Page 48 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
Was she with me not because I was Rebecca but because I was a mistress?
I knew I had no right to ask those questions. After all, I was the one who kept telling myself I only wanted Delphine for the submission. I was the one saying this was about kink and sex only, I was the one who told Delphine she didn’t really love me. But every time she gasped as some other Dom showed off their skills, every time she leaned forward to see more of the flogging, more of the dripping wax, more of the sneers, praises, and comforts that the Doms gave their subs, the surlier I became. Eventually, I dragged Delphine home and pleasured her until she was hoarse with screaming, and even then I found myself curling around her like a dragon as she slept. Like someone would come and take her from me.
But I’m better prepared for it now. I know not to trust those jealousies—like all feelings, they’re just chemicals, just oxygen and glucose flooding different parts of my brain in response to external stimuli. It’s the brain of a mammal trying to avoid pain, trying to avoid the sting of rejection because social rejection meant death when we evolved. It’s a system ten thousand years out of date, a system made for humans on the fringes of survival, and should obviously be ignored now.
And anyway, maybe I’m not frightened, maybe I’m merely possessive, and that’s to be expected.
I have more than voyeurism planned for us today. I want to play with her before the gala, so she can have stripes underneath her gorgeous gown, so that under all her silk and chiffon will be a reddened bottom and a needy cunt, waiting for me to soothe it.
You’re going to have to make her wait for it, I remind myself sternly. You can’t just give it to her the minute she bats those doe eyes at you.
My terrible secret is that there’s an urge in me, as deep as it is unfamiliar, to simply spoil her. All of the time. To pet her hair and play with her tits and kiss her pussy to my heart’s content, and to withhold nothing, even the things it makes me flinch to give. My hunger for her is as bottomless as her eyes. And so I don’t even know who I am anymore when I’m with her. Am I the strict Mistress, demanding perfection? The naughty Domme, spanking her for fun? An insatiable lover, keeping her up into the small hours of the night? A girlfriend, who texts her and cooks her supper and listens to her chatter about her day with photographers and business managers and fashion reps?
Something more?
Because it is something more, isn’t it, when I find myself watching her face as she sleeps, when seeing certain Pantones in a prospectus makes me think of her, when certain ads on the Tube make me think of her, when working, eating, breathing—they all make me think of her.
And so it’s no wonder I’m consumed today, thinking of this evening and my plans. Thinking of tonight, when she’ll be trembling and slick and oh-so-sweet.
But there’s one unpleasant task between me and leaving the office to go fetch her, and there’s no sense in delaying it. I give up on the site plans, deciding I’ll pack them up and work on them after she’s asleep tonight, and I go to close my office door for a semblance of privacy. I feel foolish as I do it, but I’ll feel more foolish if I don’t and someone overhears us.
Not because I’m embarrassed about calling my own mother, but because I am embarrassed of myself; I’m embarrassed of how she makes me behave.
I take a deep breath and dial.
Lydia Quartey picks up the phone on the second ring, answering in English. “Becky.”
She’s the only one who calls me that. I take a deep breath. “Hi, Ma.”
“I was hoping you’d call today,” she says, and I hear paragraphs of meaning in that one sentence alone. I close my eyes a moment. I can do this.
But before I can find an easy pleasantry to lead with, Ma asks me her favorite question. “Have you been going to church?”
“I—” I hate lying, but this is a truth with a heavy cost. “As much as I’m able. I have to travel a lot over the weekends.”
“The Lord says, ‘Honor the Sabbath Day.’ How will you honor the Lord’s day if you’re honoring work more? God must be first in your heart, Becky.”
Tell him he can come first in my heart when his preachers stop preaching that my heart is unnatural and wrong.
I shake my head at myself. I have more control than this.
“I’ll think about making more time to go. How is Ima?” I ask, knowing that turning the conversation to my grandmother will give me a few moments’ respite.
My mother’s words spill into a river of chatter—half English, half Ga, moving seamlessly between the two. Ima’s health is just bad enough to be interesting without being dangerous, and the bad health is just prolonged enough to give my mother a flavor of martyrdom as she talks about all the help she has to give Ima now.
I’m treated to a full account of it all. Then I hear about my aunts, my cousins, my godparents, and my mother’s best friend. By now I’m standing by the window again, staring down onto a lone tree growing from a bare-dirt square in the pavement below. Quartey Workshop is in a cluster of new, shiny things—glassy and open and shamelessly expensive among the still graffitied storefronts and litter-caught kerbs of the neighborhood. There’s neither a park near here, nor grass. The only flowers that exist here are purchased from black buckets and wrapped in cellophane. There’s only this one tree, and it looks as tired as I feel.
I miss Thornchapel like I miss Delphine. Like something vital has been pulled out of my body and blood is pooling in the cavity it left behind.
I close my eyes and think of Thornchapel while Ma talks. I think of the woods there, thick and carpeted with bluebells. I think of the river flashing bright and shallow. I think of my labyrinth, and how it will feel to walk it when it’s finished.
“—and Sheila’s son is in London now, you know. He’s a barrister, and doing very well for himself, I hear.”
She stops then, and I realize too late the trap I’ve wandered into.
“Oh?” I say, pitching my voice as carefully as I can.
“Well, you’re not seeing anyone, and why not a dinner, just to catch up? You haven’t seen each other since you were children, and now you’re both in London, and I think you’d like him, Becky, he’s very good-looking.”
