It’s hard not to be flung back into my teenage body, rising to every jab with an angry retort. But I manage it. Just.
I’m too distracted by her deep sadness, her deep loneliness, for my anger to take root. Despite all the ways in which she’s failed, I know she has done her best for me. Her best as far as she was capable. And I can see the ways in which she has been left broken, too.
It’s not my job to fix that. It’s hers. But I can’t hate her for being damaged by the hard life she’s lived.
As we’re clearing the last of the roast from our plates—hers suspiciously clean despite her complaints—she announces a gift.
“I have something for you,” she says.
And I’m inherently suspicious of this until she produces a small journal. I recognize the cover immediately. Claire’s old journal.
“I’ve already read it,” she clarifies. Because of course she has. “I found it when I was finally clearing out her room a couple of years ago. There’s some stuff in there I didn’t understand before, but now it makes more sense.”
The red pleather stares at me. A promise and a betrayal. Claire’s real voice. I’m dying to crack it open, even though it feels like a posthumous invasion of privacy. I tell my mother as much.
“You’ve always been so sensitive about things. So much like your father.”
I can’t help but bite. “I need you to stop saying that.”
She jerks backward, nose scrunching, like I’ve waved a turd under her chin. “Why not? It’s true.” She shrugs. I take a sip of water to stop myself from firing back. “You’ve both always been sensitive. Sensitive and too afraid for your own good,” she continues.
I set the glass of water down harder than I mean to. Ignore the narrowing of her eyes. “Too afraid? Was Dad ‘afraid’ each time he laid hands on you?”
A dry laugh. “Of course. Why do you think he chose me? He was a coward, afraid of everything, and he wanted someone he could punch down to. Why do you think James chose you?” She rises from her seat. “Where’s the bathroom?”
I’m still winded, trying to catch my breath.
“It’s just on the left as you come in the front door,” I manage to say, voice quiet. “Do you need me to show you?”
She tuts, shakes her head. “And your antibacterial wipes?”
I don’t need to rise to this. “I cleaned the bathroom this morning.”
“Today has been hard enough for me, Natalie. Please, the wipes.”
I fetch the packet from under the kitchen sink. She takes them and leaves. I reclaim my seat at the table.
“I’m sorry,” Dimple says. “I can try broaching the topic of family therapy again, but—”
“It’s okay,” I answer with a small shrug of my own. “Trying to get an aunty into therapy is…Anyway, I wasn’t expecting she’d have changed. And she’s not wrong about Dad and James.”
My hands pick up the journal. Flick through the pages. Claire’s teen rage is written in clear lines, only growing as she turns twenty. But amid the anger and the hypervigilance is her humor.
“Can I see?” Dimple asks.
I cast my eyes over to her. See her nerves pinning her arms to her sides. “Sure,” I say.
She takes a moment to look through the pages. Laughs. “I can see why you say we’re similar.”
“Mmm” is all I can say.
She flips to the last pages of the journal. Reads. Smiles. Stops smiling. “She was a very hurt girl.”
“She was.”
“She loved you very much.”
“I believe she did.”
