Chapter 301: Chapter 303: THE MEETING
She went back into the kitchen and sat down and picked up her tea and her mother looked at her face and read it the way she’d been reading it for twenty four years.
"Today," Mei said.
"This afternoon."
Mei nodded.
She reached over and covered Aria’s hand with her own.
"You don’t have to be kind to her," she said.
"I know," Aria said.
"Whatever you’re planning to say...you don’t owe her kindness. Not after everything."
"I know, Mum."
Mei looked at her.
"But you’re going to be kind anyway," she said.
Aria looked at her tea.
"I’m going to be honest," she said. "That’s all. Just honest." She paused. "I don’t know if that’s the same thing."
Mei squeezed her hand once and let go.
"It might be better," she said.
****
THE MEETING
The place was a private dining room at a hotel in midtown.
Catherine had chosen it. Neutral, quiet, a space that could be cleared for two hours without raising questions. When Aria arrived at five to two the room had a table and four chairs and water and nothing else and the particular quality of a space that had been prepared for something important.
Victoria was already there.
She was sitting with her hands flat on the table and her coat still on, which Aria read as someone who hadn’t yet decided whether they were staying. She looked up when Aria came in.
They looked at each other.
Catherine Walsh was in a chair at the side of the room. Present, not participating. A witness if needed.
Aria sat down across from Victoria.
She looked at her properly....the way she’d looked at her outside the hospital, close enough to see past the composure to whatever lived underneath it. Victoria looked the same as she had on the pavement. Same stillness. Same careful presentation.
But something was different.
The patient quality was gone.
Not replaced by fear or desperation. Just.....absent. Like she’d put it down somewhere between the Chelsea hotel and this room and hadn’t picked it back up.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"You wanted to talk," Aria said.
"Yes."
"So talk."
Victoria looked at her hands on the table. Then back up.
"I’m not going to ask you for anything," she said. "I want to be clear about that first. I’m not here to negotiate or ask for mercy or...." She stopped. "I don’t want anything from you."
"Okay," Aria said.
"I wanted to...." Victoria paused. The composure shifted slightly. Not breaking. Just becoming more effortful, which was its own kind of honesty. "I’ve been doing something for eight months that I told myself was justice. That I told myself was proportionate and deserved and...." She stopped again. "And I’m sitting in this room and I’m looking at you and I’m finding it very difficult to call it by those names anymore."
Aria said nothing.
"I’m not apologising," Victoria said. "I want to be clear about that too. I don’t think....." She paused. "I don’t think an apology from me means anything. I don’t think you want one and I don’t think it would be honest for me to give one because I’m not....." She pressed her lips together. "I’m not sorry I wanted to fight back. I’m not sorry I was angry. I’m sorry about your mother. That was...." She stopped. "Standing outside her building was wrong. I knew it was wrong when I did it and I did it anyway and I’m sorry for that specifically."
The room was quiet.
Aria looked at her.
She thought about everything that had built to this moment. The warehouse. The hospital. The book. The article. The campaign that had been built with eight months of patient, cold precision and that had cost both of them things they weren’t going to get back.
She thought about what she’d wanted to say.
"I’m not going to tell you I understand," she said. "Because I don’t. Not completely. I know what you lost....I know the shape of it. I know your father used you. I know you spent three years being positioned and presented for a man who was never going to choose you and that’s...." She paused. "That’s its own kind of damage. And I know the warehouse cost you things that shouldn’t have been the cost of any of this."
Victoria was very still.
"But I need you to hear something," Aria said. "Not for my sake. For yours." She held Victoria’s gaze. "I didn’t take anything from you. What you wanted....Damien, the life, all of it .....it was never yours to take either. It was never mine to take. It just....happened. Between two people." She paused. "You were never the obstacle to that. Your father put you in a position where you thought you were and that was cruel and it was wrong and it had nothing to do with me."
Victoria looked at her.
Something moved through her face.
Not the composure cracking. Something more controlled than that. The deliberate, chosen opening of something she’d been keeping closed.
"I know that," she said quietly. "I’ve known it for a while." A long pause. "It’s easier to be angry at you than at him."
"I know," Aria said.
"He’s my father," Victoria said. Simply. Finally. The first thing she’d said in this room that wasn’t constructed.
"I know," Aria said again.
The room was very quiet.
Victoria looked at the table.
"What happens now," she said.
"Catherine files this afternoon," Aria said. "The evidence is complete. The lawyers will handle the process."
Victoria nodded slowly.
"And you," Aria said. "Go home." She held Victoria’s gaze. "Not as a condition of anything. Not because I’m telling you to. Just....." She paused. "Your mother is in Sydney. She’s been waiting for eight months." She paused. "Go home."
Victoria looked at her.
For a moment.....just a moment....the composure was entirely gone. Just a woman in a hotel room in midtown who was exhausted and had been exhausted for a very long time and had arrived at the end of something without knowing what came after.
Then she straightened.
She picked up her bag.
She stood.
She looked at Aria one last time across the table.
"You’re very difficult to hate," she said. Not warmly. Just honestly.
"I know," Aria said. "People keep telling me that."
Something moved across Victoria’s face that was the closest thing to a real expression she’d offered in the whole conversation.
She turned.
She walked to the door.
She stopped with her hand on it.
She didn’t turn around.
"For what it’s worth," she said, quietly, to the door. "The foundation. The Vitalis Radix work." A pause. "It’s a good thing. What he’s building." Another pause. "What you started."
She pushed the door open.
She walked out.
The door closed behind her.
Aria sat at the table for a moment.
Catherine Walsh was looking at her from the side of the room.
"I’ll file at four," Catherine said quietly.
Aria nodded.
She looked at the door.
She thought about a woman getting on a plane to Sydney. About a mother who had been waiting for eight months in an apartment with a harbour view.
She thought about progress.
Not the clean triumphant kind. The other kind. The kind that looked like two exhausted women in a hotel room in midtown saying the true things to each other across a table and then going back to their lives.
She stood up.
She picked up her bag.
She went to find Damien.
