All the Ways to Here

by Emily O'Beirne

  “Poor me, you mean.”

  Anita picks him up and puts him on her lap. He blinks sleepily and licks her hand.

  “You’re going to get hair all over you,” Finn warns her. “You’ll look like a mad dog lady.”

  Anita shrugs and cuddles him. “Listen, I was talking to your Dad last night. About Cup Day weekend.”

  Finn loves that weekend. Well, she used to love that weekend. Every year they go away with her parents’ old friends, Angela and Matteo, and their little girl, Belle, for the Melbourne Cup long weekend. It’s the closest they’ve got to a family tradition. They rent side-by-side cottages right on the beach and stay there for three days.

  “Your Dad’s going to fly over for it.”

  Finn just blinks at her mother for a moment. “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  Finn watches Anita croon at the dog for a moment, trying to calm the ripple of excitement. This has to be a good sign, right? “Hey, Mum?”

  “Mm?”

  “Do you miss him?”

  It takes Anita a moment to answer. “Of course I do.”

  Hope springs again, and Finn wants to smile and grab her arm and tell her to keep missing him. To miss him so much that she can’t live without him.

  “Listen,” Anita says, “I thought maybe you might want to bring a friend? I know it was tough for you in Tasmania. Maybe Dan might want to come along?”

  “He’s going to Adelaide to see his grandparents. What about Will?” Finn sits up, wide awake now. “Could she come? Nan’s coming home this week, so she wouldn’t have to look after her brother and sister.”

  Anita frowns. “We’ve never let someone you’re dating stay over.”

  “I know, but it’s not like we’re going to be sleeping together.” Finn blushes. Hard. “I mean, she would stay in the other room, just like Dan would have. And you guys will be there the whole time. She could totally use a weekend away.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll talk to your dad about it.” Anita stands, brushing down her pants. “You should get up for school.”

  Finn lies there for a minute after her mum leaves, electric with the thought of the long weekend. It has to happen. The beach. Both her parents in the same place by choice. Willa there with her. She’s got to make it happen.

  CHAPTER 50

  Finn

  Finn wants it so happen so badly she rings her dad at lunch.

  “Finno!” he cries down the phone, the same way he does every time she calls. Her regular dose of overcompensatory parental enthusiasm.

  “Hey, Dad. I’m sorry I haven’t been over,” she says dropping onto a bench outside the locker bays. “Things have been crazy. I have school stuff, and Speech Night to prepare, and the filibuster.”

  “A filibuster? Have you turned into a politician in my absence?”

  “No, well, it’s kind of a repurposed filibuster.” She tells him about the community centre event.

  “I like it,” he says with relish. “That’s got to attract some local attention. Am I a bad dad if I tell you that I might be more impressed with this than I was with your last school report?”

  “Probably. But it’s okay. I’m sure Mum will pick up the slack the other way.”

  He laughs. “True.”

  “So, you’re coming over for Cup weekend?”

  “Sure am. I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Mum said I could bring someone, and I asked if Willa could come.”

  “Good-o.”

  She rolls her eyes. Typical. It hasn’t even occurred to him that he’s supposed to be parental about this. “She said she has to discuss it with you first.”

  “Oh, well, she already mentioned that she was going to tell you that you could bring a friend.”

  “Dad, catch up,” Finn teases. “She wants to talk to you because Willa’s my girlfriend.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “But I told her we’d be on our best behaviour,” she says quickly. “And you want to meet her, don’t you?”

  He laughs again. “Ah. I see your divide and conquer tactics for what they are, child.”

  Typical again. He’s a clueless dad when she doesn’t want him to be, and then he decides to get a clue right at the moment she doesn’t want him to.

  “But you’re right,” he says. “I do want to meet her.”

  “You’ll like her. She’s smart.”

  “Of course she is. Otherwise you wouldn’t like her.”

  “Maybe.” She thinks of Ruby Shipman, or Luke, that guy from Pender’s College she dated briefly last year. Cute and funny, but definitely no mental giant. It’s probably lucky her dad didn’t meet Luke. He thought Australia’s first female prime minister was Margaret Thatcher.

  “I’ll chat to your mum, and we’ll see. But you know she has the final say on these things.”

  She sighs. “I know.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Willa

  Willa drops down under the apricot tree, the phone pressed to her ear. “Riley too?”

  “Yep. That was my idea,” Finn says. “I figured Riley could play with Bella, and my parents would be more likely to say yes if your little sister is sleeping upstairs with us, being, like, a buffer.”

  “You really are a genius.” Willa waves at Maida, who’s coming through the side gate with a ragged clutch of hand-picked flowers in her hands.

  “So my mum said that your dad said he’d talk to Nan and that they’d let her know.”

  “Your mum talked to my Dad?” Willa’s eyes widen as Maida sits down beside her.

  “He said Nan had people over and couldn’t come to the phone.”

  Willa can’t even wrap her head around the idea of that conversation happening “What did he say?”

  “That he’d talk to Nan, remember?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.”

  “So, do you think he’s said something yet?”

  “Probably not. She’s had visitors all afternoon.”

  “I hope you can come,” Finn says.

  “Me too. I’ll tell you as soon as I know. I’ve got to go, though. Maida’s here.”

  “Okay. Say hi. And tell Nan I’ll come see her soon. Bye.”

  Willa drops her phone on the grass and turns to Maida. “Finn says hi.” She points at the flowers. “For me? You didn’t have to.”

  Maida grins and hugs them to her. “They’re for Nan, and you know it.”

  “She’s in the living room.”

  “It’s ridiculous how happy I am that she’s home. You must be totally excited.” Maida climbs to her feet, clutching her bright gift.

  “It’s pretty great.” Willa follows Maida inside the house and hunts out yet another vase. The house is already bursting with blooms brought to welcome Nan home. She fills a jar at the kitchen sink as chatter spills in from the next room.

  “I was just about to do that.” Nan leans on her walking stick in the doorway, clutching Maida’s flowers.

  “Well, it’s done.” Willa puts the jar carefully on the table.

  “Thank you, my girl.” Nan thrusts the flowers into the jar and fusses at them until they’re arranged the way she likes them.

  Willa can’t help smiling. Because Nan is calling her “my girl” again. Because Nan is in the house again, being Nan, making everything the way she likes it.

  It was amazing how good it was to hurry home and find her holding court from her armchair throne. There was the usual game show on the TV with the sound down as she chatted to one of her community garden cronies. Jack was perched on the arm of Nan’s chair, letting Nan smooth out the wrinkles in his school shirt as she chatted. Riley was thumping around in the kitchen, crafting some after-school snack, yelling her opinion into the next room. It was all so utterly, blissfully, loudly normal it made Willa want to cry.

  And she nearly gives into it as Nan turns from her flowers and gathers her into a brisk hug. “Thank you, my girl, for taking such good care of things. I’m proud of you. Prouder.”

  Willa swa
llows hard and says, “Want me to start dinner?”

  CHAPTER 52

  Willa

  Kelly comes over after dinner, carrying an armful of artfully arranged pastel blooms. “The lady at the florist next to work gave me a huge discount,” she says. “Otherwise it would have been el cheapo carnations.”

  “She’s in the lounge room,” Willa tells her.

  When Kelly comes back outside, she’s shaking her head. “Christ, it’s like a jungle in there. I should have brought weed killer instead.” She drops onto the end of the bench next to Maida. “You must be rapt she’s back, huh?”

  “I am,” Willa says for what feels like the millionth time.

  “Now you can have a life again,” Kelly says. “Such as it was.”

  “Poor Willa,” Maida says, smoothing out a strand of Willa’s hair. “Our Cinderella. All you’ve done is cook and clean and study for weeks.”

  “She does all that anyway,” Kelly says. “So are you going to finally party now you don’t have to play sister-mum all the time? Or are you going to return to your nunnish ways?”

  “Leave her alone,” Maida tells her. “She’s had a hard time.”

  “Dude, I know. Now I’m saying she should have a good time.”

  “I’m trying.” Willa tells them about the beach weekend possibility. “If I’m allowed.”

  “A weekend away with the gf?” Kelly raises an eyebrow. “Sounds saucy.”

  “Separate bedrooms. And they’ve invited Riley. I’d be sharing a room with her.”

  “Okay, sounding less hot now. So what did Nan say?”

  “Finn’s mum spoke to Dad on the phone. He said he’ll ask her.”

  “She’ll say yes,” Maida says. “She has to. You totally deserve a holiday.”

  Kelly leans against the brick wall and sighs. “So this is how the other half spends its long weekends? I’m working. Double time pay, though.”

  “We’re going back to the new farm block,” Maida grumbles. “Another four days with no electricity.”

  “What do you even do up there?” Willa asks her.

  “I watch stuff until my laptop runs out of juice, and then I read and pray for it to be over.”

  “That sucks,” Kelly says.

  “It does.” Maida picks up her textbooks. “Anyway, I better go.” She hugs them both and dashes down the side of the house. “Night!”

  Kelly jerks her thumb towards the back door. “So when’s he leaving?”

  “Dad? He’s staying another week so he can take Nan to her hospital appointments. Around Cup Weekend.”

  “You looking forward to it?”

  Willa shrugs. She still has no idea how to feel about it. About him leaving, specifically, or his existence in general.

  Kelly slowly nods. That’s the thing about Kelly. She knows that ambivalence is a thing you can feel about a person. Not like Maida. Maida feels everything for everybody.

  They sit there quietly, the night air lulling Willa back into a laziness she hasn’t felt in a while. She’s still got maths to do, but it can wait. Maybe it can even wait until morning. Because tonight she’s celebrating the return of Nan. The return of her world.

  Kelly sits next to her, dreaming too. Willa loves that. Kelly will talk about anything you want to talk about, but you can also just be with her in silence too, and it’s fine. Willa’s gotten used to the night-time quiet, to the silence strung out, thick and indifferent between her and her dad after the kids go to bed, that the sound of voices in the kitchen makes her jump.

  “I told her I’d talk about it with you,” she hears her dad say.

  “Why?” Nan says. “You could have said yes. I’m happy for them to go.”

  There’s the sound of cups clattering and the kettle being switched on.

  Just when Willa’s thinking that’s the end of the conversation, her dad says, “She told me that this Finn girl is her girlfriend. As in she’s…” He starts but trails off, like he doesn’t want to say the word.

  “See?” Kelly nudges her. “Homophobe.”

  “I’m aware that Finn’s her girlfriend.” Nan says it in that gruff tone she gets when she thinks someone’s talking rubbish. Usually Riley. “What’s your point?”

  “I’m so glad I was never in one of her classes,” Kelly whispers, snickering. “She would have been terrifying.”

  Willa ignores her, straining to hear what comes next. There’s no answer, though. Just more clattering of dishes and the purr of the kettle.

  “Oh, don’t tell me that you’ve lived in that conservative, parochial state for so long you’ve become a narrow-minded fool like the rest of them,” Nan suddenly says. “People are gay. Always have been. Including your daughter. Now, kindly get over it, and join us in this century. I’m halfway to seventy. If I can handle it, so can you.”

  Kelly’s shoulders shake with held-in laughter as she leans against Willa, listening. “Go Nan!” she whispers.

  “Would you let her go away for the weekend with a boyfriend?” he asks.

  Willa’s eyes widen. Wow. He’s not letting this go. Maybe he really is a homophobe.

  “Honestly? I don’t know,” Nan says. “She’s never had a boyfriend, so it hasn’t come up.”

  Willa doesn’t know why that makes her blush, but it does.

  “Look,” Nan says. “They’re going away with the girl’s parents. The mother is a school vice principal and hardly likely to let either of your daughters do anything they shouldn’t be doing. And they’ve been nice enough to invite Riley too. This is hardly something I’m going to worry about. Why are you?”

  There’s another spun-out silence.

  Then Nan starts talking again, on a full Nan roll. “You know what? I won’t even entertain this nonsense. That girl doesn’t get close to people easily, and she’s found someone she cares about. She does nothing but work and work and work. She gets top marks. She earned a scholarship to a school neither you nor I could afford, and she helps out around the house more than any teenager I’ve ever known. And she does it all without being asked to. You and Leela brought a good girl into the world. She deserves to have a nice time.” The kettle turns off with a click, as if to punctuate Nan’s last statement. “She’s going.”

  “The queen hath spoken.” Kelly smirks and wraps an arm around Willa. “Pack your bags.”

  Willa nods and smiles and does her best not to let on that she’s fighting another round of tears. Because she loves Nan so much right now she doesn’t even know what to do with the feeling.

  ~ ~ ~

  Later, when she’s in bed and the house is a contented silence, Willa pulls out her phone and texts Finn.

  We’re allowed to come to the beach.

  All she gets in return is an explosion of happy emojis.

  She tucks her phone under her pillow and smiles her way to sleep.

  CHAPTER 53

  Willa

  It’s hard to even look at her dad after overhearing that conversation with Nan. And she definitely doesn’t want to talk to him.

  Every time Willa thinks about what she heard, she feels gross. Maybe she’s been lucky, or maybe it’s because so few people have known, but no one’s ever made her feel as if liking girls is wrong or weird. And she knows that for a lot of people, it’s not always like that.

  The best-case scenario is that he’s not weird about her being gay, and he’s just being prudish and fatherly about her going away with her girlfriend. But still, it annoys her, because why does he get to play Dad like that all of a sudden? He hasn’t earned the right to have an opinion.

  Now she just wishes he’d hurry up and leave, for their life to go back the way it was when he was just a voice on the phone and not a confusing, absent presence. Until then, she plans on avoiding him. She’s polite, as usual, but she does her best to evade any encounters. When he enters a room, she finds a reason to leave. When she walks out into the garden and he’s there, she goes straight back inside. On the few times they all eat dinner together
, she keeps her eyes on her food, and lets the conversation trickle around her. She does her homework in her room, pretending she needs quiet, and only goes into the lounge room when Nan and the kids are there.

  One more week, she keeps reminding herself.

  “I wish I could have told him it’s none of his business,” she tells Finn one afternoon after school in the park. “That he’s got no say in what I do.” She rolls over onto her stomach and rests her head on her arms. “You know, I don’t even know if I care if I don’t see him again.”

  “Really?” Finn gives her a long look. “Are you sure?”

  Willa stares at the grass, jaw clenched. “Really.”

  “But what if something happens to Nan? I mean, it won’t, but what if you need him again?”

  Willa shrugs and changes the subject. Because she doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. And because she’d like to ignore the annoying fact that Finn is probably right.

  CHAPTER 54

  Finn

  As Friday afternoon barrels on, Finn gets more and more fidgety. By the time she arrives at the centre after school, she’s a twist of nerves. Because it’s D-day.

  She wouldn’t be so nervous if she wasn’t the one making the speech. All week, she’s been working on it, jamming in writing sessions between homework and last-minute Speech Night planning. Of course, in the grand tradition of planning clusterfluffs, these two events just had to fall within the same forty-eight hours. But with the help of Zehra and the army of kids they have gathered, they’ve got Speech Night wrangled into shape for Saturday night. And now they’ve done everything they possibly can to make the filibuster happen.

  They spend the afternoon cleaning and tidying the centre, music blaring from Andy’s portable speakers. Finn sweeps up the ancient piles of dust and scrubs coffee stains from tables with Bea. An hour before they’re due to start, Nona brings in a huge tray of cupcakes, decorated beautifully with rainbow flowers.

  “Wow.” Rosie leans over them. “These are amazing, Nona. Totally professional.”

  “Amazing,” Finn agrees, leaning over to get a better look. They’re like cupcakes you’d see in a shop, with small, artful flowers and detailed little leaves.