Chapter 77 #2
I go to head up there to confront them. I'm not a kid anymore they can just tell to get lost. She can't just tell to go, but the footsteps echo and they're coming towards me, so I step back.
My father is at the head of the stairs, and he looks younger.
There's more colour to his hair, no middle-aged spread to his belly.
He's wearing jeans and a shirt. He looks handsome, but tired. His eyes are red.
My mum isn't far behind him. She doesn't look so different. Younger, too. "You want it this way. You asked for it this way."
"So this is my fault, is it? All mine?"
"Mum? Dad?" I say, but neither of them says anything, neither of them even looks at me. I wave my hand in front of my father's face. Nothing. "I'm right here." But I'm not, am I? Not really. This is just a memory. My heart pounds harder as I realise, I'm trapped in this moment
I want Hook here. The thought comes unbidden, but it's true. I want his steady presence beside me, his sharp edges and careful strength.
My father spins on my mother, and his jaw is tight, his body tense. "I have no fucking idea what it is you want from me. This isn't even a marriage anymore."
"Well, perhaps if you started to be a husband, it would be."
"Stop it," I say to them both. "Just stop it." My voice sounds hollow in this memory space.
"And what is a husband? Huh?" He puts his hands through his hair, shaking his head, heaving in breaths. "I can't work like this. It can't be like this."
"It's because of Alice, isn't it?"
"What?" He frowns at her, a different kind of frown, a truly 'I don't know what the hell you mean' kind of frown.
My stomach drops. I'm suddenly ten years old again, listening from the top of the stairs, feeling like everything wrong in the world is somehow my fault. Not this argument. I never saw this, but I'd seen enough of them.
"If I hadn't had her, we'd have worked."
"Don't you dare," I snap at my mother, moving between them. "Don't you bloody dare put this on me."
"No, it's not about Alice. She's our daughter. She didn't do this."
"She's damaged."
"She isn't damaged, Elizabeth."
I flinch at the word 'damaged.' All these years later, it still cuts.
"She's always away in the clouds. You encourage her. My mother encourages her. That girl needs to get with the real world. She needs to start learning and stop all that stupid painting. She needs to be more like..." but my mother cuts off.
"More like Grace? You're not being fair to her."
But my mother isn't listening to him. She's away with her thoughts and I've heard these a million times. I was at school when this played out. "I'm going to get her an appointment with Dr Riley. See what he says."
"She's not sick. There's nothing wrong with her."
"She never does as she's told. It's not right. And you don't help with her. Always siding with her. Always doing what she wants. She controls this house, and you let her get away with it."
"You make her sound like an enemy."
"She's made it this way."
My father lifts a small box and unhooks a plastic suit packet from the banister. "I'll pick the girls up from school today and bring them home. Then we'll talk to them. I'll have them this weekend."
"Not Alice," my mother says.
"What? What do you mean not Alice? She's my daughter. I can't—"
"No. She needs to learn. She needs to understand how the world works and that everything has a consequence."
He shakes his head. "All she did was sneak off to her tree. She did no harm."
"No. She did harm. She lives in that fantasy world of hers, talking about talking caterpillars and cats that float.
There's something wrong with that girl. You can collect Grace on Saturday, but for now, Alice stays with me.
I don't want you filling her head with all these flights of fancy. It isn't right."
He stares at her, and I can see the millions of thoughts racing behind his eyes. "You'll break her heart if you don't let her come with Grace."
My mother shrugs. "It's not my place to tend to their hearts. It's my place to make sure they turn out right, and that girl is everything we didn't want."
"Everything you didn't want. How can you say that about your own daughter?"
"She was a mistake. I only wanted Grace."
I can't breathe. Her words sting hard. I stagger back, clutching at my chest.
"You even got that wrong, didn't you? Got me pregnant with her and then gave me your faulty dreams. I don't know what is in that girl's head half the time. It is up to me to teach her. Grace can go with you. Alice will stay here."
"You can't keep me from my daughter. You have no right."
"I am her mother. You have a problem with it, you can call my solicitor."
It isn't this scene that gets me so much. It's the moment after. My father leaves. I know how this goes now. He leaves and when I come back from school, he's gone. He didn't pick us up from school. I didn't even know he was going to.
It doesn't matter. The scene changes and the dinner table is set. I back up from it, because I know what comes next. I know how this goes.
We sit at the table for dinner, and we wait for Dad, only there isn't a place set for him, and when Grace and I ask where he is, our mother tells us.
"He's gone," she says. "He's left us." And even Grace is shocked by it, but she picks up her fork and eats and carries on like our whole world isn't about to crash down.
"Why?" I ask her.
Our mother puts her knife and fork down, resting them precisely at the sides of her plate.
"Because of you and Wonderland," she says to me, looking me straight in the eyes.
"He was tired of hearing about it and now he's gone.
" She looks to Grace then. "He'll be picking you up on Saturday, Grace. He'll bring you back Sunday at noon."
"And me?" I hear my younger self ask, voice small and scared, the tremor in it breaking my heart all over again.
I want to reach for her—for myself—to tell her that none of this is her fault, that Wonderland is real, that she'll find her way back here someday and meet a grumpy pirate with sad eyes who'll make her feel more seen than her own family ever did.
My mother's eyes turn cold. "You will not be going with your father. He can't handle your stories anymore. No one can."
I watch my younger self crumple, the dreams in her eyes dimming like stars being snuffed out one by one. I hadn't remembered this moment being so brutal, so precise in its cruelty. Or maybe I had buried it, tucked it away with all the other sharp-edged memories that cut too deep.
"You're lying," I say to my mother now, circling the table like a wounded animal.
"He wanted me. You kept me away from him.
" I slam my hand down on the table, but it makes no impact, no sound.
I'm a ghost here. "You used me as a weapon in your war with him, and you made me believe it was all my fault. "
My mother turns to me. She meets my gaze. "It's not real, Alice," she says. Someone is tugging at my arm, pulling me, and I turn and it's my dad. "It's not real. Wake up."
I have to blink. The world collides, and everything in my head hums and doesn't make sense, and I...
Hands grip the sides of my face and make me turn, and I expect to see my father, to meet his eyes, to look up at him, but I'm not little and this isn't my father. It's Hook.
"It's not real," he says to me.
"Hook..."
I don't even realise I've been crying until his thumb brushes along the top of my cheek. "It's just a memory. It can't hurt you."
I shift so I can look at the room behind me. My mother, me, my sister, frozen.
Hook pulls me to him, wrapping his arms around me, and I breathe him in, feel the soft leather of his jacket, smell him. He always smells like the ocean, like air. Like the outside, so fresh. I could close my eyes and sink into that feeling and stay there.
His arms tighten just slightly, and I become aware of how my body fits against his, of the steady beat of his heart against my cheek. The warmth of him chases away the cold left by the memory.
"You saw it too?" I ask, my voice muffled against his chest.
"Enough," he says, and there's a roughness to his voice that wasn't there before.