Who knew what he would do? Would he come after her again or June or, god forbid, Lily-Rose? She couldn’t put them at risk.
The baby was gone. She no longer had to have anything to do with him. She prayed he would forget about her.
As she spent her days in bed healing, the grief came in waves until, eventually, it petered away and was replaced by a cold nothingness. She no longer felt anything. Numb.
A knock came at the door on Saturday night, the day before her parents were to drop Lily-Rose home.
She was in the living room watching television. June was upstairs taking a shower. She wasn’t expecting anyone. June wasn’t either because they had agreed to have no visitors until she was better. The last thing she needed was the entire town speculating as to why she was black and blue.
She remained very still.
Another bang came at the door, louder now.
Slowly, she dragged herself on to all fours and crept to the television to turn it down. Her heart was beating up into her throat. “Please, June, stay upstairs and be quiet,” she whispered to herself.
Another bang, louder, “I know you’re in there. Open the door now!”
A full tremor rocketed through her body, set her teeth chattering, to hear his voice. The phone was in the kitchen. If he was to look in through the front windows, he would see her. But she had to take the chance. She had to call the police.
She crawled ever so quietly across the floorboards, scrambled to her feet and rushed as fast as her broken body would allow along the main living space towards the kitchen.
A loud crash sounded behind her as the front window exploded inward. She whirled to see, pain shooting through her abdomen and ribs. An enormous rock tumbled across the floorboards towards her.
“Don’t you come in here,” she screamed.
But he lifted his foot and kicked away the remaining broken glass before climbing in. She spun and sprinted for the kitchen.
“Don’t you dare,” he yelled, his fast footsteps gaining on her.
She kept running, pain igniting with every step. His fist caught her hair and pulled her back to him. She screamed.
“You trying to make trouble for me, Mary? You better not be talking to the police. I saw their car here. What did you tell them?”
She shook her head. Tears rolled down her face. Her lips trembled. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
He yanked at her hair again and pain blasted as threads of hair tore from her skull. She bit back a scream.
“You had to have told them something?”
“I said I fell down the stairs. That’s all. I promise.”
His hand shot out and smashed across her already bruised face. The force had her whirling away from him. She fell to the floor. Little lights shone behind her eyes like tiny stars. All noise dulled.
“I should have killed you the first time. I know better than to leave a woman to run her mouth all over town.”
She stared up at him with wide eyes and wrapped her arms around her belly. She shook all over. “No, I promise I won’t say anything. I promise.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a hunting knife. He unsheathed the blade until it was fully exposed, glinting under the lights. His dark eyes gleamed with violence.
“Put that knife down now!” came a voice from behind her.
June. She was in her nightie, with Robert’s shotgun slung off her hip, training the barrels directly on Julian.
An amused smile flittered across Julian’s lips. “Well, aren’t you a courageous lady.”
“I will shoot you if you don’t get out of this house now.”
His smile grew. “Oh, I doubt a sweet young thing like yourself would do such a thing.”
“Try me,” she said, her voice faltering enough to show her fear.
Mary crawled backwards from Julian, her head flicking around for a blunt object.
Julian lunged at June, his foot stamping hard against the floor. Mary screamed.
A loud boom reverberated through her body, stealing her hearing, replacing it with a high-pitched ringing. It took a moment to realise that June had fired the gun. The scent of gunpowder filled her nostrils.
She glanced at Julian. His eyes were wide. Blood was spewing from his stomach onto his white shirt like wet paint on a blank canvas. His hand went to the wound.
June fired again, hitting his chest.
All time slowed down as Julian staggered backwards and fell to the ground, a lifeless sack of wet flour. He stilled as though he was a marionette with a master no longer, simply left to lie flat and motionless on the ground. Then the scent of shit and blood filled the air, and she gagged.
Her breaths came harder, the only sound in the room competing with the ringing the blast left in her ears.
For a long moment, she couldn’t look at June, couldn’t turn her gaze from the body on the floor. Blood pooled around him. Splatters of red and specks of spine and stomach ran down the wall behind where he lay.
“Is he dead?” June asked.
She looked up at her.
June’s eyes were wide. Hands shaking. She placed the shotgun on the floor and backed away, one step, two steps, three. “Oh my god, what have I done? What have I done?” she screamed, half-terror, half-crying, all fear.
Mary swallowed hard. “It’s okay. It’s okay. He … he was going to kill me. It was self-defence.”
June shook her head. “Was it? I don’t know. I … I was so angry. I hate him. I hate him for what he did to you. I wanted to … kill him.” Snot and tears ran down her face, slid over her lips.
“That’s okay,” Mary said as calmly as she could. She was shaking. Her eyes were watery, clouding her vision. She got to her feet. “It’s okay. We can deal with this. No one has to know. We have to be smart about this. Okay, June? Okay?”
June nodded quickly, finally meeting Mary’s gaze for the first time.
“We’ve got this.”
Again a nod as understanding dawned in her expression.
“First thing’s first. We need to get rid of the body.”
“Yes,” June said, looking around everywhere.
Mary remembered the rose garden she had started clearing a plot for a couple of weeks ago. “Hurry. No time to waste. We need to handle this now. Mum and Dad are here tomorrow morning with Lily-Rose. This needs to be taken care of by then.”
Chapter 42
June
June arrives home from the hairdressers at the same time Grace pulls up in the driveway.
“Hi,” June says when Grace climbs out of her car. Grace is all hunched in on herself. Unsmiling. “You lose Lily-Rose at some point?” She had seen them drive away together earlier.
“I dropped her at the airport. She’s going to spend some time in Sydney.”
June frowns. “I don’t remember her telling me those plans.”
Grace strides towards June and they meet near the front door. “It was spontaneous.”
The way she speaks those three words ignites a clenching in June’s belly. She braces herself. “Why, Grace?”
Grace lowers her eyes, a sheepish blush creeping over her cheeks. “Let’s go inside and talk about it.”
June grips Grace’s forearm tightly and shakes her head. “Tell me here. Now.” The floral perfumed scent from the nearby roses works its way up June's nostrils and curdles the contents of her stomach.
Grace blows out a breath—it’s riddled with guilt. “I told her you were her biological mother. I told her everything.”
June’s head spins. She stares with unblinking disbelief. “You what? How … how could you do that?”
Grace presses her hands to her hips. “I felt like it was the right thing to do—”
“Why wouldn’t you have spoken to me first?” She points to the house, “Or Mary, at the very least, before making that decision. This has nothing to do with you. I didn’t even know you knew until I spoke to Joshua.”
“You spoke with Joshua?”
> “Yes. To tell him to stop with his stories. To protect Lily-Rose. And here you are going behind my back and doing whatever the hell you like anyway.” Her sentences are coming faster.
“It’s not like that, June. Not at all. I felt obligated to tell her.”
“Oh really? And how did she take it? I can’t imagine it would have bothered her at all—not an insignificant secret like that?” The sarcasm is thick in her tone.
Grace swallows hard. “She didn’t take it well.”
“Fancy that.” June leans in and hisses her next words. “Why do you think we kept it hidden? We knew this would hurt her. Are you so short-sighted—?”
“Keeping it from her was hurting her more,” Grace says, chest expanding, voice louder.
June shakes her head. “No way.”
“Can’t you see that? She’s damaged goods. If it weren’t for her career and Hugh, I can’t even imagine what would have become of her. She deserves to know the truth, so she can make sense of who she is.”
“You don’t know that. How could you say that?”
Grace sighs. “Look, I know why you did what you did all those years ago. But you and Mary are kidding yourselves if you think it hasn’t had lasting consequences. Lily-Rose is so unconfident. So needy. All she has ever wanted was at least one of you to love her fully.”
June takes a step back, eyes wide, shaking her head. She can’t believe what Grace is saying, yet deep in her heart it strums on what she knows is the truth. Her words are weak, choked when she asks, “Where is Lily-Rose?”
“Hugh is collecting her from the airport. He’s going to take care of her while she gets her head around it.”
“How was she when you told her?”
Grace looks away and frowns. “Not good.”
“For Christ’s sake, Grace,” June says shaking her head. “I’m not sure you even realise what you’ve done.”
“I know exactly what I’ve done. What had needed to be done decades ago.”
“Oh, and that’s your expert opinion, is it? Because you’ve got a degree in psychology instead of fucking eating!”
Grace flinches. “That’s really unfair.”
“No, it’s not. What you’ve done is unfair.”
“You don’t know that. This might be exactly what is needed. The truth.”
June rubs the back of her neck and groans; it’s all she can do to not slap Grace’s smug face. “Do not tell Mary about this yet. Can I ask you to keep your mouth shut in that respect? Let me talk to Lily-Rose first.”
“More secrets? You really think that’s wise?”
June bares her teeth. “I don’t know, Grace. How about you talk to your late husband about that. Because he seemed to think there was a good reason for not telling you everything.”
A below-the-belt attack, but she doesn’t care. How dare Grace? She has no idea what is best for this family nor what is best for Lily-Rose.
June doesn’t wait for a reply or a reaction. She opens the front door and marches inside, slamming the door behind her in Grace’s face.
She sneaks through the house, out the back onto the pergola. The builders have gone for the day, so she has some privacy.
She calls Lily-Rose’s number. It rings for a long time, but no one picks up.
She bites back the curse words jutting into her throat and tries again. When the call goes to message bank for the second time, she types out a text instead.
Her fingers are trembling as she deals with the small keypad.
JUNE: Where are you?
She sits on a chair and awaits an answer.
She runs her fingers over the cracks in the enamel of the table top. Cracks that have increased in severity as the outdoor setting has aged and weathered in the elements over time. Her fingers are trembling.
Fear squeezes all through June’s limbs. It takes her breath away and makes her ears ring with an eerie high-pitched squeal. She can’t lose her daughter.
All her life she has done everything she can, so she doesn’t lose her. And here she is fifty years later with those same fears.
June places the phone on the table and rests her face in her hands. She flinches when a message finally dings.
LILY-ROSE: Spending a few days in Sydney. I need some time to think.
June blows out a relieved breath. An answer means there is still a connection keeping Lily-Rose with her. It might be slick and flimsy, but it is still there.
JUNE: We’ll talk when you get home.
LILY-ROSE: Yes.
June closes her eyes and arches her head back. Her chest is aching. In her mind are images of Lily-Rose’s little fingers curling around hers the moment she was lifted onto her chest all those years ago. No moment since has outdone the sense of completeness and rightness and the pure bliss June felt.
She can see her daughter staring up at her with such focus and curiosity. All through June’s body is that love, still burning through her soul as brightly as that very second she gazed at Lily-Rose for the first time. Soft little lips. Pale skin and hair. Her scent. June couldn’t get enough. She never wanted to let her go.
June clenches as another memory impinges. A memory that has haunted her every day since. To lift that warm, sweet-scented bundle in her arms and give her over was akin to clawing through her flesh, cartilage and bones, into her chest, tearing out a chunk of her heart, and, pulsating and bloody in her fist, giving it to Mary.
In all her life, she has never made a more difficult decision. She has never felt such searing, violent pain as though her body was splitting down the centre.
Mary had smiled and her eyes glossed with tears as June lifted her baby into her sister's arms. June soothed herself with the knowingness that Lily-Rose would be safe. She soothed herself with the understanding that her daughter would be loved. She soothed herself by knowing that she would still get to hold Lily-Rose close even if it was only from a distance.
That was what kept her strong, kept her moving through each day.
Until now, despite the heartache of her decision, June had thought what she had done was right for Lily-Rose, but Grace has tipped all that on its side.
Maybe it was wrong. Maybe they should have told Lily-Rose the truth when she was younger.
She wipes the tears blurring her eyes and blinks through the wet glaze, trying to see the screen clearly as she types out two words.
JUNE: I’m sorry.
Chapter 43
Grace
Grace stares at the closed front door trying to hold herself upright. For her own sister to have spoken of John in that way, was reprehensible, but only because it had whispered of the truths strung tightly within her own heart.
Just because she had wanted John to come clean with her about his life, doesn’t mean that it would have been the right decision. Who knows, maybe hearing the truth earlier could have ruined their marriage when their bond needed to be its strongest while he succumbed to cancer.
Grace scrubs a hand down her face. “What have I done? What have I done?”
She reaches for the door and steps inside, her legs wonky stilts. She closes the door behind her and leans her back against it, gathering her wits, determining which way to go from here.
Mary. She needs Mary like she always has. Her rational, level-headed sister who always knows what to do.
But will she react like June has? Will she be disappointed with her too?
Intuitively, she knows Mary is not going to take this well, but no way can she hide what has transpired, not while she is so emotionally affected by it.
Grace climbs the stairs to find Mary and confess what she has done. The chain reaction has already started, it may as well play out as quickly as possible.
Mary is in her library, a book in her hand, though it is closed on her lap and she is looking out the window. She appears peaceful, if not pale, and Grace hesitates at the door, too late to realise she actually doesn’t want to have this conversation.
She tenses to leave, but Mary
turns her head. “Grace?”
Grace steps into the room slowly. “Hi.”
Mary places the book on the sofa beside her and furrows her brow. “What is it?”
Grace remains quiet until she is seated beside Mary. “I have something to tell you. Something important. You may not like—”
“Stop babbling like a bloody schoolgirl and tell me.”
She gathers courage from some small alcove in her mind. “I told Lily-Rose that you are not her biological mother.”
Mary is silent for a long moment, then turns away from Grace, shifting her attention to the view again. Her lips are pursed tightly, as taut as Grace’s veins are.
“Mary?” Grace asks after the silence almost suffocates her.
Mary slowly turns to face her again. Tears are pooling in her eyes.
But Mary doesn’t cry.
A long sigh streams from Grace’s lips. Her head rocks from sudden dizziness. Only then is it confirmed that she has stepped over the line. She has done something so big and monumental that she had no right meddling in.
Shame burns in her chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to interfere. I thought it was right, but I’m starting to see … Perhaps I’ve done the wrong … oh god, what have I done?”
Mary still hasn’t spoken a word. A solitary tear slides down her cheek. Her lips are trembling slightly.
How deeply this strikes Grace, hacking at her heart. Her sister never cries. She is always strong and composed and …
Mary drags herself to her feet very slowly. She’s crooked and hunched. “I think you better leave this room, Grace.” Her voice is … old, soft. Too soft.
“I’m so sorry—”
Mary’s eyes roll back in her head, whites flashing like those of a spectre’s, and she tips forward. Grace rushes to her feet to catch her sister, but barely has time as Mary crashes into her and they both fall to the floor with a heavy thwack.
Mary isn’t small; she’s tall and has more meat on her bones as she’s aged. Grace groans as Mary’s limp body traps her painfully against the floor. She wiggles and heaves out from under her and carefully lays Mary’s head on the floor.
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