Seven Lies (ARC)
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against the cool porcelain of a toilet seat.
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You see, no one expects their lives to pan out as ours were. I was
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widowed and in a dead- end job and never far from misery. Marnie
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was widowed and pregnant and in the midst of a great fall from a
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charmed life.
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“I need to move home,” Marnie said the following evening. “I need
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to sort my life out. I need to see a doctor and start working again and I 08
need to move home.”
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She called her cleaner right there at the table. She wanted the place
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spotless, she said. And she wanted Charles’s stuff boxed up and put into
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storage— his toothbrush, his clothes, anything that was obviously his.
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We visited the flat a couple of days later. We were both shocked to
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find that the cleaner had left a thick white rug with black detailing
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stretched across the floor of the hallway. I wondered what lay beneath—
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a dark bloodstain, or scratches on the varnished flooring, or just the
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scent of death— but I resisted the urge to lift the edge and peer under-
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neath. Some of Charles’s things were gone— his coat from the back of
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the door and his shoes, which had been lined up neatly along the wall—
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but he was still everywhere. He was in the books on the shelves and the
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prints on the walls and his tall black umbrella still propped beside hers 21
in the hallway.
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“Are you sure?” I said, trying to catch up with Marnie as she flitted
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between the rooms.
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She frowned and then began to climb the stairs.
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“That you want to live here,” I said. “Are you sure? We could find
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you somewhere— ”
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“No,” she said, standing on the top step and turning to face me. “It
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should be here. It’s right that it’s here. I want this little one”— and she 29
held her hand to her stomach— “to know at least a little of their father.
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And this was once our home. It makes sense. It has to be here.”
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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She looked past me. “This is the spot,” she said. “Probably right here,
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where my feet are standing now. This is where he took his last breath.
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That’s something his child should know, don’t you think?”
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What do you think? Is it something you’d want to know? I know I’d
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be devastated if I received a call informing me that my father had died.
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Not because I would miss the man he is today: a cheat and a deserter.
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But because I would miss the man that he once was.
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For my first decade, he was constant and unwavering and honest and
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true. He was always there and always encouraging and, despite every-
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thing that happened when he stopped being a good father, he was never
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selfish before that. Instead, he was broken and flawed and determined
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that he wouldn’t be defined by the very worst parts of who he was. And
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then something changed. Those difficulties that had bubbled beneath
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his skin for decades— the impatience and the uncertainty and the
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volatility— started to seep through his pores.
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Will I want to visit the place where he dies? I don’t think so. For me,
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he died at the front door, suitcase in hand, smiling as he left us behind.
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“Maybe a fresh start— ” I began.
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“I want to be back in by Christmas,” Marnie said.
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“That’s only a few weeks— ”
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“I’m going to host it,” she said. “I’m going to decorate and cook— I’ll
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need a tree and a turkey— and I’m going to make it count.”
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“This is a lot,” I said. “Marnie, it’s a lot for me to take in and it’s a lot 24
for you to take on.”
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“I’ve decided,” she said. “And you’re coming. And so is Emma. I’m
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going to make this happen.”
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“We’ll be with— ”
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“Your mum. Yes, that makes sense. That’s the morning, isn’t it?
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Well, after that, then.”
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“ I— ”
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“This isn’t optional,” she said, her face suddenly stiff and her eyes
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wide. “I’m inviting you to join me for Christmas. Whether you accept
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that invitation or not is your decision. But I am going to be living here 02
by then and I am going to do this.”
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Marnie and I have very few shared traits. She is open and warm and
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loving and unafraid. I am closed and cold and angry and fearful. She is
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light and I am dark. But we are both notoriously stubborn. I know with-
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out doubt that on some things she cannot be moved; she cannot be
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bought or bribed or won.
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“Then, yes,” I said. “I’d love to come.”
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“And will you help me move back in?”
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“Of course.”
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“Right, then. Let’s get started. I want to measure up for a new bed.”
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So that was what we did. We wrote down the measurements for a new
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bed because, although she could sleep in her dead husband’s flat, she
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couldn’t possibly imagine sleeping in his bed. She ordered a replace-
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ment that afternoon. A small double— “it’ll only be for me,” she said—
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with a blush pink button- backed headboard— “he’d never have gone for
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pink”— and storage underneath— “for muslins and nappies and all the
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other things that babies seem to need.”
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She moved back in two weeks later, the day the bed arrived, and I
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tried to be pragmatic but I felt like something was being taken from me
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all over again. I packed up her suitcases and the kitchenware that had
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overtaken my cupboards and boxed up her shoes from behind the front
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door. We piled everything into a taxi early in the morning, bags at our
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feet and on our laps, and then she proceeded to leave me.
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I’m being dramatic, I know. I felt sad that she was going but I could
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rationalize my grief because I was also pleased to see her so focused and 29
satisfied. I had enjoyed nursing her and caring for her and being her
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strength, but it’s not a sustainable way to live.
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E L I Z A B E T H K AY
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The world is full of vulnerable people. They lean on others, relying
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always on that additional support, that additional strength. Emma, for
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example, is incredibly vulnerable. But Marnie is not. She’d started
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working again a few days earlier— turning on her phone and uploading
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her videos and sharing updates and engaging with the world she had
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built around her. She seemed stronger, somehow, with that platform
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beneath her.
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“You can go now,” she said, after we’d carried everything into the
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lobby and carted it up to the flat, load by load in the lift. “I think I have 10
it from here.”
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“But the unpacking,” I said. “Don’t you want some help with that?”
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“No, thanks,” she said. She was standing in the doorway— her
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doorway— with her hand against the frame and her feet squarely on the
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wooden floor and I was in the hallway, on the other side of the entrance.
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“I’m good now,” she continued. “But thanks.”
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“ But— ”
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“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, and then she closed the door.
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I felt sort of angry and sort of proud.
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And sort of embarrassed, too. I looked left and right, but there was
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no one else, no one there who had witnessed my eviction. I stared at the
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spot where I’d sat nearly three months earlier. That felt like another
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person, another time, another world. And then I went home.
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Here’s the thing. Marnie had a family— as we all have families— but
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it had never felt much like a family to me. As a child, I believed that a 25
family was unshakable, unbreakable, something fixed and immovable.
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I had a sister, and she would always be my sister, and parents, who
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would always be my parents. It wasn’t until much later— when my fa-
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ther left and my mother disowned me— that I realized I’d been wrong.
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It wasn’t fixed at all. But it had been throughout my formative years. I
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didn’t realize that I’d need to build my own unit until much, much
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later. I didn’t realize that I’d need to become someone who others
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wanted to love.
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But it was a lesson that Marnie learned at a far younger age. Her
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family had come in waves— sometimes in, sometimes out— and was
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entirely unpredictable. She wanted this family— her new family— to be
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different. She had the power to craft this thread of the web, to build
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this unit as she wanted, and this was what she wanted.
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Chapter Twenty- Seven
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I have always loved autumn. I like that sense of something ending but
not quite over. I like open fires and curtains drawn and thick woolen
jumpers and boots that encase your feet and cushion your toes. I like
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winds that nip and clouds that soften the sky and that feeling of step-
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ping out of the cold and into the warmth. The summer is too much, too
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full of expectation, with so much pressure to be joyful and buoyant and
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bright. And the winter is too dark, even for me.
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But December has always been a strange month in this city, an
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anomaly that doesn’t quite follow the pattern of the calendar. For that
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month only, the fabric of the place feels different. There is something
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unusual in the appearance, the atmosphere, the people who filter
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through as the darkest days approach.
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Some of the changes happen slowly, over the course of several
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weeks. Strings of lights are hung between buildings, sparkling against
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the black of a night that draws in earlier each evening. Shop windows
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are overhauled, decorated in festive tones with ornaments and pine
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trees and sleighs and snow. There are fewer people on the streets. As
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the last weeks of the month draw nearer, the workers— who spend the
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entire year on the trains and pacing the streets and flowing in and out
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of rotating office doors, people like me— tack annual leave onto the
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bank holidays and stay curled on their sofas instead. The tourists—
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wearing red hats with white bobbles and carrying shopping bags and
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cameras and children strapped to their chests— are present in their
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droves, filtering in and out of toy shops and ice skating on makeshift
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rinks in otherwise underexploited venues and standing on the wrong
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side of the escalator. But, even then, there are not enough of them to
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balance the absences, to counteract a city half emptied,
its occupants
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stationed instead in their homes.
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Other changes are almost instantaneous— suddenly we are smiling
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at our fellow commuters, and then we are making polite conversation
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with our colleagues in the kitchen, about their plans for the break, who
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will be cooking, and gosh, that’s an awful lot of children for two whole
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days and aren’t you all outnumbered. And then, almost without notic-
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ing, we are suddenly wishing a merry Christmas to everyone we pass—
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the man at reception who always seems so curmudgeonly but is now
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wearing a festive light- up pin on his suit jacket, the director in the lift 15
grinning in a rather unnerving way, the barista at the café where you
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buy your morning coffee, the garbagemen, the cleaner, the woman who
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washes up mugs in the kitchen sink. The structure of the city shifts and
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suddenly we are all better people than we were before: kinder, happier,
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optimistic— the very best versions of ourselves.
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We do not register the colleague who has no partner anymore,
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whose children will be elsewhere, whose parents are long dead. We still
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ignore the homeless woman sitting at the side of the road, her worn
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sleeping bag beneath her, a blanket draped over her shoulders and the
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cold seeping into the whites of her eyes. We cannot bring ourselves to
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acknowledge the sadness that still exists in among this festive joy.
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At that time in my life, I could be both. I could bring the sadness
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and the joy. I had a best friend who was hosting lunch and a beautiful
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sister, but an absent father and a dead husband and a mother plagued by
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dementia.
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I suppose this year I will bring little joy; only sadness. I can’t shake
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it, you know. It has been getting worse. It is still getting worse.
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I suppose, now that I think about it, that was my last joyful year. I
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called Emma just after midnight on Christmas Eve. We had agreed to
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visit my mother first thing in the morning the following day. We hadn’t
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admitted it aloud, but I knew that we both wanted to go in as early as
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possible, so that it was done and so that we didn’t need to think about
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