Bea came down with a hair clip between her teeth.
She took it out when she saw us. “What is it?”
I pointed to the phone. “The message.”
She stood behind my chair and read over my shoulder. I felt her hand settle on the back of it. She didn't say anything for a few seconds.
“Read it properly,” I said.
“I am.”
She pulled out the chair on my other side and sat down. Her hair fell forward as she leaned toward the screen. I remembered waking in this kitchen after bad nights and finding her beside me like this, already dressed for work, trying to get me to eat something.
“I didn't write it,” I said.
“Of course you didn't.”
“Did you see these words before today?”
“Nate showed me when I told him about Mum.”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Yes.”
I watched her face. “And you knew nothing about it when we broke up?”
“No, Lu. I found out three weeks ago.”
Nate looked toward her. She glanced at him, then put her hand over mine on the table.
They'd already discussed this. Of course they had. They were the people who knew there would be a message on a phone at breakfast. I was the person seeing it for the first time.
“You both got to decide when I'd hear it,” I said.
Bea sat back. “I thought if I could tell you everything here—”
“You said that last night. It didn't help you do it.”
“No.”
“I don't need to hear the reason again. I need you to stop deciding what I can bear.”
She looked down at our hands, then let mine go.
I hadn't meant that I wanted her to let go. I almost reached after her, which annoyed me enough to keep still.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Speak to Mum with me. As my sister. Not as somebody trying to get Saturday over with.”
“I said I would.”
“I'm asking now you've seen this.”
She looked at the screen again.
“Yes. I will.”
Nate shifted his chair. “I can be there too.”
“Not for the first part,” I said.
He stopped moving.
I didn't want a room full of people watching Mother tell me I had misunderstood my own life. I wanted Bea beside me, and Mother answering the thing she had done. Nate could show her the phone if she needed to see it. He couldn't give me my sister.
“I'll keep it here,” he said. “You can use it.”
“Thank you.”
It was the first polite thing I'd said to him that morning. His mouth softened, and I looked away before it could become something else.
Bea checked the clock. “I've got to open the shop. I should be leaving now.” She looked at Nate, who checked the time too. “Tomorrow morning? Before breakfast. You and me, right here.”
I wanted to do it now. But Mother wasn't even inside, Nate was due at work and Bea had the shop keys beside her plate. I wanted a conversation she could stay for, with nobody reaching for a bag halfway through.
“Before breakfast,” I said. “Not after the wedding.”
“Before breakfast.”
Nate leaned toward the phone to check the screen setting again. I bent over it beside him, reading the message once more. Bea stayed in the chair on my other side.
The back door opened. Mother stood in it with her phone in one hand and a small garden cushion in the other.
She looked at Nate beside me, at Bea's chair pulled close to mine, then at the old phone on the table. Her face went still.
“What are we all doing?”
“Talking,” I said.
“I can see that.”
She set the cushion on a chair. Her phone disappeared into her pocket.
Bea picked up her clip and gathered her hair. It was such an ordinary movement that I watched it instead of Mother.
“We want to talk to you tomorrow morning,” I said. “Bea and I.”
Mother's eyes returned to the phone.
“About what?”
“The end of that summer with Nate.”
“Lucy, surely you have something better to think about this week.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Bea said. “We're asking for a conversation.”
Mother pressed her lips together. “If you insist.”
“I do,” I said.
She turned toward the sink and asked whether anyone had made fresh tea. I got up, took her mug from the cupboard and put it beside the kettle. Making it gave me something to do while my hands stopped shaking.
Nate rose too. “I need to get to work.”
Bea followed him to the hall. I heard her ask whether he'd eaten.
“I'll get something,” he said.
“You always say that.”
She returned for a slice of bread, folded it around a piece of cheese and took it to him. I watched her leave again.
Mother stirred her tea. “It's nice to see you all getting on.”
I couldn't tell how much she knew. She must have recognised the subject, at least. But she said it as if we'd been discussing where to put the chairs.
“I need a shower,” I said.
“Bea needs help at the shop. She's taking you, isn't she?”
I looked at my sister as she came back through the door.
“I'd like that,” Bea said. “If you want to.”
She made it a question. I noticed.
I didn't want to spend the day in the house with Mother. I didn't want to go back upstairs and stare at the ceiling either.
“Okay,” I said.
“Wear something you don't mind getting wet.”
“Are we arranging flowers or being baptised?”
“Depends how you behave.”
I smiled before I could stop myself.
She smiled too, cautiously. Then she picked up the old phone, checked that it was still on and handed it to me.
“Keep it in your room,” she said. “So we know where it is.”
Mother's spoon knocked against the side of her mug.
I carried the phone upstairs. The words were still visible when I put it beside my own on the bedside table. Two phones, two versions of the same afternoon.
I pulled a clean shirt out of my case. For the first time since arriving, I knew what I wanted Bea to do besides listen.
Tomorrow, I wanted her to stay beside my chair when Mother began answering.