Work Text:
Birita knew Saskia's voice well enough to recognize her through static.
She answered the telephone after supper and sat down on the hallway floor as soon as she heard the first warm burst of California through the line.
"Auntie," Birita said, already smiling as she settled onto the hallway floor with the receiver tucked close.
Saskia sounded pleased to hear her. She asked about school and waited through the answer, then asked how the driving lessons were going. Birita described the hill start in enough detail that Saskia began asking about the clutch as though she had been present. Only after that did she remember the parcel she had posted and ask whether it had arrived.
Birita could hear the distant metallic sounds of the gym behind Saskia. "You're still at work." Saskia said she had a quiet half hour between clients and had wanted to spend part of it talking to Birita before the Christmas rush swallowed the week.
Birita told her that Delaney worried she forgot meals on long workdays and had made Birita promise to ask whether she had eaten.
From the sitting room Delaney looked up.
Saskia assured Birita she had eaten. Then her voice softened over something Birita had said a moment earlier. "You called her Mum."
Birita looked toward the sitting room. "Yes. I started saying it this year. I think I'd been thinking it longer."
Saskia's voice stayed soft. "I'm glad you found the word when you were ready. Delaney has sounded like your mother for years whenever she talks about you. She would have waited forever before asking you to call her that."
Birita pressed her thumb into the telephone cord. "It feels ordinary now. That's the part I like most."
Saskia said, "I know what you mean. Once you've had to fight for a normal home, a boring Tuesday can feel precious." They sat with that for a moment before moving on.
Delaney could hear only Birita's half of the call. She glanced over once when Saskia's name came up and then left them to it.
They talked for nearly half an hour. Saskia knew Birita's dislike of raisins in cake, her interest in maps and history, the green coat, the summer programme and the driving lessons. Birita knew about Saskia's clients, the private training space she hoped to open one day, and the story of Delaney taking thirteen-year-old Saskia to a barber and then refusing to make the haircut into a family crisis.
Eventually Birita asked, "When do you think we'll actually be in the same place? I know work makes it difficult. I just don't want us to keep saying someday until someday becomes years."
The line went quieter.
Saskia did not hide behind a vague promise. She explained the practical obstacles: contracts booked months ahead, productions that shifted dates, the length of the journey, and Delaney's settled life in the Faroes. Then she said, "I want you to know that the delay has never been about whether I want to meet you. I want to hear you tell a story without a telephone line eating the pauses. I want you to show me the beach instead of drawing it. I want to sit at a table with you and Delaney and learn the things letters can't give me. Meeting you matters to me because you already matter to me."
Birita pressed the receiver closer.
Birita rested her head against the wall. "I want that too. I think about it more now that I'm old enough to travel without feeling as though the whole world is too large." Saskia told her they would find a way to make the meeting real, and Birita believed the care in the promise even without a date attached.
After a while Saskia asked for Delaney. Birita stayed on the hallway floor with the present she had been wrapping while Delaney took the receiver.
Delaney asked about Saskia's shoulder and listened through the answer. "If it still aches when you're resting, get it looked at properly. You tell your clients to respect pain. Give yourself the same care."
A little later Delaney looked down at Birita. "She is right here. School is busy, the driving is getting better, and she has decided that hill is going to lose before spring."
Her free hand rested briefly on Birita's hair as she added that Saskia's niece was doing well.
Birita kept tying the ribbon while she listened. The familiar use of niece still reached somewhere deep in her, even after years of hearing it.
After the call ended, Birita finished wrapping the present. The ribbon was uneven.
After the call, Birita finished tying the ribbon and said, "I could hear that she meant everything she said about wanting to meet me. I think I was afraid the distance was easier for her."
Delaney sat beside her on the floor. "Saskia cares in a very physical way. She wants people in the room, at the table, within reach. Work and distance have made this slow, but I've never heard hesitation in her when she talks about meeting you."
Birita looked down at the uneven ribbon. "I still think the first hour could be strange. We know so much about each other without knowing what it feels like to share a room."
Delaney retied one loose side of the ribbon while she thought. "The first hour may be strange. Let it be strange. You already know each other through letters and calls. In the same room you'll learn the rest more slowly - how she moves around a kitchen, when she goes quiet, what she is like when she is tired. She will learn those things about you too."
Birita looked at her.
Birita leaned her shoulder against Delaney's knee and kept wrapping. The answer had made the meeting feel less like a test and more like something they would simply have to live into.
Outside, winter wind moved around the house. Inside, the telephone cord lay coiled beneath the little table, holding the shape of a distance that no longer seemed capable of keeping anyone out.