by Nikki Logan
Nanna’s legs wobbled but she pushed to her feet anyway and stepped forward onto the smooth stage, everyone backing away to give her space. She tipped her head up and turned a series of slow circles, like an archaic ballet dancer, as the sound swilled around her.
‘Maybe one day you will hear your old dad’s story, maybe not. But, if you ever hear this, know that of all the mistakes I made in my life, giving you life was never one of them. But giving you up was.’
Nanna’s lashes fluttered shut. Her feet stilled.
‘It’s true I loved my Mary, she filled my heart when it was so very empty. But there’s not a week goes by that I don’t sit staring at the sky, hoping that you’re looking at it, too, back in Brachen, and I ask myself whether you might have filled my heart just as easily. That maybe I might have learned what actual love was if I’d known my daughter.’
Nobody breathed.
‘I never got that gift, my Lucy. I never got to hold you in my arms, or your kids or your kids’ kids. Can’t imagine myself as a grandfather but if nothing else I would have looked the part. So many wrinkles now and I’m barely fifty …’
Ron’s voice petered off.
‘Anyway …’ He cleared his throat and spoke to someone else in the room all those decades ago. Impatiently. Imperiously. ‘Turn it off. I’m done.’
And then the recording resolved itself into a gentle, sibilant hiss.
Still, no-one in the room dared breathe. Or speak. It just wasn’t the time. Kenzie stepped up behind Nanna, who still hadn’t opened her eyes, and gently slipped an arm around her waist, just in case. Her fingers urged her back towards the front row and the certainty of sitting.
Nanna let herself be led as if she was the child Ron had been speaking to.
By the time they sat, her nan’s eyes were carefully masked again. Damp, but strong. But the loving words couldn’t be unheard and Kenzie wondered what kind of change they would bring to her old scars, her thoughts of the past.
It was impossible not to think for just a moment that the spirit of her great-grandfather himself had played that scratchy old track from the great beyond. Who else was there to have hit play? Everyone else was down here, assembled on stage.
‘Kenzie …’
This time the voice was filled with as much warmth and softness as her great-grandfather had spoken to his little girl. But it wasn’t Ron’s voice. Confusion bubbled through the ensemble. Even Lexi looked bemused by the stranger’s voice. Okay, so not another one of the creative director’s creatives. Kenzie’s eyes drifted straight back up to the candle flicker she’d seen before. She could still see it dancing now as Dylan’s voice seeped in where Ron’s had been. There was only one person in the theatre who knew that fluid mix of French-Canadian by heart—deep in her heart. That voice she feared she would never hear again.
But she was in no position to tell everyone who it was. Or even to speak.
‘I know how long your great-grandfather’s reach has been over the generations,’ Dylan’s voice said. ‘How hard it must have been to hear his voice. I know, better than most, the power of words. To change. To heal. I hope that his will go some way to healing your family.’
Forty or so eyes swivelled her way, widening even more as they waited.
Popcorn … get ya popcorn …
‘But I’m also aware that—if not for me—none of this would have been an issue. You and your family would have ticked along just fine. You accused me of protecting myself in the shadows at the expense of other people. It might be true. All my life people have had conversations in front of me or spoken to me in monologue, told me things they probably shouldn’t have, as though I was deaf as well as silent. It taught me that ordinary people—ordinary communities—have an entirely different narrative going on underneath. Every one of them. So that’s what I write. I write truths that we don’t normally acknowledge. It’s why I wrote Larrikin.’
Somewhere in the assembled cast and crew, someone gasped Draven’s name under their breath.
‘But I’ve never meant for my words to wound and now I’ve wounded someone that I care for deeply.’
Hearing that regret in his voice hurt more than anything Dylan had done so far, but it struck like a barb in among all her other pain and drowned in it.
‘Actually, two someones. Tell your nan that I’m sorry too.’
Kenzie frowned and looked back up behind the seating. If Dylan was doing the whole Voice-of-God thing from up there in the control room, couldn’t he see Nanna sitting right there in the front row? Couldn’t he tell her himself?
If her chest hadn’t been so rigid, she might have asked.
‘I’ve been Draven so successfully for so long now, moving from place to place, theatre to theatre. I’ve never really stopped and asked myself why I do it. What is it all for? It can’t be just about intrigue and anonymity. It can’t be just about writing truths that I have no connection to. No stake in.’ He paused and she almost felt the air rushing into his lungs. ‘At some point I have to write my truths. Expose myself.
‘Maybe my next work should be the story of a little boy who lost his voice when he lost his brother. Who grew up with all manner of workarounds that were successful enough to allow him to grow into Draven.’
The ensemble shuffled again. Confirmation that they were listening to the enigma himself.
‘But maybe that boy only creates for himself a world in which he doesn’t need to take any risks at all. Being mute is not hard when there are so many other ways of staying connected to people. Living rough is not a risk when you can check into a fancy hotel any time you need to. Writing truths is not that hard when they’re not your own. Being Draven isn’t even a risk when you have a team of managers doing the hard parts for you.’
His voice paused again—sighed.
‘I don’t think I’ve stuck my neck out for anything since I stepped off that kerb two decades ago.’ There was the slightest wobble in his voice that reached in and curled its fingers right around Kenzie’s heart. Despite her best efforts to harden it against him. ‘That ends today. The workarounds end today.’
There was nothing. No further words from the darkness, though everyone tilted their heads in readiness for whatever would come next.
Especially Kenzie.
But then that familiar, soft hiss said it was over. And that it was recorded. Hard on its heels came the brutal, crushing disappointment.
He wasn’t really here.
‘Critics have noted that Draven never writes about love.’ A voice came from the wings; a little stilted, a lot nervous.
Kenzie spun in the direction of the stiff words. And she bled at how wooden they were compared to the hours of easy conversation they’d had right below these very boards. But that same blood rushed joyously at the sight of Dylan stepping out of the stage-left shadows.
Was he breathless from jogging down from that secret place upstairs or was it from the significant struggle of speaking in front of all of Rivervue?
Or was it just from seeing her again? Because that’s definitely what was stealing the oxygen from her own cells.
‘Even Larrikin isn’t about love. Not the real thing,’ he added.
Love.
The word sounded so deliciously painful in that slightly French lilt as the shadows revealed him. Everyone drew in their breath as they did the maths.
Dylan = Draven.
‘I don’t write it, because I’d never experienced it,’ Dylan said, every word coming that little bit more easily than the one before it. Just as every footfall brought him inexorably closer. ‘I had no real frame of reference except for my parents. My brother. But when it came to the oldest story of all—one person just trying to love another—I had … nothing. I’ve never let myself form a connection long enough or strong enough to let love in.’
Kenzie’s eyes filled with tears and the back of her throat tanged with bitter salt.
But a scampering backstage soon resolved into little thundery pads as Phan
tom burst onto stage, trailing his lead, and made a weighty beeline straight for his master.
Dylan dropped to receive him. ‘Except maybe this guy. Hey boy …’
Phantom couldn’t have heard him so he must have smelled Dylan from back there. Come to think of it, so could she. Something else she thought she’d said goodbye to. His scent turned her insides positively gooey.
But Phantom’s doggy kisses gave Kenzie the moment she needed for Dylan’s stilted words to sink in.
Had no frame of reference? He had never experienced it? Past tense?
Kenzie grew about as tongue-tied as Dylan must be in front of such a large and utterly rapt audience. But she fought to keep her hope in check. Holding her tongue also reminded her of how silent she had just been while he was putting it all on the line, and what a difficult position that forced Dylan into.
She just didn’t have it in her to leave him hanging.
Not in silence.
‘You’re back,’ she murmured. Thank you, Captain Obvious. But at least the inane observation got some words moving over her dry tongue.
Dylan stood and kept his fingertips on Phantom’s head as the dog sank against his leg into a comfortable lean. So that he couldn’t disappear on him again.
I feel ya, pup.
‘Technically, I never left.’
Her brain failed to compute. ‘But you left Phantom behind. You went.’ Back to Canada.
‘Larrikin needed him.’
No. She’d needed him. To share her pain, to ease her torment, to talk everything through with until his big brown doggy eyes couldn’t stay open a moment longer. Because there was so very much to talk through.
‘So you’ve been in Brachen all this time?’ While she’d been suffering his absence? But something he’d once said came flittering back into her mind.
Oh.
‘The final full tech run. You never miss them.’ Had she started to hope he’d stayed for her?
‘I never do. But that’s not why I’m here.’
Kenzie started fortifying, desperately. Better late than never. Her rapidly crossed arms halted Dylan in his tracks as he moved towards her.
‘He’s registered to me now. That would be dog-napping.’
‘Phantom’s not why I’m back, either.’
‘You can’t just have a change of heart.’
‘I’ve changed my heart around a lot of things, Kenzie. It’s all I’ve been doing this past week.’
Ditto, sunshine. Well, that and all the crying. ‘Such as …?’
‘I’ve just come out in front of a theatre full of people,’ he murmured, glancing around the room. Little Emma Conroy looked like she was about to burst with excitement. Everyone else just looked cautious.
But no-one intervened. Or even moved.
So much for team.
‘Congratulations, that should be good for Larrikin.’
A lesser man would have bristled at her snipe, but Dylan had gotten to know her in these past weeks. The real her. And he’d believed in her in a way no-one else ever had.
‘I didn’t do it for Larrikin, Kenzie. I did it for you.’
Thump, thump, thump. Was that her heart or Phantom’s tail? The two were almost indistinguishable.
‘How does you revealing the Draven secret do anything for me?’ She took a breath and took a risk. Dylan shouldn’t be the only one. ‘How does it change anything for us?’
‘Because it cuts me free.’
‘Like a bad relationship?’ It wasn’t the worst analogy. Dylan was tied to Draven emotionally, legally and fiscally. He was dependent on him. The two of them had made play-babies together.
Aaand … just like that she started thinking about Dylan’s babies. And whether they might be blond and bubbly or dark and brooding.
Stop!
‘A relationship I’ve outgrown. Maybe a long time ago. But I’m only just realising it.’
Her voice dropped. Hilarious to be worried for his corporate privacy when they’d just laid themselves bare in front of a crowd. ‘But aren’t you worth a bazillion dollars?’
He shrugged. ‘About half-a-bazillion, now I’m going public.’
‘And you thought you’d hold on to this secret until now? You couldn’t have told me a week ago? You had to lurk around the theatre being all … mysterious?’
His beautiful mouth pursed. ‘Is it lurking if no-one knows you’re there?’
Her mind went to that pinprick of candlelight far above the audience even as her eyes stayed firmly glued to Dylan’s. ‘No. It’s called stalking.’
‘Lucy … Little one …’
It was only as Ron’s voice filled the theatre again that Kenzie realised that the sibilant hiss had been running all this time.
‘It’s on a loop,’ Dylan appealed to no-one in particular.
Bruce caught the plea and started jogging towards the back of the auditorium and the stairs up to the next floor.
‘Through the storeroom …’ Dylan managed to call after them.
Bruce waved him off. ‘We’ve got it …’
She adored Bruce and knew that the feeling was entirely mutual, but the kind of soppy going on in his theatre right now … He’d have taken any excuse to get out of there. And apparently designer Gabriel Mora felt the same because he sprinted up the stairs behind him.
‘I didn’t know if I’d be able to go through with speaking,’ he confessed to Kenzie, a flush of colour staining his jaw. ‘So I recorded it on some old gear up there and cut it in with Ron’s message for Lucy when no-one was around.’
Had it been so touch and go he had to force his own hand, like that?
‘Dylan,’ she breathed. ‘Why are you here? Why not just see the show and sneak back out the doors and back to Canada or on to whatever project you have next?’
‘I’ve cancelled my next project. I’ve decided to take some … extended leave.’
Oh, please. ‘Because you can turn the words off so easily, can you?’
‘I might take some notes, keep my hand in. But … yeah … no more Draven for the immediate future.’
If someone had told her at breakfast that, by nightfall, she’d be standing here less than one metre from Dylan North talking about the future, she’d have punched them in the shoulder.
Yet, look at her now …
‘Why are you here, Dylan?’ The man had been reading between people’s lines for his whole life. She had to believe that he knew what she was asking. ‘You do recall that we broke up.’
Not that they’d actually been together. Officially.
‘I wasn’t a party to that decision,’ Dylan said, before she could throw him out again. ‘You said I could stay in the props room as long as I liked. Well, I liked it there. I’d like to stay.’
‘Because it’s so salubrious?’
He let that one go through to the keeper. ‘I’d like to renegotiate our agreement.’
Kenzie threw her hands up. ‘Fine. I say you need to go and you say … what exactly? Make me a counter-offer, Dylan.’
Something in his face shifted. Like he was abandoning a plan he’d prepared and going firmly off-script.
‘Lexi,’ he improvised back over his shoulder without taking his eyes off Kenzie. ‘Is Rivervue available next April? Say middle-ish?’
‘Um … Depends on Brachen Shire’s plans for us. Why?’
His eyes remained locked on Kenzie’s. ‘We might have a joint production to stage. Short run. Single performance.’
Kenzie snorted. Ever the lady. ‘So much for taking a break from writing.’
‘No writing for this one. Except maybe some vows.’
Nanna gasped first. Lexi’s hands shot to her mouth as a weird kind of squeal leaked out. Emma Conroy’s jaw dropped halfway to the floor.
Kenzie would have joined in on all the gasping except a woman had to have air in her lungs for that. It took her a few moments to remember how breathing even worked.
‘Although I hear you can get vows off the interne
t so—’
Vows.
But there was so very much at stake, she wasn’t about to let herself fall apart here in front of everyone. In front of Dylan. He’d already had that satisfaction once.
‘Presumptuous. You haven’t asked me whether I’d like to attend an April wedding.’
Thud, thud, thud.
Broad shoulders shrugged. ‘We can do it in May if you like. I’m easy.’
No. He really wasn’t. She thought of Dylan as many things—brilliant, dynamic, sexy—but ‘easy’ wasn’t one of them.
Nothing worth having ever was.
But she was saved from answering by Bruce’s booming voice broadcasting over the public address system from up in the gods. ‘You’re not going to believe what’s up here. Proper Brachen history. Totally hidden. Positively homely right now. Like someone’s been nesting here.’ There was a slight murmur behind him and he said, half off mic. ‘Please. You didn’t know it was here, Gabe. How could you?’
More murmuring, then, ‘Spatial what …?’ The mic clicked out and the rest was lost.
‘That’s where you’ve been? Some hidden room, watching us?’
‘Now and then.’
‘And you’re aware how creepy that is?’
‘I am, yes.’
‘So you could have alerted me at any time to the fact that you were still in Brachen?’
‘I didn’t want to throw you off your game for the bicentennial. But I shouldn’t have worried. You were amazing tonight.’
‘Larrikin was amazing,’ she said, grudgingly.
Dylan looked about as pleased as if she had said yes to his ridiculous not-quite-proposal.
‘Ugh, if you two are going to just stroke each other’s egos all night, I have better places to be.’ Yeates’s brilliance was strictly reserved for onstage. Off it he was a jerk. But his surly departure started a kind of exodus as cast and crew snapped themselves out of the hypnotic trance of the past ten minutes. They all started an awkward retreat towards the green room.
‘No-one goes on social,’ Lexi called out before she lost them. ‘None of this is public until Dylan says so. Got it?’ she shouted and eyeballed them all until everyone had waved a disappointed kind of agreement. Even Yeates.