She had become exactly what she had promised not to be. Another adult who abandoned them. Another person who made promises she could not keep.
“I’m sorry,” she said. The words came out rough, stripped of the polish she usually maintained.
“I did not want you to find out this way.”
“How did you want us to find out?” Anna crossed her arms, a gesture so reminiscent of her father that it made Mel’s chest ache.
“Did you want us to wake up and find you gone? Did you want to read about it in a letter? Did you want to spend the rest of our lives wondering what we did wrong?”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“Because…” Mel stopped.
Because your father possesses my entire affection, yet he regards me with indifference. I have been made privy to his true opinion, that I am of too humble a birth for his consideration, and such a realisation makes my continued presence here insupportable.
Because being here, with all of you, is too painful when I know I can never truly belong.
She could not say any of those things. They were adult complications, adult heartbreaks, and the children standing before her deserved better than to be burdened with them.
“Because sometimes people have to go,” she said instead.
“Even when they don’t want to. Even when leaving hurts more than staying.”
“That’s not a reason.” Thistle spoke for the first time, her voice carrying the particular intensity that characterised all her observations.
“That’s an excuse. You taught us the difference. A reason is based on evidence and logic. An excuse is what people use when they don’t want to tell the truth.”
Mel stared at her youngest charge, at the wild hair and the clutched toad and the fierce, intelligent eyes that saw too much.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “It’s an excuse.”
“So tell us the real reason.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the real reason would hurt you more than my leaving.”
Viola made a sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
“You think leaving won’t hurt us?”
“I think…” Mel’s voice cracked. She had spent a lifetime learning to control her emotions, to present a composed face to a world that offered no mercy to women who showed weakness. But standing here, in the cold entrance hall, facing the three children who had somehow become the centre of her world, she could not maintain the pretense.
“I think that I have done something very foolish,” she said slowly.
“I have allowed myself to care about things I cannot have. I have let myself imagine a future that was never possible. And now I find that staying here, pretending everything is as it was, is more than I can bear.”
“What things can’t you have?” Anna asked.
“That is not a question I can answer.”
“Because we’re too young?”
“Because the answer involves your father.”
