Chapter 130 Change of mind

Chapter 130 Change of mind
Alexa’s POV 
The drive back to my mom’s house had a different feeling from the drive there. Going there I was tight with anticipation, not knowing what the outcome would be. Some weight, but coming back now, I knew.
Her face when she came through that door. The one second of stillness and then… mummy… at a volume completely unsuited to a waiting room. The arms. The hair in my face. The extremely serious declaration of her secret-keeping credentials delivered with dignity of someone presenting a professional qualification.
I knew.
She was okay.
We were okay.
The thing I had been carrying since I left the house had not disappeared. It was still there, but the worst version of what I had feared had not happened.
She had not looked at me with the eyes of a child who had been failed beyond repair, but has chosen to run across a room and held on.
That was everything.
I was smiling before I turned onto Catherine’s street. A real one. The kind that arrived without asking permission and sat on my face with the easy confidence of something that belonged there.

Catherine was in the sitting room when I came in.
Not the kitchen for once, she was in the armchair by the window with a book and the reading glasses she also pretended she didn’t need.
She looked up when I came through the door.
She took in my face and put the book down.
“What happened to you?” she said.
“Nothing happened to me,” I said.
“You look…” She tilted her head. “Happy.”
“Is that surprising?”
“Given the last several weeks?” She raised an eyebrow. “Somewhat.”
I crossed the room and dropped onto the sofa beside her armchair and then kept going, leaning sideways until my head was on her shoulder in the way I had done since I was approximately nine years old and that she had never once commented on or made uncomfortable.
She put her book down fully.
“Good day?” she said.
“Good day,” I confirmed.
She was quiet for a moment. Then… “Are you going to tell me why?”
“Later,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything later.”
She made the sound she made ehich meant she was accepting the information she wasn’t fully satisfied with but had decided not to push on. Then she picked her book back up, while I stayed where I was with my head on her shoulder and the afternoon sitting room around us and the particular peace of a place that had always been safe.
After a few minutes she said, without looking up from the book….
“You have your father’s smile. When it actually shows up.”
I looked at the window.
“Oh,” I just said, not ready to start a conversation that may ruin my mood.
She turned a page.
I sat up after a while , the shoulder was comfortable but I had things to do and staying on my mother’s shoulder indefinitely was not going to accomplish them. I pressed a kiss to her cheek, quick and genuine, the kind that landed before she could do anything about it and stood up.
She made a sound of mild surprise.
“Going upstairs,” I said.
“Dinner is at seven,” she said. To the book.
“I’ll be down.”
I went upstairs.

My room had the afternoon light in it at this hour coming through the curtains in the warm way of late afternoon, lower and golden. I closed the door m, kicked my shoes off and sat on the edge of the bed.
I picked up my phone and found her contact.
It rang twice before she picked.
“Hello.” Her voice was warm, present and slightly breathless in the way of someone who had been doing something and had stopped to answer.
“Are you running?” I said.
“I was in the middle of carrying something,” Nora said. “Heavy thing. Very inconveniently timed phone call.”
“Put the heavy thing down.”
There was a thud sound, like something being set on a surface. Then… “Done. Hello.”
“Hello,” I said. I was smiling again. The same one from the car. Still there, apparently. “How are you?”
“Good,” she said. And then, with more specificity…“I’m really good.Harlow is treating me well.”
“Tell me more.” I said.
“Rosa gave me more responsibility this week,” she said. “I’m doing the lunch prep now as well as the evening service. She explained it by saying I wasn’t slow which I think is the highest compliment she gives.”
“That is absolutely the highest compliment she gives.”
“I thought so.” She pause and I could hear the smile in it. “The Lex work is going well. Your contact there, Clara, she’s very organized. She sent me a full brief and a timeline and I have been working through it.” Shepaused again. 
“It’s good work Alexa. Interesting work. I didn’t expect to find it interesting.”
“I told you it would be.”
“You did,” she conceded. “I’m choosing not to make a thing of that.”
I laughed.
The room around me was warm and golden. I sat on the edge of my childhood bed and laughed at something Nora said on the phone and the simplicity of it, the complete ordinary simplicity of a phone call between two people who knew each other well…was its own kind of gift.
“So Harlow is treating you right?” I said.
She was quiet for a moment. Thinking about it properly rather than just answering.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.” A pause. “I went to the market on Saturday. The one at the end of the high street. I bought vegetables I didn’t strictly need because they looked good and because I could.” Another pause, smaller. “That sounds like nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” I said.
“It felt significant,” she said. “Standing at a market stall choosing vegetables because they looked good.” A breath. “Five years of not choosing anything. And then…vegetables.”
“Vegetables,” I agreed.
“The apartment has good light on Saturday mornings,” she said. “I didn’t know that until this week. The south-facing window does something different on Saturdays. I don’t know why. I’m going to accept it as a gift and not investigate.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Good,” I said. My voice had gone slightly rough and I cleared it. “That’s good Nora.”
“It is,” she said simply.
We were quiet for a moment. The comfortable kind. The kind that had been earned.
“How did it go?” she said then. “With your family.”
“I saw Aria today,” I said.
A beat. “And?”
“She ran across the room,” I said. “Full speed, and hugged me with both arms.”
She was silent for a while, before she said… 
“Of course she did.”
“You could have led with that,” I said. “Before I spent two weeks working up to it.”
“You needed to work up to it yourself,” she said. “I couldn’t do that part for you.”
“She made me promise not to disappear without telling her again,” I said. “Then she told me she’s an excellent secret keeper because she kept Maria’s secret about a birthday cake for two whole weeks.”
Nora laughed. A full and genuine one. I had not heard it enough times to have gotten used to it and I was not going to get used to it now because this was a phone call and phone calls ended and I was going to receive it for what it was and let that be enough.
“What about the master?” she said. When the laugh had settled.
“The master,” I repeated.
“Leon.”
His name on her mouth in this context — easy, almost affectionate in the specific way that people became almost affectionate about significant figures in each other’s lives when enough had been processed, landed without the weight it might once have carried.
“I have to prepare for that one,” I said.
“How do you prepare for Leon Ashford?”
“Carefully,” I said. “With full honesty and no exits planned.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“He loves you,” she said.
“I know.”
“Whatever happened and whatever you did and whatever needs to be repaired, he loves you. That hasn’t gone anywhere.” A pause. “Men like Leon don’t stop loving things. They redirect it sometimes. They put it somewhere more manageable. But it doesn’t go.”
I looked at the ceiling.
“I know,” I said again.
“Go to him,” she said. “When you’re ready. Not before. But don’t wait too long after ready either because waiting after ready is just fear in a trench coat.”
I made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and something more complicated.
“Nora.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. For the apartment and the remote job and the conversation we had and all of it.” I paused. “For letting me go properly.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Thank you for going,” she said. Simply.
We stayed on the line for another moment without speaking.
Then…
“Go,” she said. “Eat your mother’s food. Sleep in your childhood bed. Save your energy for Leon.”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Tomorrow,” she agreed.
“Goodnight Nora.”
“Goodnight Alexa.”
The call ended.
I put the phone on the bedside table and lay back on the bed.
Looked at the ceiling.
My childhood ceiling. The one that had witnessed various versions of me at various levels of crisis, joy and everything between. The crack near the window that had been there since a bad winter storm. The light fitting that was slightly off-center, had always been slightly off-center, and was apparently going to remain slightly off-center indefinitely.
I lay there and I took stock.
Aria — running across a room. Arms. Strawberry shampoo. Secret keeper of professional standing.
Nora — Saturday morning light through a south-facing window. Vegetables chosen because they looked good. Clara and the well-organized brief. Rosa and the highest compliment she gave.
Catherine downstairs with her book and her raised eyebrow and you have your father’s smile when it actually shows up.
Leon tomorrow.
The thought of it was still significant. Still had weight. Still required… as I had told Nora… preparation of the careful honest variety with no exits planned.
But it didn’t have the quality of dread it had carried before today.
Today had done something to it.
Aria’s arms had done something to it.
I was back. Not fully, not in the daily presence sense, not yet, that was what tomorrow was for and the days after it. But back in the most important sense. Back in the sense that I had come home to a room I recognized and a child who ran across rooms and a mother who noticed my smile and a phone call with someone who had good light on Saturday mornings.
Back.
I rolled over on the bed carefully, the wounds still having opinions, but manageable opinions’ and pressed my face into the pillow.
And I smiled into it like an idiot.
Like a person who had been through a significant amount of things and had come out the other side of them with her daughter’s arms around her neck and a phone call from a woman buying vegetables at a Saturday market and a ceiling she recognized.
Like someone who was going to be okay.
Like someone who already was.