Still holding the gritty potato, I turned around from the sink so I could see my mother. There was a knowing look in her eyes.
“There were three wineglasses left out last night.”
“Oh.” My face burned bright. “There is... someone I met in the city. He came to see me last night. But he isn’t like the people at the Fashion House. He’s different.”
“Then why do you seem so burdened?” My mother’s voicewas gentle, and its softness was as comforting as a hug. At the Fashion House, I’d been so on edge. I’d been unable to trust anyone, and no one really cared about me. My mother loved me. After being away, I could truly appreciate it, even if her kind of love didn’t have much room for my dreams.
“I found out he had a past with someone. Someone I know.”
“I see.” My mother inserted her paring knife into the skin of a potato. “In my experience, it’s best to let go of the past. If you dwell on it for too long, you’ll find yourself living there. And there’s no life in the past. What’s done is done.”
I walked over to the kitchen table and put the potato I held into the stew pot. My mother motioned me over to the table and I sat down. There was a pot of tea sitting on a dishcloth and she put down her knife to pour me a cup.
“The blue china?”
“I thought it would be nice.” She placed her hand on my shoulder for the briefest moment before returning to the pot and the potatoes.
“Mother...” I mulled over her words about the past. She tensed, sensing I was about to ask her something she might not want to answer. “What was it you did in the city? Did you really work at a textile factory?”
She slowly pushed aside the pot of potatoes. She took a deep breath. “No. I didn’t. I worked at the Fashion House. I was a maid there.”
I set down my teacup with a hardclink. My mother had been at the Fashion House?She’d worked there?My whole life, I’d talked about going to the Fashion House—and she never said aword. I tried to picture her as a girl my age, moving about the Fashion House, her hand gliding up the banister of the stairs, taking in the wallpapered lobby. But even as I imagined a small, girlish form passing through the fitting room hallway, she had the aged face of my mother, her veiny hands with bitten nails.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve never had much in my life, Emmy.” My mother spoke so quietly that the crackle of the morning fire nearly overpowered her voice. “But my past is mine to reckon with in my own way.”
With that, she reached for the pot again. Her motions indicated that the conversation was over, that she’d let me in for just a peek, but that was all she was going to allow.
I watched her, uncertain about what to do with this new knowledge, unsure if it changed the way I saw her. A shaft of light fell over her, illuminating her features. I’d always seen her as plain-faced—dour, even. But suddenly I was able to see underneath the web of wrinkles and weathered skin. There, hidden by exhaustion and time, were elegant lines that rose and fell in all the right places. I’d never realized it, but my mother had been beautiful.
I cupped my teacup and let the warmth seep into my hands. I thought about Tilda, about how everyone talked right past her and through her. My mother would’ve been treated the same way, before she was forced to leave in disgrace because she was pregnant. I always knew her story was full of pain, but now I understood it—I’d seen, firsthand, the hard ways of the city.
“Is that why you never wrote me back? Because it was just too painful to think about the city?”
“I wrote to you. I wrote to you the very night you left. You didn’t get my letters?”
“No. I didn’t.”
I didn’t know if I was happy that she had written me all along—or stricken by the thought that someone must have stolen my letters. Was it the same someone who’d destroyed my sketches?
I didn’t want to give her any more reasons to hate the city, so I tried to brush it off.
“Maybe they got lost in the mail.”
My mother pursed her lips. The clock chimed, and she wiped her hands on her apron. It was time to unlock the front door. She left me sitting at the kitchen table, weighted by her past and the familiar sense that someone had been sabotaging my every move at the Fashion House.
“Emmy...” She walked back into the kitchen. “This was tucked into the doorjamb. A note.”
“For me?” She held it out, and I instantly recognized Tristan’s scrawl. The sight brought back our wine-stained kiss. “I’ll be right back.”
I could feel my mother’s eyes following me as I left the kitchen. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t need to. I already knew her expression was full of frustration. Disappointment. She saw me following in the steps of her youth—going away to Avon-upon-Kynt, falling in love with a boy from the city—she didn’t consider that maybe our endings could be different.
Halfway up the stairs, I stopped. Part of me wanted to tear into Tristan’s letter right away, but another part of me wantedto savor it. Slowly, I opened the envelope and took the note out.
Emmy,
It’s been only one night since I’ve seen you, but somehow it feels like two years.
