I felt a little sad as I got myself in to bed that night. I had about 4 missed calls from my mother who had left messages on my answering machine. She threatened to come and visit me if I didn’t get back to her by the following day.

I settled in to my big, unnecessarily large bed and picked up the receiver of the phone. I dialled my parents house. Surprising me, my father answered.

“Hi Joseph,” I greeted him a little nervously. We hadn’t spoken too much since they had picked me up from the airport after Mexico, “Its Michael.”

“Hey Mike…” He greeted me. He spoke a lot slower in the more recent years, his voice still sounded mean regardless of how kind he was being. Perhaps meanness was something I’d always associate to him, though. “How you doing over there? Are you at Neverland or at your apartment?”

“I’m in Hidden Hills,” I replied, “I’m okay, thanks. How are you and Mother?”

“We’re fine, what’s the word on the case?”

“We’re waiting, Greg is collating a list of contacts to speak with about their time with me, I think he’s looking to get witnesses together, but apart from that, Joseph,” I answered honestly, “I’m keeping my head in the sand.”

“Okay, that’s understandable,” he remarked uncharacteristically. “Good move getting that woman on your side, she is very good for your case and makes you look like a man who isn’t at all interested in kids.”

What the fuck?

It reminded me of the equally stupid and glib comment Malania’s mother had made about her making friends.

“Malania is my friend, Joseph, and I am a man who isn’t interested in kids in some sick way. I’m not looking to her for good publicity, she’s my friend.” I reiterated trying not to sound irate.

“Hey don’t get defensive on me now, I’m just saying, she makes you look good.”

I felt exasperated and didn’t bother using anymore of my energy on him. “Is Mother there? She left me some messages.”

He didn’t press me for anything else more. I was glad for that. He put my bother on the phone.

“Michael!” she exclaimed, “I have been so worried about you, how are you holding up after the arraignment?”

I couldn’t help but to feel affection for my mother. I wasn’t fair to her sometimes, I wanted her off my back but at the same time, I really needed her and her intentions were incredibly pure. “Mother, I am fine, I promise you.”

“You went shopping that night! I was so shocked to see you on the news.”

I’d almost forgotten Malania and I had managed to go music shopping and also for a fast-food burger. I smiled at the memory that seemed as if it were world’s away. “Yeah, I want to try to get by as normally as I can…” I let my voice trail off, I wasn’t sure if my freedom was going to be an ongoing thing.

“I am just really happy to hear your voice, Michael,” she murmured, “do you want me to come over?”

“No, Mom, I’m okay, I promise,” I replied, “I’m at the apartment at Hidden Hills,” I told her.

“Is your fan-friend still with you? Mallory?” she questioned me.

“Malania,” I corrected her, “And she’s not my fan-friend, Mother, she’s just my friend…she’s not with me now, she’s away for a week.”

“Oh, do you want to tell me about her?” she asked me casually, I knew she was trying to extract more information from me.

“No, Mother, I don’t really want to talk about her right now, but I want you to know that she is a very, very good friend and I care about her a lot.”

Her interest was piqued. “And what about Liz, have you seen her?”

“No, I believe she gets back from London this Wednesday. I will see her then.”

I spoke for a little longer making small-talk. I knew she needed it more than I did.

Afterwards, I decided to go to bed. 

**

I didn’t really know what to do with myself when I woke up in the morning, so I decided to sleep-in. I didn’t even raise myself out of bed until after midday and I didn’t feel sorry, I really needed some good, solid, uninterrupted sleep.

The anxiousness that had encumbered me for a few days had subsided and I was back to living my surreal existence; it allowed me to live normally with intermittent reminders of a pending jail sentence.

I had organised to go to Malania’s house before dinner so her Mom could teach me to cook. It was almost 2 hrs away, I considered that once Malania was allowed to have visitors, I might book a hotel close by to save all the driving.

I skulked around the house, a little blue and bored without someone to talk to or someone to look forward to talking to.

I went for a shower and called Carsen to come and get me to take me back to her place.

I sat up front again instead of resigning myself to the backseat. Carsen seemed surprised every single time I got in beside him.

“Mr. Jackson, are we headed to see Ms. Malania?”

“No, Carsen, we are going to her parent’s house again in Fountain Valley, her mother is going to give me a cooking lesson,” I told him as we drove down the street. I slipped sunglasses on over my eyes and pulled my hair back in to an elastic.

“Oh,” he smiled, “you really like that girl, don’t you?”

I looked out ahead of us as we turned on to a main road heading toward the highway. I smiled. “Yeah, I really do… I hope she’s doing okay.”

“Did you want to visit her?” he asked as if the idea hadn’t yet occurred to me.

“I can’t, she is lockdown for a week, after then we can see each other.”

“So wait, what’s the facility for, is she unwell?” he asked casually. I knew he had to be wondering what the hell was wrong with her since we had gone to a treatment facility.

“Yeah, she’s got some things going on,” I replied. I didn’t want to be rude, but I also wasn’t able to share Malania’s health issues with anyone. I didn’t want to betray her trust.

“So, you’re going to visit her parents without her being there, seems serious,” he joked.

I laughed. It was pretty unlike me. Meeting parents for me in any past relationships made me feel uneasy and reluctant, but I didn’t actually consider it much. “Yeah, maybe it is… I don’t know, man,” I replied with a shrug, “I’ve got too much happening right now to start thinking of marriage or anything crazy. I’ll settle with being able to surprise her with cooking her a dinner.”

The drive was kind of quiet, we made small talk which I wasn’t particularly great at, but I felt comfortable with Carsen, I knew he was on my side.

“Hey,” I began as we were getting closer, “can I use your car phone?” I asked, nodding toward the phone that was attached in the middle of the car’s console.

“Sure,” he replied with a smile.

I picked up the phone slowly. I had memorised the number almost immediately. I was bad with names, but I was always good with numbers.

I dialled the number of Malania’s treatment facility. I was aware that I wasn’t able to speak to her, but surely there wasn’t anything wrong with calling to check up on her.

I waited until a receptionist picked up. “Good afternoon this is Willow Blue Treatment Facility, this is Candace speaking, how may I help?” she asked sweetly.

“Hi Candace, I’m not sure if you can help me. My name is Peter and a friend of mine is a patient there, her name is Malania Nakamura—“

She asked me to hold a moment so that she could look her up. The facility only had a small number of beds and patients, probably around 25 or so, it was one of the reasons as to why Malania’s sister had helped the rest of her family choose it.

“Hi, Peter, are you there?” she came back to the phone for a moment after taking me off hold. I was thankful, the instrumental elevator music always drove me nuts.

“Yes, I’m still here.”

“Malania is currently not taking visitors or phone calls, I’m sorry, I can’t put you through to her.”

“I know that,” I replied, “I actually just wondered if I could find out if she’s doing okay—“

“I’m sorry Peter, because you’re not a direct family member, I’m not actually allowed to comment on her progress,” she replied. She was incredibly polite and friendly and I hoped that was a reflection of the over-all staffing at the facility.

“I understand, the other thing I was wondering was… is Malania allowed to receive anything like letters or flowers or a gift or something like that?” I really wanted to send her something if only to assure her that I was thinking of her.

“No, I’m very sorry, this week period is almost like a detox period. We need Malania to be completely focused on therapy and daily routine.”

I gave a sigh. “Okay, I understand, thanks for your help Candace, I’ll call back in a week.”

“Okay Peter, thanks for calling, see you.”

“No luck?” Carsen asked.

“Nah, but it was worth the try…” I chuckled wryly.

**

I arrived about twenty minutes later than expected, I felt awful for not being punctual. Unfortunately, I had slept too late.

Malania’s mother, Helena opened the door right as I was about to ring the doorbell. She smiled at me and ushered me inside before anyone saw me.

“Michael!” she greeted me, hugging me and taking me by surprise. She kissed both of my cheeks. “How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks. How are you?”

“I am good,” she nodded. I took my shoes off and followed her through the front foyer and in to the kitchen. “Malania’s father is on his way home, he went to get our grand daughter. She comes over on the Tuesday nights,” she explained.

Malania’s mother was very endearing, from her 50’s style smocks, grandmother-ish looks right down to her misplaced use of English words. “Oh, okay.” I smiled. On this occasion her hair was braided out of the way as if she had gone to a little bit more effort on my account.

“Here you must put this on,” she advised me handing me a pink frilly apron that was almost identical to hers. I looked at it, holding it in my hands and laughed.

“Its okay, I don’t need this,” I told her going to place it down.

She smiled kindly at me and shook her head. She knew immediately why I wasn’t cool with tying a stupid pink apron around myself. “It will be messy, you have a nice shirt, I don’t want it to have meat on it.”

I wondered what we were making. She had promised it would be easy, but I was daunted when I saw the ingredients everywhere. I reluctantly passed the loop of the apron over my head and tied the strings behind my back without a word. “What are we making today?”

“We will make Malania’s favourite,” she told me, “we will make cevapi and something like a red pepper sauce, its called ajvar.”

I was a little bit excited, but hoped I wasn’t as hopeless as I felt. “Please be gentle with me,” I told her, “I’m not sure you understand how bad I am at this. I don’t know how to even turn the oven on,” I admitted, “I don’t really even know how to make a cup of tea.”

I saw an alarmed look on Helena’s face for a moment before it dispersed in to a kind smile. “It is okay, Michael,” she told me, “I can teach you from the beginning. I will make us both tea. Do you like it with milk?”

I loved English style tea. “Sure.”

She gestured me to join her at one end of the kitchen. She took two tea cups and two saucers from the cupboard above her head that she was barely able to reach. She was shorter than Malania which said a lot.

She showed me how much tea to put in to a teapot and laughed me off when I asked her where she kept the tea bags. She showed me just the right amount of tea to pour and how to pour it without spilling it everywhere and then allowed me to pour the milk.

I felt like a child again begging my mother to let me whisk an egg or pour a cup of flour in to a bowl.

She demanded that I sit down at the dining table with her. She put out some cookies; just like the ones that Malania had given me on the second time she had visited me. “Here, you eat, šećer, you need to fatten up.”

I knew it wasn’t at all anything offensive her commands; it was just the culture. I picked up a crescent moon short-bread type cookie that was covered in powdered sugar. I had always had an incredibly sweet tooth.

“Thank you,” I said as I took a bite, blowing a puff of powdered sugar everywhere. I quickly covered my mouth and apologised. Helena laughed. I could tell that impressing people with her food was very important to her. Perhaps it was one thing that gave her some self-worth.

“It is my pleasure.”

We sipped our tea in a little bit of awkward silence. I noticed she didn’t touch her own sweets. A paranoid moment passed thinking she was probably poisoning me for making a move on her daughter.

“Do you think of Malania today?” she asked me kindly.

“Yes,” I chuckled, “I tried to call the hospital to see if they would allow me to know how she was doing,” I explained, “but they didn’t tell me anything… I kinda knew that they weren’t going to tell me anything, but I thought I’d take a chance.”

She was happy to hear that. “You like my daughter, yes?” she asked.

I nodded, “Yes, I like her very much. I’ve become very fond of her. I’ve always been fond of her, actually.”

The smile faded slowly but surely from her face. “How long have you known my Malania for?” she asked in a serious way. I sipped my tea and thought about it for a moment. I was bad with timing, but I was sure I’d met her about 2 years earlier for the first time.

“A few years…” I replied, “about two or three, I suppose. She was always very sweet and polite, you and your husband raised her so well.”

Helena smiled briefly. I knew she wanted to have a serious conversation about my intentions. She may have been polite and a little socio-phobic and nervous with her English, but she was obviously very protective of her most favourite daughter.

“Why do you wait til now to become her friend?” she asked me. It was a fair question and I didn’t see it coming. “You know her for all this time and now you want to be her friend, what is it that changes?”

I looked in to my teacup and felt a little uncomfortable. I concentrated on the intricate patterns on the chinaware and couldn’t help feeling a little ambushed. I supposed I’d want to know the same thing if my daughter—or, Casey was being accosted by a person who I knew was deeply troubled just by turning on the television.

“Timing, maybe.” I replied, trying to be honest. “Malania asked me a similar thing; she suggested that maybe if this bad stuff hadn’t happened to me, I may have never befriended her; and that could be true,” I shrugged. “But, Helena,” I dared to look up in to her eyes that, if I didn’t already know, would have never guessed belonged to the mother of the predominantly Asian-looking girl I loved, “in my life I’ve always let everyone do everything for me and that included keeping certain people away.”

She hadn’t said a single word, but she was staring at me expectantly.

“I have had managers and bodyguards and hangers-on who don’t like involving anyone in my circle because it might compromise their position. Unfortunately when you are a celebrity, you encounter a lot of people trying to benefit from you – and its hard to trust anyone. Even if I wanted to befriend Malania, my people would have kept her at arms length. When this awful thing happened to me, everyone ran away from me in all different directions. Nobody stayed loyal,” I explained, “nobody believed me and if they did, they were too scared to show it in case people might think badly of them.”

Still silence. Save for a sip of her tea, of course.

“But Malania stayed loyal to me. I felt incredibly alone and sad and she was sitting and waiting for me and I cared enough about her to make sure she was safe because she was alone too. I liked her enough to want to make sure she was okay. I know what happened to me also upset her. And that was finally my chance to get to know her without all the added extras of people trying to cut in to my time or tell me what to do—it’s the first time in my life that I’ve been allowed to just do my own thing, make my own friends and get to know someone without another person trying to sabotage it.”

“Are you dating her?” she asked bluntly.

I was very wary of my answer. “I think so, is that alright with you? I mean, I want you and your husband to approve of me.”

She looked in to her tea. I sensed some reluctance. “My daughter, Michael, she is very, very fragile, she doesn’t deserve to have her heart broken.”

“I know,” I agreed, “I have been very careful with her heart, I promise. I love her friendship most importantly and I am not rushing anything. I just want to take my time and get to know her… I want her to be healthy and happy before anything else.”

Helena seemed satisfied with that answer. He shared eye contact for a moment. “I really care about her,” I told her sincerely, “And I know that she cares for me the same. We are very good for each other, I believe.”

“In fact, I will try to protect her and honour and not turn my back on her when things are hard for either of us. I hope you’ll trust me.”

I never got her answer because bounding inside was a sweet little girl with long light brown curls that were tied half up in a big red floppy ribbon. She saw me before her grandmother and hit the brakes. I almost laughed, if her short stop had a sound effect, it would have been one with skidding tyres.

“Hello there,” I greeted her. She stared at me for a moment before taking a few steps back out of the doorway to see where her grandfather was.

“Danijela, come to Grandma,” Helena gestured, getting up to greet her grandmother, “I’m just here,” the little girl gingerly entered the room again, standing on her tip toes so that she could see over the top of the table that obscured her view.

Helena made her way to Danijela and lifted her up and kissed her cheeks, cuddling her. It was obvious that she meant the world to her. “Sweetheart, this is Michael, would you like to say hello?”

Danijela stared at me and said nothing.

“Nice to meet you Danijela,” I smiled at her warmly. Danijela ignored me and pointed to the cookies on the plate. Helena laughed, “Okay ljubavi just one.”

I held out the plate for the little girl. She took the same one that I had taken. “I am teaching Michael to make some cevapi for Malania, would you like to help us?”

“I want to help pa in the garden,” she replied, wriggling down.

“Its too late for the garden, you stay here with Grandma…”

George appeared in the doorway and greeted me warmly. We shook hands as I watched him help himself to a few cookies. We made small talk while Helena set Dani down at the table with a glass of milk.

Eventually Helena and I began to cook. I wasn’t particularly fond of dealing with meat. Not that I’d ever had much experience, but when Helena asked me to ground all of the minced meat—lamb and beef and a bunch of other herbs and spices together by hand, I wanted to puke. I sucked it up though and went for it.

She showed me her method of cooking, to clean as she went, to prepare things in such a way that it would all be ready at once, something that she told me Malania struggled with.

“A-scuze me, Michael?” I felt a pair of hands tugging at my shirt. I smiled down at her, remembering my meat-covered hands, “Pa said you are Aunty Lania’s friend.”

“Yes, I am…” I confirmed.

“Are you her boyyyyyfriend?”

I just chuckled. Here’s hoping, I thought.

Helena explained to her husband that I’d tried to call the treatment centre. He didn’t say much, I thought maybe sharing that I’d done so was perhaps overstepping a line.

We worked on some potatoes next. Helena showed me how to boil them and check that they were done. She showed me a way to fry them off with some onion and cheese the way we had eaten them the night before.

She made me do basically everything and was patient and kind to me. I asked lots of questions as I went, feeling very unsure of myself.

“You’re doing a very good job, Michael, I am sure Malania will love this.”

“Hopefully I’ll remember how to cook when its time to cook for her,” I replied a little self-consciously.

After I finished cooking, the four of us ate together, listening to anecdotes of their granddaughter who was very sweet but didn’t look a single thing like either Malania or her parents.

“Michael,” George began as he took a seat at the table, “I called Willow Blue, they reported to me that Malania-chan is doing very well and that she has had a very good first day. She is engaging in all meal times, activities and has been a little tired. They are sure its just adjusting to the new place.”

I felt a swell of happiness in my heart. “Thank you so much for that, I was a little bit worried.”

“Oh this is good news…” Helena remarked.

“Its my pleasure, I was curious to know how my little girl was dong as well,” he remarked.

It was all a little bit awkward without Malania there.

After dinner, I decided not to stay much longer despite Helena trying to insist that I stay for some dessert. We organised for me to come for a more general cooking lesson the following week. She said she would teach me to use all the appliances that I was unsure of.

I was incredibly grateful.

I called Carsen and waited for him to pick me up.