The Best Next Thing ((Un)Professionally Yours 1)

“I didn’t think you’d want to discuss that with me now. Or ever. I mean, it’s up to you if you…shit. Sorry, I told you I’m no good at this.”

“At what?”

“Conversation. Seriously, I’m best in front of a computer, figuring out ways to acquire the companies I want. Working out if they’re worth salvaging or just hacking into pieces and selling off. I’m great with numbers, legalese, seeing the bigger picture. But I leave the interpersonal stuff to my right-hand man, Bryan. I am truly abysmal at peopling.”

She laughed at that.

“You’re doing fine. I have only one sister. Older. Her name is Faith. She has this gorgeous little girl, Grace.” She stopped, finding it harder than she had expected to talk about them. Especially when the pang of yearning and loss in her heart intensified at the thought of them.

“How old is Grace?” His voice was quiet, soothing and perfectly pitched to get her talking again. And he said he was bad at “peopling”. He didn’t seem to know himself very well.

“Five,” she replied, setting aside her half-eaten sandwich and drinking down the last of her milk. “Uh, nearly six. It’s her birthday in a couple of weeks’ time.”

“That’s a great age,” he said, with a smile. “She irritated the ever loving shit out of me at the time, but when I think back now, Vicki was an adorable six-year-old. With her curly mop of black hair and her irrepressible smile and constant questions. She had such a thirst for knowledge. Still does actually. What is Grace like?"

“I haven’t seen her in a while. Not since she was three. I mean we skype but…that’s not the same is it? She doesn’t have the patience to sit and talk to this stranger on the computer. She knows me, but, not really.”

“Do you have any pictures?”

She nodded and reached into the front pouch of her hoodie for her phone. She didn’t even know why she had it on her, she rarely received any calls or messages.

She flicked through her photo album and found a picture of her niece. Grace was wearing a pink tutu, fairy wings, and mismatched Wellingtons. She was grinning widely at whomever was taking the picture.

She silently handed the phone to Miles, who took it without comment. He flipped it around and stared at the picture with a frown

of concentration.

“She’s pretty cute,” he said, flashing Charity a grin. “She has your eyes.”

“We all have my mom’s coloring; her mother—our ouma—was a mixed-race woman from the Cape Flats. And our oupa was a second-generation Lebanese man. Faith and I inherited our dad’s height. But his blond hair and hazel eyes didn’t stand a chance against our mom’s dominant genes.” She smiled fondly as she thought of her parents. She missed them so much, and it felt wonderful to talk about them. “Because they faced so much discrimination after their marriage during the later apartheid era, they moved to Canada for a few years. But they returned just before the first democratic election. I was about four when we moved back. Faith was two. I have only the vaguest recollection of it.”

“Have you seen any of your family in the last three years?” he asked, after handing her phone back.

Charity swallowed and ran a finger over her niece’s image.

“No. I speak with them, FaceTime sometimes…Faith wants me to come to Gracie’s sixth birthday party.”

“You should go.”

“I can’t.”

“Charity…”

“Miles we’ve known each other for about a minute,” she pointed out shortly, pocketing her phone, before levelling a blistering glare at him. “You don’t get to have an opinion about this, okay?”

“I’m sorry.”

His softly spoken apology took the wind out of her sails and robbed her of the fuel she needed to stoke her fiery indignation. She sagged and buried her face in her palms taking a moment to compose herself.

He didn’t say another word, merely sat quietly and waited for her to speak.

“No. I’m the one who’s sorry, Miles.” She dropped her hands and met his eyes. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I get a little defensive. My family has been so hurt and confused by all of this. But I find it hard to be around them and their sympathy. They think I’m grieving for him. And how do I explain to them that I would never mourn him, that I don’t miss him, and that I’m so damned grateful to be free of him?”

She made a despairing sound and wiped at her wet eyes.

“I didn’t want to talk about him tonight. I don’t want to talk about him ever.”

He was silent for a long, long moment after her outburst, but when he eventually spoke, the words emerged slowly. As if he were weighing every syllable for fear saying the wrong thing. “I think…and I’m not an expert. And I know it’s none of my business. But I think that perhaps if you did speak of him, to someone—anyone—it would help you find some clarity and possibly some closure. Or at the very least it’ll start the healing process on the still festering wound that was your marriage.”