by Jaye Ford
Liv closed the front door behind her. ‘I figured she would be.’ She hugged him and as he pulled her in and held on, she was glad she’d come. She was supporting someone and Jason was family.
She cut up fruit and cheese for the kids and made two cups of tea while Jason sat at the kitchen bar and told her what he knew.
‘She’s got a hairline fracture in her pelvis, broken ribs and collarbone, all from falling on her side.’
‘What about her face? There was blood on her face.’
He tightened his lips, as though he’d left the worst for last. ‘It’s not good. There was a deep gash on her cheek and the right eye socket is fractured. They’re talking about surgery.’
Liv remembered the rope of Teagan’s hair hanging over the side of the van and covered her mouth with her hand. On the other side of the family room, noise blared from the TV as a DVD started up. Jason closed his eyes, looking as though his stress level was about to shoot out the top of his head.
‘Can you turn that down?’ Liv called.
‘It’s just the start,’ Bess said.
‘The start’s always loud,’ Cameron added.
‘Well, turn it down anyway. We’re trying to talk here.’
There was a brief argument over the remote so Liv rounded the bench, gave Jason’s shoulder a squeeze as she passed him. ‘Let’s go into the other room.’
They sat on the lounge, side by side, sleeves touching, drinking tea. Family. Home. Liv talked quietly, telling him about the man confessing to her assault, the two new messages, the guilt at Teagan being caught up in it.
‘How was Kelly when you spoke to her?’ Liv asked.
‘You know Kelly. Family manager. She’s made me the communications centre.’
Liv smiled a little. ‘She was mad at me. We were mad at each other. God, Jase, it’s such a mess.’
‘We’ll find a way through it.’
‘I might have no friends left by then.’
‘You’ll still have me.’
She nudged him with her shoulder. He nudged her back. They drank in silence, didn’t speak again until their empty mugs were on the coffee table.
‘Do you need me to stay for a while?’ Liv asked.
‘Only if you want to.’
She glanced at the window. The sun was starting to drop and she was anxious to be home before dark but she didn’t want to abandon him at dinnertime if he had calls to make. ‘Did Kelly say when she’d be back?’
‘I don’t expect her for hours yet.’
She turned her head and watched him, trying to gauge his stress. And it was happening before she realised – his lips pressing hers, moving and insistent.
Shock made her go slack and in that moment of soft, intimate pressure, her body responded with the reflex of a bruised, lonely person starved for affection. It was only a brief firming of her lips, a tiny flutter of her tongue before her brain kicked into gear and shut it down. But he must have felt it. He was suddenly around her, against her, his breath on her face, in her mouth. Liv’s heart slammed, her spine stiffened. Wrong. All wrong. She tried to turn her face but he took it as passion, found the space between her lips, pushed his tongue against her teeth. She got her palms to his chest and forced him away.
‘Jason, no.’ She said it more quietly than she wanted, conscious of the children in the other room.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, leaning into her hands.
She shoved hard. ‘What the fuck, Jason?’
Before he could answer, she shoved him again, an audible thump in the chest. He sat back, an arm’s distance away. Neither spoke, they both breathed hard.
‘It’s okay,’ he said again.
‘No. It’s not.’ She turned her face, closed her eyes and saw Kelly in her mind. ‘Oh fuck. Fuck.’
‘I know. It’s difficult. But we’re here now. We can’t pretend it isn’t happening.’ His voice was gentle, coaxing.
She looked back at him in horror. ‘Are you nuts? There’s nothing happening. Kelly is my best friend. She’s your wife, for God’s sake.’
Confusion and aggravation pulled his brows together. ‘This isn’t about Kelly. It’s about us. You knew where this was heading.’
‘Where what was heading, Jase? We were having a cup of tea on an awful day. Where’s the invitation to stick your tongue down my throat?’
He put up his hands. ‘Okay, fine. You’re feeling guilty because we finally got there. Whatever. But cut the innocent act, Liv. We’ve been going down this road for months. We both know that.’
Liv opened her mouth but no words came out. Months. Which months? Not any months she remembered. She shook her head slowly. ‘Jase, I . . .’
Whatever he read in her face, he got it wrong. ‘I know, I know, the timing is bad. But this last week, you’ve needed me. I knew you would eventually. I haven’t been able to be there the way you wanted. The way we both wanted.’ He lifted his hand to her cheek. ‘But I can now. Just for a while.’
She wanted to be sick, to slap his face, to wind back the tape ten minutes and drink their tea in the kitchen. One decision for a bit of quiet had changed everything. Jason. Kelly. The kids. The only family she had to offer Cameron. She smacked his hand away. ‘This is not what I want. How can you even think I would want that after what Thomas did? You’ve got it all, Jason. I only wanted to be a part of it. And you just fucked it up for everyone. You stupid bastard.’
She coaxed Cameron away from the TV, kissed and hugged the girls in case it was a long time before she saw them again, ignored Jason in the doorway of the lounge room as they left. As she drove towards home, her heart pounded and her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. She wanted to call her best friend, share the shock, ask what she should do – but Jason had taken that away from her, too.
‘What’s the matter, Mum?’
She swallowed down on the lump in her throat. ‘Nothing, sweetie. I’m just a bit . . . tired.’ She leaned over and ruffled his hair. He gave her a toothy smile. ‘Oh wow, that is exactly what I need. Thank you, honey.’
It was dusk when she headed up the driveway and her neighbour’s porch light was already on. As her roller door made its way slowly upwards, she eyed the townhouse warily.
‘Stay in the car for a couple of minutes, honey,’ she told Cameron when she’d parked in the garage.
‘Why?’
‘I want to check I’ve got everything for the spaghetti. Hey, have you seen my new phone? It’s in my bag. Check it out and I’ll be back in a sec.’
She locked him in, flicked lights as she entered the townhouse, found the umbrella against the wall. Okay, you’re on your own, Liv, but you’ve done this before. She followed Daniel’s route – half-bath, laundry, kitchen, lounge room. Swapped the umbrella for the baseball bat as she passed it by the stairs and made her way to the upper level. Cameron’s room, bathroom, her bedroom.
‘All clear,’ she muttered in the ensuite, rolled her eyes at herself in the mirror as she passed.
Half an hour later, Cameron sat at the kitchen counter with his homework while she cooked the spaghetti. She called out ‘ea’ words for him to spell and numbers he could divide by two and listened to him read and his company swept everything else aside.
He was upstairs brushing his teeth before bed when she heard the knock at the door and her mood flipped from relaxed to cautious. It was eight o’clock. Dark outside. No lights in the driveway.
‘Liv, it’s Daniel. I’m doing a walk around your property. You don’t need to come out.’
She hadn’t expected to see him again today. Had he dropped by on his way home? Had he gone back to work after he’d helped Teagan off the van? Liv stood in the front entry waiting for his footfalls to return and kept the chain on as she opened the door.
Daniel flicked off a torch
and looked back at her from under the overhead light. It wasn’t what she expected. Not the face she’d seen at her door on other nights. Not the warrior at ease. His mouth was a taut line and something tense and grim had taken up residence in his eyes. She unhooked the chain.
33
‘Sorry to come by without calling. I was on my way past and . . .’ His words were casual but they came out fast as his eyes moved quickly, anxiously about the room.
‘It’s fine. And thanks. Did you go back to work after you spoke to the police?’
‘No, I’ve been at the hospital.’
Liv frowned. ‘With Teagan?’
‘Yeah. No, not with her. Just hanging around, waiting to see how it turned out.’ His gaze stopped on Liv. ‘Making sure she was still breathing.’
She remembered his joke from this morning. Maybe it wasn’t a joke. ‘She is, isn’t she?’
‘What?’
‘Still breathing.’
‘Yeah. Her condition’s been downgraded to serious but stable. It’s a good start.’
She nodded, relieved. ‘You were there a long time.’
He ran a hand across his stubbled head. ‘I have trouble letting go, apparently.’
‘Are you okay?’
He turned away, making like he was stretching his neck. ‘I’m fine.’
No, he wasn’t and he’d come here.
Her dad had opened the door to late-night knocks at the flat above the gym. Boys kicked out or beaten up or hungry – or all three. He’d fed them, given them a bed downstairs, let them talk if they wanted to. In the last year, Liv had learned what it was like to be strong and capable and feel suddenly desperate and alone. And how hard it was to knock on a door and ask for help. It was a long time since someone had come to her, instead of the other way around.
‘Have you eaten?’ she asked.
‘I grabbed something at the hospital.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What? A chocolate bar from a vending machine?’
He smiled. ‘Something like that.’
‘Mum?’
Cameron was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his too-long pyjama pants bunched up at his feet. The sight of him sent a rush of heat to her face. After Thomas had left, Cameron kept asking why Michelle had come. ‘But why did she come at all?’ he’d say. Liv guessed he’d been trying to work out how it had happened, not understanding that people just meet, that they weren’t sent for the purpose of taking a parent away. Now, as he looked way up at the huge man by the door, she wanted to tell him it was okay, that Daniel hadn’t come for her. ‘Cameron, this is Daniel. He works at my office.’
Daniel held out his hand. ‘Hi, Cameron. I hear you’re a good soccer player.’
‘Yup.’
Liv watched his hand get swallowed up in Daniel’s, felt something swell inside her chest. ‘You all set for bed then?’
‘Yup.’
‘Well, you better skedaddle.’ She followed him up and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I’ve got some work to do with Daniel tonight, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I love you.’
‘Love you, too.’
Daniel had pulled the curtain back a little but turned from the glass as she came down the stairs. Some of the tension in his face had eased.
‘Cameron looks like you,’ he said.
‘You think? He’s so fair and those curls.’
‘The rest is you, though. Right down to the wicked grin.’
‘Well, gee, I didn’t know I had a wicked grin.’
His eyes dropped to her mouth. ‘Oh yeah, real wicked.’
There was a beat of silence. Liv broke it up. ‘We had spaghetti for dinner. I’ve got leftovers. Would you like some?’
He waved it off. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble. What happened to the dog?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s not barking.’
She shifted her eyes to the door, listened to the quiet. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It didn’t bark when I was here last night, either. But your neighbour’s lights were out, I figured they must have gone somewhere with it.’ He cocked a thumb at the window. ‘Their lights are on tonight.’
The house lights, not the yard lights. Maybe Benny had been on some energetic outing and he was sleeping it off or maybe he was inside tonight. Liv opened the fridge, tried to ignore the disquiet stirring in her belly, told herself she should be pleased he’d stopped making a racket.
She put a plastic-covered bowl on the counter. ‘It’s good spag bol, even if I say so myself. No trouble to reheat it.’ She raised an eyebrow at Daniel. He hesitated. ‘Go on. Take a seat before you pass out from hunger.’
She poured him a glass of wine as the microwave hummed, joined him with one of her own when the smell of garlic and tomato from his steaming plate filled the kitchen. He picked up his fork, said, ‘I heard you had another note.’
‘Two more.’ As he ate, she went through it for a third time that day then told him about the discussion with Rachel at the cafe, about her earlier warning that it could be anyone in her life. She skipped a report on Jason’s tongue in her mouth. He didn’t need to know and she didn’t want to think about it. It came back to her, anyway – months?
Daniel laid his fork across his empty bowl. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘About people in my life.’
‘Someone you suspect?’
No was on the tip of her tongue but she remembered Jason’s words again. He thought they’d been heading down a path for months. This last week you’ve needed me. I knew you would eventually. Had he been trying to engineer it? Had he . . . ? She shook her head, trying to shrug off the suspicion that was creeping under her skin. ‘I don’t know. I don’t . . . Did you see what happened in the car park this afternoon?’
Daniel stood quickly, plate in hand, the cutlery clattering against it as he moved around the bench. He said nothing as he rinsed it under the tap and stacked it in the dishwasher.
‘Daniel?’
He walked past her, stopped halfway across the lounge room, spoke without looking at her. ‘I came back from a job and parked on the first floor. I’d just locked the car and heard the . . . thump and the glass shattering. I thought someone had gone over the bonnet of a car. I ran to the railing, saw her, Teagan, and went for the stairs.’ He passed a hand across his chin as he took the few steps to the nearest sofa and sat – elbows on knees, hands clasped. ‘I’d already got to her when Ray yelled down that an ambulance had been called.’
Liv sat on the other sofa. ‘Where was he?’
‘On the third floor, I think. I told him I had first-aid gear in my office. Someone tossed my keys up to him.’ His interlaced fingers flexed and released. ‘She wasn’t good. I thought it might be touch and go in the ambulance. Sorry. You don’t need to hear that.’
‘She was lucky you were there.’
He shrugged. ‘Has Rachel got a patrol on rotation in your street tonight?’
‘Yes.’
He watched her for a long moment then. Not an assessment this time, at least not of her, she didn’t think. The focus seemed more internal. Thinking, maybe, or making a decision.
‘I could stay with you tonight,’ he said. When Liv opened her mouth and didn’t answer, he shook his head. ‘Yeah, sorry, that sounded like a bad come-on. I meant I could stay on the sofa. If you’re worried.’
Did she need a guard at the door? Would it make her feel safer having someone else in the house? Yes, absolutely, especially Daniel. But did she want him spending the night, even if it was only on her sofa? ‘I’m not . . .’ She didn’t finish, wasn’t sure she knew what she wanted.
‘Look, I don’t know what all this is about. All I know is there was an incident today and you’
re alone here with your son tonight. I’m just offering to be another able body in the house. At least until you see where it goes tomorrow.’
‘You said the townhouse was secure.’
‘It is and I’m probably being overcautious but I’ve sent two women off to hospital in the space of a week. I don’t want to do it again anytime soon.’
He turned his face towards the windows. She couldn’t see where his focus was now, but as she watched his fingers flex and release again, she thought of the way he’d taken to checking on her, of the tautness in his face when he’d arrived – and wondered what effect the events of the last week had had on him. He’d rescued dozens of people, possibly more than that. She’d figured helping her in the car park would’ve been easy for him. Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe that’s why he was here.
‘Daniel . . .’
His face came around as she spoke, his voice cutting her off. ‘If not for you then for me.’
She saw something in his eyes she recognised. Fear, protection, responsibility. Then it was gone.
‘Hey, I’m a guy. You gotta let me do something useful.’
She smiled a little then. ‘Thanks. My sofas are a little short, though. Not sure you’ll be comfortable.’
‘I’m open to suggestion.’
‘How about the floor?’
‘Okay, the sofa it is.’
Liv gasped awake, blinked in the darkness, tried to rub out the images from her nightmare. Except it wasn’t total darkness. There was a faint glow coming from the hall. Cameron?
She threw off the blanket, grabbed the hand weight by the bed and ran to the corridor. The illumination was in the stairwell, coming from the lower level. She approached the stairs cautiously, listening as she started down, squatting near the top to get a view into the lounge room.
The kitchen light was on, bedcovers were in a heap at one end of a sofa and Daniel was standing by the back door, one hand holding the curtain, peering into the courtyard. Liv’s shoulders stiffened.