Chapter 14 #3
That you don’t know her, Bren. Just because she was there for you, on the other side of that wall, when you were kids, or at the end of a webcam, when you called? That does not make her yours. She’s moved on, Bren.
But I don’t think she has, Bren says, and he feels as childish as he sounds, now. Stands up, wants to pace back and forth. Settles for shoving his hands in his pockets.
This thing, between Nora and me, he says, it’s two-way. She replied to my emails. She called me, too. She was there, because she wanted to be, and I –
Came home, thought she’d take one look at you, and you’d run off into the sunset?
No! Bren says. That’s not what this was. But then I … spent some time with her, Frey, and there’s something between us. I can feel it.
You can feel regret. You can feel nostalgia. You can feel vaguely drunk, because I’ve put a drop too much vodka in this juice.
And she’s been so quiet recently, Bren says, like she’s scared to talk, or something, but I’m supposed to be her best man, for Christ’s sake. If everything was fine she’d be in touch, wouldn’t she? So I think it means she’s doubting things, Freya. About this wedding.
I’m sure she is! Freya says. Because doubting is what it is to be human!
Are you telling me you never feel even slightly bad about leaving, before your father’s funeral?
And do you think I never once looked back on my choice to cut loose from my parents?
D’you think your mother looks around her house, swallows her pills and thinks she’s lived her best, brightest life?
Freya grabs a twig by her foot and starts shoving it through the gaps in the wood, dislodging bits of moss and dried mud as she talks.
You left when you did, Bren, and that’s your cross to bear.
None of us will ever fully understand it, unless you get yourself to a therapist, or some kind of spiritual leader, which I would fully recommend, at some point.
And we all wonder about it, but we don’t force you to go over and over it.
We don’t bash the moral hell out of you for it.
She flecks more mud, more wet leaves, onto the decking.
So the real question you have to ask here, Freya says, is not about Nora’s choices, but your own. Do you really think she would be happier with you, abroad? Flitting between places, instead of living her life here?
I guess we’ll find out, Bren says. Seeing as I’ve asked her to come with me, when I leave.
And it is this, finally, that stuns Freya into stillness. She abandons her twig, for a moment, and stares up at him. The moon is out, still, even though it is mid-morning. Sharing the sky with the sun.
You told her how you feel? she says, and Bren shrugs. Says it was … implied.
Oh, yes, because implying your feelings has really worked out, in the past. See, Bren – she goes back to her twig – it’s all hot air, between you two. You might think that Nora is the key to solving something, for you, but the truth is you need to solve your own problems for yourself.
So you’re saying, Bren says, I should spell it out, when I see her next? How I feel about her?
Not at all. I’m saying you should let her get on with her life.
Which is kind of hypocritical, he thinks, but there is something else dawning on him, as he watches her scratching at the dirt with her twig.
Because she may be a hypocrite, but she is also right, in a way.
He has not been clear. He has not told Nora that he …
loves her. That he fell in love with her, long ago, but now he wants to be in love with her, share a life somewhere, which is the part that comes, surely, after you’ve made sense of your own feelings.
Faced into them, instead of running away.
I made a mistake, Freya says, because she seems to think he’s absorbing her advice. I put myself first, when I didn’t pass your message on, and it backfired. So I suggest you don’t interfere, like I did. I suggest you leave her heart alone, Brenavin, and in the same breath, protect your own.
Her harshness has softened, now, so much so that Bren feels something like pity as he looks down at her. Because what she did with his phone call, twelve years back, cannot be changed. Some things, though, he thinks, as the wind picks up again.
Some things are still to play for.
Okay, he says. Thanks.
Yes, Freya says. Good talk. Might make things less awkward, at least, over this Easter lunch your mother’s planning.
That’s really happening?
Apparently. I think she’s hoping Nora and I will make amends over a slice of simnel cake, or what have you.
She stands then, too, brushes down the backs of her knees. And Bren turns, ready to head back through the garden gate, only to find that something is still bothering him.
Freya? he says, and she straightens up, their empty glasses in her hands. Did you really only hide my message because you didn’t want her to … follow me? Was I truly that bad a choice, for her?
Freya is quiet for a while. Wind tousling her hair. He can’t read her expression from where he’s standing; it is like she’s looking past him into his own mother’s garden. A place they’d eaten burgers, played Twister. Been friends, through all the seasons.
But all she says is she’ll offer to host it here, now that she’s thought about it. The Easter lunch. There’s more shade, with the oak tree, and she’s got a bigger tablecloth, too.
You’re not going to answer my question?
I’m not going to divulge the sad, pitiable things from the very depths of my soul, Brenavin, no, Freya says. But thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Bren looks at her. Nora’s mother, in her dungarees, with her lonely edge and unusual lifestyle.
Realising, as they stand there, how similar they are.
A shared superpower, almost, this inability to hold the hard things, the things he was never taught how to handle; the things she, clearly, won’t ever want to share.
Easter, then, is all he says, by way of response.
Easter, Freya says back, with a nod.