On Wednesday morning I carried the old phone downstairs before I put the kettle on.
Mother was already at the kitchen table. Her notebook lay open beside a piece of toast. She looked at the phone in my hand, then at Bea behind me.
“Are we doing this now?”
“Yes,” I said.
I sat opposite her. Bea took the chair beside mine.
For a moment I was more relieved by that small movement than I wanted to be. She'd come down when I knocked. She hadn't asked for an hour or suggested we wait for Nate.
I opened the message and put the phone in front of Mother.
“Did you send this from my phone?”
She didn't pick it up.
“No.”
“Read it.”
“I can see it perfectly well.”
“It's the message Nate got before he said goodbye to me. I didn't write it.”
“Then you should ask him about it.”
“I have.”
She buttered the edge of her toast. The knife made a little scraping sound against the crust.
“Mum,” Bea said. “You told me you sent it.”
Mother looked at her. “I spoke to you privately.”
“It wasn't about only you,” I said.
She set the knife down. “Lucy, you were sixteen. He was leaving. It was a summer romance.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“You weren't going to spend your life following that boy around.”
“I wasn't following him. We were going to see each other at weekends.”
“And who was going to arrange that? Who was going to sit here waiting for you to come home?”
“I'd have got the bus.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
Bea put her hand on the table, near mine. “She asked whether you sent the message.”
Mother looked from one of us to the other.
“I wanted her to keep a little dignity,” she said. “Nobody wants to look as though they're begging for attention.”
I looked down at the screen. Then back at her.
“That's what it says.”
“It's common sense.”
“It's your common sense. You said the same thing about the flowers on Monday.”
She pushed the phone away with two fingers.
“Someone had to be sensible.”
I pulled it back toward me.
“Did you send it?”
Mother breathed out hard through her nose.
“Yes.”
I heard Bea's chair creak beside me. Neither of us spoke.
Mother picked up her toast as if she had finished answering.
“Why did you write that I was using him?” I asked.
“He needed a clear ending.”
“It wasn't your relationship to end.”
“You were a child.”
“I was your child. I wasn't something you could move out of the way.”
She put the toast down again. “I was protecting you.”
“From him?”
“From making a fool of yourself. You'd only known him a few weeks. You were behaving as though everything else could stop.”
I'd still done chores, seen Bea, argued about ordinary things. I had also been happy, which hadn't seemed like an offence until it inconvenienced Mother.
“How did you get my phone?”
“It was on the counter. You were in the shower.”
I remembered leaving it there while I got ready. I had been waiting for him to tell me which time to meet. I hadn't thought I needed to hide it from my own mother.
“And you deleted what you sent?”
“I didn't want you sitting rereading it.”
“I never got to read it once.”
Her mouth tightened. “You'd have upset yourself.”
I wanted to stand up. I wanted to throw something, although I knew that would give her exactly the daughter she was describing. I pressed my feet against the floor and stayed in the chair.
“You told me he'd called you. That he'd said he didn't want to see me.”
She glanced at Bea again.
“Was there a call?” I asked.
“No.”
One word. I had taken her word then too.
“You saw me try him.”
“He wasn't answering. I thought it would help you leave it alone.”
“It helped you.”
Mother pushed her chair back. “I will not be spoken to like this in my own kitchen.”
Bea stood before I could move.
“Then speak to us properly.”
Mother stared at her.
My sister's face was pale. She gripped the back of the chair, but she didn't sit down again.
“She can ask you,” Bea said. “You sent something cruel in her name. You lied about him calling. She can ask why.”
“I did what I thought was best.”
“It wasn't best for her.”
Mother looked at me. “And now look at the situation. Two sisters upset over the same young man.”
“You brought us into the same kitchen,” I said. “Weren't you afraid he'd tell me?”
“He chose Bea. Why would he want to upset that now?”
“He wasn't suitable for me.”
“You were sixteen. Bea is twenty-two, he's working here, and they'll live in her flat. She isn't planning to spend every weekend on a bus chasing him.”
“You didn't let me find out whether that would work.”
Mother picked up a crumb and pressed it onto her plate. “I wasn't going to have you miss your sister's wedding over a summer boy. Bea said she'd speak to you. I expected her to manage it.”
Bea's hand tightened on the chair. Mother looked down at her toast.
I waited for an apology. It wasn't sensible, after everything she'd said, but I still waited. There was a pause in which she could have offered one.
She reached for her notebook.
“I have enough to deal with this week.”
“So do I.”
“Bea's wedding is on Saturday. Whatever you think of an old text, I expect you to help her.”
“You posted a picture saying I was chasing him.”
“It was a light remark.”
“It wasn't true.”
“Then people will forget it. Unless you keep bringing it up.”
Bea pulled the notebook away from Mother's hand.
“Don't put this on Lucy.”
Mother's face changed. She looked at Bea's fingers on the page.
“Be careful,” she said. “I'm paying the catering balance. And the rest for the chairs and canopy. Those bills are still waiting. If you're both going to treat me like a monster, don't expect me to keep paying for the pleasure.”
Bea let go of the notebook, but she didn't look away.
“We're asking you to tell the truth.”
“I've told you. Is that not enough?”
I switched off the old phone. My hand was steady now, which surprised me.
“It's an answer,” I said.
I didn't know what else I could get from her this morning. She had admitted it. She wasn't going to become sorry because I found a better way to ask.
I stood. Bea moved away from the chair so I could get past.
“Where are you going?” Mother asked.
“Outside.”
“We haven't had breakfast.”
“You have.”
I went through the back door. The garden was bright, the chairs Mother had been testing still stood on the paving, and a bird was picking at something near the wall. It looked like the same morning we had started with.
I sat on the old wooden bench.
Bea came out a minute later with two slices of toast on a plate. No melted cheese, no careful triangles. Just butter spread while it was hot.
She sat beside me.
“I didn't know what else to bring,” she said.
I took a slice.
We ate without speaking for a while. Inside, Mother started washing up. I heard her put a cup down hard against the sink.
“Thank you for staying,” I told Bea.
She looked at me. “I said I would.”
“Yesterday you said something else too.”
“I know.”
She put the plate between us. I didn't tell her that sitting here fixed the picture or my name in the notebook. It didn't.
But she had stood up when Mother asked her to be quiet. I'd needed to see that.
“I was going to see him that last day,” I said. “I thought he didn't want me.”
Bea put her arm around my shoulders. I let my head rest against her for a moment.
Beyond the wall, a car passed. Somewhere in town Nate would be at work, fixing something ordinary, while his old phone sat in my lap.
He hadn't stopped wanting me that morning two years ago. Mother had made him think I'd stopped wanting him.
I closed my eyes, felt Bea's hand against my arm, and let myself be glad we knew.