Eclipsed Hearts

Chapter 9: The space between Sorry and Forgiven

Elena called her mother at nine in the morning.

She sat on the edge of her bed with her packed suitcase on the floor beside her and her phone in her hand and stared at her mother's name in her contacts for a full minute before pressing call. It rang three times. Then Diane picked up with the careful, tentative hello of a woman who had been waiting for this call and was terrified of what it might contain.

"It's me," Elena said.

"I know" a pause, "how are you?"

"I'm okay." She wasn't entirely, but it was the easiest true thing she could say. I need to come over today. There are some things I need to talk to you about and some things I need to drop off. Is that alright?

Another pause, longer this time.

"Of course," Diane said quietly, you never have to ask.

Elena almost said something to that, swallowed it instead. "We'll come this afternoon."

"We?"

Jade is coming with me.

Okay, her mother's voice softened slightly at Jade's name. She had always liked Jade, had fed her at this table more times than they could count. "I'll make something."

"You don't have to...."

"I want to, "I'll see you this afternoon, baby."

Elena ended the call and sat with the phone in her lap for a moment. Then she stood up, finished the last of her packing, and went to make coffee.

They arrived at the house just after 2pm.

The street looked the same as it always did in the afternoon light quiet, familiar, the neighbor's cat occupying its usual spot on the wall. Elena stood on the pavement for a moment after they got off the subway, her overnight bag on her shoulder, Jade beside her carrying a tote and saying nothing for once, and looked at the front door of the house she had grown up in.

She rang the bell.

Which felt strange, she had a key. She had always had a key but something about the last few days had shifted the geometry of this place in a way that made letting herself in feel presumptuous, like walking into a room before you've been invited.

Her mother opened the door almost immediately as though she had been standing close to it, waiting. Diane looked better than she had at the repast, more put together, her hair done, a clean blouse but her eyes gave her away the moment they landed on Elena. The hope in them, and the fear sitting just underneath it.

"Come in, she said, both of you, come in."

The house smelled of cooking, something warm and savory from the kitchen, the smell of effort and apology in equal measure.

They settled in the living room. Jade took the armchair by the window with the diplomatic instincts of someone who understood she was there as support rather than participant and positioned herself accordingly. Elena sat on the couch. Diane sat across from her and folded her hands in her lap and looked at her daughter with the expression of a woman standing before a verdict.

The room was quiet.

Elena started.

"I'm not here to fight," she said. "I want to be clear about that, I'm not here to go over everything again or to say things we've already said." She kept her voice level, measured. "I'm here because I'm going away for a while and there are things that need to be handled before I go."

Her mother blinked. "Going away?"

"I've been offered a work opportunity. It's a year-long placement, it means accommodation is covered and I'll be compensated well." Elena held her mother's gaze steadily. "It came at the right time and I'm taking it."

She watched Diane process this, the surprise, the concern, the instinct to ask questions that she was clearly restraining herself from asking because she understood, on some level, that she was not currently in a position to make demands about Elena's choices.

"Okay," Diane said carefully. "Where?"

"In the city. I'll be reachable." Elena moved on before the questions could multiply. "Which brings me to why I'm here, with me gone, Jade needs somewhere to stay. She can't cover the apartment alone and she needs somewhere temporary maybe a few months, maybe a little more while she gets back on her feet." She paused. "I'd like her to stay here. In my room."

Diane looked at Jade, Jade gave a small, honest smile that said "I know this is a lot, I'm sorry, thank you for considering it."

"Of course," Diane said, without hesitation. "Jade is always welcome here, this house is too quiet as it is."

Some of the tension in Jade's shoulders visibly released.

"She'll contribute when she can, Elena said, but don't pressure her about it."

"I won't." Diane looked back at Elena, "Elena, this house is your home, It will always be your home and Jade is welcomed here anytime.

Elena felt the familiar complicated rush of the love that wouldn't die no matter how much easier it would be if it did, the grief of what she now knew sitting alongside it, the anger that hadn't gone anywhere but had settled into something quieter and more permanent than rage.

She looked at her mother, then walked to her room, her mother followed her instantly.

"Elena listen, I'm sorry I.....

"I'm not ready to forgive you," Elena cuts in. She said it without cruelty just plainly, the way you state a fact. "I want you to know that, I'm not there yet and I don't know when I will be." She paused. "But I also can't carry this the way I've been carrying it for the last few days. It's too heavy and I have too much else to deal with, so I'm choosing to set it down for now. Not to forget it but just to set it down."

Diane pressed her lips together. Her eyes filled immediately, the way they had been doing at the slightest provocation since the night Elena had walked into the living room and heard everything but she didn't let the tears fall. She seemed to understand, instinctively, that this was not the moment for her grief to take up space.

"I understand," she said quietly.

"I'm not doing this for you," Elena continued, "I'm doing it because I refuse to leave this city for a year with this sitting between us unresolved. Not because it's resolved, it isn't but because I need to be able to think clearly about my own life without this taking up all the room."

Her mother nodded once. The nod of a woman accepting terms she knows she has no right to negotiate.

"Whatever you need from me," Diane said.

Elena looked at her for a long moment, this woman who had held her and loved her yet destroyed something irreplaceable and felt the knot in her chest loosen, just slightly. Not unravel, just loosen. Enough to breathe.

"Okay," she said.

It was not forgiveness neither was it absolution. It was a door left open a crack in a wall that had been solid, and for now that was enough.

They spent the rest of the afternoon moving Elena's extra boxes from the apartment, carried over in two trips. Winter coats hung in the back of the wardrobe. Books stacked on the shelf in her old room. The box of her father's things placed carefully in the corner not yet ready to be opened, just needing a safe place to exist.

Her mother fed them both, they ate at the kitchen table the way they had hundreds of times before and the conversation stayed on the surface, practical things, logistics and where Jade's things would go.

By evening it was settled. Jade would move in within the week. Elena would leave for Novara the following morning.