His Heart

Chapter thirty-six: Lizzie

I sat next to Maddie and watched the boys play on the carpet.

"Would you like to come and do some drawing with me?" I asked, carefully.

She looked up at me and nodded.

"Come on, I'll show you to my room."

She tensed and stopped.

"It's ok." I said. "It's where I keep all my art supplies. I have a couple of easels we can use."

She hesitated and I waited patiently.

"Or we can bring everything in here if you would prefer." I said. "Whatever you like."

Slowly, she followed me into the room, stopping just outside the door.

"It's ok." I said. "You can come in if you like. You can have a look at all the different supplies."

Still she hesitated, and I looked at her eyes which were wide and scared.

"Are you ok?" I asked, gently.

She shook her head.

"Do you want to tell me?"

I sat down on my desk and offered her the sofa where the boys sometimes sat to watch me draw.

"It's ok." I said. "It's just the two of us here."

She carefully entered the room and sank into the sofa, sitting apart from me and tucking her legs up under her chin.

"Did Papá tell you what happened?" She asked.

I shook my head and she started to tell me the whole story, probably adding more details than she had told her father, and I kept quiet and listened.

I kept my expression relaxed as she told me everything and didn't try to fill the pauses in the story with unwanted platitudes. She wiped a tear away from her eye and I handed her a packet of tissues.

"I should have stopped him." She said. "It was my fault, I shouldn't have teased him. I shouldn't have–"

"It's not your fault." I broke in, gently. "No matter what he says. It is not your job to change who you are to repel men who give you unwanted attention. You saying no - that should be enough. And no one deserves it because they dressed the wrong way or were 'nice' to someone. Being nice is not the same as giving permission."

"How do you give permission?"

"He asks and you say yes." I said. "And you can say 'stop' too. You can say 'stop' at any point."

"But what if he doesn't listen?"

"Then he is committing a crime." I said. "And you should call the police."

She nodded.

"Nobody has the right to your body." I told her. "And if anybody tells you they do, you tell them to fuck off. Ok?"

Her eyes widened at my choice of words and I reached my hands out.

"May I?"

She nodded and I rested my hands on her shoulders.

"You are an incredible, wonderful, beautiful young woman who deserves nothing more than 110% respect." I told her, gently. "And if anyone doesn't treat you right, you leave them behind. Don't waste your time on people who aren't treating you the way you deserve."

She looked up at me and I squeezed her shoulders softly.

"Thank you." She whispered.

I nodded and pushed away the unwanted memories that pushed to the surface of the last time I let a man like that get into my head.

"He told me he loved me." She whispered softly.

I know. I thought. They all do.

"Love doesn't feel like that." I told her. "Love shouldn't be painful. Not in that way."

"So how do you know when you're in love?" She asked. "How do you know it's the right person?"

I paused.

"It'll feel different to the other times." I said. "There are three kinds of love you experience in your life. Your first love, where you learn; your intense love, where you get hurt; and your true love. The unconditional one. The one where you realize you have everything you are ever going to need."

She nodded.

"How long does it take to find your true love?" She asked.

I smiled, weakly. How could I answer that, when I still hadn't found it myself? The last time I had found love, I had convinced myself that Josh was going to be my true love.

"There's no time limit." I said. "But you'll often find they come at just the right time."

~*~

I kept looking at Maddie as she looked at the page in front of her. She was so much like her father. She wouldn't rush into this. She was carefully planning every pencil stroke, not making any mistakes. I wanted to tell her to relax. To let the pencil do the work. 

"You know, when I'm anxious I like to just draw without thinking." I said, casually. "I don't plan anything, I just let the pencil take over and see what happens. Sometimes the best drawings are the ones where you let yourself relax and let the result come to you." 

Her hand loosened and the pencil glided smoothly over the paper. I looked at the person who rose from the concrete and gazed at a sky split by lightning. She had a natural talent for this, she just needed to learn to relax and it would show. 

I turned to my own paper and stared in shock at the monster who stared back at me. His eyes were dark and his skin was smooth and supple. His mouth lifted up into a smile that was designed to draw you in. He was beautiful. 

But sometimes even the most beautiful flowers could be poisonous to the touch. 

I put my pencil down and looked at the drawing again for a minute longer before pushing my chair away and rushing to the bathroom. I vomited violently until I sank to the floor shaking. 

There was a knock on the door. 

"Liz? Are you ok?" Charlie asked. 

The door opened slightly and he poked his head around. 

"Can I come in?" 

I nodded, rinsing my mouth out and spitting into the toilet. I flushed and washed my hands. 

"What's wrong?" He asked, taking my hands to steady me. "Come and sit down. Talk to me." 

I followed him into the bedroom, glad to be away from the kids for a minute. He pulled me down until my head rested in his lap. 

"Talk to me." He said, softly, stroking my hair. 

"When I was seventeen, I was in a really bad relationship." I began to explain. "He was much older than me. He had me in the palm of his hand and the things he had made me do..."

I shook my head. "It's in the past." 

He was quiet for a long time before he shook his head. 

"If there's one thing I've learnt about all this." He said. "It's that there's no such thing as "in the past". As long as we have memories, these things stay with us forever." 

I thought about his words. Thought about Archer. Thought about Maddie. Thought about all the things the twins could experience as they grew up. He was right. There was no way to get rid of the memories we made. All we could do was learn from them and cover them up with new memories. Happier memories. 

But life wasn't complete without the bad memories. After all, sometimes the bad memories were the ones which shaped you the most.