Impossible Love

Chapter 5: A Heartbreaking Discovery

Harleen arrived at her parents' house in Brooklyn with a bag full of gifts early the next day as happy to see them as they were to see her.

"Why don't you visit us more often?" her stepdad interrogated her. "You're barely an hour away!"

"Hey, Bob! You know how it is... work, life, work..." she hugged him. "It's so nice to see you. Where is everyone?"

"They're all waiting around the tree ready to open presents! Get yourself in here!" he said with a happy smile on his face. Harleen was so glad to spend one day away from Arkham and really just focus on her family. She liked her job, she had a set schedule, and she didn't have to work weekends, but—even when trying to focus on personal stuff at home like painting, exercising, listening to music, watching TV, going on dates—she found herself invariably drawn back to her work. She tried hard to keep it separated, but thoughts about her patients constantly infiltrated her mind.

"Merry Christmas, everyone!" Harleen announced to her family as she walked into the room. She was so happy to see her mom, her stepdad, and her brother and his family.

She spent the rest of the day playing with her two nieces, talking with her brother about his job in the big city, and listening to her parents talk about retiring early and traveling the country. Her stepdad worked as a financial advisor and her mom was an interior designer, having started her own business over a decade ago.

After dinner, they got out the old photo albums and Harleen looked through them with her mom. Sitting on the couch, they reminisced over memories of her dad before his mental health took a dive. They didn't talk about it very often as Harleen was only 15 when her dad committed suicide, but she could hear the pain in her mom's voice when they spoke about him.

"Ha! Back when I had long hair like yours," her mom said, referring to a photo from almost 20 years ago. "Gosh, I was about 40 then. Those were good times. I miss being a teacher," she lamented. Her mom was a long-time art teacher at the local elementary school before she was forced to take an early retirement due to funding cuts.

"At least you're still getting to do something you like, right?" Harleen asked, referring to her interior design work.

"You bet. I do like what I do," her mom said, turning the page. "I'm lucky that I met Bob. You know how much he supported me in getting my business off the ground."

Harleen smiled. Her mom always had such a good eye for art and design and she liked to think that she inherited the art gene from her.

"I would have loved to have been able to do some more adjunct work at the university, too. You know, if you ever get the chance, Har, you should look into that. That could be pretty lucrative," her mom said, looking up at her. "I know you're so busy at Arkham, though. I just don't want you to be drawn too far into that world," she said, thinking of her late husband.

"Oh, I'm not," Harleen reassured her, which she knew was a lie. Her mind flashed to Joker's almost lifeless body in the infirmary. She felt bad that he didn't have any family to spend Christmas with and she felt that she should be there with him—in a therapeutic capacity, of course. Harleen paused for a moment, thinking about her mother's work at Moraine University on Long Island. "Mom, refresh my memory, what did you teach at the university?"

"Hm, well, I did a bunch of stuff," her mom pondered. "I taught the entry-level art courses, you know, ceramics, sculpture, painting, drawing... They also had me teach a class about writing for the arts, even though I didn't have a ton of experience in writing. I learned a lot from that course myself."

"I'd love to do something like that," Harleen admitted. "I mean, I would love to incorporate arts into my field. Maybe something like arts for mental health. I could teach that!"