Page 82 of Next Time Will Be Our Turn
Still wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes and slides into my bed. When I ask her what woke her, she’ll sometimes say, “I dreamed about Mom.” I’ll hold her tight and rub her back until she falls asleep and I’ll think: “Iris? Did you come to say hi? I wish you’d come say hi to me.”
I miss you every day, Cici. Remember when you told me to stop calling you that? God, you were such a snot. If you were here, I’d call you that all the time just to piss you off. Oh, hey, guess what? I’m famous now. Seriously! I was on Forbes. Well, Forbes Asia, but still. I can just see you rolling your eyes and calling me a massive sellout. I didn’t sell out though. I got here by doing what I love and believe in,and it’s all thanks to you, Iris. I wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t pushed me to go back to school. If you hadn’t paid for my master’s degree. So thank you. I love you, and I can’t wait to see you again.
With love,
Your sister
An Interlude
IZZY
I wipe my eyes and look up from the letter to see that Nainai is also dabbing at her eyes. I realize now that more than half of the pile of letters are addressed to Iris and not to Ellery.
“How often did you write to…uh, to Grandma?” Even though I’ve always known that Iris was my biological grandmother, it never stopped feeling weird to call her that. She was a stranger to me. She was a stranger even to my mom.
Nainai shrugs. “Whenever I felt the need to. And of course, every time your mom has a birthday, I write a little update for Iris.”
“Does Mom know?” It’s so hard to think of Mom as Hazel, the child Nainai had given everything up to protect.
Nainai narrows her eyes. “I’m not sure, actually. I might have mentioned it here and there, but I don’t think she ever asked to read the letters. So she’s probably forgotten that I write them. It doesn’t matter. They’re for Iris, not Hazel. Hazel has alife of her own, and that was all I wanted for her. Even though she’s grown into someone more…traditional than I would’ve liked, that was her choice to make. Sometimes, I wonder if the family is so conscious of public image because of the company, because they all grew up in the limelight. But at the end of the day, I can’t dwell on that too much. I gave them the best education I could, I made sure to tell them to stay true to themselves, and they’re free to make their own paths in life.”
“Oh, Nainai.” There are no words. I hug her narrow shoulders and lean my head against hers. “I can’t believe you went through so much.”
She pats my hand. “I did, but I also got so much out of it.”
I sniff and smile at her. “Okay, I’m ready for the good part now. How did you reconnect with Ellery? Tell me everything. I need all the details.”
She looks up in surprise. “What?”
“Well, you’re with her now, so tell me how that happened.”
“Oh.” Her face falls. “Oh, Izzy. I’m not with Ellery.”
“What?” It’s like a gut punch. I actually feel winded. “But your—female partner—”
“My girlfriend’s name is Sawyer. I met her when I traveled to Spain last summer.”
“But Ellery—” My world is spinning. This whole time, I’d listened with the happy confidence of someone who knows that the story would end with Nainai and Ellery as a couple, and now I’m realizing it doesn’t. Not even close. And it feels like such a betrayal.
Nainai seems to sense my grief. “Darling. I meant what I said about leaving Ellery in the past. At least while I was with your grandfather. I couldn’t betray him again, not after hehelped me win Hazel back. I was determined to be as good a wife to him as I could be.”
“But didn’t you ever look her up?” I cry. “What about when Yeye passed away three years ago?”
“Well, I grieved him for a year, then yes, I looked Ellery up.”
“And?”
“She’d passed away too. Two years before Yeye died. From what I can tell, she led a happy life. She won several journalism awards, she did another poetry fellowship at some point, she traveled the world. She was unmarried though.” Her voice grows wistful. “I like to think that she meant it when she said she’d wait for me.”
“No,” I whisper. “No, it’s not supposed to end like this.”
“Oh, Izzy,” Nainai says, running her fingers through my hair. “Silly girl. You know better than that. Life rarely gives a shit how it’s supposed to turn out. That’s why you have to grab the bull by the horns and shake it until it gives you what you want.”
