Page 78 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
She’s not going to do this. She’s not going to do this.
“Rebecca,” Daddy says, and this time, the coolness is real. This is his you’re disappointing me voice. This is his these marks are not good enough, you’re not putting in the hours voice. And something inside of her breaks—maybe it had started breaking last night with Delphine, maybe it started when she talked on the phone with her mother. Maybe it had started two decades ago, as Tea Set Barbie worshipped Red Dress Barbie to the soundtrack of her parents yelling at each other.
Rebecca turns to him and she doesn’t care that her eyes are wet and her voice is strange. “You’re here for him.”
Her father doesn’t answer, which of course, is its own answer.
She swallows the rest of her drink and stands up. If she doesn’t, she’ll scream at him. She’ll say where was this queer father when his queer daughter was alone and afraid? She’ll say how come you can be brave for yourself now, but not for me then?
“Ma’s been calling,” is what she does say. “You should call her back. She misses you.” She starts to step away.
“I offered your mother a divorce,” her father says.
She stops walking. “What?”
When he speaks now, his words are a mix of English and Ga, moving back and forth between both. “Yesterday, after I decided to be here for David. I called and told her I was going to see him again, and I offered her a divorce.”
A divorce. All those missed calls on the phone—Rebecca knows why they’re there now. She thinks through what else he said. “Wait—see him again? She already knew about you two?”
Her father nods, that frown still on his mouth. He’s still handsome with it, he’s the kind of handsome that looks better stern or sad. There’d never been a shortage of men or women in London pining for him—even clients at the Workshop, even employees—but he’s never indulged even one. Rebecca thought it was for her own sake, or her mother’s, but now she wonders if it was for the memory of David Markham alone.
“That summer at Thornchapel—I took one look at him and I knew. I called your mother and told her everything, and I also offered her a divorce, just as I have now. She said no then.”
“And now?”
Her father sighs. “She’s thinking about it. I would give her a very healthy alimony. She could support Ima and the aunties still. She would stay comfortable.”
Rebecca doesn’t respond.
“It’s past time. You know it. I know it. She knows it too, even if she’s worried about other things.”
“You’ve always been unhappy together,” Rebecca says finally. “I know that.”
“I was her last choice. Did I ever tell you that?”
Rebecca pauses. Shakes her head.
There’s a relaxing to his mouth now, as if he’s thinking of the past with some hard-earned fondness, nostalgia for the silly simplicities of youth. “She had so many beaux. She was the name on everyone’s lips, the girl every mother was trying to
matchmake her son to. I was just an apprentice architect, fresh out of school and from a family that wasn’t quite good enough.”
Rebecca has never heard this. In fact, she realizes, she knows nothing of her parents’ marriage at all, save for the misery and the strain. “So how did you end up married?”
Her father sighs. “The boy she really loved married her best friend instead, around the same time I found a job in London. I think it was London more than me she wanted then—the escape from all the gossip and prying eyes—but I didn’t care. I’d take her any way I could get her. I did love her then, you understand, even though she never loved me.”
“She loves you,” Rebecca murmurs. “She wouldn’t act the way she does if she didn’t. She asks after you all the time. She misses you.”
Samson Quartey shakes his head. “She thinks she needs me. That’s different than love.”
Rebecca’s eyes slide to Delphine, who is a living ray of sunshine on the deck, currently telling everyone a hilarious story about Auden falling in the River Cam at a party.
Is that what’s happening with Delphine? Is Delphine her own Tea Set Barbie? She needs the feeling of worshipfulness and awe that a good Mistress can provide?
Rebecca’s father keeps talking, drawing her attention back to him. “I know I was not the best father when you came out to me. I didn’t have . . . You have to understand, when I was your age, it was not possible for me to do what you did. I didn’t come out to my parents when I realized I liked men too; I hid it from them, and even from myself, for many years. I had no idea how to act when you told me, how to talk to you about it, because so few in my generation do. But I want you to know—if I’ve never told you, which I realize I haven’t—I’m proud of you. So, so proud.”
Rebecca stares down at him, her blood feeling hot and cold all at once. “What?”
He meets her gaze. Steadily. Lovingly. “I’m proud of you. You are not only brilliant, but you are brave. You chose a person to love, and you’re telling the world about her. It’s what I should have done long ago, and now instead, I’ve wasted years I didn’t have.”
