Season of Shadow and Light

by Jenn J. McLeod

  Poor Alice, Paige thought, recalling the ferociousness of her tirade and the agonising way Alice’s face had become pinched, as if preparing for a stinging slap. Paige understood the reaction. She knew how emotional hurt inflicted by a loved one could be more painful than any physical action. But was this not the ultimate betrayal? The minute she’d found herself alone with Alice she’d turned, gnashing like a trapped Tassie Devil—frightened, confused—growling angry questions from an angry mouth and all directed at the person she loved and trusted the most.

  ‘How could you, Alice? What were you thinking?’ Paige had barely stopped to breathe, let alone allow Alice time to answer. ‘You weren’t ever planning to tell me, were you? You would’ve kept this a secret until—’

  ‘Paige, sweetheart, try to understand. Your mother . . . She begged me. She trusted me to keep her secret and I couldn’t betray her.’

  ‘And me? It was okay to betray my trust—both of you?’

  ‘You have to understand.’

  ‘Then make me, Alice. Make me understand why my mother would do this.’

  Alice had sat down, unable to speak and stay standing. ‘Paige, Nancy was so scared, so confused. Her marriage wasn’t her idea. She’d been hardly old enough at the time to know what she wanted in a husband. But she was a good, obedient daughter. She’d wanted to do the right thing by her family and love your father, make a good home. Your father assumed responsibility for his family business, but he wasn’t as good at it as his parents. He neglected things—your mother for one. Things deteriorated and a bad reputation in the horse business spreads quickly. Your father’s solution was to sell bits of the property.’ Alice paused, her mind clearly grappling with details. ‘How extraordinary that a woman like Teresa should buy the land and move in next door just when Nancy was looking for love.’

  ‘What happened to Teresa?’ Paige asked when Alice stopped to blow her nose.

  ‘I have no idea what happened to her after she left your mother—alone, with one small baby and grieving the loss of the other. Or where she is now.’ Alice added. ‘I also have no desire to know. Teresa hurt your mother. She wooed her and—’ Words seemed to fail Alice; either that, or there was more to the story. Perhaps it was not quite the truth. ‘I can only tell you what Nancy told me. That they ran away in the middle of the night. Content to leave her own child behind, Teresa had expected Nancy to do the same with the twins. They were in love and running away to live their dream. Only Nancy couldn’t leave her babies.’

  Tempted to ask if Nancy had considered leaving her children behind, Paige changed her mind. Why did that matter now?

  ‘Everything changed once Teresa fell in with the Oxford Street crowd,’ Alice continued. ‘You were a baby and Nancy refused to leave you alone. She’d lost one child already. She would never completely recover from leaving that night without Aurora. Teresa left Nancy at home with you while she pretty much lived a single person’s existence. They hadn’t been in Sydney six months when the woman found someone else.’

  ‘Why didn’t Mum come back here?’

  ‘Of course she wanted to, because of Aurora, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You have to understand things were different back then, Paige. Nancy was so torn about who and what she was. She knew going home to your father would mean being shackled to that existence. Tim would never let her, or you, out of his sight again. Even if she went home, there was no way to know, once he had both you and Aurora in his possession, whether he would allow Nancy to stay.’

  ‘Better that she had one baby at least,’ Paige said, the thought sobering.

  ‘You were her world, Paige, but no. She needed Aurora and keeping you girls together was more important than anything your father might do to Nancy, even if going back meant surrendering you both. She had finally decided to return to Coolabah Tree Gully—to him—when doctors diagnosed her early stages of cancer. They started treatment.’

  ‘And after the treatment?’

  ‘After?’ Alice’s expression fought between smiles and sadness. ‘I met your mother around that time. She needed a friend, but before long we both knew. There was no returning to her husband.’

  ‘Because she finally accepted she was gay?’

  Alice sighed. ‘No labels, Paige, remember? It was your mother who hated them. She never referred to herself as anything other than a woman who fell in love. It so happened to be with another woman. It might just as easily have been a man, she told me once, insisting, “Love is about connection.”’ Talking about Nancy seemed to relax Alice. ‘In the early days of our relationship I used to wonder if she might tire of me, or the novelty of loving a woman might wear off and she’d find a man. Traditional unions were a lot easier and less complicated.’

  ‘I guess I have to be glad she didn’t.’

  ‘There were times when I knew she was so desperate to see Aurora I would not have been surprised to wake up one day to find she’d run away in the middle of the night. I believe she was prepared to abandon the idea of a loving relationship right up until a note from your father came.’

  ‘What did the note say?’

  ‘I have it at home. You can read it for yourself. Rather than forcing her home, his threat did the opposite. Protecting you became Nancy’s sole purpose. So terrified of losing you, she refused to let you out of her sight when you were young, not even with a reliable sitter. She loved you so much, Paige. Day and night you were in her arms, or she was watching you sleep, or making you hold her hand.

  ‘Before we met, doctors had diagnosed her overwhelming grief as depression and prescribed medication. But she was really very, very sick. That’s about the time I met her—and you. I fell in love with you both. You were beautiful, Paige. You are the family I never dreamed I’d have.’

  Alice attempted a smile, unsuccessfully. The toll was showing on her face, her normally eager eyes dulled and sad.

  Paige was still hurt, still hungry for answers, but at the same time worried for Alice. ‘Yes, well, that beautiful baby turned into a fire-breathing banshee today,’ she smiled. ‘I don’t want to be mad, but I am. I’m so angry I don’t even know what to say except . . . I’m fine. I will be fine. Give me time.’

  She’d left Alice alone; the situation called for time and space. They’d face each other again.

  The bedroom window was wide open, the afternoon breeze whipping up the curtains. Paige needed that tea of Aiden’s and it was finally cool enough to drink. While she couldn’t taste or smell the peppermint, the warm liquid was at least soothing, so too was the expansive view. Sharni brought food to her room on a tray—hot soup and a cheese and tomato sandwich—along with an explanation. ‘According to Alice, you used to love sandwich picnic night. She wanted you to come down, but figured you’d say no. So she asked me to deliver this and tell you, if you change your mind, you can always bring the plate down with you.’

  Picnic sandwich night was Paige, Alice and Nancy, together on the bed with a picnic blanket and the electric fry pan next to them on the floor, cooking pan-fried sandwiches: white bread, lashings of butter coating the outside of the sandwich and cooked until the cheese was molten goo. Then they’d take it in turn to pull apart the sandwich to see who could make the longest string of melted cheese.

  ‘Thanks, Sharni.’

  ‘No worries. I only came home to pick up a few slumber party essentials. Banjo and Honey have set up a tent at the back of the pub and Dad’s cooking damper in a camp oven. Mati was very excited when Mum described a damper as a giant scone.’

  ‘I bet she was.’ The image of her small daughter’s eager expression was the tincture of calm Paige needed. ‘You’ve been good to look after her all this time.’

  The sound of Sharni’s funny chuckle as she headed out the bedroom door was almost enough to lift Paige’s mood. ‘She’s a bloody pleasure compared to my little munchkin. Boys! Blah!’

  Tonight, Paige would stay put in her room. Tomorrow she’d take the first step tow
ards mending relationships and seek out Alice. Then she’d find Aurora and tell her everything she now knew about Nancy.

  Nerves fluttered in her belly at the thought of sitting across from her sister.

  Her sister.

  Would that life were like the shadow cast by a wall or a tree, but it is like the shadow of a bird in flight.

  The Talmud

  38

  Paige

  The way the morning sun gouged into Paige’s eye sockets reminded her of those weekends spent pretending to enjoy the beach when she was Gidget, pining for her very own Moondoggie’s attention, sand, grit and salt stinging eyes baked dry by the sun’s reflection. Yesterday had left her disorientated, like when the waves on a windy beach day would turn into dumpers, knocking her for six and turning her in every direction until she didn’t know which way was up. Desperate to break the surface, she would swim like a crazy person, stopping only when she could take a breath, feel the sun on her face and know she was okay. What awaited Paige when she broke the surface this morning, however, would be a long way from those blithe beach days of her youth. What she wouldn’t give to go back to being sixteen, when she’d stayed holed up in her room until late morning. But Paige was a long way from a brooding adolescent and this wasn’t her old room.

  Or was it?

  The startling thought whipped her fully awake. Another question to crowd her already overloaded brain. Alice could answer some, but it was Rory’s life here on this property with her father—their father—that pecked away at a head straining with an emotional hangover.

  Drained of energy after an almost sleepless night, the mere thought of a shower too exhausting, Paige grabbed cargo pants and a T-shirt, slipping into them while peeking out the window towards the cottage, hoping her sister—her sister, Aurora—would be there so they could . . .

  ‘What the . . . ?’ Her eyes, cried dry overnight, were playing tricks and sending strange messages to her brain, like post-stroke when Paige’s head had scrambled everything at random: words, numbers, images.

  Battling the sun’s rays, she squinted across the paddock and saw . . .

  What?

  What is that?

  Her stomach lurched. At first she thought the colourful clump was a horse blanket draped over the small porch. Until . . .

  ‘NO!’ Paige turned, ran, her bed leg lagging behind, causing her to fall and hit her head on the corner of the mattress. The crushing blow as her cheek scraped down the footboard hurt like hell, but not enough to make her stop and inspect the damage in the dressing table mirror. She pulled herself to her feet, instinctively grabbing her mobile phone off the dresser, and shouted, ‘Alice, come quick! Something’s wrong with Rory.’

  As she dashed down the stairs and through the kitchen, thinking clearly enough to know the back door was the quickest route to the cottage, she glimpsed Alice out of the corner of one eye. The woman had turned the corner of the veranda, still in her nightie, pink scuffs flapping up and down, the accelerando rhythm of footsteps as she hurried towards Paige reassuring her. Alice would know what to do.

  Paige didn’t slow or wait, instead racing over the rough path leading to the cottage, hurdling a fence with ease.

  Falling on her knees, she pressed her palm against her sister’s brow. ‘Rory, Rory, oh my God, what happened?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ Rory mumbled. ‘One minute I felt all weird and next minute . . .’

  ‘You’ll be okay. Alice is coming. She’ll know what to do.’

  ‘I’m feeling . . . much . . . better.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Alice broke in as she crouched beside Paige, panting and visibly shaking—enough to add to Paige’s concerns. ‘Far from it, I’d say. The sooner we get you to a hospital, the better. And a big one. One equipped with—’

  ‘What the hell?’ Aiden appeared from somewhere. The cottage? He threw himself to the ground and stroked Aurora’s forehead, his thigh an instant cushion for her head. ‘What happened?’

  Between Alice and Aiden, Rory was in good and caring hands. Paige stood, stepped back to straighten her bad leg and saw Sharni with two small, frightened figures clinging to either side of her. She was halfway between the main house and the cottage when Paige called out.

  ‘It’s okay, Sharni. Can you take the kids back to the house? I’ll fill you in later.’

  Sharni nodded and shooed the screaming youngsters back ahead of her.

  ‘I have an idea,’ Aiden was saying to Alice.

  ‘What idea?’ Paige refused to be left out of the discussion. This was her sister.

  ‘Alice says it would be better if we could get her over the mountains to Coffs Harbour Hospital, and the sooner the better.’

  ‘They’ll have a special renal unit,’ Alice added.

  ‘Coffs Harbour? Surely that’s too far to drive. And the roads—’

  ‘We’re not taking the road. Give me twenty minutes.’

  By now Rory was fully alert and insisting she was fine.

  No one listened.

  Overhead, a helicopter buzzed the property, the pilot skilful as he hovered between the massive windbreak of pine trees that lined the driveway and the overhead wires, landing safely in the front paddock. A man alighted to chat briefly with Aiden before both men raced across to where Paige and Alice had managed to get Rory into a wooden chair on the porch.

  ‘Eamon can get us to Coffs.’

  ‘This is where I want to be,’ Rory was insisting when, without words, the two men picked up the rocker—a complaining Aurora and all—and jogging, as if their load weighed nothing, delivered her to the small chopper. Paige followed, Alice a close second, flip-flopping in pink scuffs with Paige’s mobile phone to her ear and asking questions—lots of questions. Paige assumed she was talking to the hospital.

  The chopper had seemed tiny from a distance, not getting much bigger as Paige approached it. Within a couple of minutes the men had her sister propped up in the small back seat of the very compact flying machine, the aerial mustering type Paige had seen buzzing the sky like a fly.

  ‘Only room for two,’ Eamon told the three of them. ‘The patient and one passenger. That’s it.’

  ‘Alice.’ Paige said. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Hold on a moment, please.’ Alice excused herself and let the phone drop away from her mouth to speak. ‘She doesn’t need a nurse. She needs a hand to hold. The hospital’s expecting her. Besides . . .’ Alice was shaking her head, her face ashen. ‘I don’t think I could.’

  ‘That’s okay, Alice, I can go,’ Aiden said.

  As he stepped up to double-check Rory was strapped in, Paige hung back, wondering why she hesitated. In that helicopter was her sister—her very sick sister. She’d barely got to know her or talk to her and now someone was taking her away. Of course it made sense that Aiden would be the one to hold her hand. There was more comfort in the familiar and he’d known her for years. They’d grown up together. Paige was a stranger, one who only yesterday Rory had confessed to hating.

  Paige stopped short of the door to the helicopter, close enough to yell ‘Call me!’ over the hum of engine and the whir of rotor blades starting up. She was about to duck out of the way when Rory shouted, ‘Stop. No. I’m sorry, Aiden. I don’t want this.’

  ‘You’re going, Rory, no arguments,’ he said. ‘You don’t get a choice.’

  ‘I do get a bloody choice, Aiden. This time I do get a choice. I’m choosing my sister. I won’t go without her. If anyone’s holding my hand, it’s Paige.’

  ‘Okay.’ With a quick peck on Rory’s cheek, Aiden was guiding Paige into the small passenger seat and strapping her in.

  ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Mati was charging as fast as her little legs would carry her over the paddock, Liam and Sharni close behind.

  ‘Sorry!’ Sharni yelled, thrusting Paige’s handbag onto her lap. ‘She wouldn’t stay. She said you’d need your pills if you were flying.’

  ‘Hey, kiddo,’ Aiden said, picking Matilda up and
lunging forward until she was in kissing distance. ‘Kiss Mum, quick.’ Then he handed her back to Sharni.

  ‘You stay with Nana, sweetie. Love you,’ Paige waved as Aiden flashed a reassuring smile, pulled himself up into the helicopter and said something Paige couldn’t hear over the noise of the rotor blades. Then he leaned over and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  With a final wink at Rory in the back, he jumped to the ground, giving Eamon the thumbs up.

  As the helicopter rose above the property, destination Coffs Harbour, the sisters held hands.

  Neither one let go.

  39

  When had doctors stopped looking like doctors and started looking like merchant bankers—like Robert? The quietly spoken man in a shiny grey suit and a tie had introduced himself to Paige as the ICU renal specialist. He’d stabilised his patient, run tests and reviewed medical files. Now he was rattling off various long medical terms that left Paige scratching her head until she heard the words . . .

  ‘Pulmonary oedema?’ Paige knew she’d heard the term a million times—if not in real life, then on TV medical dramas. Once well-rehearsed lines from an actor’s mouth, those two words seemed sinister when used on someone now so precious.

  There was more. Something about fluid building up in the lungs, high potassium levels, and arrhythmia leading to . . .

  Cardiac arrest!

  Paige wished Alice had come with them; she’d help her understand the jargon. More than an interpreter, Alice would hold her hand while she waited, the instant calm-all that would provide Paige the kind of reassurance she’d sought as a child in a hospital waiting room, when she could always trust Alice to make everything right.