Raising Isla | ENGLOT AU

Chapter 17: A Family of Three

Ciri fell asleep three pages into the book Emery had been reading, before she crept quietly out of the room, flicking off the light and closing the door as she found Calypso making her way up the wooden staircase, the creaking silenced by careful feet.

"Is she asleep?"

Emery nodded, her hands moving to fidget with themselves distractedly. "I'm sorry for, uh... for ruining the party."

"Em," Cal's tone was firmer now. "That was not your fault, and it's really the last thing that matters right now. So can you please explain to me what exactly the situation is here, and not the guarded for the ears of a three-year-old, version."

She took her hand then, tugging her through to the bedroom before closing the door. Two sound barriers were better than one. And then she sat, because she felt like she needed to, perching over the edge of the mattress and feeling the shift of Calypso joining a moment later.

It felt like a release, not an obligation to her question, as she began to talk. Though she wasn't the first to hear the story.

"Growing up," She began. "My mother had always been very austere, and she could be harsh at times, but it was only when I was much older that I finally realised what the term narcissist actually meant."

Calypso waited for her to continue, watching as she tucked her hands between her knees to stop them proving a distraction.

"She wasn't particularly fond of the fact I was... different. Like I'd been born a disgrace to her image or something. Every time we showed up at the doctors for a consultation, she'd always talk about me as if I were something that needed fixing. Rectifying. And as a child, I used to hear her say all the time, so often that it was the surest thing I believed in, that I'd finally be pretty after I had the surgery. That I would finally be beautiful."

She paused for a moment, her eyes rebelliously misting. "And looking back, I'm pretty certain she was more in love with the concept of who I might become rather than who I was."

Calypso watched as she sighed, deep and slow. "I don't know, if she did love me it was a specific brand of cold. And then the surgery finally happened, and months of physiotherapy passed. And I still felt like me - it was almost a disappointment somehow. Like I'd expected I'd go through some sort of magical transformation, that she would suddenly love me. But everything stayed exactly the same. She still chastised what I wore, the way I kept my hair, my makeup - or the lack of it. My dad never did anything to stop her, I think he was afraid of upsetting her. But he at least helped me get out, and when he offered to pay for boarding school across state, it wasn't even much of a decision. And then I went to college, and I have hardly seen them since."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Calypso asked, her voice gentle.

Emery shrugged. "It seemed so minimal. In comparison to what you went through."

Something in Calypso's heart broke. What dice game had fate been playing that the three of them and all their damaged pieces had found their way together as they had?

"Sometimes," She started. "Being hurt by the ones who were supposed to love us stings ten times worse than from those who gave no such promises."

She nodded, blinking away wet eyelids, her hand moving to brush off a single tear as it escaped down her cheek. Her jaw fighting over something else she was struggling to say. "Calypso... are you okay just having Isla?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"What my mom mentioned earlier, she wasn't lying. I can't have a family, I can't have kids, and I need you to know that if you were hoping for a family any larger than this it's not gonna happen through any conventional means."