“Why doesn’t she come see us?” Amy countered.
“I . . . don’t know.” It was odd, now that she thought about it, how rarely Mother visited.
“It is much easier for her to travel here than for me to pack the children up and go to her.” Amy stirred the dark water in the washbasin rather more aggressively than seemed called for. “It’s one thing for you to go on your own, but it’s harder for me.”
Julianna felt guilty for having lied to her sister, but not guilty enough to confess. “It is indeed easy for Mother to come here, yet she never does,” she observed. “She didn’t even come for Christmas last year. Why do you think that is?”
“The truth? I don’t think she likes the children.”
Julianna started to protest, but Amy cut her off.
“Mind you, I believe she loves them, but I don’t think she enjoys spending time with them, and Oliver is rather a handful. I don’t think she’s constitutionally suited to babies. I hold out hope that as they get older, she might take more of an interest in them, as she seemed to do with us.”
Julianna never would have come to this conclusion on her own, but now that Amy had pointed out this tendency of Mother’s, it could not be denied. Mother had been somewhat distant when Julianna was young, but Julianna had put that down to having had more in common with Father.
“I am sorry,” Julianna said, and she meant it. “It must be terrible to be missing a beloved parent who is nearby yet . . . absents herself.” She tripped over her own words.
“I miss Father, too, of course, but in a different, less immediate way. It was Mother I spent all my time with. It was always Mother and me, and Father and you. I’m sorry you still miss him so terribly.”
“It isn’t that I still miss him, although I do, it’s more that he’s been . . . on my mind lately.”
“How so?”
Julianna told Amy about the dream, though to do so did not come naturally. “And that’s how it always ends,” she finished, “with him trying and failing to speak.”
“You are probably trying to say something to yourself.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, it isn’t as if you believe Father is actually trying to speak to you.” She set down her paddle. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Say that as if you mean it.” Amy laughed, but not unkindly.
Julianna smiled. “Of course I don’t think he’s trying to tell me something in a literal way. He isn’t sitting on a cloud looking down at us. I just . . . never considered your interpretation. But now that I have, I believe you are correct.”
“So the question is, what are you trying to tell yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sister, may I ask why you are here today?”
“I live here.”
“Yes, but why are you here in the middle of the day on a Thursday? It’s unlike you.”
Julianna’s chest had felt heavy all day. “I think I am lonely.” Either that or she had come down with consumption.
“Oh, Julie.” Amy laid a hand on Julianna’s arm. “You’ve chosen a lonely life.”
Was Amy referring to Julianna’s refusal to marry, or the fact that her chosen vocation required such an investment of time? It hardly mattered, for the point stood. Julianna suppressed her habitual reaction, which was to bristle, to be defensive, and considered that not only did Amy mean well, she had spoken the truth.
“Yes, I suppose I have. The rub is that it’s never felt lonely before.” Julianna used to spend hours alone in the office not even noticing the passage of time.
“What’s different now?”
Everything.
