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She reached for a chair and placed it next to her so that they could sit side by side.
“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Let’s make a start and think a little about the story we want to tell.”
“I probably won’t get it right first time.”
“No writer does. You keep revising it. You refine and edit what you’ve written, you tweak it, you make it better. And you can do it as many times as you need to.”
If only she could edit her past. Delete words. Change actions. Produce a totally different draft.
If she’d been able to do that, she might be spending Christmas with her own family.
26
Brooke
Well, that was an interesting day.” Matt was shaving while Brooke stroked mascara onto her lashes.
“It was.” She paused and lowered the wand. “It was more than interesting. It was special. If we’d been with my parents, I would have spent the day in the kitchen with my mother preparing food. The girls would have been begging me to play with them and I would have been saying maybe later. I loved today. And I feel like a bad person for saying so.”
“Why? You enjoyed spending time with your children without all the pressure. Why does that make you a bad person?” He splashed water on his face. “Christmas feels like too much sometimes. It’s stressful trying to keep everyone happy. And today was relaxed and fun. And spontaneous.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “Elsie is writing a story with M.M. Kingston. Can you imagine that? She is never going to forget today. Neither am I. It was fascinating watching Mabel’s process—she thought aloud for Elsie’s benefit. They talked about characters and feelings and the use of words. That’s better than a year of English lessons.”
“I’m sure Elsie learned more about people during one conversation with Mabel than she would in a year at school.” He reached for a towel. “Mabel is a generous person.”
“Yes.” And a wounded person, Brooke thought. So wounded that she’d barely emerged from her house over these past years. “I wish we could help her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want our help. Maybe she’s happy the way she is.”
“Oh, Matt, she isn’t happy. How can you say that? She’s traumatised and sad and full of regret.”
Matt wiped his jaw with the towel, and his gaze met hers in the mirror. “You’re right that what has happened is sad, but it sounds as if it’s a complicated family rift. It’s not something you can help with. Romance is your speciality. You don’t do family feuds.”
“I do relationships.” Brooke reached up to wipe away a tiny blob of cream that he’d missed. “And a family feud is just another type of relationship.”
“Brooke—”
“I can’t bear it, Matt! I can’t bear that she and her daughter are estranged.”
“I know,” he said, his gaze softening, “and I love that about you, but you have no idea what happened. Not every family lives happily ever after. You know that. And there are genuine and serious reasons why some families are estranged. And sometimes that is the best outcome.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think that’s what this is.” She hesitated. “Every time I’ve mentioned my parents, she’s looked at me in a funny way. I think she understands. And the reason she understands is because she made those mistakes herself. She told me that. It’s hard, isn’t it, being a parent? What are we going to do if, in the future, Elsie tells us she doesn’t want to come home for Christmas because she’s spending two weeks in the Caribbean with her friends?”
“I don’t know.” Matt draped the towel over the rail. “Am I paying for this trip?”
“Probably, but that’s not the point.”
“It could be the point—” He caught her eye. “Fine. I’d want to know who the friends were, and why their company was more appealing than mine.”
Brooke put her mascara back in her makeup bag. “But she would be an adult, so you would have no right to ask who they are. You have to allow her to make her own choices. Not easy, is it?”
“I don’t know. If she’s spending a month in the Caribbean, am I allowed to ask if there’s a spare room for her old dad? I could live with that.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
He sighed. “She’s eight, sweetheart. I suppose I think this is all a little way off and it might not happen. Maybe she’ll love coming home for Christmas so much she’ll still be doing it when she’s fifty, and we’ll be so tired of heaving a massive turkey out of the oven we’ll be hoping she’ll take a turn to host. I prefer to tackle worries as they come instead of anticipating them.”
That was true, and there were many occasions when she wished she were more like him.
