The Silent Daughter

by Kirsty Ferguson

  Danni’s heart was full of pain, she could barely stop herself from screaming with the unfairness of it all. But what good would that do? She couldn’t lose it in front of Mia, not today of all days. No, today she must be strong, be present. Her girl needed her. Danni looked over at Mia as she nibbled the smallest bite possible of toast.

  Small victories, she thought.

  Danni wondered how Mia was going to manage the funeral. Would she cope? Or would her heart break into a million pieces like Danni’s had? Mia still hadn’t let Danni in, so Danni didn’t know what she was thinking. Danni wondered if Mia would ever find her voice again, ever forgive her. She missed her, she even missed her snarky teenage moodiness and would take it all right now, as long as she would speak to her. Danni wondered if she would be able to give a eulogy for those she loved. A million times she had tried writing it in her head and a million times she had failed to capture the essence of what made them… them. They were all such beautiful and unique people, something she couldn’t put into words, even though she should have been able to. All she had to do was talk about them honestly.

  Noah, with his cheeky grin and tiny dimples in each of his cheeks. Joe called Noah their ‘whoopsy baby’ as he had been a very happy accident. He was a loving and empathetic child. Smart as a whip, easy going and above all else, a Mumma’s boy.

  Alexandra, beautiful, graceful, a wonderful sister to Mia and especially to Noah. She was almost like a second mother to him, taking care of him when Danni was otherwise occupied. She was a wonderful daughter with an old soul.

  So why was she frightened to say these things out loud? Why, when she opened her mouth to practise, did all of those things just fall away, the words refusing to leave her lips? The boulder in her throat would grow bigger, allowing almost no air to be drawn in. Danni panted, hand to her throat, afraid she was going to suffocate, all because she wasn’t in the house that night. It played in a loop over and over in her mind. Pooch barking, being locked outside, seeing her house on fire.

  Danni turned away from Mia in frustration, determined not to let her worries show. She had made a decision, though; she would not be speaking about her family at their funeral. She did not want to share these memories of her family with anyone. They were hers and Mia’s memories. No one else need know them. Danni stood still, staring into the mirror, not even aware of how long she looked at her damaged reflection.

  For a brief moment she wondered if Beth would be at the funeral. Danni didn’t want to see her sister and she was sure the feeling would be mutual. No, she wouldn’t be there, she didn’t care enough.

  Mia stood and looked at the outfit Danni had laid out for her with a blank look. Danni moved closer to her.

  ‘Can I help you get dressed?’ Mia didn’t answer but picked up the top. ‘Good girl, baby. That’s my girl.’ Danni went to move a piece of hair from over Mia’s eye, but she shrank back, an indecipherable look on her face. Danni grabbed her own clean clothes and went into the bathroom, only closing the door halfway. She still wanted to be able to hear Mia if she needed her, or if she spoke. Danni longed for just one word from her. Just one.

  Danni lathered up her hair and scrubbed her body as hard as she could, the stinging skin punishment for being alive when they weren’t. She showered until the boiling hot water cascading down her body ran out, turning lukewarm then cold. Then she viciously rubbed herself with the thin, hard towel that smelt strongly of mothballs and bleach. She really had to get Mia out of this place, it was doing neither one of them any good. Danni heard the phone chirp and quickly pulled on her cobbled together outfit.

  She checked the phone.

  It was Susan.

  The car will be there in twenty minutes. I’ll see you soon. It will be good to see you again.

  Susan’s words, while innocuous, worried her. Danni didn’t want to see Susan again, or anyone else for that matter. She didn’t want sympathy; she didn’t want a bunch of people staring at her. Judging her for crying too much, or not enough, and exactly what would they think of Mia? The girl who’d lost her voice and couldn’t mourn properly for her family?

  She stuffed her feet into high heels a size too small. Why did people feel the need, the pressure to get dressed up to go to a funeral? To honour the dead? The dead were dead, they wouldn’t care what you were wearing. Besides, her family knew her best in her favourite jeans and a coloured top, not some outdated dress and too-small heels. These conventions felt constraining to her, suffocating. Looking down at herself, Danni tore through the pile of clothes still neatly folded on the dresser. She found a pair of light blue jeans in her size, then a sunshine yellow t-shirt. This outfit seemed more appropriate than this depressing black on black outfit. Her family would have appreciated her looking like herself, and that’s all she cared about.

  As soon as she’d changed, there was a knock at the door. Chain still firmly on, she opened the door a crack.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mrs Brooks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve come to pick you up to take you to the… your destination.’ The driver seemed embarrassed to say the word funeral.

  Danni could understand his hesitation at using the word. She didn’t want to use it either. Some people thought of funerals as celebrations of life, but that seemed wrong. She didn’t want to celebrate them, she wanted them with her, with Mia, together. Even if they were all huddled together in this dingy motel room, she wouldn’t care.

  ‘Mrs Brooks?’

  She must have been standing there, not saying anything. ‘Okay, let’s go,’ she said, turning back to make sure Mia was following her.

  She opened the door wide and watched as the man backed up. Danni and Mia both sat in the back. The seats were fake leather, pleather, she thought it was called, and even this early in the morning felt sweaty underneath her hands. Lucky she didn’t wear that dress after all, the backs of her legs would have stuck to the seat. She looked down at her outfit, colourful and cheerful. Noah would like to see her looking normal. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup either. What was the point? She needed to say a final goodbye, but she knew it shouldn’t be at some impersonal cemetery.

  Looking over at Mia, she moved to hold her hand, but once again, Mia pulled away from her mother. Danni longed to touch her. She needed Mia to speak so she could get some answers. The detective had told Danni that the children had died in their sleep, but Joe… did Mia hear any of that, she wondered.

  The air conditioning was blowing at full blast into the back seat as it was a hot day outside. Danni’s hair would go frizzy at the sides, as would Mia’s. It made Danni smile to think of something so mundane, the normalcy of it all. The driver drove at a sedate speed, almost too slow for Danni, it felt like they were driving to their doom, but finally they arrived at the service road to the cemetery. Danni could see, in the distance, people already milling about, the coffin, roses, friends. She wasn’t ready for this, not by a long shot. She wasn’t even sure she could make her legs work to get out of the car.

  When the car slowly stopped, Danni took a steadying breath and grasped the door handle and went to open it. Then she felt someone grab her wrist. She looked down, to discover Mia’s small hand clutching hers. Mia had touched her! After weeks of Danni trying, Mia had finally responded and reached out to her. She had hoped that if she persevered, Mia would eventually come back to her. Maybe it was finally happening.

  ‘Sweetheart, it’s okay. We’ll get through this together. I promise,’ she said gently.

  Mia’s mouth opened and closed as if she was trying to speak, but it had been so long that Danni wondered if she had lost the ability.

  Mia swallowed hard; Danni could see she was still trying to say something. She waited, outwardly patient and calm, but inside, she wanted to shake the words out of her daughter.

  Mia looked her mother deep in her eyes, and Danni felt as if they were connected by something deeper than just a stare. They were connecting souls.

  ‘
Don’t,’ Mia finally croaked.

  ‘Don’t? Don’t what, honey?’ she said, putting her hand over Mia’s hand.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said again, this time stronger, louder yet still so very weak. She tightened her grip on her mum’s wrist and finally Danni got the message.

  She whispered, not wanting the driver to hear their conversation. ‘You don’t want to go to the funeral? Is that it, Mia?’ Danni had to admit that she had mixed feelings about the whole thing as it was. The people, what remained of her family. A shudder ran through her, from the inside out. Mia looked pained, her face screwed up in fear.

  ‘Don’t.’ She looked at the driver. ‘Turn around,’ Mia whispered.

  ‘You want to turn around?’ Danni asked quietly, pushing a piece of hair from her eyes. Mia nodded her head. Obviously the thought of saying goodbye to her family was too much for Mia to bear. Danni understood completely, it was hard enough for her, let alone a teenager. If she was honest with herself, Danni was relieved that Mia didn’t want to go, it gave her a way out as well. Danni took one final look at the scene. The people waiting on them to begin, the pastor that Susan had arranged, the flowers, roses and the sea of black. No, black was not the colour of the day, not today.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she asked, tapping the driver on the shoulder.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Brooks?’ he said, turning slightly to look at her.

  ‘Can you please take us somewhere else?’ She glanced over at Mia but she was staring intently out the other side window, ignoring the scene completely.

  ‘Somewhere else?’ he repeated, seemingly confused. ‘Where else do you want to go?’

  ‘I’d like you to take me to my home.’ She gave him the address, which he put into his GPS, then he smoothly pulled away from the kerb. Danni didn’t bother looking back. There was nothing there for her any more. Susan would wonder where she was going and would likely stall for as long as possible, but there were always more funerals to do. Her family would be buried today and tears would be shed, but it wouldn’t be by them, not there, anyway. That would be left to the friends who wouldn’t watch them grieve. She’d rather do that in private, away from prying eyes.

  The scenery slipped by them outside the window. Dark golden stubble in some fields, lazy, fluffy sheep standing perfectly still in the next, guarded by a lone alpaca. She knew that, the further they got from town, animals like kangaroos would come out to frolic once the baking heat of the day had passed. Then their letterbox came into view. Danni’s heart slowed then skipped a beat entirely. She used to be able to see the top storey of the house from the bitumen road that connected to their dirt driveway. Now Danni could only see a great expanse of nothing where the house used to be. Taking in a deep breath, she watched as the charred remains of their house grew closer. When it came into view, Danni let out an involuntary sharp intake of breath, her eyes immediately welling with tears, her heart feeling like it was going to burst with the pain. She had to look away for a moment, wipe the tears from her eyes.

  The car stopped short of the front yard, which was full of dirt and burnt leaves. She opened the car door and was blasted by the hot sandy air. Eddies of dirt kicked up by the wind throwing grit into her eyes. She wiped at them, blaming the dirt for her wet and sore eyes. Danni was so transfixed she forgot Mia was still in the car. The driver sat behind the wheel, staring down at his lap, probably on his phone giving her privacy as Danni walked towards the ruins of her family home. So many years, so many memories, each child bringing more than just memories: love, happiness and togetherness as a family.

  Now that was all shattered. Alexandra and Noah, gone. Their happy voices and laughter echoed in her mind, taunting her with the memories of better times. Then Danni thought about Joe. Complicated Joe. Where once Danni had thought him simple and easy to understand, she quickly realised that, despite loving her, he could never be fully trusted. She thought back to the cruel taunts that her sister had said to her when they were in high school, laughing in her face about how she had had him. Before Joe had told her the truth, she could blow it off as mere jealously, but once she asked him point blank and he’d told the truth, something inside of her had faded away that day. How could he have broken her trust and her heart like that?

  It wasn’t the first time, either. She had heard the rumours of girls before Beth. But after? After they were married? It was a small town. It was full of people who liked to gossip. Be seen with someone of the opposite sex and suddenly you were cheating on your spouse, breaking up someone else’s family. Danni might have tried to ignore the rumours, the whispered conversations that she heard behind her back, but some of them seemed to find traction within her mind.

  Joe was dead now. She could never confront him. Never ask him if he had strayed outside of their marriage. Danni had felt a disconnect between her and Joe for some time before that night. It felt like they had been drifting further away from each other with each passing day. Their once strong bond, slowly disintegrating, disappearing like puffs of cloud on a strong breeze. Danni had noticed it but had been powerless to stop it. It was like watching an accident she couldn’t look away from and was unable to stop.

  It was around the time of the second round of gossip, this time about a mystery woman, although Danni never did get a name, that Danni decided to seek help. She began seeing a psychologist at first, one who listened to her talk, but the more she talked, the sillier she felt, her problems seeming inconsequential compared to what other people were going through. She sat across from the doctor that one time, unloading her innermost thoughts and feelings onto someone who she didn’t know. It felt indulgent. Even though she’d been Mrs Brooks for nearly eighteen years, she still felt like her old self on the inside, like a fraud posing as a woman who seemed to have it all together, when really she was just as insecure and lonely as she always had been.

  The realisation, pulled from within her by the doctor after just one visit, shocked her. Danni thought she had it all together. Wife and mother, two things she excelled at. But it seemed as if her mind had other ideas. She was not as put together as she thought she was.

  Danni glanced back at the car, she couldn’t see Mia inside, but she knew that she would be sitting, facing forward, hands clasped neatly in her lap, face as if made of stone. Danni didn’t blame Mia for not wanting to come out, but it was the only place that Danni could think of to go to say goodbye. The place where her kids had roamed free, happy and loved.

  The day was hot, burning hot. The wind dried her face, making it feel like her skin was stretched too tightly over her bones, dried like parchment. The small of her back felt slick with sweat. She wished she had remembered sunglasses.

  Danni sat down on the ground in front of the pile of burnt-out rubble. She felt sure that the air was still tainted by the acrid smell of burnt wood and paint. Everything she owned had gone up in the fire. Everything. The clothes on her back didn’t even belong to her. She was relying on charity. Her mind wandered, back to her children’s laughter and the kind words that Joe would say to her. He would tell her that he loved her, cherished her, desired her, but that was a long time ago. So long ago, she couldn’t believe a thing that he had said towards the end. By the time of Joe’s tragic death, he hadn’t made love to her in well over a year and Danni realised that she didn’t even care. Not after what she knew now.

  The last time she’d heard about another one of Joe’s affairs was when she was in the video store selecting ten DVDs for ten dollars for the week. One of the last holdouts against online streaming; Danni still had a thing for the old ways. Picking out movies to cater to her family’s tastes was a way she showed her love. Noah liked westerns, Alexandra liked Miley Cyrus, Mia liked horrors and Joe liked action movies.

  Danni had also discovered recently that Joe had liked movies of a different kind. She had been clearing up in their bedroom, putting away the clean, folded laundry that always ended up in a pile at the foot of the bed, never quite making it to the drawers or wardrobe where they be
longed. While she was doing that, she had accidentally bumped the mouse beside the open laptop on the dresser. Danni had never been one to snoop, despite all the rumours, or possibly because of them. If she was honest, she really didn’t want to know if they were true. If Joe was with other women – women that didn’t look like her, that didn’t have mum bodies from bearing and birthing his three children – well, Danni didn’t think she could handle that. But this time? This time, it must have been fate.

  Seeing the screen burst into life, Danni put the pile of clothing on the floor and cautiously walked around to stand in front of the laptop. She looked at the doorway, expecting to see Joe standing there, fists clenched in anger, but he wasn’t there. No one was. The login screen popped up. Danni had no idea what Joe’s password was or where to start guessing. Her fingers itched to type the only obvious password she could think of, but it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Taking another look at the door and angling the laptop away from the door, she typed the word ‘password’ and held her breath.

  Well, fuck, it worked!

  Danni smiled for a brief second, marvelling at either Joe’s stupidity or the trust he had in her, before the smile fell from her lips. There was a website open, not even hidden or bothered to be closed. For a second, Danni didn’t know what she was looking at. She wasn’t innocent, nor was she boring in bed, they used to enjoy a great sex life until… well, it looked like until Joe had found something else to entertain him.

  The girl on the screen was tied spread-eagled to the bed, naked, red welts covering her breasts, a gag stuffed in her mouth and a man ejaculating onto her face. She looked at the camera. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her face haunted and distressed. Danni slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. This is what Joe liked? This is what her husband of nearly twenty years liked to watch? He got off on the pain of women? How could she not have known this or seen any evidence of this in the years they had been together? The worst part was that the woman on the bed wasn’t a woman, she looked to be barely older than Mia.