7. Julia #3
“Occupational hazard of having a complicated dead parent.” I offer but again, he doesn’t take the bait.
Instead he rests the pen against his notepad and asks, “What about your mother?”
For a second I genuinely don’t understand the question. “What about her?”
“You’ve mentioned her in relation to your father’s affairs and what home was like growing up, but almost everything you’ve told me still revolves around him. I’m curious about your relationship with her.”
I shift in the chair and tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “My mom and I are fine.”
The words are barely out before I hear them. Kai does too. Neither of us comments.
I let out a small, humorless laugh. “Okay, apparently that one is going to haunt me now.”
“We don’t have to count it.”
“How generous.” I mutter.
Kai gives me a moment. “What does fine mean when you’re talking about your mother?”
I think longer than the question should require. “We talk. A couple times a month, usually. Sometimes more.”
“Are you close?”
“I guess.”
“That’s different from yes.”
I exhale and sink deeper into the chair. “She’s my mother. I love her.”
“I didn’t ask whether you love her.”
Something uncomfortable moves under my ribs. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Then we can start there.”
I stare somewhere in front of me as I think about what he asked.
We exchange recipes neither of us will make.
She tells me about her day. I remind her about appointments, listen when she’s upset, make sure birthdays and prescriptions aren’t forgotten.
There are years of conversations between us.
I can’t remember the last time I called her because I was hurting.
The realization comes quietly enough that I almost miss it. Kai doesn’t.
“What just happened?” His question pulls me back.
“Nothing.”
“You went somewhere.”
“I was thinking… I can’t remember the last time I called her because I needed something.”
He lets the silence sit. “Did you go to her when you needed comfort as a child?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who did you go to?”
“Nanna.”
“But not your mother?”
“She had enough going on.”
“How old were you when you started thinking that way?”
“Young.”
“What did she have going on?”
“My father. The affairs. Trying to catch him, trying to figure out where he was and who he was with. They fought constantly. She was always consumed by him. When things were calm, which wasn’t often, they would both somehow turn on me instead.
Nanna was the one who actually raised me.
She sat with me through homework, taught me how to read and write.
My mother made sure I had clothes and food and that birthdays happened, but Nanna was the one who was really there. ”
“Where were you in all of that?”
The question pulls something tight in my chest. “I was there.”
“I know you were physically there. Where did you fit into it?”
“I don’t know.” I whisper.
“Were you allowed to need her?”
Now my throat feels like it’s tightening and the reaction is immediate enough to piss me off. “Of course I was.”
Kai doesn’t challenge it, but he doesn’t nod either.
“She loved me.”
“I haven’t suggested otherwise.”
“She did.”
“I believe you.”
Something about how easily he says it strips away the argument I was preparing.
“She wasn’t a bad mother.”
“Julia.” His voice is quieter now. “You don’t have to convince me that your mother was a bad person in order to talk about the ways she may have hurt you.”
The room goes very still. My father is easy to be angry with. The evidence is easy to compartmentalize. Infidelity. Manipulation. Blame. Abandonment. Suicide. I can put the memories in boxes and close the lids.
My mother doesn’t fit into boxes. She cried in my bed. She asked me where Dad had been. She wanted to know whether I’d seen the woman again. She told me not to tell him she’d asked. She told me I should have kept quiet. She needed me to understand. She needed me to choose. She needed.
What about what I needed?
The thought catches and refuses to let go. Kai is saying something, but I don’t hear the first few words.
“Julia?”
I blink. His face comes back into focus.
“Sorry. What?”
His attention has changed. The curiosity is gone, replaced by something more careful.
“What were you thinking about?”
“My mom.” I try to say more, but the memory rises without permission.
I'm twelve. Maybe a little younger. I wake up in the middle of the night because I'm thirsty and need water.
The house is quiet, but when I walk into the kitchen I see a thin line of light under the pantry door.
I open it, and my mother is sitting on the old potato bucket we kept in there, the light from the single bulb making her face look pale and strange.
She reaches for the doorknob like she wants to shut me out, but then she changes her mind and starts talking in this low, frantic mumble that doesn't sound like her at all.
She's holding my father's phone in one hand and a pair of his underwear in the other.
She keeps saying she can't find anything in the phone, that he erased the messages but she knows they're in there, she knows he's texting them.
And then she holds the underwear out toward me, pointing at the stain she says is cum, her voice rising and falling as she tries to make me see it the way she does.
She's not herself. She's talking too fast and not really looking at me, just needing someone to hear her.
I stand there in the doorway of the pantry, too young to fully understand what she's showing me but old enough to feel the wrongness of it settle into my stomach and stay there.
She used to do things like that. Pull me into the middle of whatever storm was happening between them.
Ask if I'd noticed whether his tennis clothes smelled like sweat or like laundry detergent when he came home.
Whether the orange clay from the courts was on his shoes or if they were clean.
Whether a woman had called. Whether he'd said a name.
Sometimes I'd tell her something small and then they'd fight because of it, and I'd lie in bed listening to the raised voices, wondering if I should have just stayed quiet.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Kai’s voice reaches me immediately. “You were a child.”
“I know.”
But the room is getting quieter. Not the good quiet. The wrong quiet, the kind where sounds start happening somewhere else.
“Julia, look at me.”
I try. His face blurs for a second before becoming clear again.
“What are you noticing in your body right now?”
“My hands are cold.”
“Can you feel the chair underneath you?”
I try to move my fingers but they don’t feel like mine.
“Kinda.”
He stays where he is. Deliberately.
“That’s okay. Keep your eyes on me if you can.”
There’s something on his face I haven’t seen before. Concern. Not the soft, sympathetic kind I hate. Something sharper. Almost angry.
“I’m fine.” The words barely sound like mine.
Kai’s jaw tightens. I want to smile. Nothing happens.
“Julia, we’re done talking about your mother for today.”
I nod even though I’m not sure I understand why. My eyes drift toward the window. There’s sunlight against the glass. Or maybe there isn’t. I can’t tell whether I’m looking at it or remembering looking at it.
Kai says my name again. He asks me something about the room. The lamp. The rug. He asks me to tell him what color something is, and I answer because answering seems easier than understanding why he’s asking.
Gray-green. Brown. Black. His voice keeps finding me every time everything else starts slipping farther away.
By the time the clock says the appointment should have ended, I know where I am again. At least I think I do. My purse is beside my chair. My phone is next to my thigh. My hands are still cold. And Kai is watching me like he’s trying very hard not to show how worried he is.
“I should go.”
“I’d rather you stay for a few more minutes.”
“I’m okay.” The words come automatically. This time neither of us pretends not to notice.
I reach for my purse and miss the strap the first time. Kai sees that too.
“I just need to go home.”
There’s something almost desperate about the need once I say it aloud. I need my house. My couch. My blankets. My silence. I need to be somewhere nobody is looking at me while I try to figure out why talking about my mother somehow did what talking about my dead father couldn’t.
Kai studies me for several seconds. I can see the argument happening behind his eyes.
Eventually he stands. So do I. The floor feels strangely distant beneath my feet.
He doesn’t touch me. He walks with me toward the door, close enough that he could catch me if I stumbled but far enough that I don’t feel crowded.
My hand closes around the handle.
“Julia.”
I look back. His expression is controlled again, but only just.
“Text or call someone when you get home. Tessa, your grandmother, whoever feels safe. I don’t want you sitting with this alone tonight.”
I nod because agreeing gets me closer to leaving. “I will.”
“And take a few minutes before you drive.”
“Okay.” I’m already opening the door.
Mara looks up when I step into reception. Her smile starts automatically, then disappears. I don’t know what she sees when she looks at me. Whatever it is, she doesn’t make a joke. And somehow that’s how I know I must look worse than I feel.
I say goodbye. At least I think I do.
Then I walk toward the clinic doors with Kai Blackwood’s attention following me all the way out.