27. Georgina
— ? —
Georgina
I hear Max’s footsteps on the stairs while I’m fastening my blouse.
He appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame with the easy confidence of a man who knows he’s welcome. My braid is still loose from the morning ride, the ribbon I used to tie it off sitting on the dresser.
“I can’t decide whether to wear the blue trousers or the gray ones.” I turn to face him. “The gray are more comfortable, but the blue make me look like I made an effort.”
“The gray, then.” He crosses the room and picks up the ribbon from the dresser. “You like those.”
“My mother will think I haven’t taken the occasion seriously.”
“You’ve changed out of your riding clothes. I’d call that an effort.”
“An extraordinary one. I nearly kept the boots.”
He smiles and moves behind me. When I hand him the brush, he begins working through the loosened braid, starting at the ends. I watch his fingers separate the strands and let myself enjoy the small pull against my scalp. In a few minutes I will have to go downstairs. Until then, I want this.
I watch him in the mirror, his concentration as he plaits my hair, the small furrow between his brows that appears when he’s being careful.
He’s wearing the shirt I like, the dark blue one that brings out his eyes.
I wonder if he chose it deliberately or if I’ve simply trained myself to notice everything about him.
“She’ll be here at two,” I say.
“I know.” He ties off the braid and rests his hands on my shoulders. “I’ll greet her properly and then make myself scarce. You said you wanted to talk to her alone.”
“I do.”
“Then that’s what you’ll do.” He meets my eyes in the mirror. “I’ll be in the study if you need me.”
“Not hovering?”
“Working on the training notes for next week.” He smiles. “I have legitimate correspondence. You said so yourself.”
I turn and rise on my toes to kiss him. He catches me around the waist and holds me there for a moment longer than necessary, and I feel some of the tension in my shoulders begin to ease.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For not telling me it will be fine.”
“It might be fine. It might be terrible.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Either way, I’ll be here when it’s over.”
My mother asked to come in a text last night, her first message since the competition five days ago. I offered two o’clock and told her I had an hour. She agreed without asking why I couldn’t give her longer.
Now the sound of a car on the drive reaches us through the open window. I take a breath and step back from him, smoothing my blouse, checking my reflection one last time.
“The gray trousers were the right choice,” Max says.
“I know.” I take his hand and squeeze it once. “Let’s go.”
My mother emerges from the car as we reach the front of the house.
She’s dressed in a cream suit, her hair styled with the precision I remember from every family gathering of my childhood.
Her posture is perfect, her expression controlled.
She looks exactly like herself, which is somehow worse than if she’d arrived looking uncertain.
Max greets her with the courtesy that was drilled into him from childhood. She accepts his handshake with a nod that contains neither warmth nor hostility. They exchange a few words about the drive, the weather, the garden. The small talk of people who have nothing small to say.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Max says, “I have some work to finish. I’ll leave you both to talk.”
I catch his eye as he turns toward the house, and he gives me the smallest nod. Then he’s gone, and I’m alone with my mother for the first time since everything changed.
“The south terrace,” I say. “Rosa’s set out coffee.”
She follows me through the garden to the terrace where the round table gleams in the afternoon light. The cushions I chose are bright against the weathered wood of the chairs, and I feel a small surge of satisfaction that I made this space exactly what I wanted it to be.
I pour coffee for both of us, grateful for the ritual. My mother sits across from me, her hands folded in her lap, waiting. She’s always been good at waiting. It’s one of the ways she maintains control.
“Thank you for seeing me,” she says when the silence has stretched long enough.
“I said I could give you an hour.”
“I wasn’t sure you would.”
“Neither was I.” I set down the coffee pot. “I spent most of last night trying to decide whether there was any point.”
“And?”
“And I decided I wanted to hear what you had to say.”
She accepts this with a small nod. “That’s fair.”
I leave the biscotti between us untouched. Usually I would offer her one, ask about the drive again, find something to carry us past the silence. Today I let it stay.
“What did you want to tell me?”
She’s quiet for a moment. Her eyes drop to the untouched biscotti before she looks back at me.
“I came because I owe you an apology,” she says finally. “Not for what Giselle did. That’s her responsibility. But for the part I played in making it possible.”
I hadn’t expected her to start there. I’d prepared myself for excuses, for deflection, for all the familiar patterns of our conversations. A direct admission catches me off guard.
“What part do you think you played?”
“I made excuses for her.” She looks down at her untouched coffee. “For years, I told myself she was struggling, that she needed more support, more attention. I told myself you were strong enough to handle things on your own while I focused on her.”
“You told me to move past the fall.” My voice comes out harder than I intended. “You wanted me to put a date on being better, as though I was keeping you waiting.”
“I know.”
“You wanted me to stop talking about what I couldn’t do. To be pleasant company again.”
“I remember.”
“Do you?” I feel the anger rising, the old familiar heat. “Did you ever wonder how that sounded to me? I couldn’t get near my own horse, and I was supposed to make the conversation easier for everyone else.”
“I didn’t think of it that way at the time.” She meets my eyes. “I told myself I was helping you. That keeping you occupied would stop you dwelling on it.”
“You could have asked what helped.”
“I thought I knew better than you,” she says. “Even about that.”
“What changed?” I ask. “What made you suddenly see what you’ve been doing for years?”
“Giselle told me her version of events.” My mother’s voice is flat. “She called me after they took her into custody. She explained everything, every detail, every reason why none of it was her fault.”
“And?”
“And I realized I’d heard it all before.
” She looks at me directly. “Every time something went wrong, she had an explanation. Every time you were hurt, there was a reason it wasn’t her responsibility.
I’ve been listening to those explanations for years, and I never stopped to wonder whether they were true. ”
“You believed her over me.”
“Yes.” The word falls between us like a stone. “I did. And I’m sorry.”
“She tried to hurt me,” I say. “Deliberately. She damaged my equipment knowing I could fall. Knowing what happened to me the first time. Did you know she was still so angry with me?”
“I didn’t.” She shakes her head. “I knew she was jealous of you. I knew she wanted things you had. But I never thought she would go this far.”
“You didn’t want to think it.”
“No.” She accepts the accusation. “I didn’t. It was easier to believe you were exaggerating, that your fears were out of proportion. It was easier to focus on what Giselle needed than to ask myself why you stopped calling.”
I remember those months after the fall, the silence that grew between us. Every time I thought about reaching for the phone, I remembered her voice telling me to move past it. Eventually I stopped reaching.
“I couldn’t call you,” I say. “Every conversation felt like a test I was failing.”
“I know.” Her voice cracks slightly, then steadies. “I made you feel that way. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t give me back the year I lost.”
“No. It doesn’t.” She doesn’t try to argue, doesn’t offer excuses. “I can’t change what happened. I can only tell you that I see it now, and I’m ashamed of the part I played.”
The afternoon light shifts across the terrace. I look at my mother, really look at her, trying to see past the familiar facade to whatever is underneath. She’s not crying, not begging for forgiveness. She’s just sitting there, accepting my anger, waiting for whatever comes next.
“You haven’t asked me to change my statement,” I say. “Or to speak to anyone about dropping the case.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not why I came.” She meets my eyes. “Giselle made her choices. She has to face the consequences. I won’t ask you to protect her from that.”
“She’s your daughter too.”
“Yes.” Something flickers in her face. “And I love her. But loving someone doesn’t mean excusing everything they do. I should have learned that a long time ago.”
She turns her cup until the handle faces the other way, then leaves it alone.
I know she still wants to help Giselle. There will be calls to make, a lawyer to speak to, explanations she will hear because she is her mother.
For the first time, she isn’t asking me to make any of that easier.
I hadn’t realized how much of myself I was holding ready to refuse until I can let it go.
“What do you want from me?” I ask. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want to know how you’re doing.” She leans forward slightly. “Not what you think I want to hear. How you actually are.”
The question catches me off guard again. I search for the assessment, the judgment that usually follows these conversations. I don’t find it.
“I rode this morning,” I say slowly. “For the first time since the competition.”
“How was it?”
“Nervous. At first.” I turn my coffee cup in my hands. “Max set poles for me. Nothing high, nothing difficult. Just something to focus on while I got used to being on Sovrano again.”
“And Sovrano is all right? After what happened in the ring?”