Larenzo's Christmas Baby

‘I know.’ When she’d been about eight or so she’d stopped investing so much in friendships. In the circuit of international schools, people were always on the move. And she hadn’t minded; you had a friend for a while, and then someone left, and you found someone else. It had been simple—until her mother had been the one to find someone else.

‘So perhaps that’s why Mom leaving you affected you so much,’ Meghan finished gently. Emma stared out of the window.

‘I asked her to take me with her,’ she said after a moment. ‘I don’t think you knew that.’

‘No,’ Meghan said quietly. ‘I didn’t.’

‘She said no. Obviously.’ Emma took a deep breath. ‘So that might be the reason why I’m a little gun-shy when it comes to relationships.’

‘Maybe,’ Meghan allowed, and Emma could tell she wanted to say something else.

‘What is it? You might as well give it to me straight. It’s not like you to hold back.’

‘There was...stuff Mom didn’t tell you,’ Meghan said slowly. ‘Because you were so young.’

‘Stuff?’ Emma stiffened. ‘What kind of stuff?’

‘She was depressed,’ Meghan answered after a moment. ‘Really depressed. She told me about it, when I was in college. She was trying to get help, but it was hard.’

‘Depressed...?’

‘Did you never notice anything? How tired she was, and how...I don’t know...listless sometimes?’

Distantly Emma recalled how much her mother had slept. Often when she’d come home from school, her mother would be napping. She hadn’t thought much of it, perhaps because she’d had no one to compare her mother to. ‘I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘Maybe, a bit, but...’

‘When she went back to America she went into a clinic,’ Meghan said. ‘For depression. She was there for six months. That’s why you couldn’t come.’

Emma swivelled to gape at her sister. ‘And she never told me? Not once, in fifteen years?’

‘I think she felt ashamed,’ Meghan said quietly.

Emma sank back against the seat. Just as Larenzo had felt ashamed. And yet in both cases honesty, although harder, would have been so much better. So much more healing.

‘I wish I’d known,’ she muttered. ‘She could have told me when I came to live with her.’

‘I think she just wanted to forget that part of her past, of herself.’

‘And that visit was a disaster,’ Emma reminded her. ‘It wasn’t just about the depression, Meghan.’

‘I’m not saying it was. I just wanted you to understand the whole picture. As for that time in Arizona...you left pretty quickly, Emma. Maybe that felt to Mom like you were rejecting her.’

‘So you’re blaming me?’ Emma demanded, more hurt than she wanted to admit or reveal.

‘No, I’m only asking you to look at it from both sides.’

Meghan fell silent, and Emma turned back to the window. Look at it from both sides? She realised she’d been clinging to her entitlement as the wronged party for so long. Her mother had rejected her. Her mother had failed her. It was a child’s view, and one she wasn’t actually all that proud of.

She wanted things to be different with Larenzo. She wanted to be different, to be patient and understanding of the man she loved, and to trust that he would put the past to rest, stay with her and love her for ever...even if he had trouble trusting her in the same way.

‘Love is complicated,’ she finally said to Meghan, and her sister laughed.

‘You’ve got that right.’

Her conversation with Meghan was still rattling around in her head when she returned to New York that evening. Meghan had helped her to deal with her past issues, and maybe she needed to help Larenzo deal with his. Not just by being patient or loving, not just by waiting, but by dealing with them once and for all.

Ava had fallen asleep on the train, and Emma hefted her over one shoulder as she wriggled her way out of the cab and then up to the apartment.

Larenzo met her at the door, taking Ava from her aching arms. He put Ava to bed and then rejoined her in the living room, looking slightly wary, as he always did after she’d returned from her sister’s. As if he were still afraid she might leave him.

‘Larenzo, I’ve realised something,’ she said, and now he looked even more suspicious.

‘Oh?’

‘We can’t go on like this.’