Chapter 20. Ophelia #2
He grins. “Could be one of ten reasons. You want to meet my mom?”
“Oh God. I should wash my hair.”
He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “You two are alike. She won’t care or notice.”
I roll out of bed and stretch my tired arms above my head, hoping to send a bit of life to my groggy brain.
I give my hair and my teeth a speedy brush, changing into jeans and one of my dad’s old sweaters.
It’s a green knitted number with a hole in the sleeve, and it probably could do with a wash, but I don’t really care.
I needed it with me, need to feel close to him.
In a way, it feels like taking him with me to meet Alex’s mom.
“She’s going to be disappointed,” I say, staring at myself in the small mirror above the sink in the examination room.
Alex appears behind me, hands settling on my waist. “She’s going to see what I see.”
“Which is?”
“The greatest thing that ever could’ve happened to me.”
I spin away from the sink to face him. “My dad would’ve loved you.”
This makes him smile. I so rarely bring them up around him, around anyone. It’s a wound that still feels fresh. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. He liked rugby, too. All sports, really.”
“Did he watch you swim?”
“All the time. He was a chef. He loved cooking for us, so I was a very mediocre, twelve-year-old swimmer eating like I was two weeks out from an Olympic gold.”
His eyes are glittering with amusement. “Wow. So cooking isn’t genetic, huh?”
“Fuck you, Corbeau, you’ll be grateful for my burned toast one day.”
His hands tighten over my hips, pulling me flush against him. “Oh, I bet. He must’ve been a great man, to raise such a wonderful daughter.”
“Oh, well …” I’m staring at my feet, cheeks flaming for no real reason. “That’s kind.”
His hand links with mine. “Come on.”
I wait outside a hospital room in a different hallway, watching Alex crack the door open. “Maman?”
I can’t hear the quiet reply.
“Ophelia is here, but no pressure.”
Another reply, too soft-spoken to hear.
“Your hair looks good, Mom.”
I hear her ask for a concealer, watch Alex shoot me a knowing look before vanishing inside for a moment. I pick at my nails, nervous.
I’m underwhelming.
I imagine things she might ask me. Where have I traveled? Nowhere. What are my grades like? Just scraping passes. What are my career goals? Haven’t got a single one.
Alex calls me in, and I peek one eye round, like that’ll save me from my terror.
I feel like I already know the woman in the bed. Not just from magazines my mom had when I was growing up, but from the way she shines through Alex.
Though clearly unwell and so, so frail, Elise is exactly as beautiful as she looks in pictures, even in her current surroundings. She’s in a white satin gown that she must’ve gotten from home, her hair brushed to a soft shine.
“Hi,” I croak, floating in the doorway like someone who’s never socialized in her life.
“Ophelia,” she replies, and I don’t know how someone can squeeze so much warmth and so much welcome into seven little letters, but she manages it. Her accent is heavy, like that tiny hint of French that runs through Alex’s.
Something about her pulls me forward. She’s safe and kind and smiling at me like Alex does. Her eyes are glittering pools of pale green, just like his. “You look so wonderful.”
“I look like I’ve been electrocuted. Twice,” I say, sinking into the chair beside her bed. She holds out her hand for me to take, laughing softly. Her fingers are cold and thin beneath mine.
“You don’t. Not at all. And nobody ever looks their best after a long flight.”
“I don’t know how Alex flies so often. I was convinced we were going down the whole time.”
“Are you staying a while?”
I look up at Alex. We haven’t discussed it. I have no idea what my plans are. I only have three more days of underwear. I have no idea if he wants me to meet his sisters, if Fleur would even let me into their home without killing me.
“I hope so,” is all he says, looking at me with so much emotion in his eyes. Yellow happiness and red passion and the fierce blue of his unwavering loyalty.
I love it when he isn’t gray.
“He was lost without you.”
“Mom.”
“You were!”
“I think we had to take some time apart to work through some stuff for ourselves,” I say, enjoying the feel of my hand in hers. It eases my mother’s absence and makes it so much worse all at once.
Alex steps outside to take an urgent work call, and I scoot my chair closer to the edge of the bed so I can show Elise some photos of the clothes I bought at the charity shops with Colette. It seems to take her mind off things, at least.
Elise is easy to talk to. She doesn’t ask me any of the questions I’d worried about. She asks me how my time with Colette was, how swimming is going, whether I’d like a cup of tea.
“I knew you were good for him from the very start,” she says, smiling down at my lock screen when I’ve finished showing her all the random pictures in my camera roll so that I don’t have to think of a new conversation topic.
I stare at the photo, taken last December. A blurry selfie outside the Nightshade mansion, snow gathered on our eyelashes, windburn on our cheeks. “Sometimes I think he’s really extraordinary, and I’m …”
“Don’t you dare say you’re ordinary.”
“A mug of hot chocolate is my idea of a big treat. Walking to the corner store is a day out.”
That makes her laugh. “You’re extraordinary, Ophelia. Don’t fall into the same trap I did, don’t let them make you believe that it’s wealth or fame that makes a person. It’s what you do in the quiet moments.”
I think back to my last quiet moment. I think I spent it balancing a tube of Pringles and my phone on my stomach. “I guess so.”
“He started drawing in color again.”
That has my head snapping up. “What?”
“After he met you. He started drawing in color again, not just black and white.”
I think back to the sketches I saw when I first met Alex. Messy, chaotic, often repetitive. Always in black charcoal.
And then to the first time he drew me, in bright orange pastel. To the artworks from the life drawing class: colored portraits in muted pastels.
“I didn’t know that.”
Her hand squeezes mine, her heavy-lidded gaze soft and sleepy. “Makes you seem quite extraordinary to me.”
“He’s very talented.”
She glances at the door, like she’s checking Alex is still on the phone. “I won’t last forever, Ophelia. These past few months, right as my mind is making a little progress, I can feel my body giving up on me.”
My swallow is thick, nostrils burning. “I know.”
“Josie is almost eight, Charlotte ten,” she says, like it’s something I might not know. “If I died tomorrow, Alex would …”
He’d be the only parent figure in their life. “I know.”
“I know raising children is not what anyone would want in a relationship at twenty-one.”
“It’s okay. You don’t need to worry about that,” I reassure her. “The girls aren’t a hinderance. They’re a learning curve, maybe. An adjustment for me to make, coming from a tiny family. But I wouldn’t be with Alex if I was planning to run the second things get difficult.”
She gives me a watery smile, eyes conveying more gratitude than words ever could. But she has it wrong. It’s Alex who’s saving me, no matter how much it looks like the other way round from the outside. Every second that Alex keeps breathing is a promise of the happy ending I’d long given up on.
He’s the salve to the four-year-old ache in my chest. He’s the hope of a family. He’s complete and utter acceptance of me, as I am. No changes necessary.
Elise falls asleep to the backdrop of rhythmic beeps from the machines beside the bed. I stroke her hair and tell her about anything I can think of, doing a crossword aloud until Alex’s voice interrupts me.
“She loves you.”
I glance up, cheeks turning red. I hadn’t realized he was there. “I love her, too. Was your call okay?”
“Yeah, just boring.”
“I miss my mom,” I say, quietly. I don’t know why her and my dad are so heavy on my mind today. My mom cheated on my dad. She cheated on him with the wrong man, a heinous man.
But I miss her all the same.
“Does it ever not hurt?” he whispers, quiet enough that his mom can’t hear him.
I want Alex to have honesty from me, not the it’ll get easier that everyone churns out on autopilot.
“It always hurts. The shock of it, the unfairness. It’s ridiculous …
like a movie you’ve seen a hundred times and yet you still think this time it might end differently.
Every day it’s like … maybe my dad will be flipping pancakes at the stove when I go downstairs, and all of this will have been some bad dream. ”
His palm settles on my shoulder, gently rubbing the tense muscles there.
“It’s cliché, but it doesn’t get easier. You just get better at managing it. It doesn’t hurt any less, but the pain doesn’t scare me as much as it used to.”
When I tip my head back to see him, his smile is soft, grateful. “I can handle that.”
“I’ll be right there with you.”
He drops a kiss on my forehead. “Do you want to go back to my place? You can shower, eat a decent meal, sleep in my bed.”
“Who is home?”
“The girls will be home in the evening. And the housekeeper, the nannies, the chef, and the security guys.”
I do a terrible job of concealing the worry in my voice. “All six of them?”
His sigh tickles the top of my head. “Fleur will cool off.”
“She shouldn’t have to. Home is her safe space. I don’t want to infiltrate that and make her feel she can’t be there. Especially right now.”
His hands move to my hair, scratching my scalp in the way that he loves. “I’ll give her a call and ask her what she thinks of you staying over.”
I’d like that, but I keep my hopes down.