A Shadow's Breath

by Nicole Hayes

  Ms Bainbridge hands her a cup of water. ‘Tiny sips. Wet your mouth.’

  Her hand is shaking too much, so Ms Bainbridge holds it for her, just tipping it slightly. The cool water against her lips is delicious, and it takes all her willpower not to gulp it down greedily. She wants to drown in it. To disappear into its depths, swim in it. Then a flood of images.

  The car.

  The mountain.

  Nick.

  Tears wet her cheeks. She doesn’t make a noise. A silent, heartbreaking grief so consuming that she can’t even cry properly. It’s too … big.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Tessa,’ Ms Bainbridge says, enclosing Tessa’s hand in hers. She leans in against the hospital bed, searching Tessa’s face for something she doesn’t seem to find. ‘Your mum is on her way.’

  ‘Have they …?’ A knot in her throat. ‘Have they found him?’

  Ms Bainbridge squeezes Tessa’s hand. ‘I don’t know. They need to talk to his parents. They’re not telling me anything.’

  ‘I didn’t want to leave him. I tried to move him, but I couldn’t … I should have.’ She can’t look at Ms Bainbridge anymore. Her shame is enormous, as big as her pain.

  ‘Of course you did. Don’t think about it for now. You need to rest.’

  She doesn’t feel any pain. Her shoulder is strapped tight and there’s a drip in her hand and a bandage wrapped around where she tore her palm. Everything feels out of body, numb, as she stares out the window to the bleak hospital carpark, her swollen heart hard against her ribs.

  Tessa senses eyes on her before she turns, knows what she’ll see when she does. Who.

  Ellen stands in the doorway, her pallor ghostly, her lips faded and thin.

  ‘He better not come in.’ Tessa’s voice is flat, though she’d like to scream it. Fury tingles in her fingers, colours her cheeks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know who.’

  Ellen straightens, her brow furrowed, then realisation dawns. ‘He’s not here. He won’t be coming.’

  Tessa wants to ask why but doesn’t want to be lied to anymore.

  ‘I’ve been so worried,’ her mum says, moving forward.

  But Tessa can barely look at her. The memory of the day of the accident is sharp despite the meds. ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘Tess, I’m –’

  ‘Don’t!’ She hears the next words almost before she feels them in her throat. ‘Just go away. Leave me alone!’ She doesn’t even look up when she hears her mum leave, but the yawning vacuum in her chest grows with the sound of her footsteps receding and something tender inside her shrivels up as tight as a fist.

  Doug and Keiko and Yuki hover over Tessa, helping her up their front steps, Mia clinging to her hand. Each one of them asks her what they can do, what she might need – questions that have so many answers, none of which they’re able to provide. And Tessa keeps saying she’s fine, there’s nothing she needs, thanking them over and over.

  ‘Nope. You get the real bed,’ Yuki says, when she heaves herself down onto the trundle, having peeled a reluctant Mia off Tessa’s hip and sent her out of the room.

  ‘I’m not an invalid, Yuke.’

  But Yuki refuses to budge, and so she finds herself, later that night, tossing and shifting against the unfamiliar comfort of Yuki’s mattress, longing for the lumpy foam of the trundle where Yuki is now lying.

  ‘You okay?’ Yuki’s voice uncharacteristically soft, timid, as though afraid Tessa will shatter if she speaks normally.

  She wants to cry out that of course she’s not okay! But what can they do? What can she do? Except get through it and try not to lose anyone else along the way. ‘Can’t sleep,’ she says simply, because at least it’s the truth.

  She hears the rustling of bedclothes and then Yuki is on the edge of her bed, slipping in under the covers like they used to when they were small. She almost protests then, the idea of someone beside her too much for her brittle heart to handle. But then she feels the familiar shape of Yuki, the warmth of her body, the smell of her hair, and instead of pain, she is overwhelmed by a quiet calm, and the tears quickly fall as they lie there in silence, Yuki’s arm around Tessa, Tessa’s head on her shoulder. The low hum of Yuki’s humidifier the only sound in the quiet dark, except for Yuki saying, over and over, ‘It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.’

  The days bleed together unformed, unrecognisable from anything that could safely be called life. An indomitable force, relentless and forward-moving. She tries to find comfort in this, that time creeps on, that the pain should eventually recede, because that’s what people keep saying, just like the books Ms Bainbridge dropped off. But when there’s no substance to the days, nothing to hold on to, how is that possible? How can she put them behind her when they slide through her fingers, little more than shades of light and dark that fall into the space between the shadows, quiet as a breath?

  Her body slowly heals. She’ll need surgery on her shoulder, will have it after Christmas, but the bruises have yellowed and faded, and her ankle is back to normal. Like nothing ever happened. She continues to function, all the bits where they are, working largely as they should, but there’s an emptiness to it all, as though she’s been hollowed out.

  Her mum calls regularly, but has left her mostly alone at Tessa’s request. Tessa understands that this can’t be permanent, that there are too many things that need to be said. So when she hears the doorbell two weeks after the rescue, she knows it’s her mum. Knows the Frasers arranged it, and understands why they did.

  Tessa opens the door, steps back without speaking, and they both head to the kitchen. Tessa takes a seat across from her mum, needing the wide granite counter between them to gather her thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ellen says, for possibly the twentieth time since the accident. She’s said it at the hospital, at the funeral, on the phone. Every time they’ve spoken.

  ‘I know,’ Tessa says, but it’s not enough. She doesn’t know what is, but understands that this isn’t.

  ‘I’m not going to try to make it up to you,’ Ellen says quietly. ‘There’s no way I can.’

  Tessa knows she’s right, but anger fills her, because her mum should try. Shouldn’t she?

  ‘But, for what it’s worth, he’s not coming back.’

  ‘Yeah right.’ Just because he’s not around now doesn’t mean there isn’t a future when he will return, when her mum will weaken and fall over. It’s happened before.

  Her mum fixes her eyes on Tessa, red-rimmed and watery. She looks older. ‘I mean it,’ she says.

  ‘Whatever you need to tell yourself.’

  Ellen blanches. ‘It makes sense you would feel like that.’

  And then there’s nothing to protest because they have both agreed.

  ‘Listen. I’m not angry anymore. You do what you need to do, and I will too.’ Tessa says it like she’s talking about picking up the drycleaning, but it takes all of her willpower to continue and she’s not sure how long she can sustain the remove. She stands up. ‘Anyway, I hope everything works out for you.’

  After a long silence that stretches between them, thick and stifling, Ellen nods. ‘I’ll leave you alone, Tess.’

  ‘Of course you will. You always do.’ The words fall out before she can rethink them. She was getting so good at keeping her hurt safe, hiding it from the world, even from her own mother, yet there it is, laid out flat and square, an offering between them, impossible to take back.

  ‘I deserve that,’ Ellen says.

  The first tears are hot and silent, but then they’re falling too fast for her to catch her breath, and things she hadn’t let herself think, let alone say, spring from a place deep and dark inside of her. ‘Yes, Ellen. You do! You never fought for me! All those times, you just let him hurt me.’

  Her mum clutches at the bench between them as though to stay upright. Her face frozen, the line of her mouth the only evidence of her pain. The slow nod, more emphatic, grief sharp in her eyes. ‘But I did fig
ht for you,’ she says quietly, so that Tessa has to strain to hear. ‘Too many times. He threatened to kill me. Threatened to kill you.’ A shaky breath. ‘And I believed him.’

  Tessa’s whole body is trembling. Does this change anything? ‘But you kept drinking. You made a choice, and you didn’t choose me.’

  Ellen seems to shrink into herself. ‘It’s my greatest regret,’ she says. ‘That, after letting him in, I didn’t make him leave. Not until it was almost too late.’ Her chest rises and falls. Her mouth quivers.

  Tessa studies the granite top. ‘It is too late.’ She slides back into the seat, rests her elbows against the countertop. ‘There’s too much.’

  ‘No. You’re right. I didn’t fight for you.’ Ellen runs a hand through her auburn hair, pushes it off her face where tendrils cling to her damp cheeks. ‘I’m so ashamed. So …’ She closes her eyes, presses her fingers against them, hard. She looks up finally, and says, ‘But I’m fighting for you now. I’m pressing charges.’

  Tessa sits back.

  ‘For everything.’

  Tessa shakes her head.

  ‘That’s what you say.’

  ‘It’s done.’

  Something hot swells in Tessa’s chest and she has to steady herself against the counter to stop the world from tilting over.

  ‘I asked Doug not to say anything. Asked them to let you settle in, not to rush you.’

  Tessa stares at her knuckles white against the granite, struggles to steady the irregular beat of her heart. ‘What will happen?’

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, that’s great.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. I will. But I have no idea what will happen.’

  Tessa swallows the knot in her throat. ‘Why did you see him? How could you?’

  Ellen clasps her hands in front of her. ‘Look, what happened that day doesn’t matter. It’s what I let happen before that I can’t undo.’

  A wave of anger courses through Tessa. ‘Actually, it does. Because I’d forgiven you. Don’t you see that? And I believed you too!’

  ‘He called me, Tess. So, yes, I met him.’ She swallows, tears wet on her lashes. ‘I didn’t want him to find you.’

  Tessa blinks back tears. ‘What’s that mean?’

  Ellen looks out into the Frasers’ backyard, a thousand emotions crossing her face before she turns back to Tessa. ‘He called me. He was drunk, angry. He said that his whole family had gone.’

  Tessa flinches at the word. ‘I was never his family.’

  ‘No. Well, in his mind it was different.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I knew he’d look for you if he didn’t get his way, so I agreed to meet him at the pub. It had to be the pub. He was hardly going to show up for scones and tea, was he?’

  Tessa’s chest constricts, pain sharp in her lungs. ‘Don’t you dare try to turn this around. I saw you. We both saw you! Talking to him. Just like before. And once again, you chose him over me!’

  ‘I’m sorry that’s how you see it, and when I think about that painting … I came home to that, after the police left. And realised what you’d seen, what you’d been carrying all this time. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. So sorry I couldn’t help you.’

  Tessa swallows the lump in her throat. The painting still sharp in her memory, the horror of it, even to her, breathtaking. More than this, though, her mum knows what Tessa saw that day. Finally, she knows. ‘It’s a long time ago,’ Tessa says quietly. ‘No one can change it now.’

  A sob escapes her mum then, and Tessa watches as she steadies herself. ‘No, but there are some things I can change. I did choose him over you, before. I know I did, and I can’t believe you’d ever forgive that. I certainly can’t forgive myself.’ She tilts her chin then, lifting it higher, though it’s trembling like it weighs too much. ‘But the pub was different. I wanted you safe.’

  Tessa struggles to absorb this, trying to reconcile Ellen’s words with what she thinks she saw. And then she remembers Nick’s words. How he thought she looked different. He meant scared. A shiver runs through her. It’s too much. She’s not ready. Instead, Tessa focuses on something that makes sense. ‘How will it work? The charges.’

  Her mum presses her lips together. ‘I’m prepared to testify. I will testify. Doug’s seen things too –’ she swallows noisily – ‘that he shouldn’t have. He thinks it’ll be enough to put him in jail. And that day, he wouldn’t let me go until Doug showed up and made him. That’s a crime too.’

  ‘You were drinking, weren’t you?’ Tessa doesn’t know where this question came from but lets it sit there while she waits.

  Ellen breathes in roughly. ‘Yes. I could say I was just keeping him there, away from you. But I wanted it too. I don’t know which of my motivations won.’ She sighs, deep and long. A sad smile touches her mouth. ‘I’m an alcoholic, Tess. Always will be. I broke. It might even happen again. But I won’t drink today. And I won’t drink tomorrow. And I’d like never to drink again.’

  Is that enough? Tessa wonders. One day after another, letting them join together, end to end, to form a life? Right now it’s all Tessa can manage, so maybe it is enough. Or has to be.

  That’s what her dad couldn’t do. What Nick hasn’t been allowed to do. And suddenly it doesn’t look like such a small thing. One day. Then one day more. Until a week has passed, and then a month. Eventually, a year …

  ‘I can’t come back,’ Tessa says.

  ‘I know.’ Ellen tucks her hair behind her ear, shakes it loose, then tucks it back. Her hands twist together in front of her, her thumb massaging her palm. ‘I just wanted you to know. To feel safe, at least.’

  Tessa nods. ‘I have to, um …’ She stops. Isn’t going to lie. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  Her mum’s eyes flicker, the tiniest acknowledgement of pain. ‘Listen, Doug gave me this – said the police had retrieved it from the car.’ She places Tessa’s phone on the counter between them.

  ‘Why didn’t he give it to me himself?’ The glass is smashed and the power’s off, but it’s in one piece.

  Ellen’s smile twists. ‘I suspect he wanted to be sure you’d see me.’

  Tessa nods. ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘You might need to charge it, but it still works. At least save your photos.’

  Tessa is almost afraid to pick it up. Knows she’ll be bombarded with a picture of Nick on the screensaver if she turns it on. And countless other images of things she wants to forget. Things too painful to see.

  ‘Anyway. I’ll leave you to it,’ her mum says gently. The weight of those words, the surrender in them, thick as tar. She heads out the Frasers’ door, Tessa watching silently from the hallway, ignoring the hot shame in her heart.

  ‘No more!’ Yuki says, her eyes glittering as she stands over Tessa, who’s dressed for once, but stretched out on her bed.

  She’s back in the trundle again. She let Yuki indulge her for two nights but had woken the morning three days after her rescue and, without a word, had changed the sheets, placing her pillow on the trundle, her PJs under them. And that night she’d slipped under the covers of the freshly made bed, felt the familiar give of the foam mattress and whispered, ‘Thanks, Yuke,’ when she’d turned out the light.

  ‘Come on!’ Tessa says now, the patience leaving her voice.

  ‘Nope. No. Not happening.’

  ‘Tomorrow. I promise.’

  ‘You said that yesterday.’

  ‘False start.’

  ‘And the day before that.’

  ‘Seriously, I will.’

  ‘And the day before that.’

  Before Tessa can protest, a small, densely packed bullet launches at her, and she’s staring into the face of a grinning Mia.

  ‘T-chan! T-chan! Get up.’

  Tessa groans, feels the clammy clutch of Mia’s fingers on her wrist, her body wriggling into bed beside her, all feet and elbows and laughter. Tessa tries to sit up, but Mia’s giggles bring a smile to her face and she
starts to tickle the little girl, who squeals until Tessa is worried she’ll pee in the bed. ‘You give up?’

  Mia grins. ‘Will you get up?’

  Tessa falls back on the bed, exhausted.

  ‘Come on, Tess.’ Yuki is standing over them both, frowning. Mia holds her arms out to her sister, and she lifts her off the bed.

  A loud metallic clang comes from the kitchen. And another. Then the sound of shattering glass.

  ‘Jesus! What’s that?’

  ‘Mummy’s cooking!’ Mia exclaims.

  ‘Ouch.’

  Yuki rolls her eyes. ‘I know, right? The only Japanese person of her generation who is actually a danger in the kitchen.’ She heads over to the dresser, starts digging through the drawers.

  Tessa smiles despite herself. Before she can reply, a pair of bathers flies across the room and lands on her chest. ‘You right?’

  ‘I’m going to rescue Mum while you get sorted.’

  Mia stomps her foot. ‘Tessa come too!’

  Yuki arches her eyebrow. ‘You heard the tyrant. Up you get.’

  ‘I want to. I do.’ She pulls the covers over her face, feels the weight of a long day ahead.

  ‘Mi-chan, go see Mummy,’ Yuki says.

  There’s the slightest pause, as though Mia is tossing up whether to obey, before Tessa hears the pounding of her feet in the hallway. She pushes the covers back and waits for the lecture she knows is coming.

  Yuki scowls, her voice sharp. ‘One thing. Okay? One thing I need you to do for me. And we haven’t been to the beach since …’ She falters. Her face falls.

  Tessa feels the familiar flash of heat course through her body, but shakes it off. ‘Okay, okay.’ She grabs the bathers from where they’ve fallen down the side of the bed. ‘Go and save our dinner, will you? Tell Keiko it’s my turn to cook tonight.’

  Yuki beams and blows her a kiss as she shuts the bedroom door.

  Tessa slumps back on the bed, tempted to back out. But she owes Yuki this much at least. She stands up and heads to Yuki’s dresser. The phone is there, charged now. But she hasn’t tried to turn it on. She picks it up and tosses it into her beach bag, gathers her stuff and heads out the door.