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Adam was gazing around, much as I was. “Isn’t it gorgeous?”
“It reminds me of a picture book I had when I was little. “Snow White” or “Little Red Riding Hood” or something. My f-favourite bit was always when she was in the forest.” I found myself leaning against Adam’s upper arm as we walked, wanting to be closer to him in our own little fairy tale. “I know that’s supposed to be scary. But it looked like this, w-with the light all green and gold, and I always thought how nice it would be, to be there instead of where I was.”
Adam released my hand, but only so he could slide his arm around my waist instead. “That’s…”
“Weird?” I suggested.
“It’s not weird. It’s just you. And your grandmother sounds like a piece of work.”
“Oh.” I knew it was wrong to think ill of the dead. But what if the dead were awful? “You know how it is. Different generation. Different values. Lived through a war. Raised my fathersingle-handedly. I wasn’t even allowed to tell her I was gay in case—” I paused. “Actually, I don’t even know in casewhat.It was upsetting for her, somehow?” Bitterness washed over my tongue. “I w-wish I had. I wish I’d been able to make my feelings matter just once.”
The canal was wide enough now that there was space for a couple of narrowboats to moor. There was no sign of Marius though.
“The ironic thing,” I added, “was that she was the one always telling me to speak up.”
Adam’s hold on me tightened. “Some people aren’t worth speaking to.”
We walked a little further. Across the waterway, the trees were reaching out to each other like long lost friends, their branches brushing like fingertips. The question Adam wasn’t asking hung listlessly in the air.
“I’m not ready to talk to my mother yet,” I said.
“I’m not saying you should.”
“But youthinkI should.”
“Well”—Adam lofted a sigh into the quiet air—“I think there’s already enough leaving in the world. So maybe there’s something to be said for people who want to come back.”
He was talking about Sioban, I knew. But this wasn’t the same. “She did leave me, Adam.” As soon as I uttered them, I heard the child in my words. “She left mewith them.”
“I know, petal. I know.” Turning his head, he kissed the edge of my brow. “But it’s like she said in her letter, she was very young when she married your father.”
“Old enough to have a baby.”
“Younger than you are now.”
That brought me up short. I spent my days among pieces of lost time. The history discarded even by those who lived it. And yet this was such a disorientating perspective on my own life. My mother and I—who I had always regarded as irredeemably separated—travellers on the same path all along, my present catching up with her past, and our future a meeting place if we made it one.
“She…she could have taken me with her,” I said. But then I thought of my father, and my grandmother, and their terrible sureties, and I knew she could not have.
Adam said nothing.
I thought of my mother’s letter. The handwriting I hadknownwas hers even though I’d never seen it before. It had been a long time since I’d been able to bring myself to read it. “I’ve p-probably made them sound like monsters.”
“Your dad and gran?”
“They’re not—they neverabusedme.”
“You don’t have to abuse someone to be a bad father or a bad grandmother. You don’t have to abuse someone to hurt them.”
I caught the shadow of old shame in his voice. “Please don’t compare yourself to my father. It’s not fair to anyone. You were too young to be caring for a family. And he…he didn’t know how to care about anything.”
“Edwin…”
Adam stopped walking, put down his bag of terrible wine, and drew me fully into his arms. And we stood there together, wrappedin green and gold and each other, for long, long minutes. Finally, I tucked my head against his shoulder and turned my gaze up to Adam’s. His eyes were a little wet, which always made them look darker, like freshly tilled earth.
“It was the way he was raised,” I said. “To be strong and hard and d-decisive and everything a man should be.” I sniffed, old injustices like barbed wire in my throat. “Why is that everything a man should be? Why is it wrong to w-want to be other things?”
“It isn’t wrong.”
