Since I was a child I’ve only ever had one real dream, to be understood and accepted.

I don’t know exactly when that wish was born in me, but I have an idea.

"You’re disgusting, don’t come near us," a boy had told me once, a boy whose eyes had been erased for my own good.

That taste, of burnt ants, always haunts my palate. Every time I opened the door after school, greeted only by my grandmother’s humming as she cooked.

"Hi, grandma," I greeted her, setting my backpack down by her feet. "Are you making another scarf?"

"Yes, sweetheart," she answered, moving the needles with a hypnotic rhythm. "This one has a brown bear, do you think your mother will like it?"

"It’s the fifth one this week, grandma," I said, sitting beside the sofa, looking at the floor. "She’s never worn any of the ones you give her, why do you keep doing it?"

She placed a hand on my head. "Because I like giving gifts to the people I love," she laughed. "Your grandfather I filled with gloves and hats, and your father with socks."

"I don’t understand it... why keep trusting she’s going to use them, when she’s already disappointed you?"

She placed a hand on my uniform, smoothing it carefully. "The answer is simple, Clear," she moved her hand to my head. "Because I love her."

"I don’t understand..." I repeated.

"Even if she doesn’t wear them, it makes me happy to give them to her. I know that someday she’ll need them," she smiled. "Maybe they’ll even end up with you, and through them you’ll remember me, every time you feel the warmth this house needs."

"I’ve always had a dream, grandma," I said quietly, curling against her leg. "And it’s to not be so cold anymore."

She didn’t answer, I just watched her pick up white yarn and start knitting. In that moment I thought the next scarf would be horrible, too thick and too big in my mind, and white besides.

Who would have thought it would become my favorite sweater.

With it, and the right person, I’m not cold anymore.

Chapter 38: Gusti Italiani VII

"When Elena picked up her laundry basket she found her phone underneath," Dr. Roy laughed, raising her pitcher with a smile. "It had been missing for two days and all she had to do was clean her room, what a kid, honestly."

I took a sip of my third tea, listening carefully to each one of her stories. Each one grew more sincere than the last, with every drink she took from that yellow pitcher.

"Elena is very attached to her phone, isn’t she?" I asked. "There isn’t a day I don’t see her with it."

"Too much," she nodded. "Even though she seems calm, she’s actually a pretty disobedient kid, you tell her to do something, and she does the opposite, like she enjoys making you angry," she admitted, raising her pitcher, calling the waitress over. "She spends the whole day grumbling, ignoring me whenever she can and arguing about the smallest things."

I blinked a couple of times, watching the waitress hand her a new drink with almost the same efficiency as Nolan delivering coffee.

"Sometimes I think it’s just an age thing, you know, adolescence and rebellion," she laughed for a second, drinking some of the foam. "But after five years, I’m not so sure anymore, have I failed as a mother?"

"What are you thinking, Hirise?" I asked, watching her grip her pitcher.

"It’s ironic, don’t you think?" she laughed. "A psychologist mother who doesn’t understand her own daughter. And the worst part is, I don’t know why," she set a fist on the table. "Sorry, sorry, when I drink I don’t know what I’m saying."

"That doesn’t bother me," I answered, eating a piece of shrimp. "If I’m honest, I never thought that about Elena, but if she tells me more, maybe you could help her."

She looked at me for a second, I noticed her cheeks were red. "Do you get along well with Elena?"

"A little, honestly," I answered, squeezing my thigh under the table. "We haven’t talked much, but she confessed to me how she felt about having a partner."

She raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised. "I didn’t expect she’d have that kind of relationship with you. With me she only says to drop her off at the park and leave her two blocks before we get there. Sometimes I feel like she hates me..."

"She doesn’t hate you," I interrupted. "I’m completely sure of that."

"And how can you say that, everything she does suggests otherwise."

I lowered my gaze, thinking of all the times I hid things from my mother. "Because she’s afraid of you," I answered, looking down. "Sometimes mothers carry that image, especially you, since you’re a psychologist."

"Why would she be afraid of me?" she asked, nearly knocking over her drink. "With good reason. I can tell her if a boy is good or bad, how to handle him, how to take care of herself emotionally so she doesn’t get hurt."

"That’s exactly what she’s afraid of, Miss Roy!" I shouted, standing up from the table. "I’m sorry," I said, sitting back down. "You reminded me a little of my mother, and my relationship with her was never the best."

She blinked a couple of times. "What was your mother like?"

"Why would you like to know that?"

"To know where I might be going wrong," she confessed. "I don’t want to repeat patterns that maybe you’d recognize."

I smiled. "My mother was a very particular woman. The woman with the longest neck I’ve ever known," I laughed. "According to my grandmother, it grew long so she could see and hear more gossip, since she loved criticizing you for everything."

I turned toward a clock in the restaurant.

"She was the kind of person who could spend five hours waiting for you to put on a shirt she approved of, and it wasn’t as simple as having a couple she liked and wearing those every day," I looked down. "If she saw you in the same shirt two days in a row, she wouldn’t let you leave the house."

"She was very strict," the doctor added.

I nodded. "She almost burned my sweater more than once. She was sick of me wearing it," I confessed. "So I avoided wearing it on the only days I had to be around her," I sighed. "But if it wasn’t the clothes, it was my training, her shrill voice still echoes in my head like fingernails scraping a chalkboard."

"How did she criticize you?"

"Lift that leg higher. Center that arrow more. Don’t tire so fast," I let out. "And the list goes on and on, I came to think she hated me."

She stayed quiet, it seemed like she didn’t want me to stop talking.

I sighed.

"When I confessed I had feelings for the gardener’s son, a sweet boy my age who helped his father work on Friday afternoons and weekends. She investigated everything she could, until two days later she told me I was forbidden from being with someone of the working class, that it would only stain our pure bloodline."

I clenched my fist, watching Hirise’s eyes go as wide open as my wound.

"Sh-she forbade me from going near him!" I shouted, feeling my voice start to break, my throat losing its strength. "E-even though h-he was the only p-person who had ever treated me well. H-he was a k-kind boy, who us-used to tell me n-not to cry."

She placed a hand on my shoulder, asking me to look up.

"Calm down, Clear, breathe, it’s just me listening to you," she said gently. "Better now? Can you tell me what that boy was like and what happened?"

"E-every time I came back from school, I came back crying. But, on Fridays, I knew h-he would be there," I breathed. "H-he would tell me it’s okay to cry, a-as long as I always smiled at the end."

I lowered my gaze, holding back the tears at the edge of my eyes.

I remembered his face, his dark skin, but his bright teeth. I tightened my hand, remembering every second I spent beside him.

"He always said it with a smile bigger than his whole face," I confessed. "But my mother, to make sure I obeyed," I let go of my arm, feeling my whole body lose its strength. "She fired his father and filed a restraining order on a fabricated harassment claim."

I felt my mind starting to fade, my eyes going blank.

"That day I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream, I wasn’t even able to clench my fist," I felt my lungs losing the little air they were holding onto. "I knew it was pointless, my mother’s decisions had always been final."

"What did she tell you?"

"It was for your own good, sweetheart," I repeated. "Now take off that hideous sweater," I looked down, feeling everything around me turn to dust along with my tears. "I only remember, how that Friday after school I was so cold, and I couldn’t smile after crying."

"Breathe," she asked, holding my hand. I felt her warmth carefully, just like hers, when I burned her scarves next to the house. "You’re not in Norway anymore, you’re in Canada."

I smiled at her words, and stopped crying.