Clarice is trying to hide a smile the entire time she gets into the car, the entire time Honey is speaking to her. When Honey finishes, Clarice purses her lips for a moment–offering no judgement, just an expression of thought. She starts the car, putting her hand on the back of Honey’s seat to help her angle right to see behind her; and when she does, she lets her hand brush Honey’s hair, just for a moment, just to make sure she’s really there.
The hand is gone a moment later, placed firmly back on the steering wheel as she pulls out of the parking lot. “Honey Darling. It suits you,” she says, offering that as she tries to decide what’s proper to ask about and what needs to be left alone. “I’m touched. That you saw me first. I’ve been wondering where you’ve been, you know, thinking about you.” And there it is, that little invitation, a question that can be politely ignored; an offer for Honey to explain where she’s been that she can, if she wants, pretend not to notice. Clarice won’t push it, then, if she ignores it; but still, she has to ask.
The dread weight of expectation doesn’t hang like a lead apron around Honey’s neck-- not the way she thought that it might, not the way she’s been resolutely avoiding for so very, very long. In fact it barely feels like anything at all. Deflecting would be simpler than simple; an easy lie is on the tip of Honey’s tongue before she quite knows what it is she’s going to say, and it feels so much like cheating she swallows it back out of pure spite.
Things are going to be different, this time. That is the lie Honey told herself, and it may as well become true. She may be spinning holding patterns around old nostalgias, but Honey doesn’t have to stay the same person she’s always been. Honey is made new again on every breath; she can reinvent herself a person who knows how to tell the truth.
But it’s hard. It’s always been hard. She lets the silence stretch so thin maybe Clarice doesn’t expect from her an answer-- she tucks her chin against the shelf of her knees, not quite watching the road, not quite shutting Clarice out.
“...If worry is the emotion, it is not what you should feel,” She finally settles on, a lame platitude that tastes sharp in all the disgusting ways. It’s not a real answer-- she’s trying for a real answer. She tries again.
“I have been spending lots of time in old circles. Home again, I guess, is the flavor of this retreat. Old friends. Old debts. I have been spending many times with my boyfriend.”
And they weren’t bad times-- she can’t help but smile, thinking of her bird. The Arbiter had needed her help, and she wouldn’t ever turn down a call from him, not when he too hasn’t ever really asked anything of her. She turns that smile on Clarice, cheek squished to her knee, beaming. Trying, for what little trying has ever been worth.
“Belgium is very nice in the spring. I missed it, but it is an easy place to get tired of. So I came back. I have missed this too, also, a whole lot. I also had wondered, what it was that you were doing,” That last sentence runs so flat it no longer sounds like the question it is, but it is. Call it an olive branch. She can pick up the ebb and flow of conversation again.
