Dark Horse, page 9
Sadie breathed out slowly and swallowed hard.
“Thank you,” she said, after a few moments of silence, and then snorted softly. “You should have been a therapist.”
Nicole chuckled. “Nah, somehow I only have the patience for your troubles. And you’re welcome, by the way. Any time.” She paused. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah,” Sadie murmured. “I think so.”
“Give my love to Elsie when you see her. I went by the house last night and watered the yard. Everything’s okay there.”
“Thanks, I’ll tell her. Say hi to Tash for me. I’ll call you later, yeah?”
“You better. I’m gonna need to hear how it all went.”
“Sure.” Sadie smiled, glad she could smile. “Later.”
After sitting in the rain for a few more minutes, she finally hooked the helmet over her left arm and coasted the bike the short distance to the driveway. She pulled it up behind a shiny Mercedes C-Class and climbed off. She hesitated only momentarily before pressing on the doorbell. Her heart was still thumping away beneath her ribs, but she knew nothing would calm that down in the near future.
The door opened, and her gran smiled warmly at her. Sadie was overcome with emotion at the sight of her and stepped forward to pull her into a hug. Elsie returned it, her thin yet strong arms gripping on to Sadie’s shoulders, despite the wet jacket.
“Hey, Gran,” Sadie whispered. “I missed you.”
Elsie patted Sadie’s back and pulled away.
“I missed you too, love,” she said, smiling again. She cocked her head, staring at Sadie. “Everything okay?”
“Oh. Yeah. I…wobbled a bit out there. I had a quick call with Nic to kind of calm down.”
Elsie nodded. “Well, let me get you a towel, and you can take your jacket and boots off here. When we’ve got that sorted, we’ll go through, okay?”
Sadie nodded, her gaze drifting around as Elsie wandered down the hallway. From what she could see so far, the house hadn’t changed much since she’d last been there. The walls were a deeper shade of cream than she remembered, and the hallway table was new. But the layout looked the same, and, strangely, the house still smelled the same as she remembered. She wouldn’t have known she’d remember something as innocuous as that until she stood there breathing it in.
Elsie soon reappeared with a dark blue towel, and Sadie wiped roughly at her face, hands, and hair.
“Ready?” The question jarred something in her stomach, but she quelled it and nodded.
Elsie turned and walked off towards the lounge room. Sadie followed, breathing deeply against the rising tide of emotions that were bubbling to the surface. Elsie pushed open the door to the lounge room. Sadie’s gaze was quickly drawn to the woman sitting in a reclining armchair, a blanket over her legs, a magazine abandoned in her lap.
Christine Williams looked at least twenty years older than her age of fifty-three. Her blonde hair was thin and cut short, and her eyes were dull and lifeless. The skin across her cheekbones was drawn, and her once beautiful face looked sallow and…sad. She had lost weight, but that actually sat well on her.
They stared at each other in silent appraisal for a minute. Finally, Christine smiled weakly.
“Sadie,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I’m so glad you came.”
Sadie couldn’t speak. Her pulse was racing, throbbing somewhere at the back of her head. She nodded and swallowed.
“Sit down, love,” Elsie said from behind her, and she felt her grandmother’s hand gentle in the small of her back. She took a couple of steps farther into the room and sat on the nearest couch, diagonally opposite her mother. This was…surreal.
“Would you like a coffee?” Elsie asked.
Sadie tore her gaze away from her mother to look up at her gran. “Coffee would be great,” she said gratefully. “Do you need a hand?”
“No, I can do it.” Elsie’s glare pinned Sadie in place. “Christine, anything for you?”
Christine shook her head, still staring at Sadie.
“Okay, be right back,” Elsie said brightly.
Sadie tensed as Elsie left the room. She stared at her mother, feeling more uncomfortable by the second and willing her grandmother to reappear. Inwardly, she chastised herself for her cowardice. What is the point of coming here if I don’t say what needs to be said? Bracing herself, she opened her mouth to speak, but her mother beat her to it.
“You are so beautiful, Sadie,” Christine said. Sadie’s heart lurched. “My God, so beautiful.” Christine’s eyes watered over, and she raised a hand to wipe away the tears that fell.
Her mother’s words stunned her; it was the last thing she was expecting to hear. At the same time, those words fired up the anger that was already lurking deep inside her gut. Did her mum think that was enough? That a simple compliment would suddenly make it all okay? Twelve years of pain and agony and heartbreak, and all her mum could think of was a meaningless statement about Sadie’s looks?
Before she could rationalise it, temper it, or control it, she was standing again. There was a foul taste in her mouth; acid was burning her stomach, and a cold sweat broke out down the length of her spine.
“I honestly don’t know what you expect me to say to that,” she said sharply. “Is that supposed to make it all okay? You think some stupid bit of flattery magically makes it all go away?”
“No—”
“No, it doesn’t!” Sadie’s voice, its volume reflecting the years of pent-up anger, was overly loud in the small room. She raised her gaze to the ceiling momentarily, trying to get the rage under control and only just managing it.
Elsie walked into the room, carrying a tray. She quickly put it down on the coffee table and stood beside Sadie.
“Sadie,” she warned gently, her thin hand clutching at Sadie’s forearm.
Sadie shook her off and took one step closer to her mother, whose eyes were wide, her bottom lip trembling.
“I… You have every right to be angry,” Christine said, her tone mollifying but her voice quivering nonetheless. “But please, can we just talk? There’s so much to say.”
“Sadie, please,” Elsie said quietly from behind her.
Clenching her hands tight into fists against her thighs, Sadie sucked in a couple of deep breaths. For a moment, she’d wanted to run, get away from the intensity of this meeting. But if she did that, she knew she’d never come back. And then she’d never know.
“Okay,” she said from between her gritted teeth. Forcing her jaw to relax, she stepped back. “Okay. I want to do this.”
Relief flooded her mother’s face. Sadie stumbled backwards to the couch and sat down again.
Elsie handed them each a cup of the coffee, and they sat back. Sadie took a couple of fortifying sips of the hot drink.
“I can see what I just said has upset you.” Christine’s voice sounded as tired as she looked. “I didn’t mean to do that. I think I was just overwhelmed by you being here, by the realisation that I have a beautiful, grown-up daughter whose life I have missed out on for all these years.” She paused, and Sadie saw her swallow hard. “I’m so glad you’re here now.”
Sadie exhaled slowly. “I am too.” She hesitated before saying, “I-I’m sorry I lost my temper. Shouting at you isn’t going to help.”
Christine smiled wanly. “Like I said, you have every right to be angry. It’s okay.”
Shaking her head, Sadie shuffled to sit on the edge of the sofa, her hands gripping the mug they held. This had to be a two-way street. If they were going to talk, they had to really talk. Sadie couldn’t shy away from the part she’d played in their history. “Maybe. But shouting is what he did to me all those years, and being like him is the last thing I want. And…” She paused, swallowing hard before she said the next words. “I gave you both a lot of heartache when I was younger, and probably a lot of your anger at me was deserved too.”
“We could have tried harder. To understand. But…oh, there’s so much to explain.”
Sadie shrugged. “I’m here all week. We don’t have to say it all today.”
Elsie made a small sound of affirmation next to her, and she glanced around quickly to find her gran smiling warmly at her. She returned the smile, feeling some of her tension easing away.
When she turned back, Christine was staring at them both.
“It looks like you and your gran have a wonderful relationship,” she said, the wistfulness obvious in her tone.
Sadie nodded. “We do.” She caught herself before her tone became more scathing than would be helpful. “Gran’s always been good to me.”
Christine nodded, and Sadie saw a few more tears leak down her mother’s face.
“She’s always been a pleasure to live with,” Elsie said, without malice, and Sadie’s chest swelled with pride and love.
“You probably wouldn’t think that, I guess,” Sadie said quietly, looking at her mum. “But for some reason you couldn’t see how much I’d changed by the time you…that night.” She forced herself to speak calmly in spite of the conflicting emotions running through her. It would be too easy to just blame it all on her parents, no matter how bad their final decision had been. “I was really working hard to turn myself around. I did some bloody stupid things when I was younger. I appreciate now, as an adult, how much trouble that was for you. But it did really hurt me when you couldn’t see the changes in me. I was trying, Mum, trying so hard to be a better person. To get an education. To keep myself out of trouble.” She stopped as the anger threatened to swamp her again.
Christine shook her head. “I was blind to it. I can’t even explain it now. I became so used to expecting the worst from you, I…I couldn’t see anything else.”
“I know, Mum, it’s—”
“I know it’s twelve years too late,” Christine interjected. “But, I’m sorry.” Her voice broke. “I’m so sorry for everything that day and for everything that led up to it. For everything I didn’t say as I let him throw you out. Everything I should have done and didn’t.”
Christine’s tears fell freely, and she made no effort to stop them. Sadie sat absolutely still on the couch, shocked at what she was hearing.
“I wanted that to be the one thing I said to you, if you visited. If nothing else, I wanted you to know that.” Christine’s voice was firm on that last statement, her fingers gripping the armrests of her chair.
To see this much emotion from her mother, this much regret, tore at Sadie. Why couldn’t they have talked like this back then?
“I’m sorry, too, Mum.” The apology hadn’t been planned, but as the words left her mouth, the rightness of them lifted something in Sadie. Only by both acknowledging all that had led up to that fateful night could they hope to have a chance at redemption and reconciliation. “I’m sorry for causing you so much trouble. I never meant to. I think I just wanted to try and get your attention. I…I was jealous of Izzy, and how perfect she seemed to be in your eyes. So I lashed out and did the stupidest things possible to make you notice me. Only it backfired, because you just thought less of me instead.” She could feel a sob threatening and hurriedly reached for her coffee to take a big gulp.
“Oh, Sadie,” Christine said hoarsely. “I…I don’t—” She broke off, her hands flying up to cover her face. Her body shook with her sobs, and before Sadie knew what she was doing, she’d pushed herself off the couch and was across the room. She knelt on the floor beside her mum’s legs, wrapping her arms around her weakened body. She heard Elsie sob quietly behind them, but all she could focus on was how hard her mum was hugging her back and how good it felt. Their tears mingled on the blanket beneath them as they cried, and cried, for twelve lost years and a relationship they could never have.
After a few minutes, Christine gently pushed her away so that she could reach for the box of tissues alongside her chair. They pulled one each from the box and wiped their faces.
“Finish your coffee,” Christine said gently. “And let me try and explain everything that went wrong back then.”
Sadie stood and walked back to sit down on the couch. Picking up her mug in shaky hands, she took a few sips. It was difficult to swallow around the lump in her throat.
“Remember, you don’t have to do it all today, Mum,” she said quietly. “You look pretty tired.”
Christine waved her hand. “No, I need to. You deserve to know it all.” She wiped at her eyes again, then settled herself back against her chair. “I was obsessed with my place in our local society,” she said, frowning. “I look back now, and I don’t recognise myself. I’d always been a bit full of airs and graces, but somehow I’d just got completely carried away with it when he got elected to council. Up myself, I think Izzy called it.”
Sadie chuckled, surprising herself at how natural that reaction was, despite what she was being told.
Christine sighed. “Is that true, what you said about being jealous of Izzy and how we treated you in comparison to her?”
Sadie nodded slowly. “Yeah. Izzy could do no wrong, because she was always smarter than me. When I didn’t bring home glowing reports and grades, neither of you seemed that interested. Not even disappointed, actually, just not interested.” She shook her head. “And you were both so busy with everything that meant something to you. Anything else I wanted to achieve, like basketball, you wouldn’t give any energy to.” The resentment in Sadie’s tone was palpable.
Her mum flinched at the harsh words, but Sadie pressed on. Since they were having this exchange, it all had to be said.
“It’s why I stopped playing—you were never around or willing to drive me to games, or practices. And he barely even knew I was alive.” Sadie was amazed she could say all this without spilling over into a screaming rage again. But this version of her mother was so receptive to what she was saying, wanted to hear it, that Sadie’s rage didn’t need to come into it. Anger, yes—she couldn’t shy away from that. But the deep rage she’d feared she’d express, like the one that had overtaken her earlier, had seeped away with her mother’s openness, her simple yet powerful acknowledgement of all that she had done wrong.
“But I know, now, that all that bad behaviour did was just push you two further away from me, give you more ammunition to see me as the troublemaker. My school counsellor, Mrs Duncan, helped me see how self-destructive all that gang stuff was. I guess the problem was I never took the time to sit down and talk to you about what she was teaching me and what I was learning from it.”
Christine shook her head. “I had no idea. But then, equally, I didn’t pay enough attention to notice all the changes in you.” She paused, pulling haphazardly at threads in the blanket with her fingertips. “Knowing what’s happening to me now seems to have opened something up in my mind during the past week.” She turned to gaze out of the window. “It’s as if I’ve stepped outside myself, somehow, and I’m looking at me as if I am an observer, a reviewer of the life I’ve lived. And, God, I am not proud of some of the things I’ve done.” She turned back and stared at Sadie. “And the worst I’ve done is let him talk me into kicking you out. Abandoning you.”
Sadie trembled, and heat flashed through her body. The word abandoned was her worst trigger. Suddenly she was back there in the kitchen, watching his red-faced tirade, her mum immobile and silent beside him. She stood as sharp anger knifed through her. Uncontrollable.
“You just sat there, Mum!” The words spilled out of her, her voice cracking with the effort not to shout. “You didn’t say a word. Not one fucking word.” She’d never sworn at home as a kid, and the word somehow amplified in the air between them. “You…you made me feel like I was nothing to you.” Her voice cracked completely, and she struggled to continue talking. But she had to finish. “He stood there accusing me of s-something I didn’t do, and t-telling me you’d both decided I had to go, and y-you said nothing! How c-could you do that, Mum? How could you—”
She stopped, her anger dissipating like a spent wave. Christine beckoned her over and Sadie went, her steps stumbling, her eyes unseeing. She was pulled into an intense hold, her mother’s arms around her neck, pressing Sadie’s face into her chest. Sadie’s tears dampened the V of skin that was revealed by the opening of her mother’s shirt. She was vaguely aware of her mum saying the words “I’m sorry,” over and over again.
How long they stayed like that, with her mum rocking her, Sadie didn’t know.
Eventually, pulling herself away from her mother’s embrace, she excused herself to visit the bathroom. She washed her hands and splashed cold water on her face. Her emotions were all over the place, and she was exhausted.
When she walked back into the lounge room, there was fresh coffee on the table, and Elsie looked as if she’d spent some time composing herself too.
“Thanks for the coffee, Gran.”
Elsie smiled and patted her arm.
The three women sipped their coffees in silence, until Christine broke it with a question Sadie least expected.
“So, do you have a boyfriend?”
Sadie stared at her mother. What the—?
She glanced at Elsie, who looked as bemused as Sadie felt.
She turned back to her mother. “Mum, I’m a lesbian. I told you that years ago.”
Her mother’s eyes widened, and she raised a trembling hand to her mouth.
“But…but I thought…?” She shook her head.
“Thought what? That I only said it to piss you off?” Just when they were making such good progress, she thought wryly. She hadn’t anticipated having to deal with this on top of everything else.
“Well… Yes.” Christine’s voice was tight. “And you were so young. How could you have known something like that at that age? And is that really how you want to live your life?”
Sadie snorted. “Mum, I knew when I was fourteen. And yes, it is exactly how I want to live my life.” Oh great, her mother may yet turn out to be a homophobe. Perfect.
