Page 124 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
For the first time in a very long time, my mother gives me a genuine smile. “My daughter is very wise.”
A low battery charge notification comes up on my screen and I tap it away—and when I do, I see the time in the corner. It’s past nine now, unbearably late, and Delphine’s probably already eaten supper without me—
Oh no.
Oh fuck.
The exhibition. It was supposed to start at seven. That’s why she was texting and calling.
Oh fuck.
“Ma, I have to go,” I say, jumping to my feet and scrambling for my things. “I forgot—I’m supposed to be somewhere with Delphine. It’s important.”
“I suppose I’ve kept you long enough,” she says, but she says it lightly and not in the sighing way she might have done just an hour earlier. “Thank you for your honesty. I’m sorry for . . . a lot of things. But I want you to know I love you.”
“I love you too, Ma,” I say. It’s the truth, and I think she’s finally willing to believe it.
I do love her, even when I can’t be the only reason for her happiness.
We hang up and then I race downstairs as I call for my car.
When I get to Justine’s, Delphine isn’t there. I ask the concierge if she checked in—and she had—but he’d also seen her leaving about fifteen minutes prior. To the loft, surely, I think with some relief. I need to apologize to her—I need to grovel—and that will be much easier in private.
I try texting and calling her the whole way home from the club. It’s galling to see how many times she tried to contact me tonight. I didn’t see any of the notifications since they’d presumably come in while I had my head on the desk and wasn’t looking at the screen, but I still should have remembered our date at the exhibition. How could I have forgotten?
I’ll explain.
I’ll finally come clean about everything—how much I’ve been keeping back.
I’ll tell her I love her and she’ll be so happy, and everything will be good, so good.
I just have to get to her. That’s all.
But when I get to my lo
ft, it’s empty. There’s no Delphine. I stand in the middle of it, my hands at my sides, my heart thumping in slow, heavy beats. I feel like I’m in the middle of a bomb blast, like I am the center of an invisible crater.
Delphine is gone.
I text.
I call.
I apologize.
Jesus, how I apologize.
I don’t confess that I love her, because it feels manipulative to play that card when I’ve let her down, as if I’m using a declaration to leverage forgiveness, and I refuse to cheapen it by doing so. It’s the sort of thing that should be said in person anyway, when I can kiss her afterwards, when I can look into her eyes and hold her hand and then eventually pull her to bed.
Delph, please, I finally write in a perverse echo of what she sent me earlier. Tell me you’re okay.
I’m okay, the response comes finally. Decided to go up and stay at my parents’ for a bit while they’re gone. I missed home.
Here is your home! I desperately want to text back. But I stop myself.
Will you come back soon?
Those vexatious three dots appear, then disappear, then come back again.
