Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [7]
Amanda looked at Lisa, who gesticulated in exasperation.
“That’s not the point, Mand. I’ve been going nuts, okay. I’ve been going nuts.”
“I wrote in that e-mail that I’d be here.”
“Almost a week ago.”
“And I’m here.”
“Just.”
“But I’m here.”
Lisa threw her hands out in exasperation, then turned to the mirror, saw her big yellow self, and snorted.
Amanda was rummaging in her rucksack. She had been, of course, wearing what she thought might do for the church. She just didn’t want to admit it.
“Bright, right?” she asked Hannah now.
“Bright.” Hannah shrugged. “Mum’s wishes.”
“Right…bright.” She opened another flap and started pulling creased clothes out of the pack’s dark recesses. “She’d be lucky to get clean, let alone bright. Even the stuff that started out life bright isn’t so bright now….” Her voice cracked.
Lisa softened. She put a hand on Amanda’s back as she bent over a pile of her stuff. “Are you okay?”
Amanda’s eyes had filled with tears. “I’m fine.”
SHE WASN’T FINE. OF COURSE SHE WASN’T FINE. HAD IT BEEN A week? It could have been a month, or two minutes. Time had stopped, there in the Internet café. The world had gone weird. She’d sat for ten minutes, looking at the screen. Mark’s address. The red exclamation mark flashing urgency at her. The e-mail was dated with yesterday’s date. No heading. It didn’t need one. She knew, before she pushed the button that opened the text and made it real. Mum was dead.
She hadn’t gone far, this time. She’d been in Spain. Working at a beach bar on the Costa Calida, near Murcia. Staying with some friends of friends whose parents had a little villa out there near the sea. It wasn’t somewhere she would normally have stayed for long. But she couldn’t have gone farther. She’d been waiting. Waiting for this e-mail.
When it finally came, she sent a one-line reply, saying that she’d be home. And now she was. In the five days between, she had drunk too much tequila, taken long walks along the beach, and resisted the urge to change her tickets home to tickets to somewhere else. Anywhere else.
It wasn’t the trouble she would inevitably be in with her sisters. It was because she found the idea of other people’s grief far more frightening, far harder to cope with, than her own. She had come home to immerse herself in it, and she was afraid it would feel like drowning. It wasn’t going to be like some film—like Steel Magnolias or Terms of Endearment, where the funeral marked the end of the really bad time, and the start of everyone getting better. It wasn’t going to be like that at all. It was going to be the beginning.
Hannah took her hand. “I’m glad you’re here now. I don’t really care where you’ve been.”
“Thanks, Hannah.” Amanda let herself be held. It wasn’t something that happened often. Mum had always said that she was a wriggly cuddler—unwilling to sit still and be embraced. Mum once said she’d almost enjoyed it when Amanda was sick as a young child—it was the only time she allowed her to put her arms around her and stroke her hair.
JENNIFER CAME IN WITHOUT KNOCKING. AMANDA READIED HERSELF for round two.
“Listen, Jen. I know you’re mad at me, and you probably have every right. I’m sorry I took off and left it to all of you. I know it was selfish and cowardly and all that. And I’m sorry if you thought I would be back sooner. I just needed a bit of time, that’s all, to let it sort of sink in. I know—selfish again. That’s me, hey? But I really am sorry. And I really am here now. Can we leave the flagellation out, just for today. Hey?”
“What’s flagellation, anyway?” Hannah asked.
“Beating. Brought on by guilt.”
“No one wants to beat you up, Amanda.” Jennifer tried to sound less like a teacher. “I just thought we should be together for this. For all of this.”
She was biting back. Amanda was right. Jennifer was mad. It wasn’t fair—Amanda had buggered off and left it to all of the rest of them. And now she was crying, damn her, and that just wasn’t supposed to happen.
Hannah stepped bodily between the two of them, facing the older sister of the two. “Please, Jennifer.