In the Distance There Is Light (27 page)

June doesn’t let me finish. She holds up her hand. “You don’t have to spell it out for me, Sophie. I don’t need a lecture.”

But I need to say this
, I think.
Not just for you, but for myself as well
. “Okay.” I shouldn’t forget that my only objective for this visit is convincing June that Dolores didn’t take advantage of my grief.

“It’s not as if I didn’t know something was going on with Dolores. When we talked, it always felt as if she was leaving something out. I thought it was the loss of Ian making her act a little funny. It made sense that way. But when she told me about you and her. Not in a million years had I expected that.”

“I know it’s a little shocking.”

“A little?” She expels a quick breath. “You think you know someone…”

“That kind of works both ways, don’t you think?”

June narrows her eyes. “I’m not finished, Sophie. Let me speak.”

I almost say “Yes, Ma’am,” but manage to swallow it with a big gulp of wine.

“Of course it’s shocking and upsetting. To think it had been going on for months. All behind my back, of course. For which I might be grateful if it wasn’t such a big thing for Dolores.” June takes a deep breath, drinks from her wine.

By now, I’ve learned not to interrupt.

“Do you love her… the same way she loves you?” she asks in a stern tone. I wonder where the big spotlight is that cops use in movies to get their suspects to confess.

“I do. I love her. I was the one who started it all. Dolores is just… so many things. You know her, so you know.” There goes my eloquence. Fat load of good rehearsing that speech did me.

“Then that’s all I need to know.” Her voice softens. “You turning up here says enough anyway.”

I sigh with relief.

“Not everyone is going to be as easygoing about this as me,” she says.

“Easygoing?” I give her a big frown. “That’s what you call easygoing?”

“I just want Dolores to be happy. That’s really, truly, all I want for her. After losing Angela and then Ian, she deserves a little bit of happiness. A little bit of comfort. Something that makes her feel good. Not everyone will feel the same. Being with you might make her feel good, but having to battle other people’s opinions about it won’t feel so good.”

“I’m well aware.”

“Hold on for a minute, will you.” June rises and disappears from the living room.

When she comes back, she’s holding a cardboard model of a very futuristic-looking house. Seeing it is like a dart puncturing the spot in my belly where most of the pain first settled. She doesn’t need to tell me it’s Ian’s. I know.

“He made this when he was only a boy. Twelve or thirteen, I think,” June says. “He already knew he wanted to be an architect. He made that dream come true, and not many of us do, Sophie. Most of our childhood dreams don’t come true.” She holds it out to me. “It’s yours now.”

I feel tears pressing up. It’s June’s way of saying she’s willing to accept my relationship with Ian’s mother.

* * *

That night, in bed—I couldn’t bear to stick to my own silly rule of no sleep-overs two nights in a row after my visit to June—we lie in silence for a while. My head rests on Dolores’ chest and I can hear the sound of her breath. Her hand strokes all the way from the nape of my neck to the small of my back, up and down and up and down. It reminds me of how I used to lie in bed like this with Ian. Almost exactly the same way as I’m lying here with his mother, except that Ian’s arms were longer and when he caressed me, his hand went all the way to my thighs.

Some things are the same, but most of them are very different. Because I’m different. I’m no longer a girl who will be caressed by Ian’s long fingers, who will press her cheek against the dark, curly hair on his chest. I’m the girl who will always remember him and love him. And I’m the girl who won’t do it alone.

I think of the model June gave me. Dolores broke down a little when I showed it to her. I told her it belonged in her house, not in my flat. He made it here. In his room, where we put it, back in its rightful place. In the room of a boy who dreamed of becoming an architect, and who became exactly that.
What else did he dream of?
I wonder, as I listen to Dolores’ breathing, to the rustle of the sheet below her elbow as she keeps stroking my back. The usual things, I guess. Ordinary dreams of an extraordinary man. A man who lives on in the love Dolores and I share. Because no matter the dreams he had left, they’ll never come true now. But, as my cheek sinks deeper against Dolores’ flesh, I dare to guess that, in that brief moment between his losing his balance and his head hitting the sidewalk, he would have dreamed that I’d find some sort of peace after his death. All I want is for him to know, somehow, somewhere, that with Dolores, I have.

 
Epilogue

At the party Dolores and I are throwing to commemorate what would have been Ian’s thirty-seventh birthday, she’s the one who gives a speech. Not everyone who felt compelled to come to his previous birthday is here, but it’s close enough. Alex and Bart have brought their little girl, who is sleeping in a cot in my office upstairs. Dolores’ colleagues from the gallery are there. Jeremy and his on-and-off boyfriend Vasily. All of mine and Ian’s friends. June and a bunch of Dolores’ arty friends. I invited my parents and for the longest time my mother insisted she and my dad wouldn’t miss it, but she bailed at the last minute, which is not un-typical, I guess.

Booze has been flowing copiously for an hour or so and I, for one, am quite tipsy. I bought a new dress. I can keep my shoulders upright without having to make too much of an effort and the chit chat flows from my lips much better than last year, when I hardly said a word to anyone. When Dolores and I were still so broken, we ended up fumbling in the pantry, hiding away, trying to salvage something that couldn’t possibly be salvaged.

Today, we’re no longer hiding.

“Thank you all for coming and raising a glass in Ian’s memory.” There’s a little crack in her voice, but these days, when her voice tends to break, it’s not with the wretched grief that it used to show. Ian’s death destroyed us, but we have started to rebuild. “I’m rather fond of the idea of making this a yearly tradition. Last year, when Sophie and I decided to have this party”—I’m standing right in front of Dolores and she fixes her gaze on me—“it was really because we had no clue what else to do with this day. With what it reminded us of. However, a year has gone by, and while all wounds have decidedly not yet healed, things are different now, just like they’ll be different again one year from now.”
 

Dolores blinks once and looks into the crowd again, but I can’t keep my eyes off her.

“So you
are
a lesbian now?” Jeremy asked a couple of weeks ago, after I broke my lease and moved in with Dolores officially.

“Does the word bisexual mean anything to you?” I replied.

“Of course it does, Soph. My own boyfriend identifies as such.”

“Then why are you being so obnoxious?”

“It’s just my personality, darling. You know I can’t help myself.” He pecked me on the cheek and poured me some more brandy.

Most people we’ve told have come around in the end, even my parents. I blurted it out during a particularly taxing phone conversation with my mother one day.

“Dolores, Dolores, it’s always Dolores with you,” my mother said, being more right than she could probably imagine. She said it in her whiny, woe-is-me voice, the one I can stand the least, and I just told her.

“We’re seeing each other,” I said. “Romantically.” That shut her up for a good long minute. To my surprise, she didn’t hang up the phone there and then. I was glad for the little opening she left, for the words she spoke next, for not making it all about her for once.

“Does she make you happy?” she asked, and with it, erased a great deal of fear I’d had about having to tell her. Mere minutes later the conversation took a different turn, and she broke out in a tiny yelp of disbelief, but I was grateful for those few seconds of initial acceptance, even though it didn’t last. What it told me was that there was a possibility this could be talked about at some point, Winters-family-style talk, but talk nonetheless.

It would have been better if she’d come today, but I understand. Different things are hard for different people.

I stop thinking about my own mother and look at Ian’s mother instead. Since I told her that red is
really
her color she’s bought a few new red dresses. “Just to please my lady,” she said, and darted around the living room with one of them clasped against her body. She’s wearing a red dress today and red lipstick and she looks gorgeous and in control and important—at least to me.

Dolores is the most important person in my life. She has been since Ian died. And we’re still standing. We’re still together. In an ideal world, we would have celebrated our first anniversary together already, but the world is far from ideal and we were both reluctant to start counting from the day we first got together. Instead, we’ve decided to use the day of meeting Albert the truck driver as the official beginning of our affair. The day of our first official date.

I tune back into Dolores’ speech. I should be listening more attentively but I’m mesmerized by the red of her lips, by the shape of them, by the way she angles her head before she says something jokey.

“On behalf of Sophie and myself, I’d like to thank you once again for being here. Do stick around until the booze runs out.” Dolores ends her speech with a big smile and by lifting her glass in the air.

“To Ian,” everyone says, just like they did last year.

This time, I raise my glass with them. I put my hand up and keep my glance on Dolores. “To Ian,” I say.

I still see him sometimes. Usually when I’ve drunk too much. I still go to Cooley’s. I prefer it to going to his grave. I sit there and drink too much beer and, in my head, I talk to him. I tell him things. Ordinary things about my day at work or something funny that Dolores said. I no longer write him letters. I stopped doing that when I started on my first piece of serious investigative journalism again. A long article about illegal toxic waste dumping. Maybe someday I should write one about the consequences of not wearing a helmet when cycling. Someday, when I feel capable.

Dolores walks over to me, puts her hands on my shoulders and, in front of everyone, kisses me fully on the mouth.

“Come with me for a minute,” she whispers in my ear after the kiss. “I need to show you something in the kitchen.”

My brain is too fuzzy to realize what she’s getting at, but as soon as we reach the kitchen, she closes the door behind us and drags me into the pantry. This time, we don’t cry or break down or need each other in that raw, complicated way. This time, a year after the last time we were in there together, we exchange a kiss and a quick giggle and are out of there before it can raise any questions from our guests.

I walk back in the living room and look for Jeremy, but all his attention is focused on Vasily, who is such a nice guy. “Way too good for you,” I keep telling Jeremy, in jest.

Upstairs, baby Juno starts crying and, as new parents tend to do, Alex stirs immediately and rushes upstairs.

Dolores grabs my hand and people cluster around us and we talk to them, hands clasped together.

The two of us standing in her living room like that, surrounded by friends and acquaintances, sums up this whole journey so perfectly.

Together, we made it through.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Endless gratitude to my wife, the far superior part of our high-functioning co-dependent unit. When I started this story, and believed I was taking my cougar love one step too far (and the words came slower than I was comfortable with), she paid me a slew of very un-British compliments that got me past the doubts and fears that came with writing this book.

I respect no editor more than my trusted friend Cheyenne Blue, who never minces her words (she’s the only one allowed to call me ‘pompous’) and always makes my books better.

Special mention to my beta reader Carrie (with whom I share a love for distinguished older women) who is so relentlessly nice, positive, and encouraging. I couldn’t ask for a better first reader.

As always, my Launch Team are not only there for me when a book releases, but I get to avail of their support and smart wits whenever I need to. I’m well aware this is a great luxury.

Last but by no means least: Thank You, Dear Reader! Every single one of you has made a difference in my life. We are on this crazy lesfic journey together and, thanks to you, it’s true what they say: There really is no better time to be a writer than right now.

Thank you all.

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