Ally had washed and wiped up after dinner, bragging all the while about the autonomy the officers had granted her in the prison kitchen. After being thanked profusely by Jackie for refusing to allow anybody else to clean up, Ally pulled the first payback card.
“I’m going to take a walk.”
All three adults in the room spun around to look at the clock. 9:36. Exactly twenty-four minutes until curfew. The rule was outlined on the second page of her parole agreement.
“Can I come?” Annie begged, heartbroken when Bron told her it was way past her bedtime, and then instructed her to go and change into her pyjamas and brush her teeth.
“Well don’t be long,” Jackie urged Ally.
As Bron tucked Annie into bed and kissed her goodnight, she watched from Annie’s bedroom window as Ally closed the front gate at the end of the driveway, leaving a whimpering Tammy inside, and headed in the direction of Katoomba town centre.
An hour and a half later, she still wasn’t home. Bron was anxious. Jackie had been the one to write the letter of commitment to help Ally in her reintroduction to society. Along with their address, Jackie’s name and the signed letter were in the parole plan. Since Jackie wasn’t able to drive the streets in the dark in search of Ally, was it Bron’s responsibility? Could she get into trouble if Ally’s parole officer somehow found out that Ally had breached parole?
She kicked at a rock on the path and Tammy chased it. She tried to imagine where Ally might have taken herself on foot. Echo Point, the popular tourist lookout, was a far distance from the end of the main street of Katoomba. Although the time of night would blanket the green valley in complete darkness, the view from the cliff-top platform was nothing short of magical—The Three Sisters, set against the blackness of the night sky, illuminated from below by hugely powered lights, their brown rock faces almost golden.
It was stunning at night, but Bron preferred the rock formation in daylight. If she ventured down there tomorrow, right at the crack of dawn before the heat set in and the busloads of tourists arrived, she would be able to see the silver mist the eucalyptus trees breathed across the canyon, giving the Blue Mountains its colourful namesake. There was something calm about the view from the top. The day after Libby’s funeral, Bron had taken Annie down to the lookout, the two of them bundled up in beanies and scarves. She had given her orphaned niece two dollars to keep her occupied with one of the telescopes, and then leaned against the railing, looking out at The Three Sisters and thinking about how there had once been seven, and how they’d eroded away long ago.
Reaching the gate, Bron watched another reception bar light up. Three bars. It wasn’t going to get much better than that. She wasn’t surprised to hear the monotonous recording inform her that she had three new messages since she hadn’t bothered to dial through for at least a week. She deleted the first two, old work messages she’d already received via email. The third was a charity she’d donated to months ago and would undoubtedly hear from for the rest of her life. Like last week, there was nothing from Rae. Bron didn’t know how she felt about that.
“Calling the cops on me?”
She pivoted on the spot. Ally shut the gate behind her and crouched down to roughhouse with Tammy. Bron’s gaze dropped to Ally’s thighs. Lean muscle strained against the unhemmed, fraying line of her shorts, which two hours before had been jeans. Bron rolled her eyes and hung up on the message service.
“Enjoy your walk?” she asked sarcastically.
“Yep,” Ally played. “I expected you to wait up for me, but you didn’t have to come all the way out here—”
“Look, mind your curfew next time. Aren’t you grateful you can serve the last two years of your sentence in relative freedom? Pulling crap like what you’ve done tonight… It’s not fair to us when we’ve just gone and stuck our necks out for you, okay? I don’t appreciate being played.”
Ally straightened. “Okay. Sorry,” she added reluctantly. “I’m not playing games.”
Bron couldn’t be bothered starting another argument, so she started the uphill walk back to the house, Ally falling in step beside her. Considering Ally thought she’d been down by the gate waiting for her, Bron said, “There’s no reception up at the house. I had to check my messages on Daniel’s phone since mine is broken.”
“Yeah, Daniel told me. Did you need to call the boyfriend?”
She slowed. “Excuse me?” she asked in utter confusion, her gaze searching Ally’s face for any hint of jest.
Ally looked down at her, her face blank. “What?”
Bron shook her head. How on earth had their signals crossed so spectacularly? Sudden, deep upset erupted within her. Had the entire family managed to conveniently omit the minor detail that she’d been dating women since…forever? “I…I don’t have a boyfriend.”
A slow smirk broke out on Ally’s face. “I’m fucking with you, Bron. Libby told me you’re a dyke ages ago, like back in the Stone Age.”
Bron didn’t know which maddened her more—Ally’s knack for catching her off guard, or Ally rekindling the horrible sadness invoked by Bron’s family’s resistance to her sexual identity. She pursed her lips and picked up the pace.
“I’ve known a lot longer than Lib, though,” Ally continued. “I watched you check out Desert Hearts from the video store every second weekend.”
“Twice. I only rented it twice.”
Ally chuckled. “Well, I think the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman poster on your bedroom wall gave you away too. I figured it was either narcissism or lesbianism that made you pin it up.”
“Narcissism?”
“I’ve always thought you look just like her. Blue eyes, blond hair. Pint-sized, but just like her.”
“Oh. Well…thank you.”
When the silence that had settled upon them obviously began to make her uncomfortable, Ally spoke up. “So the main street is still pretty much the same.”
She hummed her disagreement. “Something’s always different each time I come home.”
“How often is that?”
“Up until now? Every three years or so.”
“I’ve been away four. Still looks the same to me.”
Don’t bite, don’t bite…
“I am surprised to see there are still three sisters. Felt like I’d been in for so long, that there’d only be one left by the time I got out.”
So she had been down to the lookout, not town, not her mother’s house.
“Look,” Ally started, pinching at the bottom of her singlet in an invitation to the cooling breeze. “About the money—”
Bron sighed. “We can figure it out later, Ally.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Sure?”
Running a hand through her hair, Bron nodded.
“Your hair is longer,” Ally commented. “Haven’t seen it so long in a while.”
At the certainty that Ally’s gaze was on her, apprehension broke across Bron’s skin, hot and unwarranted. When they reached the front steps, Ally reached out and grabbed the back of Bron’s elbow. Her grip was firm, her eyes glassy. She licked her lips. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes?”
Ally paused at the granted permission. Bron’s gaze fell lower to where the tendons in her throat tensed. “Where is Libby?”
“The Anglican Cemetery in Leura,” Bron said, softly.
“The one on the back road?”
“Yes. She’s next to Mum and Dad.”
“Can you…Do you think you could take me there sometime this week?”
Her anxiety prickled at the request. Although Jackie had taken Annie each weekend since the funeral, Bron hadn’t been to Libby’s grave since she watched her brother and uncles lower Libby into the ground.
“The grave…It’s a bit of a mess. We had a few weeks of rain. It’s sinking. We’ve been adding bags of potting mix every week or so, but it’s a matter of just…waiting for the grass to grow. Mum asked the groundskeepers to have a look and see what they could do, but the morons just went and dump
ed huge clumps of clay on top. That only made it worse. The headstone isn’t in yet either.” She paused. “Maybe you should wait a bit.”
“I don’t mind,” Ally assured her. “I’d like to go sooner than later.”
Bron nodded. “I’ll take you on Sunday.”
“I’d really appreciate that.” Ally’s unfocused gaze dropped to where her fingers had lightly wrapped themselves around Bron’s wrist. “Sorry,” she said, jerking her hand away.
Quietly, they made their way inside. In the semidarkness of the end of the hall, Bron locked the front door behind them. As Ally stood beside her, bent over at the waist and peeling off her boots, Bron inhaled her scent. It wasn’t perfume, of course. It was maybe cocoa butter or vanilla. Something else too. She couldn’t place it, and she couldn’t remember it.
Bron guessed Ally had recently had a haircut, judging by the short, clean hairline at the back of her neck. Her gaze ran over Ally’s muscular back, admiring the prominent vertebrae—one, two, three—until they disappeared beneath the singlet. Her skin was firm. Lovely. The sudden impulse to reach out and touch it made the hairs stand up at the back of her own neck, and she quickly looked away.
“I might have a shower if that’s okay,” Ally whispered as she dropped her boots at the mat next to the infamous iron doorstop.
“Yep,” Bron said shortly, kicking off her thongs. “Night.”
The kitchen light trickled through the house. Barefoot, Bron padded down the hall, the floorboards cool beneath her feet. Jackie sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown, studying a barely inked crossword. She had moved the fan down from the fridge, and it wheezed on the table in front of her, the corners of the magazine flapping as the fan oscillated. Bron leaned against the cool doorframe and crossed her arms.
“Get reception?” Jackie asked.
Her pen met the paper forcefully as she scribbled each letter into the boxes of a vertical column. A wave of guilt flushed over Bron. Upsetting her mother brought her no pleasure. “Better than last night.”
“Want a cuppa?” Jackie asked, still refusing to look up from the magazine.
“Nah, I’m off to bed. Just wanted to say goodnight.”
“Night, then.”
She waited for a moment, and when it was obvious Jackie wasn’t about to start on her about the money fiasco earlier, she turned to leave.
“What’s a twelve letter word for judgmental?” Jackie murmured. “Starts with s.”
She tapped her slim fingers against the doorframe, thinking. “Supercilious?”
Jackie glanced up over the rim over her glasses.
She rolled her eyes, feeling ridiculous. “Okay. Good one. I hear you. I’m exhausted.”
“Bron…”
“What?”
“Are you going to apologise to Ally?”
She ran her tongue along the front of her teeth and appraised her stepmother. “Maybe.”
Jackie looked back down at the page, obviously unamused.
“Mum?”
“Yeah, darl?”
She swallowed over the lump in her throat. “I can’t find Libby’s ring. I’m almost certain it was in her jewellery box, but it’s not there anymore.”
Jackie set her pen down and pushed her reading glasses up onto her head. “The one you gave her?”
Bron nodded.
“Do you think Annie has it?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think so.”
“It’ll turn up, Bron.”
“Yeah. Night, Mum.”
“Night, love.”
She laid awake long enough to see the red digits of her bedside clock flick over to three thirty-two a.m. She rolled over for what felt like the hundredth time and realized she could hear footsteps—tiny footsteps—making their way down the hall. She smoothed her hand over the cold top sheet and waited for her door to creak open.
It was funny the way her heart had learned to swell at the anticipation of Annie. Energetic Annie after school in the playground, sleepy Annie at the breakfast table, or frustrated, exhausted Annie in the early hours of the morning.
But her door didn’t open. Footsteps continued down the end of the hall, to Libby’s old room.
“Annie?” Ally whispered through the wall, her voice hoarse with sleep.
“My room’s real hot,” Annie groaned loudly and Ally shushed her.
“Can I sleep in Mummy’s room with you?”
Bron raised an eyebrow at her niece’s carefully executed, guilt-trip of a question before the muffled voices went quiet.
Bron sat up, breathing a sigh of relief as a cool, early morning southerly washed over her clammy skin. A flutter on her work desk caught her eye. With the window open, her draft pages were catching flight.
She threw back the covers and picked up Page Two from the rug. She looked down at the draft. She wasn’t happy with it—at all. What on earth had the art history department at MIT been thinking when they’d selected her teaching application? She’d drawn with more imagination and precision in her first year of university. There was still so much work to do before she could post first draft photocopies to the city on Friday afternoon.
She pinned the pages down with one of the snow globes she’d taken from Libby’s room when she’d cleaned it out for Ally. The ornament was so old that the water had marked a putrid brown circular stain at the top of the globe. She remembered buying it on her first trip to New York. She remembered wrapping it in three pairs of socks, shoving those socks into the epicentre of her enormous suitcase, hoping that the souvenir wouldn’t break before she got it home to her little sister. She shook it. The discoloured, once-white flakes were stuck, clumped where miniature Radio City Music Hall met inch-long Central Park.
Just as the breeze picked up, she heard giggling from Libby’s bedroom. She sighed, irritated by the way her body betrayed her and allowed the sting of rejection to cramp in her chest. Pressing a hand against the fly screen to ensure it had no intention of dislodging and sailing down to the veranda like it had the week before, she gathered her hair to one side and sank back into her age-old mattress.
Everything was still the same as it had been yesterday, and at the same time, it was all so different. The ageing house still creaked with the swelling heat, and those god-awful rainbow ribbons still floated on humid air. But with Ally’s arrival everything had been thrown off balance, and Bron wasn’t sure she could find her way back to the careful routine she’d spent every ounce of her energy creating the last few months. Intuition and its ugly twin, experience, pestered her mind, slurring that history was going to repeat itself. Bedtimes and curfews were going to be the very least of her worries.
Chapter Three
When Bron finally rolled out of bed just after seven, the house was rowdier than usual. She could hear Daniel loading up for work, paint cans clunking around each time he added something into the aluminium tray of the utility truck. In the kitchen directly below her bedroom, someone was chatting with Annie, but the voice was too muffled for her to be certain if it belonged to Ally or Jackie. She allowed herself a moment longer in bed, hoping that sixty seconds of indulgence would fuel her for the next sixteen hours.
Her gaze caught on the clothes rack in the corner of her bedroom. A multitude of Libby’s skirts and dresses hung there, crammed together so they would all fit on the rail. Bron remembered a few. There was the silver velour dress Libby had worn to her high school formal, preserved in its plastic cover. At the other end of the rack was the tacky, white leather skirt Libby had paid a fortune for down in Sydney when she was fifteen, only to get it home and be told by their father that it was far too indecent to be worn in public. The skirt probably still had its original tag. Bron smiled to herself and stretched across the mattress in an attempt to wake up.
Pulling her hair into a bun, she moved to the rack. Just as she assumed, the skirt still had its tag attached. $167. She rolled her eyes and pulled at the skirt of one of the sundresses, gathering the thin cotton to her face. Arreste
d by the scent of Libby’s perfume, of just Libby, her eyes watered.
Downstairs, there was laughter, loud, brash laughter—Ally, undoubtedly. Tammy barked from outside, thrilled by so much commotion at such an early hour.
The thin, cardboard tag of another dress nicked the knuckle of her little finger. She brought the paper cut to her lips and grimaced at the metallic taste. She searched through the rack for the culprit that the tag belonged to—a dark green sundress. Brand new.
She pulled it out and appraised it. She occasionally wore a dress. This one was fairly plain and yet nicer than anything else she’d thrown into her suitcase. She couldn’t exactly wear denim shorts to her meeting that afternoon, and shopping for anything but groceries was the last thing she wanted to do. She sighed, pulling the dress from its padded hanger.
Beneath the spray of the shower, she wondered how she would ever sort through all of Libby’s clothes to give to charity. Beside the clothes rack at the end of her bed, there was still the cupboard in Libby’s room she hadn’t bothered cleaning out, and there was a lowboy full of winter clothes in Bron’s room. The moment she silently cursed her sister for being a shopaholic, shampoo seeped into her paper cut. Touché, Libby, Bron thought, holding her pinkie directly under the showerhead to rinse away the sting.
The dress would have fit better a size smaller. Libby’s shoulders had always been wider than hers, but Bron thought she could get away with it. Not wanting to trigger anything in Annie, she sprayed enough of her own perfume to disguise the scent of her sister which had seeped its way into the material during its close proximity to the other clothes on the rack.
When she made her way downstairs, Annie was seated at the kitchen table. Oddly, her oversized school bag was already on her back, wedging her closer to the plate of raisin toast in front of her.
Bron bent at the waist to kiss the top of Annie’s perfect braid. “Your hair looks lovely, sweetheart. Did Nanna do that for you?”
Annie nodded, her mouth full of toast.
Across the table, Ally looked up from buttering her own raisin toast. “Morning,” she said, the smile she offered Bron so bright it bared teeth. If it was my first morning out of prison, I’d probably be a morning person too, Bron thought. Politely, she smiled back.
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