B L A I R E
•
My heart is pounding the whole way from the lake to Elizabeth's house, sitting in the back of Sukie's mum's car. I shouldn't feel so sick about going home, about facing my aunt, but I know I've messed it up with her and I know she's not being honest with me, and I don't know how to get myself out of this stalemate.
Isn't that the whole point of a stalemate? There's nowhere left to go. The game ends in a draw. Nobody wins.
"Keep me in the loop," Sukie says as Sara pulls up on the empty road outside Elizabeth's house, big and dark and set off the road behind a smattering of evergreens.
"Will do. Unless she confiscates my phone and locks me in my room."
"Oh, honey," Sara says with a sigh. "I'm sure it'll be okay. It'll be good for you two to talk. I hardly know you, and I can see you have a heart of gold."
I don't believe that. I'm rash and irrational and overemotional and clingy and I don't know why Sara or Sukie have bothered to give me the time of day, regardless of their Watanabe Way. They have been nothing but wonderful to me, and I am nothing but a drain.
"Thank you," I manage to say, reluctantly unbuckling myself and getting out of the car. Sukie rolls down her window and throws out her arm as I pass, catching my elbow.
"Seriously, Blaire, if you are genuinely worried or concerned or scared, you tell me, okay? If you talk to her and in five minutes you need to get out, just call me and we'll come right back."
Her eyes are so sincere, her dark gaze warm and real, and it gives me the energy I need to get this over and done with. Only once Sukie and Sara have left do I try the front door. It swings open, and I step into the dimly lit house.
It feels like nobody lives here. Half of the rooms are unused, the rest barely clinging onto signs of life. In the sitting room, the flowers I bought for Mum are starting to wilt, heavy peony heads wilting on slender stems; the mantelpiece is littered with fallen petals in a colourful display of death.
I can't linger. Can't get distracted. I have to face my fears and find Elizabeth and crack her open, sift through her words for the answers I need.
When I get upstairs, I can hear the radio playing a deceptively upbeat song; I hear the creak of her footsteps. My heart is in my throat at the thought of her ire, the way she will pierce me with that icicle stare when she knows that I went through her stuff.
A whole minute passes, me standing in front of the door she disappears behind each day. Then another minute, and another, until I lift my hand and knock and I can't take it back now. It's too late. My knuckles have rapped on the wood and I hear the radio go off, and then the whine of the floorboards as she crosses to the steps. I hear the pad of her soft-soled shoes on the stairs, and then the door eases open.
I haven't seen Elizabeth in days. It's strange to be standing right in front of her, closer than ever, when she slips into the hallway and shuts the door behind herself, less than a foot of space between us. I instinctively step backwards, taking in the thin paintbrush in her hand and the apron so covered in smears of acrylic that I can't tell what its original colour was.
"Blaire," she says. "I didn't realise you were home."
"I just got back."
Don't let this conversation stall, just spit it out, spit it out, find your fucking words, Blaire.
"We need to talk," I blurt out. Elizabeth tucks the paintbrush into the deep front pocket of her apron. "Can we talk?"
For a moment she looks as though she's going to shake her head and return to the attic, shutting me out once more, but she nods once and leads the way downstairs. I wonder if I'll ever seen inside the attic. She has never explicitly said I can't go there, but I feel the implication like a brick on each shoulder. That is her space, and hers alone.
"Coffee?" she asks, halfway down the stairs.
"Please."
I follow her to the kitchen. She puts the kettle on and pours a teaspoon of coffee and half a teaspoon of sugar into my mug, and it's the smallest thing but she remembered how I take my coffee. I latch onto that sliver of acknowledgement, as though it's a sign that we will be okay. We will get through this, all because she remembered how I take my coffee.
She makes herself a cup of tea and takes a seat at the kitchen table, nodding at the chair opposite as though she's the one asking me to sit down for a chat. I sip the coffee before I sit. It's a bit strong; I could use a little more milk but I don't want to undo what she's done, so I sip again and pull out a chair. Where do I start?
"Why do you have a photo of me?"
Might as well dive in headfirst, I guess.
Elizabeth, for the first time, looks shocked. It would be more satisfying, if it wasn't so jarring. "What?"
"You have a picture of me." I dig the photo out of my pocket, slightly creased where it curled around my phone. Before I even show it to her, I sense something in her snap.
"Where did you get that?" Her words are short and sharp. I don't have time to answer before her eyes harden and she asks, "Were you in my room?"
I think of Sukie. I have to lean into it. Honesty is the best policy, especially if I want the truth out of her.
"Yes. I was looking for the book and I found this." I set the photo down. The moment it touches the table, Elizabeth snatches it. Her movements turn gentle as she tries to flatten the crease, but her eyes are hard as nails.
"You took this from my room." She's calm. Too calm. I start to shrivel, but then I clench my fists under the table and remind myself to persist if I want to get anywhere.
"You said you didn't know I existed. How can that be true if you have a photograph of me. This is from, what, 2004? You told me you hadn't spoken to Mum since 2002."
Her lip twitches. She lays the photo flat on the table, smoothing it over with both hands, and turns it around. She taps it once. "You think this is you?"
"It is me."
She shakes her head and rubs her eyes, taking off her glasses and laying them on the table next to the photo. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath, and she pushes away from the table.
"Hey, don't leave!" I call after her when she retreats. "We need to talk, Elizabeth."
"I'm coming back." She disappears upstairs. Up two flights of stairs. I wait for several minutes before she returns with a book in her hands. White, battered. Not the book, not the one I want. It's an old photo album. She folds herself into the seat again and flips through the book, and when she finds the page she wants, she shows it to me.
I see myself again, this time in Elizabeth's arms, though I can only just tell it's Elizabeth. In the photo, she's fat and happy and a lot younger, with sun-kissed blonde hair and a full fringe and bright blue eyes unobstructed by the glasses she now wears, and her radiant smile is unlike any I've seen. She looks incredible, so like Mum, and she's beaming at the camera, and I'm laughing, gazing at her, and—
It's not me.
The caption says Fee's 5th birthday!
It. Isn't. Me.
"Who's Fee?" I ask. My voice is shaking, the crash of adrenaline, of a misplaced accusation. For days I've held onto this fury that she lied to me, that she knew about me all along. But the picture I stole isn't a picture of me.
Elizabeth takes the album from me and stares at the photo, her eyes glued to the page when she says, "My daughter." She takes the picture that I took from her and she slips it into the album. "This isn't you, Blaire. It's my daughter."
My mind is blown and the world is spinning and I have to grip the edge of the table when a swirling whirlpool of guilt and regret and realisation hits me, tinged with horror and oh my god, Elizabeth has a daughter.
The words croak out of me. "You have a daughter?"
She shuts the album and steeples her hands in front of her face, rubbing the sides of her nose. All of a sudden, she looks so tired. Weary. Absolutely drained. I swear I feel the words before she says them; I sense their weight enter the room and stretch out between us.
"I had a daughter."
Oh, god.
Every awful thing I've said to her comes rushing back in vibrant technicolour.
"Fee died years before you were born, Blaire." She drops her hands to the table and clutches her elbows, meeting my eye. "I understand why you thought the photo was of you, though. You two could have been sisters."
"I ... Oh, god." I cover my mouth and swallow down the acid burn of nausea. "I'm so sorry, Elizabeth."
"You said that it's painful to look at me, because I look like Anna," she says. Her voice has softened, like there's a sigh behind every word. "And trust me when I say that I know how much that hurts."
Her words may be gentle but each one feels like the twist of a knife, digging into that soft space between my ribs and aiming for my heart. "Every time I look at you, I see the woman my girl should have become."
Silence falls. I'm shocked to the marrow, sitting here with my mouth hanging open, and although Elizabeth's voice is unusually mellow, free of venom, it feels like a slap when she echoes what I said to her days ago.
"You have her face, Blaire, and I miss her so much."
"I didn't know you had a daughter. Elizabeth, I'm so sorry, I—"
Folding her hands around her mug, she shakes her head at me and says, "I never told you. You couldn't have known. Given what your mother hid from both of us, I'd hardly expect her to have told you. How could she explain Fee without explaining me?"
At the mention of Mum, I feel the flood of every other question rushing to the fore, clamouring to be the next I ask, though I'm still trying to get over the revelation of a cousin, one who lived and died before my birth. But I can't ask them. It doesn't feel right.
If I'd had any inkling how wrong I was, even the slightest idea that the photo could have been anyone but me, I never would have questioned her, demanded answers.
"I'm so sorry," I stammer, blinking hard to stop myself from welling up, but it's hard when I can see the tears in Elizabeth's eyes. The same woman I called a stone-cold heartless bitch is crying in front of me, because of me. I wanted to confront her with her lies. I never thought I'd be confronting her with her dead daughter.
Oh, god, I'm such an idiot. A stupid, heartless, irrational idiot.
Elizabeth briskly wipes her eyes with the backs of her thumbs and rolls her shoulders, shaking her head, like she can shimmy out of her sadness. It doesn't seem to work. The tip of her nose is turning pink and she sniffs as she looks down at the photo album sitting between us, turning the pages and turning back time until she looks half her age. She's lying in a hospital bed, red-cheeked and bare-faced and beaming with a brand new baby in her arms.
"I always wanted to be a mother," she says, offering me a teary smile. "You probably can't imagine that."
She's not wrong there.
"I never wanted a partner; I've never wanted to date or marry, or any of the things that come with that"—she waves an absent hand in a circle—"but I always wanted to be a mother. And I got my wish. I got so lucky with Fee. She amazed me, every single day."
She closes the book and lets out a world-wearied sigh. "I know this is hard, Blaire. I know. I have lived it all before, and I wish I knew how to help you. I wish I knew how to be who you need me to be."
"I'm so sorry," I say, hoping that my pathetic words can make up for a fraction of the shit I've given her. "I said you didn't know heartbreak but, oh, god, clearly it's a friend of yours."
Elizabeth shakes her head. Her hair slips from the loose elastic holding it in a bun, a grey-blonde wave falling over her shoulder. "No, Blaire. It's no friend."
My lungs are tight and sore, like my face after a day in the sun. I've already cried today over my own loss, and now I'm crying for Elizabeth, for her loss.
"You're all I have left," I say, my words barely making it above a whisper. "I need you, Elizabeth." I lift my head and search her face, and it guts me to see the tears pooling in her eyes, the rawness of fresh grief weaving into the years of agony stitched into her features.
She stands up and I'm sure she's about to leave, to take herself off like she usually does, but she doesn't move. Just stands there, so I stand too. Wearing only a pair of thick socks on her feet, she's at least half a foot taller than me, tall enough that when she opens her arms and pulls me into a hug, my head fits under her chin. Just like Mum.
Her embrace is the heat of a log fire on a cold night. It's the relief of sinking into a warm bath after a long day. It's everything I need right now, and more. She's holding me for the first time, and she holds me close enough that I can hear her heartbeat, a steady thud that says oh-kay, oh-kay, oh-kay.
She has lost more than I have, and she's still standing. So I close my eyes, and I listen to her heart.
*