It was just that it had been so long since I’d had friends, or anyone to open up to, I’d forgotten how.
And, in thinking about it (which I tried not to do, and failed), it occurred to me I really never had good friends I could open up to. When I was a kid, I didn’t want to bring friends to my house because I didn’t even like being in my house, I didn’t want to make friends come there. This meant invitations to their houses dried up and I was often left out.
Thinking on this, I realized as I grew older, my solitude kind of became habit. I had friends, just never really close ones.
Even though I hadn’t opened up to the girls, it wasn’t lost on them things weren’t great. This was because I was moping and also because Apollo hadn’t showed in four days.
“Hey,” I called to Cristiana.
She smiled a small smile, her eyes on me assessing in a kindly way, and she moved into the room.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Tea, perhaps?”
“I’m good, honey, thanks,” I murmured.
She sat on the couch with me and looked out the window.
I looked back out it too.
“Ulfr doesn’t come.”
When she spoke, I looked back to her.
“Sorry?”
She gave me her eyes, no less assessing, no less kind, but now astute. “Four nights he has not been here.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Will we see him tonight?”
I looked back to the falling snow and whispered, “I doubt it.”
There was a long moment of silence before Cristiana broke it.
“May I ask, Miss Maddie, why you delay so long in healing this breach?”
I turned surprised eyes to her. “Sorry?”
“It’s yours to heal and you delay. This isn’t right.”
“I…” I began and trailed off.
What was she talking about? How was it my breach to heal?
Had Apollo said something to her?
“Um…Cristiana, no offense,” I pulled it together to say, “but you don’t know what happened. I’m not sure it’s my breach to heal.”
“We women,” she started, “it rarely is but it always is. Learn from me. I have thirty-five years with my husband. He is proud. He is stubborn. Therefore, when we have words and distance forms, it’s up to me to close it.”
There it was. One thing that was the same in both worlds.
“That isn’t right,” I told her the truth.
“It isn’t but there are a lot of things that aren’t right or fair in this world and this also pertains to relations between men and women.”
She wasn’t wrong about that.