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“You’re family.” Jane’s words echo in Kate’s head long after she’s gone home. She’d tried to sidestep, tried to give the other woman a way out, but she hadn’t taken it.
Family.
Kate’s not even sure she knows what that is anymore. Family’s always been tied up in obligation. In being the best, always. In never making a single misstep. Family has always been conditional.
And letting Lucy in had been something but there are conditions there, too. Silent ones. Ones she puts on herself more than anything.
Don’t be too much trouble, don’t push too hard, it’ll make you look desperate.
Even now, those words are spoken in her mother’s voice.
Because Lucy loves her but Lucy doesn’t know her and all her darkness. If she did, she’d run.
Identifying her mother’s voice doesn’t make it any easier to unlearn the lifetime of proof she’s spent collecting. Relationships are all transactional.
Kate’s settled on the couch with a glass of wine when Lucy’s call comes in. It’s expected, but she startles a bit anyway, the red liquid sloshing dangerously close to the edge of the glass clutched too tightly in her hand.
Before her mother’s voice can materialize in her head and scold her, she answers the phone.
“Hey.”
“Hey yourself,” Lucy counters, her smile evident in her tone and Kate relaxes. “Long day?”
“Not too bad,” Kate murmurs and Lucy laughs softly.
“Liar. But we don’t need to talk about that. I almost have a six pack now.”
It’s Kate’s turn to laugh, though she feels a little like crying too, because Lucy does know her, as it turns out, and that’s a lot harder to deny when they’re talking.
“And I’ve gotten really, really good at solitaire. And twenty questions. Yesterday, we saw dolphins. Made me think of you. I mean, I guess everything does. But I was thinking, maybe when I come home, you can teach me how to surf.”
“Teach you how to surf?” Kate echoes. “Really?”
“I mean, I got on a boat for my own sake. Personal growth and whatever. So I figure I can get on a board for you, since I love you and all.”
“I love you too,” Kate murmurs. “So much.”
“I know.”
Kate wonders, not for the first time, what kind of person she’d be if she’d had that kind of certainty. She probably wouldn’t be here. She’d have some safe, boring job where she wasn’t being awarded medals for not dying in a shootout. And that’d be nice, she thinks, except she wouldn’t have Lucy, either.
“How do you feel about snow?” Lucy asks.
“Snow?” They’d taken annual ski vacations to Colorado for most of her childhood. Her brother had been allowed to take snowboarding lessons but Kate’s parents had insisted she take skiing because snowboarding was ‘for boys’. Whatever that meant.
“After all this water, I was just dreaming about holing up in a little cabin in the woods somewhere with a fireplace and a hot tub. But I’d happily go anywhere with you, you know that.”
“I’d like that,” Kate agrees.
Personal growth and whatever.
“I miss you,” Lucy sighs.
“Counting down the days.” Kate squints across the darkened room to the wall calendar where Lucy’s return date is circled and highlighted. It’s still months away. But it’s there.
“You and me both. Hey, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you on Thursday, okay?”
“Sure. Love you, darling girl.”
“Love you, baby.”
And then she’s alone again in their apartment, but the voice of her mother is a little fainter, and Jane’s promise of family settles a little more firmly into her chest. She googles “remote vacation cabins snow” and imagines rewriting history until it bleeds into reality, and when she sleeps, she dreams of Lucy with snowflakes in her hair.