Page 69 of Breathe
“That bloody city!” said Charlotte; another word Ellen had never heard her use. “Come home, Ellen. Right now. This weekend.”
“I can’t, Mum.”
“They won’t even give you time off for this?”
“It’s not that.” She let the tears fall. “I’m being transferred. After Christmas. So I have to stay and wind up things here.”
“Where?” said Charlotte, as Andrew said, “I thought you were staying in America.”
“No.” Under the pad, her tears were stinging her cuts. “I changed my mind.”
“Can you still come home for Christmas?” Andrew asked carefully. “Please do, darling.”
Ellen squeezed her eyes closed again, tried to keep her voice steady. Her parents used words like “darling” all the time, but they could still never tell her they loved her, and neither could she. Still, that kind of reticence seemed soothing to her right now. “I will. I want to.”
“And where was your precious Kane in all of this?” demanded Charlotte. She still said his name as if it were a bad joke. “Letting you walk around a city at night by yourself!”
“Mum, I was just coming home from work. This is nothing to do with him.” If she told her mother why she’d been targeted, she wouldn’t need a phone to hear Charlotte’s shriek. “It was my mistake. I’m at his apartment now. This is the number here. My cell phone and keys are with the police at the moment. I’ll... I’ll call you when I get home.”
“Do you want me to come and get you?” Andrew asked.
With a sudden rush she realized how badly she wanted her father, a need she hadn’t had in years. To hide her face in his shoulder and feel as if the world had receded, to breathe in the sympathy and support of the one person who never questioned her.
But it was Charlotte who said, “Oh, Ellen,” in a completely different voice, one Ellen hadn’t heard in a long time.
She had to cover the phone with her hand to stifle a sob. “’M okay,” she tried to say.
“Ellen, dear,” Charlotte said, and Ellen couldn’t resist the sympathy, the compassion she heard. “All we’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy. If you’re not happy there, then just come home. Don’t wait until Christmas.”
“Mum.” She couldn’t hold back the tears now. For the first time in years, she believed that Charlotte really did care about her feelings. “I want to.”
“What’s stopping you?”
“Whenever I came home,” she said, “you talked about Edward. You told me how much you wished—”
“Oh, Ellen,” said Charlotte. “I just meant that the last time I really saw you happy was with him. I was looking for the thing that would make you happy again.”
“I thought your Kane was making you happy,” her father interrupted.
“He—he did—he...” She wanted to say, he does, but she was too used up today. Too in love and too hopeless about it.
Her parents gave her time to finish the sentence, but when she didn’t, the silence spoke volumes.
Charlotte broke it first. “So you’ll come home? Even to regroup for the holidays? I promise not to... not to ask you any questions.”
“Yes.” Ellen made the decision and the strength left her limbs. She fell sideways onto the bed, the phone trapped under her ear. “I’ll come home.”
The word had begun to mean something else to her, someone else. But she’d been dreaming.
“Oh, good,” Charlotte answered, not knowing how the capitulation had shattered Ellen. “We have missed you, darling.”
“Mum,” Ellen whispered, tears having taken her voice. “Don’t. I can’t take that right now.”
“No, of course not.” Of course the declaration of actual emotions was undesirable. “Well, call us when you know your flight.”
“Okay.”
She hung up and hid her face in her hands. Could she go home and start again with her mother? Her father’s love was always uncomplicated: it didn’t matter how long they spent apart, they picked right up with their banter and jokes. Charlotte had always been more prickly, seeming harder to please. Every emotion on her part had seemed like a duty grudgingly fulfilled.
