CHAPTER 93: Out Loud

POV: Selene Castellano

She told him on a Wednesday.

They were washing up after dinner.

He was drying while she was washing. The domestic division they’d arrived at without discussing it, the way most true things between them had arrived.

“I want to tell you something,” she said.

“Okay.”

She kept her hands in the water.

“I’ve been keeping a journal since the symposium. It is mostly about the foundation, what I’m learning and still figuring out.” She said. 

“I didn’t know that.”

“I know. I haven’t mentioned it.” She handed him a glass. “I wrote about you last week.”

He dried the glass without speaking.

“I wrote that I think you’ve almost stopped, that you’ve been doing something differently since the letter.  She looked at the water and continued. “The way you laugh, you reaching out to Catherinesnd the book you put in my bag.” She said.

He was quiet.

“I’ve been watching it,” she said. “Filing it the way I file things I don’t want to lose.”

“What made you decide to say it out loud?” he said.

“Well, filing something privately means I’m still protecting it,” she said. “Protecting myself from it and I don't want to do that anymore.”

He set down the glass and turned toward her.

She turned toward him.

His face in the kitchen light had the quality it got when something was getting through. His Jawline is more visible due to the light.

“I love you,” she said. “I know I’ve said it before but I’m saying it differently now. Not as a fact I’ve established but as something I’m choosing to keep saying out loud instead of just carrying.”

He looked at her.

“There’s a difference,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I can hear the difference.”

He reached over and turned off the tap. Took the dish cloth from his own hands and dried hers.

She stood in the kitchen and let him.

“I love you too,” he said. “Also differently than before.” He looked at her hands in his. “Before it was true and I was afraid of it. Now it’s true and I’m not afraid of it.”

“What changed?”

“The letter.” He paused. “She said let more people know about him and I think what she meant was stop letting fear decide who gets in.” He looked at her. “You’ve been in longer than anyone and just kept the door mostly closed even after you were through it.”

She looked at him.

“Is it open?” she said.

“It’s open,” he said.

She put her hand against his face the way she had in the bathroom the night everything changed. 

He turned his face slightly into her palm.

She felt that more than anything he could have said.

Later they sat on the floor of the living room.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Yes.”

“When you came back because Nene’s will required you to. What was the first thing you actually felt when you saw me?”

“Terror,” she said.

“Of me?”

“Of what you might say or not say.” She looked at the lamp. “Of whether I’d be able to do what I’d agreed to do while also being in the same room as you.”

“Were you going to be able to?”

“Barely,” she said. “I was barely holding it together that whole first week.”

“You didn’t look it.”

“I know.” She almost smiled. “I’ve been performing fine for a long time and I am kinda good at it.”

“You don’t have to perform fine with me.”

“I know that now.” She looked at him. “I didn’t then.”

He was quiet.

“What did you feel, when you saw me again?” She asked.

“Fury,” he said immediately.

She looked at him.

“It wasn't at you, or should I say, it wasn't only at you.” He looked at the lamp. “I was furious at the situation, at Nene and at ten years of carrying something I couldn’t name and then the thing I’d been carrying walking into a conference room in a good jacket.”

She laughed.

“A good jacket,” she said amidst laughter.

“It was a very good jacket.”

“It was the only good thing I owned at that point.”

He smiled.

“I think I loved you again before I was willing to admit I had ever stopped,” he said. “Which was inconvenient.”

“You did say it was the most inconvenient thing.”

“That still stands.”

She leaned against him.

He put his arm around her.

She picked up her journal from the side table and opened it to the page she’d written last week and read him the line.

I think this is what it looks like when someone decides to almost stop.

He was quiet for a moment.

“Your sister said the same thing to herself in Accra,” he said.

“I know.”

“Same family,” he said.

“Same habit of almost.” She closed the journal. “We’re working on it.”

He took the journal from her and set it on the table.

Then he said: “I have something to tell you too.”

She looked at him.

“Margaret called today about the foundation.” He paused. “She found something in Nene’s personal estate files which she had set aside years ago.”

“What?”

“Money,” he said. “A separate account set aside specifically. The instruction says it’s for the foundation. She had set it aside twelve years ago.”

Selene stared at him with shock on her face.

“She was planning for this twelve years ago,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Before we were—”

“Before any of it,” he said. “She was already planning for it.”

Selene sat with that still in shock.

Nene, twelve years ago, had set aside money for a foundation that didn’t exist yet for a question she hadn’t answered yet for people she hadn’t met yet.

“How much?” Selene said.

He told her.