The Cost of an Explanation Owed...

From that day, it seemed I saw Kaitlyn less and less. She didn’t seem mad at me, exactly, just a little distant, but I knew I’d hurt her. She said she had some projects coming due, the culmination of a lot of tests to write up. Usually, her enthusiasm in her research spilled over to our breakfast table conversations, late night coffee, or wherever/whenever our paths crossed. She’d even been known to hunt me down in some off-site lab or somewhere I might be conducting repairs, just so she could bubble endlessly over her latest findings. This time she wasn’t forthcoming with any details at all. I could picture her alone late at night in the university lab searching the datalogs aimlessly, sometimes pausing just to stare across the room out a window into the night, then rising from her station, walking slowly to the window, listening to the echo of her own lonely footsteps hitting the cold tile, the sound bouncing off the naked concrete walls and high ceiling, then returning to taunt and console her. I could picture her feeling as desolate, directionless and disconnected from everything she loved as I felt.

I’d never kept anything from her before…at least, not anything on which she’d pressed me for more info. As close as we had always been in our little world of two, I knew it WAS a betrayal. Such behaviour, ironically, was something I would only have done for her sake. I’d have to tell her something, but I still couldn’t think what. It would have to be an edited version of the truth, because lying to her simply didn’t work. I questioned the wisdom of this whole pursuit. What had made me think it was so inevitable that she would follow in her mother’s footsteps, anyway?

An explanation good enough, thorough enough, plausible enough, yet safe enough to give Kaitlyn was my very obsession. I spent every waking moment pondering what might constitute such an explanation. When I lay in bed at night, never quite able to fall fully asleep, listening for the sound of Kaite’s key at the lock, I thought about it then, too. Ironically, I found I ached to seek Cleo’s input on my problem. Of course, I could not. This was between Kaite and me. I already felt unspeakable guilt not only for lying to my daughter, but for bringing someone into Kaite’s and my world without her consent. Cleo had been, an unseen presence in Kaite’s world for a while now. Kaitlyn had had no choice in the matter, and no explanation. I owed her something.

Even though I hadn’t yet settled upon my approach, I longed to spend some time with her, wanted her to want to spend some time with me, however awkward. To this end, I cancelled two of my meetings with Cleo in favor of attempting ambush dinners with my daughter. Both times Kaite arrived home at an hour I would not usually have been home to find me cooking REAL food for us with my own two hands. Some of her favourite dishes. Both times she made small-talk for about ten minutes before making her apologies and excuses and leaving us both alone again…

It was all so unlike her. But I had been unlike me. Now we were painfully unlike us. I hoped against hope that I’d just hastened an inevitable spell of teen moodiness. She’d been too sweet for too many years. I had to admit that was unnatural, or at least against all statistics. So bring on some hormones, I begged in my mind. I wished she’d lash out or ask me again…just ask me again and I’ll spill every last detail, Kaite, just to restore your trust, talk to me…Something.