Chapter 12

“Sure, Mika,” said Lauren. She grinned. “This is why it made sense for me to work after Christmas. I have plenty of time accrued.”

“That, and showing me your stockings,” Mika replied, with a slight grin. “Intimacy might not be high on my list of desires right now, but I want to tell you, that was hot. I’ll make the travel arrangements, and I’ll be paying for both of us.”

“Are you sure?” Lauren asked.

“This is my… uh, pilgrimage, and it would make me very happy to have you with me, so yes,” Mika said. “I speak to her. At the grave, I mean. I don’t know if she hears me, but it helps me to believe that she does. It helps me to cope. I share my worries and my joys with her. There haven’t been so many joys, but telling her my worries helps me not feel like they’re building up inside me. It’s like writing a diary. Or a love letter, I suppose

“It won’t be easy, I think, but this year I’m going to tell her about you.”

“Oh, honey…” Lauren took her hand, then released it as she realized her own eyes had filled with tears. She took a tissue from her purse, holding onto it after dabbing at her eyes, and reaching for Mika’s hand again. “I knew about the time of year. I thought you’d want to put our relationship on pause. I wasn’t worried about the long term, but I know I will need to give you space. For you to include me makes me very happy.”

“You’re part of my life now,” said Mika. “You’re right, I need a pause, but only for sex, while my feelings are so grim. I still want to be with you.” She gave Lauren’s hand a quick squeeze. “After Valentine’s Day I’m sure I’ll want to make up for lost time. Maybe you can take some more PTO so we can spend a few days in bed.”

“I always like the way you think,” said Lauren. “Maybe we could go away for a couple of days. We won’t think about that until after Valentine’s, though.”

The seventh of February hadn’t been as hard as Lauren had feared. She’d moved some clothes and toiletries into Mika’s house, sharing her bed, if chastely, on Thursday night, holding her during the day, when tears threatened, and in the evening when they finally overflowed. She had slept with her again on Friday night, and every night after, checking every day that Mika wanted her there, until the thirteenth arrived.

Mika set up the automated cat feeder for the Admiral, checked her water, then petted her for a few minutes before leaving. Mandy had agreed to check on the cat every day.

Lauren had effectively moved in with her, which she wasn’t entirely comfortable with. She planned to start sleeping at her own place after this trip. Living together was something she felt they would want in the future, but it needed to be a decision made together, not a response to a difficult situation. While Mika wanted her as a bed warmer, she’d be there for her. In the medium term, they’d need to talk.

Lauren drove them to the airport, parking the Lexus there. Mika had arranged for a rental and a hotel at their destination. After checking with Lauren, she’d selected a room with a king-size bed. If they’d been able to share Mika’s bed platonically for the last week, they could do the same traveling.

After checking in, they drove around the city, eating dinner at a restaurant on the bay. “Maybe this is where we can come for our trip,” Mika said.

“What trip?” asked Lauren.

“The one you suggested we take together.”

“Oh, right. Maybe,” Lauren agreed. “Yeah, that would be good. Though I was thinking about finding a house in the mountains, all to ourselves. Away from everything, maybe with a chance of being snowed in, though all I really care about is there’s a comfortable bed we can get lost in. Maybe a hot tub.”

“We do need some of that time together, true,” said Mika. “The mountains sound nice, but so does a date on the waterfront. We should do both.”

“That’s the best idea,” Lauren agreed.

The night brought restless sleep. At one point, Lauren woke to find the bed quivering. It took her a minute to realize that Mika was facing away, crying, clearly trying to suppress the sounds. Lauren crept towards her until she was close enough to rest a hand on her waist. A moment later, she felt Mika’s hand wrap around hers. Mika stopped trying to be quiet, and that seemed to help; within five minutes her tears subsided. She rolled over, kissed Lauren’s collar bone, then allowed Lauren to wrap her in her arms. Soon, she was asleep, Lauren following close behind.

Nicole’s parents lived a short ferry ride followed by a short drive away. The line wasn’t long, and soon Mika was pulling the rented Audi into the driveway of a gorgeous medium sized house. It was in a heavily wooded lot. The trees were bare, but for a couple of evergreens on the perimeter, but Lauren could picture how lovely the trees would be in spring. Even with the barren branches surrounding it, the house was impressive. It had polished wooden decking that ran down a few feet to a placid waterway. There was a jetty extending from the deck, but no boats were moored to it.

There was a furious barking from inside the house as they approached. It changed to a whine when Nicole’s parents emerged, leaving the small dog inside.

Mika and her late wife’s parents were all in tears when they hugged. They seemed tears of shared loss rather than heavy grief, as though the source of Nicole’s parents’ sadness was Mika’s loss, and hers was theirs. Tears of closeness. When Mika drew back, she wiped her face, then introduced Lauren as “my girlfriend.”

This was the part Lauren had dreaded. These people had no reason to love their daughter’s wife’s partner. But they did. They hugged her as they had Mika – without the shared tears, but Lauren found she had trouble holding her own back.

Their names were Rick and Morgan, and after introducing themselves they took both women inside. Morgan offered coffee, but Mika shook her head. “I want to catch the next ferry,” she said.

“We’ll see you later, sweety,” said Morgan. “You will stay for dinner?”

“Of course,” Mika said, then left Lauren with her in-laws.

This was the second trial that had concerned Lauren. Would she be interrogated or punished once she was alone with these strangers, whose daughter’s place she was – in a sense – trying to take? But the inquisition didn’t happen. Rick and Morgan seemed genuinely lovely people.

“Would you like coffee?” Morgan asked again. “We keep tea for Mika’s visits, but no one else we know really drinks it. You’re welcome to it, of course.”

Lauren smiled. “I liked Mika’s tea from the first, and it’s growing on me even more, but I’m a coffee girl at heart. I’d love a cup.”

Rick led her into the spacious living room, taking a seat on the couch with her, but with a good distance between them. Friendly, not intimidating. He asked what she did for work, and his eyes didn’t glaze over too badly when she described it.

Morgan took the chair across from them after delivering their coffees. She served it on a tray with milk and sugar. Lauren added milk to her coffee, then sat back. The small Yorkie, Sean, who seemed perfectly calm now, had followed Morgan into the room, but had decided that he couldn’t avoid greeting the newcomer any longer. He leaped up onto the couch between Rick and Lauren, and curled up against Lauren, panting, when she petted him.

“How did you meet Mika, dear?” Morgan asked.

Lauren suppressed a grin. This was the interrogation, but it didn’t sound like a hostile one.

She explained about Mandy’s apartment hunting. She mentioned Mandy as a friend, not an ex. She talked about sitting outside talking to Mika for hours at the table in the center of the yard.

“That is a pretty house they own,” Morgan said. “She owns, I mean. You’d think after five years I’d get used to that, but I guess a mom never does. I’m happy she found someone, dear. She’s needed to move on with her life.”

“I don’t know how much you know about me,” Lauren said. “Has Mika talked about me?”

It was Rick who answered. “She called us from Japan,” he said. “She seemed very nervous. She told us that she’d met someone…”

Morgan picked up the story before Rick could continue. “We were so worried!” she said. “Well, I was worried. She calls us from Japan saying she’s met a girl, of course I thought she meant a Japanese girl. So she’d be moving! I love that girl! I don’t want her to leave.”

“‘Course, I didn’t know that she was panicking,” said Rick, “because I waited to hear what she said. She met you here. She seemed to glow when she talked about you, so we knew it was serious.”

“I’m very serious about her,” Lauren said, “but I want you to know that she still loves Nicole, and I’ll never try to change that. I think she has a big heart with room for another, but I don’t want to replace your daughter.”

“I think you wouldn’t have come here if you did, dear,” Morgan said. “You know about her need to visit Nicole, and you seem okay with it.”

“I’m very okay with it,” Lauren agreed. “Could you… if it isn’t rude of me to ask, could you tell me about Nicole?”

“Oh, sweety, of course we can,” said Morgan.

Rick stood with a grunt. “I’ll get the photos.”

The next couple of hours found Lauren looking at photos, aided by Sean, who didn’t care whether he was sitting beside her or on her lap, as long as she didn’t stop petting him.

She saw a girl she’d never met grow into maturity, increasingly coming to resemble the wedding photo and Mika’s sculpture. Photos of her playing soccer, a much younger Rick giving her a piggy-back ride in her club uniform. Waving down from a tree house at an unfamiliar home. A photo of her scowling with her arm in a cast.

“That look is because her best friend was on vacation and couldn’t be the first to sign her cast,” Morgan said. “I think they were girlfriends for a time when they were sixteen, but we weren’t supposed to know. They stayed friends, though. Nicole didn’t come out to us until she turned eighteen.”

“‘Course, we knew all along,” said Rick. “We probably knew before she did. She never had time for boys. I think there’s a photo of her with Maddy, hold on…”

He skipped ahead a few pages, finding a photo of Nicole, in her mid-teens but already startlingly beautiful, with a pretty dark-haired girl, each with her arm around the other’s waist. “That was before there was anything romantic between them, I think,” he said, “but who can know?”

“No, you’re right,” said Morgan, “because when they were dating, no one was allowed to see them together, so she’d not have let us take this photo.”

They came to the photos of Nicole with Mika. Most of the early ones had clearly been taken by a friend holding Nicole’s phone, but the two girls looked so happy. And more than a little drunk, in several shots. There was a photo of them at a sidewalk café, with a metal teapot between them, and several of them before stone buildings that looked ancient. These must have been at Oxford.

Of course there were wedding photos, including a copy of the one on Mika’s wall. After that, several of them outdoors or at home, a few with Morgan and Rick. There was one of both of them wearing summer dresses sitting at the round table in Mika’s yard. Their yard, then. Lauren’s eyes filled with tears to see that, and though she tried to brush them away before anyone could see, Morgan picked up on it immediately. She took Lauren’s hand, drawing her to her feet and hugging her.

“I’m sorry,” said Lauren. “I didn’t expect to…” She took a deep breath. “I wish I’d known her.”

“She’d have liked you, sweety,” Morgan insisted, releasing her.

The photos ended after that, which was upsetting in its own way, of course. Rick told her more about Nicole’s studies, awards she’d won at school, how excited she was to get her scholarship, and how she’d been aggressively recruited even before she had her doctorate.

“She was brilliant,” Rick said. “She never did anything by halves. She could have done anything she wanted. Some of those job offers must have been tempting, but she knew that the doctorate would open doors, and she knew exactly what she wanted to research. And she never gave a f…” He broke off, glancing at Morgan. “‘Scuse me, dear. She never gave a flying fuck about what anyone thought to her being gay. Not once she’d come out.”

“For the time she was with us, she did very well for herself,” said Morgan. “Including finding your Mika. I wish they could have been together longer, but now I want Mika to be as happy as she was with Nicole.” She smiled at Lauren. “I think she has a chance.”

“‘Course, it goes without saying,” said Rick, “that we’ll murder you if you hurt her. Right?” He grinned, not at all murderously.

“If I hurt her, I’ll let you,” said Lauren.

“She might have parents in Japan,” Morgan said, “but she became our daughter in 2015 and she always will be.”

“That’s lovely,” Lauren said, sincerely. “I know she feels the same.”

“I love your house,” Lauren said, a little later. “Being right on the water is amazing. Do you have a boat? Your jetty is empty.”

“We do,” Rick said. “It’s in storage. Come back with Mika in June. We can go fishing, or just ride around.”

“That would be fun,” Lauren said. “I’m not sure about fishing, though.”

When Mika returned in the late afternoon, her eyes were red-rimmed, but she was smiling.

“How are you, dear?” Morgan asked.

“I’m well,” Mika replied. “I feel good about today.” She moved over to Lauren, but barely glanced at her, still focused on Morgan. “I feel that I’m ready to accept that I can both miss her and be at peace with my life at the same time.” Lauren felt her hand slip into hers, as if it was something so natural for Mika that she didn’t even need to look for her. “I’ve always left the cemetery feeling sad. Today I was sad, while I spoke to her, but I left feeling comforted.”