Chapter 12 #2
She had driven out to this house to make Aurora disappear, and in the end she was the one who did — out of the estate, out of a family she had never quite belonged to and realizing for the first time that she did not know her husband as well as she had thought and that there would now be questions that would remain unanswered for the rest of her life.
*****
Halston came home from the Houston office just after seven.
He came up the marble staircase with his jacket folded over his arm and his collar already loosened, and Aurora was sitting on the edge of the bed in the master suite with her bare feet on the rug, looking at nothing in particular.
He stopped in the doorway.
"Aurora, are you ok?"
She told him.
She did not draw it out. She told him about the check for five million dollars made out to her, the offer — leave the marriage after the hearing, go back to the Third Ward, let him raise the child at a distance and what she had said back.
About the part where Beatrix had not known what Theodore had done, and the part where Aurora had watched her find out.
Then she stopped.
Halston had not moved from the doorway the entire time.
He set his jacket very slowly on the back of the chair beside the door.
"Five million dollars."
"Yes."
"Where is the check."
"In the wastepaper basket in the gold sitting room, torn in half, I tore it. Yvette will have emptied it by now."
He looked at her for a long moment.
She watched him processing the whole encounter, the small line at his jaw go tight and then deliberately untightened.
"I am driving to River Oaks tonight."
"No, baby. You are not."
"Aurora."
"I am asking you not to."
"She came into our house."
"She did. And she walked out of it knowing exactly who I am and exactly what her husband was.
That was enough. I do not need more than that, Halston.
I have had enough rich people telling me what I am and what I am not.
I am tired. I want to be done with her. I want this hearing to be the next thing I think about, and then I want to take Imari to school in the mornings, and I do not want Beatrix Iverson in any of those rooms with me.
Do you hear me. I want her gone. I want her quiet.
I do not want her punished. I want her gone. "
Halston was very still.
"All right."
"Halston."
"I said all right, Aurora."
"You hate this."
"I hate this very much. I am asking you to let me be the one in this house who is angry at her, so that you do not have to be. Tell me I can have that much."
Her eyes filled.
"You can have that much, baby."
He crossed the bedroom and sat on the bed beside her, took both her hands in his and pressed his mouth to the back of one of them, the gold ring against his lips.
After a while she said, "Halston."
"Mm."
"You are not going to River Oaks."
"I am not going to River Oaks."
"You are not calling her."
"I am not calling her."
"You are not having Mason draft anything."
"Aurora."
"Halston."
"I am not having Mason draft anything."
She set her forehead against his shoulder.
"Thank you."
He turned his head and kissed the small spiral of hair at her temple.
"For what."
"For not making me have this conversation twice."
*****
That evening, after Imari was fed and bathed, Aurora sat on Imari's bed and read to her as she did most nights.
When the chapter ended, Imari said sleepily, “Aunt Rory.”
“Yes, sweet pea.”
“Will you read me your book again.”
“Which book?”
“The one you made about the girl with two best friends.”
Aurora's hands stilled.
She had not read that book to Imari yet. Imari had not, until this moment, known that the small picture book she had owned since she was four years old, the book her mother Maeve had read her every night for two years, had been written and illustrated by her Aunt Rory.
Maeve had never told her because she wanted Aurora to be the one to tell her.
“You know about that book, sweet pea?”
“Mommy told me last year. She said it was a surprise for when I was older and that you wrote it for me. She said you put me in it, that the little girl is me.”
Aurora's eyes went hot.
She got up and went to the bookshelf on the far wall. She found the book where Yvette had quietly shelved it without saying anything to anyone. She brought it back to the bed.
She climbed in beside Imari and read her dead best friend's daughter the book she had made for her seven years ago.
She read about the little girl with two best friends, the little girl who knew, in her heart, that the two friends would always come back for her, no matter how far they went, no matter how long they were apart.
Imari fell asleep before the end.
Aurora closed the book, set it on the nightstand next to the wooden hummingbird and kissed the small braided buns at the back of Imari's head.
She turned out the light.
*****
Eight days before the hearing, Aurora drove out to the Third Ward alone.
Errol's truck was not in the driveway — he had a delivery in Galveston.
She knocked on the screen door.
Ayanna opened it. She looked at Aurora's face and stepped back from the door without a word.
Aurora walked into the kitchen of her childhood.
The same yellow walls.
They sat.
For one long moment neither of them spoke.
"Mama," Aurora said.
"I know, baby."
"Let me say it."
"All right."
Aurora set her hands on the kitchen table. The gold ring on her finger caught the light through the window over the sink.
"I have been angry, Mama and the worst of it has been not knowing where to put it, because the man I wanted to be angry at is dead.
I have not known how to be angry at the woman who packed my lunches and pressed my black dress for Maeve's funeral.
I have been trying to find a way to be angry that did not also stop me from loving you. I have not been able to find one."
Ayanna's hands had come up onto the table. She did not speak.
"So I have decided to stop trying. I love you, Mama. I am not going to spend the next fifteen years the way you spent the last. You did that already. I am not going to do it too."
Ayanna closed her eyes.
A tear went down the side of her brown cheek into the corner of her mouth. She did not lift her hand to it.
"Aurora. I have not slept through a night in years.
I get up at three. I sit at this table. I make tea I do not drink.
I have apologized to you in this kitchen, I have told you in the dark, baby, and you have never heard me.
I am telling you in the light now. And I am asking you to forgive me.
I have not asked. I have been too afraid to ask. "
Aurora's eyes were wet.
"I forgive you, Mama. I forgive you. I am not telling you I have stopped hurting. I am telling you I am not going to make you carry it alone anymore. The carrying is over. Do you hear me, Mama?"
Ayanna pressed both her hands flat over her mouth.
She nodded.
Aurora got up from her chair, came around the table, and pulled her mother up out of the chair into her arms.
Ayanna held on the way Imari had held on in the corridor of the hospital. Both fists in the back of Aurora's shirt. Refusing to let go.
After a long time Ayanna lifted her head.
"Aurora."
"Yes, Mama."
"Your daddy is going to be home soon. You stay for tea, baby. You stay."
"I'll stay, Mama."
She stayed.
The custody hearing was eight days away.
She was, she realized, not afraid of it anymore.