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“She’s ... she’s not bad,” Marc grits out, when he’s got his feet back underneath him, metaphorically speaking. Layla waits. She’s happy to give him a moment, whenever this look crosses his face - strange and screwed-up and trying so hard to tell her something, no matter that everything in his mind is telling him to hold his silence. (She’s noticed it more and more lately. Before he had told her about Steven, it had been a very rare thing.)
“Yeah?” Layla prompts, and can feel the smile curling her lips. Marc’s little - Steven would give her an earful for calling any of them Marc’s, actually, now that she thinks of it - her husbands’ little Imogen had been so sweet to Layla. Laya, she’d called her, and had been grinning and giggling, little bubbling spurts of it. Though she’d kept it to herself, Layla had gotten the impression that there weren’t very many people Imogen had felt safe to laugh around - had noticed it in the stop-start of it, the way she’d caught herself first, then met Layla’s eyes and let herself relax. Granted, Layla hadn’t actually known about Imogen before yesterday - but Imogen, it seemed, had known about her. Thought rather highly of her. The thought was warm, like sunlight on her chest.
Marc nods, short and jerky. She can see the strain in his eyes, and at once regrets pushing - but there’s something imploring there too, and she tilts her head, trying her utmost to signal that she is listening, she is willing, she holds no judgement. (Her husbands tend to fail to read any cues that she projects in such a manner - they struggle with facial expressions, among other things - but some part of her hopes they’ll feel her earnestness anyway.) A moment later, Marc adds, still in that hesitant manner, “It’s - hard. Weird. To talk about her.” A pause; his eyes flicker to meet hers for a moment, then move away again. “Feels private.”
“I understand,” Layla murmurs, and means it insofar as she’s able. “If you want to talk about something else, Marc, that’s -”
“No.” A sigh rumbles in his chest, and he reaches for her hand without looking at her. “I want to tell you. She - she really fucking loves you, you know. You deserve to - You deserve us trying.”
“I do,” Layla whispers, and takes his hand, presses it to her lips. “But I can already tell you’re trying, love. Don’t kill yourself pushing.”
Marc’s breath is uneven against her skin. She smiles against his hand, squeezes it, and murmurs “I just want you to be happy. Every part of you.”
If any part of them can be happy, Layla muses, it must be Imogen. For the love of all good things, the girl is made of her smile - out of place on Marc’s craggy, lined face, even despite the crows’ feet Steven wears more tightly when he’s at front. But there’s a solemness to her, some depth to her movement and patterns of shadow, that reminds Layla she isn’t, could never have been, a real child.
“Marc thinks you’re very pretty,” she says once, knowledgeably, as though sharing a secret. She and Layla are sitting at their kitchen counter together - Imogen had been delighted by the barstools, and the fact that she was tall enough to reach them - sipping smoothies Layla had blended up, banana and yoghurt and strawberry. (Imogen had flinched at the noise, then soothed herself quickly, rubbing hands up and down the fabric of her jeans.) “He says it like it’s a secret so I thought I’d tell you. Cos it’s funny.”
“That is pretty funny,” Layla allows, smiling. She can’t help it. Imogen brings out her own grin, in a way that only her father used to - earnest and without reserve. Marc and Steven make her smile, of course, but ... it’s not like this. (They temper it with other things - worry, desire, determination. Imogen’s childlike demeanour lifts the weight from Layla’s shoulders, just for a moment, while her husbands help her carry it with their strength.) “Are you sure Marc would want you to tell me, though? It doesn’t seem very nice to tell people’s secrets for them.”
“You knew anyway,” Imogen says, and returns her attention to sipping at her smoothie - she’d been enamoured by the curly straw Layla had presented, dug from the depths of their cutlery drawer. She pauses. “Well, they aren’t very good at keeping secrets anyway. Not from you.” A brief, toothy beam. “It was my fault a bit, you know. Messing up the secrets. I helped.”
“Oh?” Layla raises her own smoothie - sans straw - to her lips, for want of some better way to hide the honest curiosity in her expression. She doesn’t want to overwhelm Imogen, but the aside has more than piqued her interest. “Well, you did a wonderful job. Clearly.”
“I always do,” Imogen says, and refuses to speak any more on the subject.
“Oh, Immy,” Steven says brightly, the next time he’s out and Layla brings up the subject. “Yeah, she’s lovely, isn’t she? Didn’t know we’d gotten the go-ahead to tell you about her, but if that’s alright, then -”
“Go-ahead?” Layla interjects, feeling herself sharpen. She can’t help it; part of her still struggles with trust. “What do you mean? Who was -?” A deep breath. Some things are not hers to know.
“It’s a democratic thing,” Steven says, glancing her way, looking back at his dishes, then back at her again like he’s just processed whatever he’s seen in her expression. His hands are sudsy, but he turns to her and takes both of her hands into his like it’s the most romantic gesture he could muster. (Layla’s a bit of a sucker for it, dish soap or no.) “Oh, Layla, no, love, I didn’t mean - I know we said no more secrets. I’m so sorry, honest to God I am, it’s just - compromises and all that, you know? Doing our best? One secret at a time?” He’s so earnest that it almost stings more - she doesn’t and can’t doubt his every honesty in this moment. Can’t even be frustrated, because he’s telling the truth - they are trying. She knows. She knows. It’s the archaeologist in her - she wants to scrape back the sand from the whole truth the moment she sees a kernel of it, rather than letting the layers unfurl in their own, painfully slow time.
But Marc and Steven are trying. And she’s trying too, no matter how she hates that she will never really know as much about them as she thinks she does. Her husbands and their stupid, big, beautiful labyrinth of a brain.
“Democratic?” she says, trying to distract herself. “A parliament of three, is it?”
Steven winces. “Er. About that.”
“They don’t like paying much attention to inside,” Imogen says, turning Marc’s sleek black pen over and over in her hands, clicking it every so often as if to check the nib still pops out like magic. “It’s not, um - I dunno how to say it.” Her voice is softer than Marc’s or Steven’s, with the faint hint of an accent Layla can’t place. It could be one that doesn’t really exist. Maybe their mind had plucked it from an amalgam of television shows, mothers, daughters, foreign girls, thrown it all in the mixing pot and called it Imogen. Sunny Imogen. “They’re okay with each other being there and that’s about it. They don’t like me very much.”
Something drops into Layla’s stomach, leaden. “Oh, no, no,” she soothes automatically, “I’m sure that’s not true, Imogen. You’re so kind and clever -”
“Even if I was the best person in the world they wouldn’t like me.” Imogen shrugs. “Even if I was the worst and worst and worst it wouldn’t make much difference. They just don’t like there being more of us. They said I’m broken in bits. Like a vase.”
Layla had seen that infographic, too. Faintly condescending, grounded in foreboding acronyms she’d hoped Imogen would never have to see. It had curdled something uncomfortable in her stomach, but every part of her had known it wasn’t her place to comment. “That’s still not fair,” she says. “You shouldn’t - I’m sorry. I’m just sorry.” It feels almost like grief, this guilt.
“It’s okay,” Imogen says, like it’s nothing. That matter-of-fact mien, so comfortable and bland, sits on her just the way it does on Marc when he’s about to lay down his life for her. “Well, anyway, I know more than them. If you was - if you were curious.” A grown man’s voice. A child’s grammatical fumble. A god’s old tired eyes, Layla imagines, and closes her eyes briefly, overcome.
“I’m always curious,” she admits, voice laid raw. “But I don’t want you to tell me anything they wouldn’t like me to know.” It’s difficult to say, but she gets the words out. It feels like a lie. Well, want comes on different levels. The part of her that’s conscientious truly means it.
Imogen purses her lips, contemplative, then grins again. Marc’s pen clicks, and clicks, and clicks. “You’re really good, you know,” she says. Bold and bare of trappings; pure comment, as if unremarkable. “It’s - You have a funny face you make when you’re saying a right thing that you don’t want to say. I like it. It means you’re safe.”
“All I want,” Layla says, “is to be safe for you.” This time, it comes out easily. No part of her disagrees.
Imogen beams. “You always were, you know,” she says. “That’s why I helped tell you in the first place.”