Nineteen #2
I stare at it. I had a whole monologue prepared about the tyranny of caffeine-free existence, about the cruel irony of being a writer who can no longer access the one chemical that makes sentences happen, about how the universe has a sick sense of humour.
What comes out instead is, "Thank you."
Elsie pours. The tea is chamomile with something citrusy, and it's good, actually, which is somehow worse than if it had been terrible.
If it had been terrible, I could have raged against the injustice.
Instead, I have to sit here and admit that Elsie has found a way to make my hormonal exile almost pleasant, and that feels like a personal betrayal.
Luca and Liv are already arguing over which traits the baby will inherit from them. Liv insists the child will have her impeccable taste and devastating wit. Luca is convinced she'll inherit his dramatic timing and flawless hair. I sip my tea and let the sound of their voices wash over me.
Then my phone rings.
The name on the screen hits me like a physical force.
Freya. My baby sister. The person who has called me every Sunday for thirteen years, who has texted me every morning without fail, who has not heard from me in over three months because I am a coward and a terrible sister and the kind of person who can write entire novels about other women's courage but can't seem to manage a five-minute phone call about her own life.
I wince. The phone keeps ringing.
Luca glances over, sees the name, and his entire face seems to freeze in a disappointed frown. "Harper Bennett," he says, in the tone of voice usually reserved for people caught stealing from the cookie jar. "You still haven't told her?"
"Not yet."
"Not yet? Not yet? It's been months. She's going to think you died. Or worse, that you joined a cult."
"I was going to text her from the hospital," I say, which sounds even worse out loud than it did in my head.
Luca stares at me. "You were going to text her. From the hospital. After you gave birth. 'Hey Frey, guess what, I'm divorced and also here's a baby, surprise!'"
"It could work," I mutter.
"It's psychotic," Liv says whilst not even looking up from her phone.
The phone stops ringing. The silence that follows is somehow worse than the ringtone. Then it starts again. Freya, calling again. My thumb hovers over the screen, paralysed by the sheer magnitude of my own failure.
Luca moves faster than I thought possible. One second the phone is in my hand, the next it's in his, and he's hit the speaker button before I can argue.
"Freya!" he announces, his voice carrying to every corner of the suddenly, horrifyingly silent café. "Harps finally got rid of the asswipe! Oh, also she found a new hunk of man meat and got herself knocked up with a new niece! Congratulations, you're going to be an aunt again!"
I lunge for the phone. The tea sloshes over the edge of the cup. Someone at the far table coughs loudly. The toddler in the corner stops dismantling a wooden block and stares at me with the unblinking judgment only a two-year-old can muster.
"Luca, give me the…"
"Harper?" Freya's voice, small and confused, fills the café.
I snatch the phone back, fumble with the speaker, pressing it hard against my ear. "Frey. I'm so sorry. He's… that was… I'm at the café and he…"
"Harper." Her voice is quiet. The way it always is when she's trying not to cry. "Is it true?"
I close my eyes. The café seems to have gone completely still. Alexander is watching me from the table, his expression is openly concerned. Liv has set down her mug. Elsie's hand moves to my shoulder.
"Yeah," I say, and the word comes out smaller than I meant it to. "It's true. All of it."
A pause. I can hear her sniffling.
"I understand," she says finally. "I love you."
With that, she hangs up.
I stand there with the phone against my ear for a second too long, listening to the dial tone like it might offer some kind of absolution. It doesn't. The guilt settles into my chest, the type of shame that only comes from hurting someone who never deserved it.
Elsie's hand squeezes my shoulder. Luca looks like he's about to throw himself into the pastry case.
"I'm fine," I say to everyone and no one. "I'm going to sit down now."
I walk to the table on legs that don't quite feel like mine, and Alexander pulls out the chair before I can reach for it. His hand finds mine under the table. I hold on.
***
I step into the living room with two mugs of chamomile tea and the vague sensation that the universe has forgotten to cue the dramatic montage music.
The sofa is still the same sagging blue one I bought three years ago during a Boxing Day sale that made the salesperson visibly uncomfortable.
The coffee table still bears the scratch marks from where Leo tried to replicate Jurassic Park with a pencil and a genuine lack of spatial awareness.
Alexander is already on the couch, one arm stretched along the back cushions, his socked feet crossed at the ankles on the coffee table.
He looks so comfortable, so settled, that for a moment I have the bizarre thought that he might have been born here, sprung fully formed from the upholstery like some kind of lawyer-shaped Athena.
He takes the mug from my hand without looking at it, his eyes fixed on my face with a concerned expression still plastered there.
It hasn’t really left since the café. Since the phone call ended.
Since I waited five minutes before gathering Leo and pulling Alexander away to come home with us.
Leo has been asleep for an hour. The silence upstairs is the special, sacred kind that only parents truly understand.
I settle into the space beside Alexander, my shoulder slotting against his chest like it was made for this purpose.
His arm drops around me, such a sweet and simple gesture that makes tears prickle at the back of my eyes.
“He okay?” Alexander asks.
“Out cold. He spent dinner explaining the migratory patterns of pterosaurs to the salt shaker. I think his brain finally gave out.”
Alexander laughs, a quiet rumble against my temple. “Kid’s going to take over the world.”
“Or at the very least, a corner of the Natural History Museum.”
We sit like that for a while, the tea cooling between my palms, the television muted on some documentary about deep-sea creatures that neither of us is watching.
The quiet is so complete I can hear the refrigerator click on in the kitchen, the soft ticking of the clock on the wall, the distant hum of traffic three streets over.
Normal sounds. The sounds of a life that has, against all odds, kept going.
Alexander’s thumb traces a slow pattern on my shoulder.
“Can I ask you something?” he says.
I don’t need to look at him to know what’s coming. His voice has that careful quality that I’ve come to recognize, the tone he uses when he’s about to ask something he already suspects I don’t want to answer.
“Freya,” he says. Not a question. Just her name. My stomach tightens on cue.
I stare at the television. A jellyfish pulses across the screen, blue and translucent and utterly unconcerned with human emotion.
“What about her?”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
The question hangs between us, simple and yet completely devastating.
I could lie. I could deflect. I could say I was waiting for the right moment, or that I wanted to get through the divorce first, or any of the dozen excuses I’ve been rehearsing in my head for months.
Instead, what comes out is the truth, so raw and unvarnished and so obvious it hurts.
“Because I’m the big sister.” The words seem to be too small for my monumental fuck up. “That’s my job. I look after her. I don’t…I don’t make her look after me.”
Alexander is quiet for a long moment. Then his arm tightens around me, just slightly.
“Maybe that’s her way of loving you,” he says. His voice is so gentle it’s almost painful. “Maybe you should have let her be there for you in her way.”
I close my eyes. The guilt rises, familiar and acidic, making me monetarily concerned that my dinner will make a reappearance.
He’s right. Of course he’s right. But being right doesn’t change the years I have spent watching Freya absorb other people’s pain like a sponge, the way she would make herself into smaller and smaller spaces to make room for everyone else. I couldn’t do that to her. Not again.
“I know,” I say. “I just…”
The doorbell cuts through the sentence like a guillotine.
We both freeze. Alexander’s arm goes still. I check my phone…9:47 PM. Nobody with good news arrives at 9:47 at night.
“Stay here,” Alexander says, already on his feet.
“It’s probably Luca. He once showed up at midnight because he found a spider in his shower and ‘needed a second opinion on whether it was venomous.’”
“Was it?”
“It was a daddy longlegs.”
Alexander shakes his head and heads for the door. I hear the lock turn, the creak of hinges, and then…
“Oh.”
His voice is soft. Concerned. I’m on my feet before I can stop myself, padding into the hallway in my socks.
Adrian stands on the front step, one hand braced against the doorframe, his expression the carefully neutral one that I’ve come to recognize as his version of mild panic. And beside him, pressed against Adrian’s side like he’s trying to merge with the man’s ribcage, is Luca.
Luca, who is crying.
Not the delicate, almost pretty crying that I would have thought Luca was capable of. But a full messy, red-faced crying where your breath comes in jagged, wet gasps that sound like you’re drowning on dry land. His eyes are swollen. He looks, in a word, destroyed.
“Harper,” he manages, and then his voice crumples completely.