ii.
"I told you Maman, I'll be fine." She speaks calmly into the sleek silver phone at her ear, her voice vulnerable yet firm. The gadget is what Renée hesitates to label a measure of mollification, because she'd needed no consolation (or even convincing) when it came to her parents' divorce, but the faint annoyance she felt with herself was growing stronger every time she used it. She is trying her best to be understanding of her mother, as it is the first holiday she's spending without both or one of her parents. But the fact that Emmanuelle was trying to make her feel guilty for leaving, for moving away from Bruges and from an empty house that still held echoed screams buried in now-deafening silence, was leaving her steady hands nearly shaking with anger. Renée's animosity towards her parents ebbs and flows like the sea. She can see the cold waves coming in, white-capped and blue, and hangs up before the crash of waves on shore. The sound reverberates in the space around her head, leaving her chest hollow.
The sheer amount of effort she'd put into the move, far eclipsing any of her parents' minimal support, was the only proof needed of Renée's determination and focus. Getting her records straight at school in Belgium and transferring to the Université de Caen with the full backing of her professors, not even counting packing her possessions and getting them to France, to her best friend Augusta's apartment, was a task that a few months ago seemed as tall as a mountain. Now that it is done, Renée wishes desperately to feel like she can breathe deeply again. She has so much to be happy for: being out of the house that held so much anger in its walls, moving in with a friend that knew her better than anyone else, the continuation of her studies, and the intertwined joy and pain of growing up, of exploration. But she feels something holding her back. It isn't homesickness or fear, or even mere trepidation. It is something she can't put her finger on, and that is what rattles her confidence more than anything.
As she hauls her bags up to the apartment, she takes a deep breath. Letting her new atmosphere wash over her seems like the best way to try and shake this nervous energy. The smell of Augusta's cooking, a rich, warming stew, greets her at the door, along with hugs and cheek kisses and more hugs. Over dinner, they discuss their plans for the next few months. Augusta is twenty-three, four years older than Renée, and works as an EMT in the city. Renée has only looked as far as finishing school in Caen, but she knows for a fact that she won't go back to Belgium.
As she drifts off to sleep that night, she feels hopeful. This weight on her chest could be lifted here. She is home.