“I’m sure it’s a sentiment shared by much of London,” I said.
Oscar helped our mother while Oliver and Ruby talked quietly with Roberta. It was a sad procession, all things considered. The joy that I’d felt only moments ago withered beneath the weight of my family’s unease.
We were the last of the funeral procession, but just as we were about to go through the door, my father stopped. I studied the gray in his hair and the lines beneath his eyes and beside them. I wished I could have spared him the last year of worry. It was hard not to feel responsible, even if I knew logically it was all because of James.
My father reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and for a moment, I was five years old and hurting from something Ruby said.
“You’re happy?” he asked.
It was a convoluted question. I knew happiness. It was the sun on my skin and the sand between my toes. It was waking up tucked into Bash’s body. I was laughing with Oscar till I was hoarse. It was talking nonsense with Oliver. It was listening to Dilly talk about the Mysterious Deep, and it was watching Val laugh at something I said. I knew happiness in a hundred different ways, but that question, which should have been easy, left me winded.
“I love him,” I said quietly.
My father took a long breath, and I could have sworn silver lined his eyes, but he pulled me into a hug, crushing me to his chest.
“All I’ve ever wanted for you was to be happy. Tonight, sweetheart, you looked happy.”
After Oliver and Ruby’s condemnation and Roberta’s scathing words, my father was the calm beneath the storm. I held him tighter, which earned me a grunt before a small chuckle. When he finally pulled away, there was no denying the emotion in his eyes.
“He better deserve you,” he said.
I snorted. “He probably doesn’t, but he can work on it.”
My father’s laugh was a deep rumble, and the world was a better place. By the time we went inside, everyone had retreated to their own rooms.
“I should go find Roberta,” I said.
“Give her time. She’s young and knows all she needs to know. She’ll come around,” he said. “Your mother, on the other hand, could probably use a word with you.”
I scrunched up my nose and groaned. “Is she very mad?”
He shrugged. “When you are a parent, you only ever want your children to be happy. When they are young, it’s easy to know what that means for them. You know everything about them and what delights them over what brings them down. One day, you blink, and suddenly it’s not as easy to know what they need because, much like Roberta, they need to learn what makes them happy. There’s no worse feeling for a parent than realizing you no longer know your child. It makes you feel old, but also obsolete, helpless. Tonight, your mother looked at you and well- I think she could use some time with you.”
Some people understood each other without so much as a wrinkled brow, but that was never me. Probably a moral failing. First Roberta, then my father, now my mother. Not to mention that I essentially cornered Bash tonight. The highs I celebrated came at the cost of those I loved.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Raising his hand to cup my cheek, my father smiled, but there was exhaustion in the pull of his muscles.
“You are worthy of a great love, Rose. Don’t doubt yourself because others do. You’ve always been strong, but tonight, well, my darling, you finally looked like you,” he said.
The emotions of tonight were likely to kill me. Too much for a simple girl to overcome. One moment, I was drowning in validation, only to realize I’d pulled others down to take it. Maybe happiness and change weren’t singularly good or bad.
“Thank you, Papa,” I said, rising on my toes to press a kiss to his forehead.
He nodded once to me and then to the stairs behind us.
Right.
Summoning my courage to soothe my beating heart, I followed the path I knew by heart. Bailey House was my home. The only one I’d known. I knew that the third step always creaked, and the fifth had a scratch of paint missing becauseOliver scraped it when he slipped as a child. I knew these steps with or without light.
So it was that my feet followed them until I was standing in front of two white doors with gold handles. The coward in me wanted to keep going down the hall till my own familiar door came into view. Then I could change and put on my cloak, escaping out my window into the night and towards my pirate. Maybe a year ago, that’s what I would have chosen. Citing tomorrow as a better option to tackle familial discord.
I knocked once and opened the door.
It gave way to pristine white trimmed with gold and hard wooden floors. A large canopied bed to the west and an ornate fireplace overset with a golden mirror sat to the east. However, it was the woman who sat in front of a large vanity filled with jewels, rouge, brushes, and mirrors that made my heart skip.
The moment I entered, her green eyes that mirrored my own locked onto me through the mirror.
