinched.
"Sorry." Billy chuckled. She paused for a moment before continuing, "Some of those bricks were virtually invisible. They needed to be picked apart by someone who knew how to do that…knew how to probe just enough to find the detail in the marrow."