“Rebecca…”
Helplessly Marin stared at her sister as she continued to cry the kind of noisy sobs she’d never heard from her before – jagged sounds reminding her of broken glass.
Rebecca wrapped her arms tightly around herself, her shoulders hunched so her hair fell forward and covered her face. Marin could see how they shook, and her heart ached for her sister and the grief she’d hidden for so long.
“Sweetheart,” she murmured and clumsily she put her arms around Rebecca and pulled her towards her. They hadn’t actually hugged since that first day in Hampshire, when Marin had come from Boston and greeted this near-stranger, both of them shocked by grief and the knowledge that their lives were now forever entwined.
Rebecca remained stiffly in Marin’s arms for a moment before she finally, thankfully, yielded, her body softening as she pressed her hot face, damp with tears, into Marin’s shoulder.
Marin felt a sudden swell of emotion and affection, something almost maternal, that took hold of her and brought tears to her own eyes. She blinked them away as she rubbed Rebecca’s back, murmuring soothing nonsense until her sobs had subsided to snuffles.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca finally said, her voice muffled against Marin’s shoulder.
“Don’t be. I think you’ve probably needed a good cry.”
“You don’t even know what I’m crying about.”
“I think I can guess.”
“Can you?” Abruptly Rebecca pushed away from Marin, scrubbing her face with her fists like a little child.
“Why don’t you tell me, then?” Marin said quietly. Rebecca just stared at her, her lower lip jutted out, and then the kettle started to shrill. Sighing, Marin moved it off the hotplate. She was afraid Rebecca was already retreating, no doubt regretting her momentary outburst.
Rebecca gave a big sniff and sank onto one of the kitchen chairs while Marin busied herself with pouring their tea. “I don’t know if I can,” she said and Marin didn’t answer, hoping that more words would come. “It’s just…” Rebecca let out a shuddering breath. “It’s so strange,” she finally burst out.
“Joss said something similar,” Marin told her as she handed her a cup of tea before sitting opposite. “He said grief was both natural and unnatural. It’s a part of life, of everyone’s life sooner or later, and yet it still never feels right.”
Rebecca stared at her miserably, her mug of tea cradled in her hands. “You don’t get it,” she said and blew on her tea. “I’m not…” She lowered her gaze to her mug and again Marin waited. “I’m not grieving,” she finally said. “Not really.”
And what, Marin wondered, was she meant to make of that? She took a sip of tea to stall for time, but apparently that was the wrong thing to do because Rebecca gazed at her miserably, her lower lip trembling now as well as still jutting out. “You’re shocked, aren’t you? You think I’m awful.”
“No, Rebecca, I most certainly don’t. But maybe you need to help me understand what you mean.”
“How else can I say it? I’m not grieving. I don’t miss them!” Her voice rang out and then, in seeming direct contradiction to what she’d just said, she began to cry again. She controlled herself quickly, though, sniffing hard before taking a slurpy sip of tea. “There. Now you know.”
“Why don’t you miss them?” Marin asked. She spoke calmly even though inside she was reeling. This was an admission she’d never expected Rebecca to make.
“I don’t know. I do miss them a bit – of course I do. More than a bit. I’m not saying that.” She looked up, clearly anxious to get this point across, and Marin nodded.
“I understand.”
“But Mum and Dad… they were so wrapped up in themselves. Not in a bad way. But they had such a – I don’t know, a grand passion, I suppose. I mean, Dad left his job for Mum. But, of course, you know that.”
“Yes,” Marin said after a moment. Having Rebecca say it all again was making her realize how raw she still felt about her father’s second marriage. Diana had been one of his students at the university where he’d lectured, just twenty years old, and they’d both been swept up in the “grand passion” Rebecca had described. And this, after so many years of her father virtually ignoring her, claiming he’d never forget her mother… The bitterness she’d felt still possessed a sharp bite.
Within months of meeting Diana, Richard Ellis had accepted early retirement. He’d married her and they’d gone to live in Hampshire; Rebecca had been born five years later. Marin still remembered receiving the email telling her that she’d been born. She hadn’t even known Diana was pregnant – that was how estranged they’d become. And watching her father embrace his new family from afar had only made Marin retreat all the more – away from her father, into herself.
But she couldn’t do that any more. She didn’t even want to.
“I do understand what you’re saying,” she said to Rebecca. “But they loved you, you know. I’m quite sure of it.”
“I know. I never questioned that; not really.”
And yet Marin had questioned her father’s love for her endlessly. How could he love her and send her off to boarding school the way he had? She’d begged him not to make her go, had clung to him, and he’d simply sent her away from him, as if she were a puppy jumping up and muddying his trousers. As she’d grown older she’d tried to both understand and justify his behaviour; she’d told herself that he was too stricken by grief to act as a proper father. Yet that small bit of comfort had been taken from her when he’d married Diana, had had Rebecca – and still hadn’t reached out to her.
Now she felt all those old, unresolved feelings and memories rise up within her in a tangle of emotion; her throat had thickened and she didn’t think she could speak to Rebecca, if she even knew what to say, which she didn’t.
“It’s just…” Rebecca said, “I don’t feel the way I think I should feel.”
“There’s no right or wrong about how you feel in this situation,” Marin said after a moment, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth she realized what a meaningless platitude they were. “How do you think you should feel?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Rebecca answered with a shrug. “Grief-stricken, I suppose.”
Grief-stricken. To be stricken down by grief. It made Marin think of a bolt of lightning, or a smiting by an almighty hand. Rebecca didn’t feel that, and neither did she. The sadness she felt was about something she’d never had, not something she’d had and lost. She just hadn’t ever expected Rebecca to feel the same.
She had assumed, based on her outsider’s view, that Rebecca was the adored and coddled only child of doting parents, the very centre of their world – because her father had chosen Diana, had chosen Rebecca in a way he’d never chosen her. She’d never resented Rebecca; how could you resent a child? And yet she’d resented how her father’s choices had, since she’d been eight years old, made her feel unwanted, unloved.
“What,” Marin asked Rebecca, “do you think ‘grief-stricken’ feels like?”
“Oh, enough with the questions,” Rebecca suddenly snapped. “You’re not my therapist.” Stung, Marin didn’t answer for a moment. Rebecca sighed impatiently. “Sorry,” she said, and Marin couldn’t tell if she meant it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know the right thing to say here, Rebecca.” She hesitated, and then decided honesty, uncomfortable as it often could be, was needed. “I’m remarkably inept at these kinds of conversations, I’m afraid.”
“Isn’t everybody?” Rebecca shot back, and Marin suppressed a sigh.
“Maybe. I wouldn’t know, because I don’t have enough experience.”
Just as quickly Rebecca’s mood changed again, and her face crumpled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“You’re entitled to snap a little,” Marin said, and yet again she felt as if she’d offered a platitude, and the wrong one at that, when Rebecca shook her head, her eyes filling with tears.
“But that’s the thing, Marin. I’m not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because they were my parents, and sometimes I’m not sure I even miss them. When you came to stay, I didn’t even feel as if anything had changed all that much. They were so wrapped up with each other, busy with their own lives… sometimes I felt like they forgot I was even there.” She sighed and shook her head again. “I know I sound spoiled.”
“You don’t.”
“I wanted to move because I was tired of everyone feeling sorry for me when I knew I didn’t deserve it. They all thought that I’d had this great tragedy, and all I’ve ever really felt is… numb.”
“I know what you mean,” Marin said, and Rebecca looked at her keenly.
“Do you? Because he was your father too, and yet you never seem to talk about him. He never talked about you.”
Marin blinked back the hurt those words caused. “No,” she said, taking a sip of tea. “He wouldn’t.”
“What happened? Why weren’t you close?”
“When my mother died, my father withdrew from me. From life, really. He buried himself in his work.” She hesitated, memories of being eight years old, confused and hurt and alone, sliding through her. Standing at her father’s study door and wondering if she dared knock. And when she did knock, and she knew he was inside, there was no answer.
“Sometimes,” she continued slowly, “I wonder if I’ve made those years before she died a bit rosier than they were. I have fond memories of my mum, but I don’t have too many of him. I don’t know if I’ve blanked them out or not.” She gave a little shrug. “Memory is a tricky thing.”
“But that photo of you in your bedroom. You both look happy then.” Rebecca made a face. “When I saw it, I felt jealous of you, you know. Dad never looked at me that way. Sometimes I feel like they resented me, for taking them away from each other.”
“Jealous?” Marin let out a short laugh. “Trust me, you’ve had nothing to be jealous about.”
“But that photograph… you can tell he loved you, Marin.”
“But it’s just a photograph,” Marin returned. “I didn’t feel like he loved me the whole time I was growing up. So what’s real – the photograph or the feeling?”
“I don’t know.”
They lapsed into silence and Marin thought suddenly of the other photograph, of the girl and her gardener. She’d built so many emotions into that single image, and now she wondered if she’d made it all up because she simply wanted them to be true. She wanted a love story; she longed for someone’s happy ending.
Suddenly her entire mission with the garden seemed pointless and, worse, pathetic. She was pouring so much emotional energy into discovering something that she wasn’t even sure existed.
“We should go to bed,” she said finally as she took both of their mugs to the sink. “You have school tomorrow, after all.”
“All right.” Rebecca rose from her chair. “Thank you,” she said stiltedly. “I’m sorry I’ve been so… I don’t know. Difficult.”
“You haven’t been – honestly, Rebecca. I just wish I was better equipped to be a support to you.”
“You are a support. You moved up here even when it seemed like a really stupid thing to do.”
“I’m glad we moved.”
“Are you?” Rebecca looked pleased by this. “I am too. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“I don’t like the rain,” Rebecca said ruefully. “But everything else is pretty good.”
Laughing a little at this, Marin switched off the kitchen light and then they both headed upstairs.
She made sure Rebecca was settled back into her bed before going to her own, yet sleep eluded her. It was nearly five in the morning before she finally gave up on trying and switched her light on. The world was still pitch dark and she huddled under the covers, conscious of the pre-dawn, creeping cold of the house.
Her gaze fell on the photograph of her and her father, and she reached for it, studying the picture once again.
There she was, fourteen years old and a bit awkward-looking, her limbs a little long and gangly, her nose a bit too big in her face. She was laughing, and she could see the space between her front teeth that braces the next year had corrected. Her hair was blowing in the wind as she held it back, and Marin could see freckles on her nose, brought out by the sun.
Almost reluctantly she flicked her gaze towards her father. She could see the bald spot on top of his head, burnt red by the sun, and his nose was the same shape as hers; she’d never realized that before. He had placed one hand on her back; not quite a hug, but she still saw something protective and tender in the gesture. And the look in his eyes… the small curving of his lips… He looked proud and affectionate, and yet now she wondered if that expression was real. Could you trust a look? Could she take comfort from it, believing that her father had loved her as best he could, just as, perhaps, he’d loved Rebecca? An imperfect man, a man who had not been able to balance the passions in his life, but still a man capable of loving his children.
Grey light was filtering through the curtains when Marin finally put the photograph back on the shelf. She settled back down under the covers, and eventually she slept.