Page 121 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
I thought this was what I wanted—I could have sworn it was—just one single unconditionally given crumb of love. But now that I have it, I don’t know what to do with it, I don’t know how to feel. I should feel happy? Or grateful?
Relieved?
But all I feel is my headache.
I pull my hand back. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “Let’s keep going.”
The rest of the day is no better.
Our site in Wiltshire has started to flood. A German company won a project we were bidding for on the Isle of Wight. The team working on the final parts of the Thornchapel maze removal are encountering more rock under the soil than we planned for and they need me to sign off on bigger equipment.
And I’m worried about Delphine. Something was wrong yesterday, in the shower, something was off, but I didn’t have time to delve, and anyway, it seemed rude to pry if she didn’t want to tell me. But then why didn’t she want to tell me? And is it even fair to expect her to open up when I don’t do the same with her? When I haven’t told her about my parents’ potential divorce, about how hard it is to be my mother’s daughter, how lonely I feel even when I’m in a room full of people?
When I tell her she’s wrong when she says she loves me?
God. Of course she doesn’t feel comfortable telling me what’s upsetting her. Not when I’ve treated any talk of emotion from her as complete anathema.
Tonight, I decide, pressing my fingertips to my eyes. I really want to massage my temples, but it would only make the headache worse. I’ll fix it tonight.
She wants to go to the club for the exhibition. We’ll play there, and when we get home, I’ll insist she opens up to me and tells me what was bothering her yesterday. I’ll fix it, like I have to fix everything.
I try to ignore the lacy tendril of bitterness that accompanies that last thought. I’m not bitter. It’s fine. It’s fine.
It’s all fine.
So if it’s fine, then will you do the same? Will you open up to her? About your parents? About how hard you work and how it never seems to be enough for anyone? About how you wish that people would be there for you for a change?
I scowl across my desk, as if the thought has crawled out of my head and taken shape in front of me.
What craven thinking, what cowardice. Wanting to dump my pointless and cliched fusses on the lap of someone I care about when I can carry them just as easily by myself. As if the small, stupid dissatisfactions of my life aren’t weaknesses enough on their own. As if I must compound the sins by making them Delphine’s problem too.
No. No, I refuse to do that. I may not go to church anymore, but I know what’s moral and what’s right, and burdening other people isn’t it.
“Rebecca,” Shahil says, sticking his head through the door. “There’s someone from a rural green energy company on the phone, and they’re saying they’d previously secured permission to run lines through the lacrosse field at the Wiltshire school. Should I put them through?”
I stare at him a minute, my headache fusing with the potential crisis at hand. “And they only just now bothered to remember this? And the council couldn’t have told us this last year?”
Shahil is very skilled at the rueful assistant shrug—the I’m on your side, those fucking twats shrug. “Would you like me to close the door?”
“I’d like you,” I say, my scalp screaming and my eyes pricking with the tears I always get with a bad headache, “to drive to Wiltshire and politely murder everyone who had a hand in these planning permissions.”
“Certainly,” Shahil says cheerfully. “I can’t drive though. Shall I walk instead?”
“Yes. A pilgrimage, like in Chaucer. Find a saucy widow to walk with you.”
He grins. “I do like experienced women. Shall I put them through now?”
“Ugh. Fine.”
“And would you like me to bring you ibuprofen for your headache?”
I glare at him. “No.”
“You’d feel better . . . ”
“My stomach lining in ten years wouldn’t.” Taking a pain reliever feels like a concession, a dangerous one. A surrender to weakness, and I already have enough weakness slithering inside me.
I refuse to admit entrance to any more.
