Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
"May I ask questions?" Rosa said.
Billy nodded and smiled. "I hoped you might want to." She held her hands up. "I'm an open book."
"What does…’little trauma’ mean exactly?"
Leaning back, Billy thought about the question.
"When I was a kid and my dad was at home, I suppose life wasn't fun always.
Sometimes it was…really big fun, and then suddenly it wouldn't be.
They argued a lot, but then the next minute they were all loved up and I was…
I guess I felt like I was in the way of that.
My therapist explained that as a small child, I learned that it was never safe, emotionally.
Back then, both of my parents were very much…
unavailable. Dad, because he was so walled off.
And believe it or not, my mum was…overwhelmed and dramatic, needing me to be her sounding board. "
"Somehow I can see that." Rosa grinned.
"It's not hard, right?"
"Sorry, go on." Rosa's smile didn't fade.
"Okay…so, there are a million things that added up, but the biggest was when my dad left. My mum fell apart, and I…I took on the responsibility for her emotions. I blamed myself for him leaving. If I'd just been a better daughter, a quieter child…if I'd just…the list went on."
"And all of this was in your subconscious the entire time?"
"Yes, just pecking away here and there. When I met you," she smiled, "I'd never been happier.
Getting married, though, it somehow set off a chain of small events that just became an avalanche.
Losing my job was a catalyst that pushed me over the edge, and then when Imogen was born… All I could see in me was my dad."
"You were scared you'd abandon her, and yet, that's what you did."
"I was scared I'd fail her. In my depressed fog, I worried I’d be just like him. My thinking got all twisted because I’d subconsciously blamed myself for him leaving.
But the reality was, he was just a selfish sod who'd met someone else and abandoned us…
me. But I rationalised it all as I'd fail her… fail you."
"So…" Rosa mused, "have we…did we fuck up Imogen without even realising?"
"Maybe…"
"You should have told me sooner." Rosa sat up straighter. "We could have headed it off."
Billy smiled. "When?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, when would it have been a good time to bring any of this up with you?
Before now, we've barely spoken to each other.
I pick Imogen up and you're either not there, or in a hurry to go somewhere.
I drop her off and you're in a hurry to get her organised for school the next day. If I call, you don't answer. I’ll get a text message later saying that you’re sorry you missed my call. "
"That's not fair—"
"It's just facts, Rosa," Billy said. "We spent years after I left with us both walking on eggshells, and then these last years have been spent with you avoiding me and any real conversation."
Rosa bristled, her fists slowly clenching.
"I get it," Billy said. "It's not easy to open up and say what you want or need to say, and maybe…
" Her head tilted as she held Rosa's gaze.
"Maybe there are things you need to say…
hurtful things? Angry things?" Billy held her arms open.
"I can take it. I want to hear it and get it all out into the open so we can draw a shared line under it all and parent our child together. "
Rosa stood up. "I need a drink for that." She went to the fridge and pulled out the bottle of wine. "Do you want one?"
Billy shook her head. "No, I'm all good."
Rosa poured the wine, put the bottle back, and turned.
Glass in one hand, her other arm wrapped around her middle, she leant back against the countertop and brought the glass to her lips but didn't take a sip.
"I'm finding it difficult to put things into words," she said, finally looking back at Billy.
"It's okay…you can take your time, or just say it however you have it and we can unpack it—"
"See, that..." Rosa pushed off from the counter, her arm unwrapping to point a finger at Billy. "All this therapy jargon…it makes me feel…" She inhaled and then blew it out. "I just want to be angry at you."
Billy nodded and remained silent.
"I just want to be angry and hurt you the way you hurt me, and I can't…I can't, and that makes me angry at me."
"I'm sorry."
Rosa rolled her eyes. "I'm sick of hearing ‘sorry’," she said, moving back to the couch.
She placed the glass down onto the table next to the mug.
"I needed you. I needed you and you weren't there, and there was never a time when that changed…
when I stopped needing you, and that pisses me off.
It pisses me off that you still have that hold on me.
" She looked at Billy, eyes wet with tears that wouldn't fall.
"You could have come back at any time, and I'd have let you, and that… that makes me angry with me."
She picked up the glass and swallowed it down in one.
"So you don't get to sit there and tell me you still love me, and that you never stopped loving me, when you could have been loving me and you chose not to."
Finally, they fell—one by one, until it was a trickle of tears pouring down her cheeks. Tears she'd not shed for so long, that when they started, her entire body shook. The glass slipped from her fingers and hit the rug with a soft thud.
"I've spent all these years thinking I was so terrible…such an awful wife, that you'd choose to be away from me to heal, and now…now I hear your words, your truth, and I feel horrible for being so selfish…so self-absorbed that I didn't see it. I didn't see your pain."
"Stop." Billy's voice cracked. She was beside Rosa in an instant, kneeling in front of her, hands hovering, uncertain. "You weren't selfish. You were drowning too."
She took Rosa's hands, cupping them between her own.
"There's no blame here. We both did, and felt, and assumed a lot of things that in the moment were all we had to go on.
It's too simplistic with hindsight to say either of us shoulda, woulda, coulda done anything differently.
And neither of us are those people anymore.
We grew, became more than we were, and that's okay.
" She bent lower and tilted her head to look into Rosa's downturned eyes, her voice low and soft as she spoke.
"I love you. Whether you feel anything for me or not, it's okay, but I needed you to know—"
Before she could finish the sentence, lips were on hers—soft, yielding, and salty. Lips that instantly felt like she knew they would: unexpected, but home.