The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  ‘How could you do that to him?’ Jade snapped. ‘How could you lie? You’re the reason he’s spent his life in depression. You made him this way. Does he know now that it wasn’t his child?’

  ‘No. I never told him,’ she said softly.

  ‘You coward!’ Jade spat out the words.

  ‘I’ve made some terrible choices, Jade,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve had to live with the consequences.’

  The emotion between Jade and her mother was building. Jade stared at her, unflinching, venom in her voice. ‘You know, most people learn from their mistakes. But you, you just keep on making them.’

  ‘So, who is he? Who is my father?’ Courtney said, desperate to know.

  Asha stared at Courtney now, a dark blue rim around her eyes that were both beautiful and cruel. ‘Frank,’ she answered simply.

  Courtney’s hands started to tremble. Her heart was racing so fast she felt like she might vomit. ‘That’s impossible. He adopted me.’

  Asha shook her head.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Courtney said in disbelief. ‘Why would he have lied to me my whole life? Why would he pretend to be my adoptive father?’

  Courtney studied the woman, trying to see anything in her face that resembled her own. ‘Well?’ Courtney pleaded.

  ‘Frank stayed until you were born. He found a job at a local vet. I still remember the way he looked at you. He only came to the hospital at night, and if any of the nurses asked, I said he was my brother. He was so happy, so besotted, that parting with you every night was torture for him. He begged me to go back with him to America. He said we could start our lives over. Be a family. He promised he would take care of us. After a while, I toyed with the idea. Frank wanted me to confess everything to Paul, but I just couldn’t.’ She paused and looked away from them both.

  ‘So, what did you do?’ Courtney asked.

  ‘I loved Frank, so I told him I would go with him. He organised everything. He had a forger include you on his passport, naming you by your middle name with his surname. He got me one too with a fake name. He would have done anything for me.’ She looked into the distance as if she could see the memory playing before her. She sat down on the bench. Courtney glanced at Jade, who was still, her eyes wide, her breath shallow.

  ‘He’d bought suitcases and all the baby necessities you could possibly ever need. He told me he had everything worked out. With the fake passports, we could reinvent ourselves. They couldn’t track where we went. The plan was to go to Fiji, a place no one would think to look. Where we could simply disappear.’ She turned to Jade now. ‘By then Paul was completely smitten with –’ she looked back at Courtney ‘– with you. I’d never seen him so happy. He was glowing. He had built your nursery himself and he spent hours just watching you sleep. I felt so torn. So lost. And being a parent was new to me. It was all so overwhelming. Having suddenly to care for a child. Having this thing to be responsible for.’

  Courtney felt anger pulse through her. She couldn’t grasp that the woman before her was related to her in any way. ‘This thing?’ she snarled. ‘How can you talk about a child like that? Your child.’

  ‘It was so long ago,’ Asha said, waving it off.

  Jade seemed stunned. She narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw. ‘What did you tell Dad?’

  Her reply was clipped. ‘I didn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘So, what did you do, then?’ Jade pressed again. ‘A child doesn’t just disappear.’

  Asha put her head in her hands again. ‘We made a plan,’ she said quietly.

  ‘A plan?’ Courtney asked, incredulous, feeling that at any moment she would break.

  ‘We decided to build a lie. A vast, horrible lie,’ Asha said. ‘Everyone has secrets.’ She turned to Courtney, the golden light falling across her skin. ‘You are mine.’

  52

  JADE couldn’t listen to another word. Not once in her mother’s confession had Asha acknowledged the torment she had wrought on Jade. Not once had she shown the slightest bit of acknowledgement that while she was searching the world for a daughter she gave up, she chose to leave her other one behind.

  So, before Jade could hear anything more she turned away from her mother and found herself running. She sprinted as if she could outrun the pain her mother had caused that spread through her body like a virus. She drowned out the sound of Asha begging her to wait. ‘Jade, I’m sorry,’ she called out.

  It was too late.

  Everything swirled around as she ran deep into the bush. She kept running, desperate to fold herself into Adam’s protective arms and be shielded from the hurt. As she ran faster, her leg slipped over a rock covered in green moss. She felt her knees scrape the rock with a thud and then she was tumbling forward. She reached desperately for anything to stop her fall, but she kept tumbling until she suddenly felt air beneath her and then she was weightless, plummeting over the edge of a steep ravine.

  As she fell, time fragmented.

  She is twelve. She is fourteen. She is seventeen. She is twenty. She is ageless. She is motherless. She is still waiting.

  She hit the earth with a thump, her legs taking the brunt of the impact. Pain shot through her body. She felt confused and dizzy as she looked up in shock to see she had tumbled about four metres from above. She drew her breath, grateful that she hadn’t knocked her head against a rock. Despite the searing pain and the fogginess in her head, Jade forced herself to climb back up and somehow found the strength to lever her body over the edge. When she was safely on flat ground, she lay back on the grass, exhausted and in agony. She closed her eyes as abandonment drew arms around her once more. Sleep enveloped her.

  Jade dreamed she was a child again lost in the forest. She could smell damp wood and lemongrass, fireflies and olive leaves. She was five and her mother had left her there alone. Her mother would come for her. And then there was YiaYia, taking her home to give her warm honey and mint tea.

  But when Jade felt herself being lifted, it was not her grandmother. It was her father. Her head felt heavy. She could barely open her eyes. Her mind was cloudy. Her legs ached. Paul picked her up delicately and carried her. ‘You’ll be okay now, Jadey,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve got you.’

  She felt a raindrop on her skin but when she tilted her head up, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. She wanted to tell him not to cry, but she was too tired to speak and her eyes were too heavy to keep open.

  Darkness pressed around her and finally her mother’s voice was gone.

  53

  COURTNEY paced up and down by the bench under the willow tree. Shades of dusky blue and purple spread across the sky, shadowing the bushland Asha had followed Jade into. Courtney was sure her birth mother wasn’t coming back despite her promise that she would return once she found Jade.

  But what good was her word? She had made a life out of lies. That much was clear from the wounded look on her daughter’s face when she ran into the woods, unable to withstand any further confessions.

  As Courtney waited, she replayed the shocking revelations in her mind. Could Frank really be her birth father? Courtney was desperate to confront him but she had too much to ask and such rising anger that speaking to him over the phone on the other side of the world would only compound her mixed emotions. She would wait until she was home, which would be in less than forty-eight hours.

  Little things made sense now, like his reaction to the headlines on the radio about the wildfires in Australia, and the way he seemed to draw his breath when she wore her mother’s pearl necklace. All this time he had been telling the truth when he told her it belonged to her mother. Except not the truth she had believed it to be.

  Courtney remembered the way he froze when she found the photo of a woman in the shoebox and how he said he had never seen her in his life. She had assumed it was Alzheimer’s blocking his memory, but had he actually been lying to her face?

  She felt a seething rage bubble inside her. It was her life. Her truth to know. And yet
her father had wrapped the secret around her like a blanket. Why would Frank go to such extremes to lie when the truth seemed so much simpler?

  With all the pressing questions Courtney had about her own life, she reminded herself that there was only one question she really had to ask Asha. One that outweighed all the others. But how do you ask a woman who gave you up to save your son’s life?

  When thirty minutes had passed, Courtney was sure Asha wasn’t coming back. Anger and resentment pulsed through her. She stood to leave when she saw Asha emerge in the distance. The moonlight crept up from behind the mountains, casting silver shadows over the tall trees that stood like waiting guards. Asha’s head was down. Her white dress lifted in the wind, the moon’s luminous glow making it seem almost transparent. A cloth covering an invisible woman.

  ‘You waited,’ Asha said breathlessly when she reached the bench. Her eyes were red from crying and her cheeks were pink from running. ‘I couldn’t find her,’ she said. ‘And the forest is nothing like it was. All the familiar markers have burned away. I searched all the places I thought she might go but then I realised, I was looking in spots she loved as a child. I don’t really know her as an adult. I don’t know her at all,’ she mused, looking away and into the space where Jade had disappeared. ‘And it’s no one’s fault but my own. I let her go.’ She turned back to Courtney. ‘Like I let you go.’

  Courtney would not allow herself to be fooled into pitying this woman. ‘Well, why did you, then?’

  Asha sat on the wooden bench. The air was cooler now that the sun had sunk behind the mountains. The earth smelled of wood smoke. Asha gazed away as if she could see her life replaying before her on the rolling hills. ‘Why? I’ve been asking myself that question for thirty-six years.’

  Courtney sat down on the bench and was startled when Asha ran a hand through Courtney’s hair. Courtney’s body stiffened and she stood up.

  ‘I always knew you’d have hair like your father. Dark and strong. Fiery. Not like mine, weak and open to the elements. But your eyes are the same. From the moment you were born, you had those piercing eyes. Too much like mine. Like looking into the depths of my soul.’

  ‘You are nothing like I imagined,’ Courtney said bitterly.

  Her mother smiled as if she expected that.

  ‘Why did you give me up?’ Courtney asked.

  Every response Asha gave was frustratingly poetic and scattered, as if she were caught in her own world. ‘You make it sound like I had a choice,’ she said. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You could have gone with my father.’

  ‘I couldn’t leave here. He knew that. I couldn’t leave my husband. And Frank wouldn’t stay unless I told Paul the truth. I didn’t want to be like my own mother. She left me with my alcoholic father when I was fourteen. And then I ran away and I never went back. And I found myself here, in this beautiful countryside. And it breathed into my soul and it healed me. I felt like there was a tie binding me to it. I thought if I left, I’d be like a tree uprooted and I’d never survive.’

  Courtney felt anger vibrate through her. ‘But you had a child. You had me.’

  ‘I was never going to be a good mother. Look at what I’ve done to Jade.’

  ‘So, what did you tell your husband, the man who thought I was his child?’

  Asha rested her hands on her legs and closed her eyes for a moment before answering. ‘I thought a lie was less painful than the truth of my betrayal. And I’ve lived with the scars of that one decision for the rest of my life.’

  ‘What was the lie?’

  Her mother took a breath, steadied herself and then spoke slowly. ‘Where does a lie begin? I think about that often, where did it start? The lies bled into each other until they resembled something else entirely.’

  Courtney stared at her, unblinking, her eyes like daggers. ‘Well, find a beginning.’

  Asha stood up and went to the willow tree. She ran her fingertip up the bark. There was something graceful about her every movement. It made Courtney think of a ballerina. She hated that the woman was beautiful, that on the surface you could be deceived into thinking she was harmless. ‘I was so in love with Frank that for a while I made myself believe we could have this secret relationship and I wouldn’t have to destroy my marriage. I could have the best of both worlds and live happily ever after.’ She dug her nail into the bark and it flaked off like a second skin. ‘But of course, life never has fairytale endings.’

  Courtney sat on the grass and kept her eyes on the blades as they shifted in the early-evening breeze.

  ‘For weeks, Frank and I argued back and forth, trying to find a solution. Either way, someone got broken. Paul had been so good to me. I’d been with him since I was seventeen. He was my only family. But I just didn’t love him the way I loved Frank. With Paul it was comfort, our history, familiarity. The truth would have killed him. I just wanted things to go back to how they were before the problem began.’

  She said the word ‘problem’ like it was bitter on her tongue and she wanted to spit it out. She fixed her eyes on Courtney. ‘And you were the problem. If only I could make you disappear.’

  Courtney’s throat suddenly felt tight and scratched, as though she were swallowing glass. She couldn’t believe a person could be so cruel, so heartless. But more than that, she couldn’t believe that that person was her mother.

  ‘And then it hit me,’ Asha continued. ‘I wouldn’t have to tell Paul at all. I dreamed up a plan that I believed would fix everything. Frank thought it was risky. He kept insisting I tell the truth instead, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. So, he organised the fake passports. Because no one knew anything about Frank, there was nothing connecting the two of us. The plan was for him to go with you first to Fiji. And then I would follow after two weeks. No one would find us. People would assume I’d disappeared to escape the grief of losing you. That’s what I would have told Paul in a letter. And Frank and I would start over. Reinvent ourselves.’

  Courtney stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘Take a few steps back. How would he get me to Fiji if you weren’t going to tell Paul the truth?’

  ‘You had to disappear,’ she said simply. She swivelled around, clenching a piece of bark in her palm. ‘How do you make a child disappear?’

  Her question hung in the air, heavy and thick like smoke. When Courtney realised what she was alluding to, she felt ill. Sweat collected at the back of her neck even in the cold night air. Her skin felt hot. ‘He abducted me?’ Courtney blurted in disbelief.

  ‘I guess you could call it that. I don’t like that word. Abduction. It sounds poisonous. I prefer to think of it as taking what was rightfully his without anyone knowing.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ Courtney spat out. ‘My father would never have gone along with anything like that. Never. He has morals. Values.’

  Asha shook her head as if she pitied Courtney’s idealism. Her voice was even and composed. She knew each word would pierce. ‘Your father would have done anything for me. Anything. And not just for me. But for you. You were his. He didn’t want to let you go. And this was the only option I gave him.’

  Courtney tore a handful of grass. ‘So, you practically held a knife to his throat.’

  ‘I didn’t make him do anything. He could have left me, left you. But instead, he did what I asked.’ She ran a hand down her long, wispy hair and twirled the ends in her fingers. ‘Love does strange things to people.’ She said it as if she was proud of the hold she’d had over Frank.

  Courtney stared at her. ‘How did you plan this abduction?’

  Asha sat at the base of the tree and brought her knees up to her chest like a child. She dipped her head down and took a deep breath, her composure slipping as if it had only ever been a mask. ‘You were six months old by then. I went shopping in the supermarket with you and made sure we were seen together by shop attendants. I waited till you were asleep before I walked back to the car park. I’d parked on the furthest end. Frank was waiting in his car right next to m
ine. He had a car seat ready. I put your pram next to his car door as we’d planned. We waited until there was no one around us.’ When she continued, cracks crept into her measured tone. ‘Just as I was about to leave you there, you curled your fingers around my thumb and gazed up at me, smiling your toothless baby smile. I’ll never forget the way you looked at me. Like I was your whole world. Like I would never let you down.’

  Asha started to cry. At first she tried to keep it in, but it took hold of her and made her whole body tremble.

  ‘And then Frank lifted you delicately out of the pram, and so quickly no one would have seen. I did what we had planned and continued to slowly load the groceries into my car to give him time to get away. He was going to drive straight to Melbourne and board a cruise to Fiji.’

  She looked away now, too ashamed to meet Courtney’s eyes. ‘When he was long gone with you and I looked into your empty pram, I put my palm on your blanket and I swear it was still warm. It still smelled of you. The sweet milky scent of your breath, the smell of your skin like baby powder, dry sheets and cherry blossoms. And in that moment, I felt so confused, so lost. I didn’t know what I’d done. And then a scream escaped me. I cried as if he really was a kidnapper. My cheeks flushed red and I began to weep.’ She paused, shaking. ‘Because I knew right then that I would never see you again. I would never see Frank again. I knew,’ she sobbed, ‘that I couldn’t go through with our plan.’

  Courtney rubbed her hands over her eyebrows and closed her eyes. She couldn’t grasp what she was hearing.

  ‘People came out of the shopping centre and out of cars and rushed around me and I couldn’t speak. “Who took her?” “What car were they driving?” “Was it a man or a woman?” “Did you see the direction they went?” These strangers hurled questions at me, but I could barely breathe. “Don’t worry,” they assured me. “We’ll find your baby. We’ll get her back.” And that only made me cry harder because the truth was, I didn’t want them to find you. I didn’t want you back.’