“Come on, Bron.” Ally laughed, her words biting. “It was like she didn’t own any other clothes, and God knows that wasn’t the truth. She wouldn’t have chucked it. It’s probably still with her stuff.”
Bron’s eyes watered. “Oh, I think I remember now,” she managed, but she couldn’t remember it. She closed the album in her own lap and stood up. “I’ll be back in a sec,” she rasped.
She took the stairs two at a time and went straight for her room to the rack of Libby’s clothes. There it was. She was instantly blinded by the horrible yellow and orange stripes. She reefed it from its padded hanger and buried her face in it, the pulls in the wool scratching across her smooth cheeks. She sank down onto the bed, Libby’s scent overwhelming her. Her tears saturated the wool of her dead sister’s jumper.
Her bedroom door click closed. A sob ripped its way out of her throat as the mattress shifted with new weight. Ally pulled the jumper from her grasp and gathered Bron in her arms. “I shouldn’t have made you feel bad about not remembering,” Ally murmured against the top of Bron’s head. “I’m sorry.”
Bron’s forehead pressed against the tendons in Ally’s neck. “I just miss her so much,” she sobbed. “If I knew she was going to die so young I never would have left. I never would have gone.”
Ally wrapped her arms around Bron and held her tighter. “I know. I know,” she soothed, resting her chin on the top of Bron’s head.
Bron closed her eyes against the comforting sensation of Ally’s fingers raking through her hair at the base of her bun.
“I feel…” Bron trailed off. Safe. Loved. Understood. Like you’re the only one who misses her like I do.
She pulled back with a deep sigh and met Ally’s gaze. Ally’s hold loosened. She rubbed a thumb across Bron’s tear-stained cheeks in an attempt to dry them. She examined Bron’s expression so carefully, so attentively. Suddenly, Ally’s lone arm around her didn’t feel as comforting as it did arousing.
“Are you okay?” Ally said quietly.
From the base of the stairs, Jackie called them down for dinner.
Unmoving, she exhaled. “Al?”
Ally’s gaze fell to Bron’s lips while she rubbed her back. “Yeah?”
Jackie called out a second time.
“Can we finish this later?” Ally whispered.
Chapter Twelve
“Can’t you come too?” Annie whined.
“No.”
Bron pushed the last bag of Libby’s clothes—the god-awful jumper zipped inside—against the far back window of Jackie’s compact Nissan. “It’ll only be a few days. Three at most.”
Although they hadn’t received an official evacuation warning, the bushfires had flared up overnight, and Jackie’s asthma had worsened as a result of the overwhelming smoke, a dirty grey blanket across the green valley. As for Annie, it made more sense for her to go with Jackie than it did for her to stay. If they were suddenly evacuated, Bron didn’t want Annie to live the horror of farewelling the only home she’d ever known as it vanished through the back window of a car, left to be swallowed by flames. Annie had already experienced enough traumas for a lifetime.
In a last attempt, Annie decided to drop the ‘aunt’ title. “Bron, please,” she tried, pressing her body against the side Jackie’s car. “Can’t we at least wait until Al and Dan come home from work? I don’t think I said good-bye properly.”
Bron sighed, her heart aching for Annie. “You said good-bye properly, I promise. And you can call and talk to them tonight, baby. They won’t be back for a long time yet.”
Jackie came down the front steps, keys in hand. “Now, don’t forget, I’ve washed your sheets with Ally’s,” she told Bron. “They’re in the dryer, so you may have to check on them. Also, let Ally know that her first phone bill is due tomorrow, and she’ll need to pay it before she gets a fine! I told her getting that mobile wasn’t worth it. She barely touches it! But does she listen?”
Bron nodded. “Okay, Mommie Dearest, will you get in before Little Miss has a hissy fit?”
She shuffled her reluctant niece around to the other side of the car and into the backseat. “You’re going to have so much fun in the city.” Annie pulled a face of disagreement. “You are,” she insisted. “Nanna’s going to take you to the zoo tomorrow, and you’ll spend all day with the giraffes and the monkeys…” she rattled off, clicking Annie’s seat belt into place. “You’ll get to see the Christmas tree in Martin Place and the Christmas windows at Myer.” Annie looked down at Bron’s fingers pulling at the belt across her lap, assuring it was clicked in.
“Please come with us,” Annie said softly.
Bron cupped her heart-shaped face in her hands. “I have to stay here with Ally and Tammy and Dan to make sure they don’t get up to mischief. I love you, Annie. Be a good girl for Nanna.”
Annie’s little arms wrapped tightly around her neck. She pressed her lips against Bron’s cheek. “I love you. And you’re not so bony,” she whispered. “You feel like Mummy.”
Bron’s heart fractured in her chest. She smoothed a hand over the back of Annie’s head, her eyes watering.
“Bye, baby.”
Bron craned her neck through the open driver’s window to kiss Jackie’s cheek. “Call me when you get to the McDonald’s at the halfway point, okay?”
“Will do, love,” Jackie said. “Ready to go on an adventure, Annie girl?”
As she watched the car drive away, Annie’s words echoed in Bron’s mind. You feel like Mummy. Bron remembered when Libby had left two-month-old Annie with her to go out for a night—her first night away from the newborn for a few hours. She’d thought Libby overdramatic when she arrived home an hour and a half later, plagued with guilt.
Now, she understood.
As expected, Ally and Daniel returned just after lunch. Bron was at the kitchen table with her laptop when Ally stepped through the back door, her eyes glassy and swollen, tears rolling down her cheeks. She was stone-faced.
Bron gasped. “What happened?” In twenty-five years, she’d never seen her cry.
A ferocious grin slowly broke out over Ally’s face. “Gotcha.”
Utterly confused, Bron brought a hand to her heart. Ally’s tears continued to roll freely.
“I’m having a reaction to the smoke.”
Bron’s heartbeat slowed with patent relief. “You’re having a reaction to the smoke?” she clarified.
Ally swiped at her cheeks. “It’s really bad down at the job we were working. It was an outside job, and it just got to my eyes. Now I think they’re going to fall out,” she chuckled.
Bron moved closer to examine her bloodshot eyes. Ally wasn’t exaggerating. The odour of smoke on her clothes was so overpowering, Bron was surprised Ally’s eyes hadn’t completely dried up.
She cringed. “You’ve been rubbing them too.”
Ally rolled her eyes at Bron’s berating tone, but the gesture didn’t have as much weight when her eyes were filled with tears.
“We have an eye bath upstairs,” Bron said. “It’s in the top drawer—”
Ally squeezed her eyes shut, utter discomfort scrunching the rest of her sharp features.
“Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
She led Ally upstairs and instructed her to perch on the edge of the bath while she fiddled in the top draw, pulling out the eyeglass. She poured a thin fountain of table salt into it and turned on the hot tap, filling it to the brim with warm water.
“Who would have thought I used to be a firey?” Ally chuckled.
“It’s been a long time. Your eyes aren’t used to dealing with it anymore. Head back.”
She gently rested the rim of the cup at the base of Ally’s left eyelid. “Don’t close it,” she instructed.
Ally’s eye was opened wide, strained in concentration. She huffed, her breath hot on Bron’s inner wrist. “I can’t make any promises.”
Bron tipped the cup over Ally’s eye. As far as she could tell, Ally’s top
eyelid had stayed open. But despite the tight seal Bron had attempted, saltwater still dribbled over her cheek, running to her jaw and cascading to the bath mat.
She lowered the cup, and Ally immediately pulled back, vigorously blinking. She bent to look up into Ally’s soothed eye. “Better?”
Ally tried to focus her watery left eye. “Yeah, much,” she breathed after a moment. “Still tight, but less itchy. Thanks.”
Bron turned back to the sink to clean the eyeglass.
“I can probably do the other eye myself,” Ally offered.
“No, no, I’ll help.” She pinched the same amount of salt into the glass again.
The old bath creaked as Ally shifted on the rim of it. “It’s so quiet. I don’t know who’s louder—Annie or Jackie.”
Turning off the tap, Bron grinned. “Mum, probably.”
She slowly turned back to Ally, careful not to spill any saltwater over the rim of the eyeglass. “Ready?”
She repeated the treatment. This time more water escaped from the lip of the plastic. As she tried to angle the cup up, the skin of her inner wrist brushed Ally’s warm cheek.
She must have moved the cup into an uncomfortable position, because Ally quickly pulled back, laughing. “Geez, you’re supposed to be washing out my eye, not prepping me for a lobotomy.” She squeezed her eyes shut tight and rubbed at the ridge of her eye socket with her fingers.
With a wide smile, Bron ran the pad of her thumb along the ridge of Ally’s wet cheekbone. Her wet eyelashes were clustered together, tiny droplets hanging from the ends like miniature crystals. Until then Bron had never noticed how long they were.
Ally stared up at Bron affectionately, her eyes red and glassy. Her fingers curled around Bron’s wrist, holding Bron’s touch to her cheekbone. Ally tilted her head and chastely kissed the inside of Bron’s wrist. She fought against the urge to close her eyes, watching Ally’s lips closely instead. When they parted against the valley of the tendons and veins in Bron’s wrist, intent on a more passionate adoration, she withdrew her hand.
“Daniel’s downstairs,” she whispered, moving back to the sink to disinfect the eyeglass with Dettol. In the reflection of the bathroom mirror, she watched Ally run a hand through her short hair, her dark, troubled stare fixed on the ground.
“Well, thanks for the help, Nurse Bron.”
Bron cleared her throat. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m going to go and get out of these smoky clothes before I eat,” Ally murmured.
When Ally brushed past, her entire body thrilled at the contact.
Downstairs, Daniel’s tall form was leaning against the kitchen counter, an all-knowing expression painted across his face. “I wondered where you two disappeared to.”
Bron reached up into the cupboard for a glass. “I was helping Al wash out her eyes.”
Daniel raised a thick eyebrow.
“Shut up, Daniel.”
“What’s going on with you and Al?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“You know she’s got it bad for you, right?”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“She has. She looks at you like you hung the moon, and you know it.”
“Well, you’re too young to remember,” she started softly. “But Al had a bit of a crush on me when we were younger.”
“Yeah, Mum and Lib told me.” Daniel looked in the direction of the doorway. He lowered his voice. “I think it’s more than a crush, though.”
She tensed. “What makes you say that?”
Has Ally said something to Daniel? A wave of shame and embarrassment immediately washed over her, and she hated that she couldn’t pinpoint where it came from.
Daniel shrugged. “She talks about you a lot at work, and sometimes I catch her looking at you. Stuff like that. All I’m saying is don’t mess with her feelings. She might be a bit wild, but when she wants something, Ally gets real intense about it. Just be careful.”
She swallowed over the dryness in her mouth. “Okay, Mum,” she managed to joke.
They both looked up when Ally swung open the back door.
Daniel cleared his throat. “I think I might go over to Carly’s tonight.”
“She’s welcome to stay here,” Bron said, feeling Ally’s gaze on her, watching Daniel’s stare dart between the two women. She fought against the blush that began to rise at the realisation that her brother had been witness to the tension between herself and Ally for a while.
Daniel scoffed. “Yeah, nah.” He stood and placed his glass in the sink. “Her parents aren’t home.” Ally wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Shut up,” he replied. “She’s all alone over there with the fires.”
“Oh, please,” Bron laughed. “She’s not even in the danger zone!”
Daniel ignored her. “If there’s an evacuation, you can just give me a ring and I’ll come back and load up. And maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll take you two with me.”
“Surely you can fit Tammy and I in at least?” Ally joked, winking at Bron.
Daniel laughed, already halfway out the door. “Can I trust you two not to kill each other tonight?”
Bron smiled at Ally, but her features were cloaked in seriousness, as though she were lost in thought.
When her brother was gone, she turned to Ally. “I’ve got another page to finish, so I’m going to head back up.”
Standing in the middle of the kitchen, Ally shoved her hands into her pockets, as though she was afraid she’d reach for Bron without permission. Her gaze flitted over the length of Bron’s body. “Okay.”
“Oh, your sheets are in the dryer,” Bron said. “I would have made your bed, but I didn’t want to invade your privacy.”
Ally’s expression may have been distracted—anguished—but her voice was clear and deep when she said, “You can invade my privacy.”
“Are you sure your eyes are okay to eat out here?” Bron wondered. “I know it’s cooler outside, but it’s still pretty smoky.”
Ally looked up from the porch swing. “It’s really not that bad. Seems smokier inside.” Thanks to a bottle of eyedrops that Bron had found in the pantry, Ally’s eyes, which had gleamed a bright, bloodshot red just hours before, were almost healed.
Bron handed Ally a bowl of warm chicken salad. “The tomato is a bit how’s it going,” she warned.
Ally shrugged and dug her fork in hungrily. “It’ll do.”
As she poured herself a glass of water, Bron took in the sky. The hot westerly winds had calmed their assault on the fires, but the smoke still lingered, blanketing the setting sun.
“It’s much better than last night.”
“Better than earlier today too,” Ally agreed. “Hopefully this is the worst of it for the year. The radio said the helitankers are flying over tonight to douse the last of the fires in the north.”
“Want to walk down to the lookout to watch them fly over?” Bron wondered.
“It’s forty-two degrees,” Ally chuckled. “I don’t want to do much of anything.”
When they finished their salads, Ally sat back against the porch swing and sighed. “I wanted to have the cubby house finished for Annie by Christmas, but I’ve barely started.”
Bron looked across the circular driveway to the timber scaffolding of a miniature house. “You’ve been busy with work. Why Christmas?”
Ally shrugged. “I thought it would be cute if Santa left her presents in there for her.”
“That would have been cute. Maybe Santa can do that next year.”
Ally’s chestnut stare bore into Bron’s. “That’s if Annie’s here next Christmas. Who knows? Her Yankee aunt may scoop her up and take her away to some foreign land.”
Bron averted her gaze at the biting tone of Ally’s joke. They were quiet for a long moment before Bron spoke up. “Hey,” she said. “Do you remember the Christmas I came home when you were seventeen?”
Ally nodded. “Yeah.”
“I was sitting out here—”
“Yeah,
okay,” Ally said. “I know what you’re going to say, so we don’t need to go over it.”
Bron’s lips curved up into a smile. “You know,” she said lowly, imitating Ally. “I’m seventeen now, and I know what I want.”
Ally scoffed. “I did not say it like that.”
Bron grinned. She could vividly remember Ally’s inflection, as well as the way she’d looked at Bron. “I have a pretty good memory of how it went down.”
“Yeah, well, at the end of the day, nobody went down, did they?”
Laughing, Bron stretched her legs out on the seat. Ally’s gaze unashamedly travelled to the line of her shorts.
“Don’t be so embarrassed,” Bron said. “It’s not like you let it go after that.”
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” Ally mumbled, taking a sip from her glass. “Why else would you have offered to drive me back to the motel that night?”
“Perhaps because you were technically still a child and I was the only sober one who could take you back?”
Ally huffed. “Well, I thought it was code for ‘changed my mind, let’s do it in the backseat of my Toyota.’”
Bron’s memory of the late night drive across town fifteen years ago was vague, but she recalled parts of it, namely the way Ally’s confident hand had reached across the console and rested on her bare thigh. Seconds later, Bron had slowly unpeeled Ally’s fingers from her skin. Words had not passed between them, but the sting of rejection had been as bitter as ever.
“I was pretty cocky,” Ally admitted.
“Yes. You were.”
Ally cleared her throat. “Well, it was worth a try.”
Bron let her hair down in an attempt to conceal the flush rising up her neck.
“It may have seemed confident,” Ally said softly, “but I’d been building myself up to that for a long, long time.”
Bron licked her lips. “I’m sorry. I knew you had a crush on me. I could have been gentler with the way I let you down—”
Ally placed her glass down on the small table in front of them. “It wasn’t a crush,” she asserted. Her whole body seemed to stiffen in frustration. She ran her hands over her thighs for a moment, visibly trying to calm herself.
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