Good Girl Bad (51)

“I’ve moved back in to Rebecca’s house, while we try to get through this,” he’d told her earlier that week, hastily adding, “Not in a romantic way. Just in a family way. To make things a bit more stable for the girls. To support them, and Rebecca, too.” His eyes had drifted away, over her head, unfocused, and she thought that maybe he would support them all, maybe they would all be okay. With time, and external support, too.

Where do you even start to recover from something like this?

Now, she meets his eyes as she passes. She doesn’t quite smile. She hopes her body language conveys her acknowledgement that he’s there. He’s trying. She hopes he will do better.

She’s rooting for him, even.

Then she steps off the curb and gets in to her car.





Epilogue





Six Months Later

When Rebecca gets home from work, Nate hands her a gin.

She smiles at him, and asks about his day.

“Same, same,” he murmurs, following her out to the veranda, where they sit in silence for a while.

In truth, it had been a hard day. Tabby has bad days, sometimes. And somehow her bad days overflow onto Genevieve, and they’re all having a bad day. But that’s okay.

Now, Tabby comes out the front door, and startles when she sees her parents sitting there. She bristles, her eyes frosty. “I’m going to work,” she says. She glances at Rebecca, a long sideways glance. There’s something slightly spiteful about it. She knows she doesn’t need to say any more. She’d explained it all clearly enough when she first starting volunteering at the women’s refuge. How she wanted to help other people like her.

At the time, she’d been teary and idealistic. Fresh off her new understanding of her mother, she launched herself into this new endeavor, wanting to support all the hurt people in the world. Nate and Rebecca had been tentatively supportive. They’d worried, parental, over coffee, whether she needed to be directing that inward, and helping herself, rather than outward, and supporting others. But in the end they’d agreed that a sense of purpose seemed galvanizing for their daughter. She had something to believe in, something that was getting her out of bed.

Also, the refuge had her doing administrative things off-site at the organization’s office, not actively supporting distressed women at the refuge location. So they were supportive and attentive. They asked questions and listened to difficult answers.

Now, Rebecca can see the accusation in Tabby’s eyes.

I’m going to work to help all the women crushed by people like you, her eyes say, daring Rebecca to revert to type. Still just waiting for it. Bracing for it.

She’d been waiting for six months, and it hadn’t happened yet.

Rebecca isn’t complacent, though. She still feels the familiar rage. She still grapples with it. She just has better resources to make a different choice when it rears its ugly head.

She also has Nate still living with them, offering support and, she supposes, a judgmental eye. She thinks about him moving back out and feels a flash of panic. Well, he can’t for now. Her parents are staying at his house. They’ve been amazing, even Rebecca has to admit that. Taking the girls to therapy, sometimes twice a week. Coming by to cook dinner on days where Rebecca feels overwhelmed, or unable to cope. Sometimes just sitting with her when she has all the feelings, but none of the words. Last week, they brought an old shoe box full of photos. They didn’t open it. They popped it in the cupboard above the fridge, and told her it was there. “For if and when you’re ready,” Cheryl had said. Rebecca could see how hard she was working not to cry.

She hadn’t looked in the shoebox yet. She wants to. But she’s not ready yet.

“What time will you finish?” she asks her daughter. “Nate or I can pick you up, if it’s going to be late.” Usually Tabby does a couple of hours after school during business hours. Tonight is the first time she’s been asked to help out after hours. The thought makes Rebecca anxious. There will be less staff around. Whatever Tabby tells her about the nature of her role, she can’t help worry that perhaps Tabby will need to call the refuge, might be exposed to more distress. Or even vengeful exes, who can’t find out the location of the refuge, and turn up to the office instead.

She still has trouble equating these men’s behaviors to her own. She has to remind herself. I did that. I did that, too.

She still has to make conscious space for Tabby to be working through her own pain and her own healing in this way. With something so riling, so close to her own pain, her own healing. Of all the things to choose, Tabby chose one that forces her to think about her own behavior, every day.

Rebecca supposes there’s something unconsciously just right about that.

“I’m okay on my bike,” Tabby says, and hesitates, looking from Nate to Rebecca and back again. Rebecca finds she is having trouble keeping her breath steady. She knows what Tabby is thinking: can I kiss Dad goodbye, and not Mom? She knows that when Tabby thinks she’s alone with Nate, she always kisses him goodbye.

When Nate is with Rebecca, she kisses neither of them.

“Well, just call if it gets later than you thought, or if you change your mind. You know you can call Nan, too, if you prefer.” Calling Cheryl “Nan” feels so weird to Rebecca, but that’s what both Cheryl and the girls seem to prefer, so Rebecca had asked if she should refer to her that way too. Cheryl, as usual, looked as though she might cry.