Chapter 8: What Bianca Said at the Back Door
She found me in the backyard.
I was sitting on the low wooden bench near the garden bed, watching Oliver try to teach Maisie how to do a proper throw-in for soccer.
He was very serious about it.
She was not.
Bianca came out through the back door and stopped on the step.
She stood there for a moment, not speaking.
Oliver looked up, saw his mother, and went back to adjusting Maisie's elbow.
Bianca came down the step and walked toward me.
She didn't sit.
She stood at the edge of the garden bed with her hands at her sides.
"I owe you an apology," she said.
I waited.
"I planned the invoice before you arrived.
I told myself it was about boundaries, but that wasn't really it." She looked at the children.
"I think I wanted you to feel what I feel when you're here.
Like you're being evaluated.
Like nothing you do is quite right."
"I've never thought that about you," I said.
"I know.
I think I know that now." She finally sat, not on the bench, but on the garden border, a foot away from me.
"I've been jealous of how much they love you.
Maisie asks for you when she's sick.
Oliver talks about things you told him.
And I'm here every day and sometimes I feel like I'm—" She stopped.
"Like you're invisible," I said.
She looked at me.
"I know that feeling," I said.
"I felt it for years when Graham was small.
His father's mother was wonderful.
The children adored her.
I used to drive home from her house and sit in the car for ten minutes before I could go inside."
Bianca was quiet.
"You're not invisible to them," I said.
"You're the ground they stand on.
I'm the holiday.
That's a different thing."
She looked at the invoice, still folded in her hand.
She had brought it outside without realizing it.
"I shouldn't have said what I said to you.
About lazy grandmothers." Her voice was flat with shame.
"That was cruel.
I knew it when I said it."
"It hurt," I said.
"I won't pretend it didn't."
"I'm sorry, Eleanor."
She said my name.
She had never said my name before.
In four years of marriage to my son, she had never once called me by my name.
I looked at her.
She was younger than I sometimes remembered.
Thirty-one years old, two children, a husband who traveled, a house that got away from her, and a mother-in-law she didn't know how to have.
"I accept your apology," I said.
She let out a breath.
Her shoulders dropped about an inch.
Maisie abandoned the throw-in lesson and ran over.
She climbed onto the bench between us and leaned against me, then looked at her mother.
"Are you friends now?" she asked.
Bianca made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"We're working on it."
"Good," Maisie said, satisfied, and went back to watching Oliver.
I looked at Bianca over the top of Maisie's head.
She was still holding the invoice.
She tore it in half.
Then in half again.
She leaned over and dropped the pieces into the garden bed.
"I'll pay you back for the groceries," she said.
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
I nodded.
Graham appeared at the back door.
He looked at us — at the two of us sitting a foot apart, Maisie between us, Oliver demonstrating throw-ins to no one in particular.
He didn't say anything.
May you like
He went back inside.
But I heard him in the kitchen a minute later, filling the kettle.
