Chapter 58 Later #2
I laugh, dry my eyes. “You have to be nicer to her, Em. She’s trying.”
She makes a face. “I’m not making any promises.”
“Em.” A word of warning.
“Okay, fine. Although I thought you’d be above harassing a pregnant lady. Jeez.”
With an eye roll and a wink, she’s out the door.
When I return to the living room, Dimple stays where she is, even though there’s room beside me on the sofa now.
“How are things at the school?” I ask.
I suppose it was an inevitability that Dimple’s career would not survive what happened.
Even without James’s claims about her provocation of my poor mental health, that she’d orchestrated her way to becoming her sister’s therapist was a significant issue.
One the UK Council for Psychotherapy saw fit to strike her off their register for.
It didn’t actually stop her from practicing, but it certainly didn’t help, and she took it as an invitation to reconsider her career.
Now she was working as a teaching assistant while she weighed up pivoting into social work.
“It’s tough, and shit pay. God, the kids are having a rough ride of it.” Her frown transforms into something akin to a smile. “But it’s rewarding. I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry you’ve had to leave therapy behind.”
She waves away the apology she’s heard before. “I got into it because I wanted to help people, and I still am. Besides, I knew it was a risk when I chose to get close to you, irresponsible as I was in doing so. I made my choice.” A proper smile now. “We’ll see how things go. What about your work?”
“I’m still figuring out what to do with James’s shares.
It’s…I don’t know. And Will’s gleefully swinging his weight around.
I mean, he’s got his strengths on the business end, but I can’t let a man like that run around the business unchecked.
I think I need to sell. Find someone smart and decent.
Or just hire someone like that. I don’t know…
. At the very least, we’ve hired a replacement for me in the office.
For the best, really. And James’s parents have paid me the equivalent of what James stole.
They needn’t have bothered. Turns out that, yes, he was putting a lot of his money back into the business, but he was hiding a lot of money from me, too.
I’m not exactly sure what for. Maybe to fund one of his many illicit affairs.
Turns out he was shagging Molly, by the way. ”
The doorbell buzzes and my body goes rigid. Somehow, it’s already time.
Dimple points an elegant finger into the hallway. “Do you want me to?”
I nod.
She gets up and walks into the corridor, saying a few words into the intercom. I hear the click of the door button. Some time passes and then there’s a short knock at the front door. Before long, Dimple is reentering the room, my mother trailing behind her.
Years. It’s been years since we’ve been in the same room. Before she can say anything, tears are already springing into her eyes.
“My baby,” she says.
The skin around her eyes is a little more lined.
Relaxed hair streaked a little more silver.
But otherwise, she looks the same. And I tell her to come in, make herself comfortable.
It’s quickly noticeable in the way she picks apart the meal I serve her—her favorite meal—that she hasn’t changed much on the inside, either.
She spends a great deal of time talking about herself.
I watch Dimple panic as she swings between a desire to intervene and a promise not to.
A shake of my head tells her it’s all right.
She’s here as facilitator and witness, but it’s not her fight.
It’s hard not to be flung back into my teenage body, rising to every jab with an angry retort. But I manage it. Just.
I’m too distracted by her deep sadness, her deep loneliness, for my anger to take root. Despite all the ways in which she’s failed, I know she has done her best for me. Her best as far as she was capable. And I can see the ways in which she has been left broken, too.
It’s not my job to fix that. It’s hers. But I can’t hate her for being damaged by the hard life she’s lived.
As we’re clearing the last of the roast from our plates—hers suspiciously clean despite her complaints—she announces a gift.
“I have something for you,” she says.
And I’m inherently suspicious of this until she produces a small journal. I recognize the cover immediately. Claire’s old journal.
“I’ve already read it,” she clarifies. Because of course she has. “I found it when I was finally clearing out her room a couple of years ago. There’s some stuff in there I didn’t understand before, but now it makes more sense.”
The red pleather stares at me. A promise and a betrayal. Claire’s real voice. I’m dying to crack it open, even though it feels like a posthumous invasion of privacy. I tell my mother as much.
“You’ve always been so sensitive about things. So much like your father.”
I can’t help but bite. “I need you to stop saying that.”
She jerks backward, nose scrunching, like I’ve waved a turd under her chin. “Why not? It’s true.” She shrugs. I take a sip of water to stop myself from firing back. “You’ve both always been sensitive. Sensitive and too afraid for your own good,” she continues.
I set the glass of water down harder than I mean to. Ignore the narrowing of her eyes. “Too afraid? Was Dad ‘afraid’ each time he laid hands on you?”
A dry laugh. “Of course. Why do you think he chose me? He was a coward, afraid of everything, and he wanted someone he could punch down to. Why do you think James chose you?” She rises from her seat. “Where’s the bathroom?”
I’m still winded, trying to catch my breath.
“It’s just on the left as you come in the front door,” I manage to say, voice quiet. “Do you need me to show you?”
She tuts, shakes her head. “And your antibacterial wipes?”
I don’t need to rise to this. “I cleaned the bathroom this morning.”
“Today has been hard enough for me, Natalie. Please, the wipes.”
I fetch the packet from under the kitchen sink. She takes them and leaves. I reclaim my seat at the table.
“I’m sorry,” Dimple says. “I can try broaching the topic of family therapy again, but—”
“It’s okay,” I answer with a small shrug of my own. “Trying to get an aunty into therapy is…Anyway, I wasn’t expecting she’d have changed. And she’s not wrong about Dad and James.”
My hands pick up the journal. Flick through the pages. Claire’s teen rage is written in clear lines, only growing as she turns twenty. But amid the anger and the hypervigilance is her humor.
“Can I see?” Dimple asks.
I cast my eyes over to her. See her nerves pinning her arms to her sides. “Sure,” I say.
She takes a moment to look through the pages. Laughs. “I can see why you say we’re similar.”
“Mmm” is all I can say.
She flips to the last pages of the journal. Reads. Smiles. Stops smiling. “She was a very hurt girl.”
“She was.”
“She loved you very much.”
“I believe she did.”
“I think you should see this.”
The book is pushed down a canal of space between the dirty plates. I pick it up. Read.
I know one day, I’ll have to tell Natty what I’ve done.
And I hope she’ll forgive me for it. At the very least, I think she’s happier now than she would have been.
And if there’s one thing I want, it’s for her to be happy.
For her to come out of all the shit we’ve been through and stop pretending her feelings.
Pretending to be happy or to like whatever or to care about whatever.
And just fucking live, you know? One of us has to figure out how to do it, and I don’t think it can be me.
I fight the swell in my throat and then allow the tears to fall.
“Do you think you could do that?” Dimple asks.
“What?”
“Let go of your anger. Try being happy,” she says.
I sigh, try to prize a few ossified fingers off the guilt I’ve been holding on to so tightly. A little falls away. “I think so.” I consider the small relief that smooths out Dimple’s forehead lines. “But you have to try, too.”
Dimple frowns, nods. “I guess that’s fair.” And then smiles. And it’s one of those unburdened smiles. Honest smiles. When she smiles like this, her whole face lights up, eyes beaming a pure warmth. And in these moments, I can’t help but think, Joy.
She looks back at the journal. “Mind if I borrow that after you? I understand if it’s too much to share it, but…Well, I’d like to get to know her.”
I consider the journal and consider Dimple. “I’d rather tell you about her, I think. If that’s okay. From what I’ve seen, she’s writing at her worst. I want you to know her at her best.”
Dimple considers this. Nods an acquiescence. “I know there’s trust to rebuild—”
“On both sides—” I concede.
“—but I want to know you, too.”
The bathroom door clicks open. My mother’s footsteps echo down the corridor. Her eyes spot her empty glass.
“I suppose you’re waiting for me to die of thirst, then,” she says.
A little of the camaraderie leaches back into Dimple and me as we catch each other smothering smiles.
“Joy was just about to refill your glass.” And at the sound of her name out of my mouth, she gives me one of those radiant smiles again.
In truth, I don’t know if we’ll ever completely heal what this thing is between us, but I’m ready for us to start.