Chapter 56: An Onlooker
As much as she tried to keep her thoughts on her book, Joyce found them straying. All morning long, through breakfast and the quiet hour or two as she sat with her daughter in the front room, both of them absorbed in their books, a nagging notion she couldn't quite shake persisted. Her daughter was no stranger to impetuosity, truth be told—even if that predilection had softened over the years—but something about this was...off.
Their voices were drifting in from the kitchen, the same words repeated every now and again. "'Darling! It's you!...No no, no worries, it doesn't matter—'"
"'Don't worry', Cully," she heard Tom say.
"Right, sorry."
He's probably happy to be the one helping her, she thought, flipping to the next page. After all the times this summer...He'd had no chance to read through Pygmalion with her, Joyce remembered; she'd only done so once or twice herself, if that. It had all fallen to...She sighed. Well, that was the problem, wasn't it: the man whose name they had tiptoed around almost the entire morning, like a poison no one was sure how to treat.
Despite the overall quiet in the front room, Joyce still heard rustling every few minutes. Whenever she shifted her gaze up from the words on the page before her, she saw her daughter peering at her phone, sitting beside her on the armrest of the plump chair. "Are you expecting a call?" she asked, letting her book fall closed.
Cully glanced up. "Sorry, Mum?"
"You keep glancing at your phone every five minutes." It was strange enough, Cully have her mobile to hand in the late morning, let alone checking it so often.
Her daughter dropped the script she had been struggling to read, clasping her hands over top of it for a second, then taking hold of her small black phone instead. "I—I don't know."
"What?"
"I mean...yes."
"You don't sound too sure."
Cully sighed, dropping it again, one of her feet beginning to tap on the floor. "I'm just—hoping Gavin will give me a ring."
Of course, Joyce thought. Cully had rarely spoken about him over the past few days, but the young man clearly weighed on her mind. "So why don't you call him?"
Her daughter looked down, running her thumbs over the edge of her script, pulling her arms in closer. "He said he would."
There was a darkness in Cully's voice. "So?"
"And I'm just hoping he will."
Joyce narrowed her eyes. "What?"
"It's...Don't worry about it."
Even if she wouldn't admit it, Cully had been acting peculiar over the last days: dark looks, words she wouldn't explain, and the sort of unhappiness Joyce didn't remember seeing in her daughter since she had broken up with her first high school boyfriend. "Cully, did something happen?" she asked quietly, curling her hands around the spine of the book in her lap.
Cully shook her head. "Nothing really, Mum."
"That's not an answer."
"I'd tell you if something did—really—"
"Then what, Cully?"
"What?" Everything sounded hard, finding the words—forming the questions.
"Please, what's the matter?" Joyce asked quietly, leaning forward.
"We..." Cully's voice faded as she looked away for a second, pressing a hand to her shoulder.
"What is it?"
Cully let out a heavy breath. "We had words yesterday," she said slowly, "that's all."
Joyce could hear the unhappiness in Cully's voice, see it as her daughter still refused to meet her eyes. She slipped her book away beside one of her legs. "What about?"
"Just...changes."
"You don't sound happy about it," Joyce said quietly. The darkness was sounding heavier, blacker as Cully rubbed her arms, like she suddenly felt a gentle breeze.
She pulled one of her feet up into the chair, tucking it beneath her other knee, somehow just looking smaller—almost colder. "And—life, that's all."
There was still something missing, something Cully wasn't saying. "Did you tell him you changed your mind?"
Another hesitation, another reach for her mobile. "Yes. Or—I tried."
Tried? Joyce thought, folding her fingers together around her knees. "And what did he think?" she asked quietly.
"He didn't." The last word was clipped and almost bitten, something sharp and ugly underneath as she frowned. "Or at least...he didn't say."
That wasn't the Sergeant Troy Joyce remembered sitting at the kitchen table with Cully just a couple months ago, clearly craving her daughter's touch, struggling to reach for—hold?—her hand. "I'm sure he must have had some opinion."
Cully glanced at her phone yet again. "I'm sure he did"—just as before she dropped it down again, letting it fall back onto the arm of the chair—"but really, he didn't want to know."
How was the sharpness growing worse, and stronger, somehow worse? "You don't have to hold everything so close all the time, Cully."
Her daughter shook her head, tucking her chin into her palm. Joyce kept waiting for the words, but they never came. It wasn't something she was used to from Cully, with her occasionally impetuous choices and willingness to be blunt. "Really, Cully—"
"I know, Mum," she said, raising her face again as her gaze drifted to her phone again. "Sorry, just...I still need to think."
"What about?"
"About..." Her daughter sighed. "About...things, that's all."
"Yes?"
She dropped her foot back onto the floor. "Don't worry about it, Mum. There's nothing you need to know, really."
Joyce leaned forward. "You know your father and I are always here to listen, dear."
"Yes, just..."
"What is it?" Joyce asked quietly once more.
With another glimpse down and a shake of her head, Cully whispered, "Nothing."
Until Cully finally stood, heading into the kitchen looking for her father to read through her lines, she'd continued to look at her phone every few minutes, still not saying anything about anything. It was anything but nothing.
All their words had danced around each other, all saying everything but what needed to be said: why. Many a thing done in haste were soon regretted. ("Marry in haste, repent at leisure," that had been the warning from her own mother as her relationship with Tom grew stronger.) And words, especially those flung in anger, often had a power far beyond themselves. Cully hadn't said they'd merely spoken—rather that they had had words—and she knew her daughter well enough that probably most of them were hers: blunt and perhaps even rash.
It wasn't confusion Joyce had been witnessing, not even sadness. It was regret, regret and stubbornness. Maybe—no surely—tinged with guilt as well. She had said to Tom more than once, he only knew Sergeant Troy: a policeman, not a man. Sometimes, though, the latter broke through.
That afternoon, sitting with Cully, looking ready to reach out and touch her. Driving her home that horrible afternoon, so clearly wondering if he should stay or go. All those extra hours to allow Tom the extra time with them and his own memories. The little glances that he probably fancied were hidden. And perhaps most of all, a newer, brighter happiness in Cully. It had all gone wrong before, Joyce well remembered that, but something had been cleaner, this time. Ready for someone to reach out and claim it.
Her gaze was still drifting across the page, and she turned a few back, trying to find the last bit she recalled. "'No no, I'm sure he won't be...'" she heard her daughter begin from the kitchen, her voice fading as she seemed to be struggling to find the words.
"'He won't be back unexpectedly,'" Tom finished for her.
"'No no, I'm sure he won't be back unexpectedly.'"
Sure? Joyce wondered, finally closing her book. You might want to think about that yourself, Cully. Reach out and claim it...Easier said than done, and...what? Only one person knew—truly knew—what, and she was the only person who wasn't talking.
A/N: A little while ago I mentioned that I would run some thought experiments on Cully and Troy's ages, to see if that's another reason that Barnaby might be unhappy about a relationship between them. I think there's something to that possibility. My very rough calculations peg that difference at about three years at the least and six or seven at the most (exclusively TV canon). Again, very rough. Much of the data on entering the police force was extremely recent.