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Release (The Submerged Sun, #3)

Page 11

by Garden,Vanessa


  “What do you mean you have to leave, Robbie? You just got here. What about Sarah? She’s been waiting for you too. I hear her praying every night. How about I make you a cup of hot cocoa and some toast, crunchy and buttery, just the way you like it. I haven’t forgotten a single thing about you, Rob. I always knew you’d come back to me, son.”

  I hid my grandfather’s words in the deepest darkest corner of my heart and put an arm around Lily. The cool, evening air was giving her the shivers.

  “There’s no answer,” said Lily through chattering teeth, after knocking against the screen door yet again. “What if they’re out?”

  “But you said a car is parked out the back.” I knocked again. Though it was only the early part of the evening, perhaps they had gone to bed already. “There’s a storm coming. Maybe they’ve turned in for the day.”

  As soon as I finished my sentence, I heard movement in the house, then, footsteps.

  Finally the door swung open.

  “Robbie?” said Marko, disbelief in his voice.

  “What?” called Miranda from somewhere inside the shack.

  The sound of bed springs followed. So they had been asleep, or in bed at least.

  “Yes!” said, Marko. “And Lily too!”

  Miranda let out a squeal and came running to the door. She squeezed past Marko and in a blur, flew at me first, crushing me to her with a strength I’d never known her to possess. I could tell that her biceps were more defined. She must have been working out.

  She squeezed me once more and I laughed and kissed the top of her head before she let go of me and threw herself at Lily.

  “Robbie, you don’t know how good it is to see you,” Marko said, before gripping me in a bear hug. He patted my back several times before stepping away.

  “You must tell us everything. How is Marin faring without us? And Lauren and the baby?”

  “We were due a few days ago but...” I shot a quick glance at Lily’s blurry form, “...but we chose the wrong location and ended up in England.”

  “England?” said Marko.

  I launched into my story of England, leaving nothing out, desperately avoiding the subject of Lauren. But I knew it was coming. I knew the first question on Miranda’s lips was going to be about her sister. But I just couldn’t break it to her yet. I needed to give her more seconds, more minutes and more hours of her sister alive. It wasn’t fair for me to rip Lauren out of Miranda’s life just like that. It was cruel. And I’d had enough of being cruel and all the guilt that came with it.

  “That must have been difficult for both you and your grandfather,” Marko said, with knowing in his voice. “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t need to see Marko’s face to know that it would be dark with guilt. He still hadn’t gotten over the fact that he’d taken me from my family. No matter how many times I’d reassured him over the years, I knew the guilt still consumed him.

  “I’m okay. I’m glad I got to see him again.” I shrugged for emphasis and straightened my back. “I’m grateful for it in fact, because he told me he was dying.” This was actually true. “At least I got to say goodbye.”

  “You didn’t tell me that, Rob,” said Lily, placing a hand on my arm. I shrugged her off.

  “I didn’t want you to feel any more guilt than you already felt.” I glanced from one blurry face to another. “He said he didn’t think he had much time and that he’d been praying to see me before he died.”

  Marko cleared his throat. “If you need to go back to see him one more time, I’d understand.”

  “We all would,” said Lily. Miranda, who had come to stand beside Marko, agreed.

  I had everybody’s undivided attention. This was the perfect time for me to tell Marko and Miranda everything, about Lauren, about the baby, about Sylvia and Damir and the state of Marin. Lily, perhaps sensing my thoughts, took my hand in hers and gave me an encouraging squeeze.

  Miranda stepped forward in a little jump, grabbing my arm. Her fingers were warm.

  “So how’s Lauren? What did she have?” she squeezed me and said, “I bet it’s a boy. I keep picturing a little boy with Lauren’s blonde hair and blue eyes.”

  Marko looked at me, and at that moment my eyes began to focus. He narrowed his gaze slightly and his brow knitted together. Though he smiled down at Miranda briefly before turning back to me, I could tell he sensed there was bad news. His hands had curled into fists and his blue eyes had turned to steel.

  Perhaps I too had gotten bad at my mask face and Marko could read what had happened in my eyes. He wrapped his arms around Miranda, as though to hold her up.

  “She had a little girl,” I managed to say.

  “Oh my God, I bet she’s cute.” Miranda’s eyes searched my face and she lost her smile, for a second, before recovering it and grabbing both my arms. “Is she cute? Does she look like Lauren?” Her voice wavered, as though she could sense what was coming.

  “She’s beautiful.” The words squeezed out of my throat like stone through the eye of a needle. Damn this was hard.

  “Great.” Miranda let go of my arms and leaned back against Marko, like she needed him to hold her up. “So how did Lauren go giving birth? Were you by her side?” She swallowed thickly. “And has Sylvia kept her distance from the baby?”

  Marko gave me a knowing look, a dark look, and ushered us all inside. The screen door banged shut and Lily closed the wooden door behind us.

  Being sealed inside the tiny house felt suffocating. My breath came short.

  Lily stood by the window and stared outside at the waves crashing against the shore. By the trembling in her shoulders I could tell she was crying.

  “You’d better sit her down,” I said to Marko, but as soon as he tried to guide Miranda into a chair, she yanked herself out of his grasp.

  “What’s going on, Rob?” asked Marko.

  “Just tell me what happened.” Miranda said, her voice surprisingly controlled. “Did Sylvia steal my sister’s baby?”

  I couldn’t look into those wide, dark eyes. I couldn’t face her. Lily choked back a sob but wouldn’t move away from the window.

  Oh God. Here goes.

  “Lauren died giving birth, Miranda. I’m so sorry.”

  Silence enveloped us.

  Miranda stood there, hardly breathing.

  Marko tried to touch her but she shook him away. She glanced at Lily who had now turned around, her face tear-stained. When Lily nodded, Miranda’s face paled and she ran into the nearby room, slamming the door behind her.

  There was silence at first, followed by soft sobbing, which gradually grew to a loud, painful wail. She sounded broken, like she’d just been severed in two.

  It was too much. I hated that I’d just ruined her world, that I’d been the one to take her living sister away and replace her with a dead person. My own eyes stung with tears as I glanced at Marko’s ashen face, which blurred before my eyes.

  I couldn’t bear it anymore. I turned, fumbled with the door handle, kicked open the screen door and burst out of the shack and onto the beach.

  Seagulls shrieked above me, competing with the howling wind.

  It was so unfair for Lauren, to have died creating life. It was so unfair that Miranda was without family.

  And it was so unfair that I didn’t get to meet Sarah, face to face, to hold her in my arms again, like I’d held her when she was a tiny newborn. And most of all, it was unfair that my grandfather was dying and that I wasn’t going to be there by his side, holding his hand to the very end.

  The sky had turned dark with storm clouds.

  Thunder grumbled beneath my feet, making me jump then stumble. Though I had read about it countless times, and had no doubt experienced it as a child in England, nothing had prepared me for the sound, like a giant monster bellowing from the earth’s core. I jumped again when scissors of lightening followed, illuminating the burry mass of ocean before me in streaks of white.

  Hot tears trickled down my face as I ran for th
e ocean, my feet tripping against soft mounds of sand several times, until I reached the cool water and dove in, my tears and the sea becoming one.

  14

  The girl with no name

  I’m getting stronger.

  The daily walks Ivan has taken me on have helped. Walks by the sea, walks though the bushlands surrounding the gorgeous bay. My skin is a deep, golden brown from all the sunshine, so I don’t look sickly at all. But my stomach is still flabby and empty, like a burst balloon. Whenever I place my hand over it, Ivan looks at me sadly.

  He keeps asking me questions in his native tongue but I’m certain these are rhetorical. It’s almost like he questions the universe or God about my situation. And I can’t help but like him even more for it. He is a true gentleman and I get the sense that most of the boys I’ve ever known haven’t been like him at all.

  For some reason, I’m certain all the boys in my past have been a great disappointment, even the father of my baby, whoever that is. And that is why I find Ivan so appealing. He is that one in a million guy. Someone I want to hold on to. But I know that it is inevitable that I’ll have to let go one day. That I’ll have to get back on my feet. After all he is just the guy who found me. He doesn’t owe me anything.

  I suppose it will happen the day my memory returns. I want it so much, and yet I’m scared to have it back too.

  Every time a memory returns the angry woman with the bulging green eyes enters my mind and shouts at me. Then I’m filled with fear, followed by such a deep sadness that my mind immediately shuts down.

  I want to go there, through the door to my past, but when I put my hand on the door knob and nudge it open, I take a step back. This is how it is every single time.

  I’m not sure how I’ll get my memory back. Ivan tells me over and over that it will take time, that my memory will return when I’m strong enough to know it.

  “Polako, draga, polako.”

  Slowly, darling, slowly, that is what he says right now while we walk the ocean shore.

  Thanks to an English-Croatian dictionary Ivan gave me a few days ago, I now understand some basics. It’s almost funny. I can learn the basics of a language in a few days but my name, my age, and where I was born... not a clue.

  Ivan catches my weird smile and he frowns. “Why you laugh?”

  I can’t help it now, and the laughter makes me shake. It’s so crazy.

  Ivan, still wearing a puzzled frown, begins to smile, his cheeks dimpling and his blue eyes catching the sun and shining as bright and as beautiful as the ocean in front of us. His large shoulders jerk with laughter and soon we are both doubled over, sitting on the pebbled beach, laughing our heads off at nothing.

  Eventually I catch my breath and, holding my aching stomach, reach out and touch his hand, my fingers brushing over the golden hairs on his wrist.

  “Sorry about that. But thanks for laughing with me.”

  He sucks in a sharp breath at my touch, his chest expanding, and instantly stops laughing.

  “No sorry,” he says, putting a calloused hand over mine, his eyes intense. “I am sorry. I am sorry I haven’t made you laugh like that more times.” He smiles and my heart catches on its beat. “I like you laughing. It is good sound. Beautiful music to my ears.”

  He stares out across the sea at a family snorkelling, their heads together, their legs spread out behind them. They look like a human flower, their bodies the petals. Tourists flock to this beach, to this beautiful bay, on a daily basis. But we are lucky to have the prime location of the bay, and our own little private rock jetty.

  “You want to come to town tonight? It is my friend birthday and we go to dinner and drink some vino and be very happy?” he asks me. “I would like very much to see you laugh again. It good for you.”

  I stare at the family. The smallest child, a dark haired boy, raises his head. He must be around ten years of age, and shouts, “Star fish. An orange one!” They are English. The rest of the family gather around to see, all face down in the water, forming a human flower again.

  Something about the way they are all together. The way the older sister of the boy says, “Wow, good spot!” and pats her brother on the back, makes me ache inside.

  And when my heart aches, the pain tends to suck out all the happiness inside of me, leaving behind an emptiness that eats away at my internal organs and muscles and bones until I am nothing but a girl-shaped shell. And it is when I am in girl-shaped shell mode that I start to think about my baby. That’s when the panic sets in.

  My heart bangs against my chest and I grip Ivan’s hand hard. I need to touch him, to feel his support.

  He takes my hand between his own two large ones. He is there for me without smothering me.

  Staring out at the ocean, at the English family, makes me wish I knew what had happened to my baby. Did he or she die? Did I ever hold my baby in my arms? I can’t remember. I’m sure I’d remember something as important as that. My arms ache to have a memory of my baby snuggled there.

  My breasts are tender and still produce a small amount of milk which I have been releasing in the shower. At first I thought I was getting rid of it, but when I started releasing it the first time, I realised that the following morning my breasts felt full again, more so than the day before. It is the true proof that I am a mother. And I worry that if my milk disappears and my floppy stomach tightens, then the baby I had will be erased from existence.

  “You know, my grandmother will keep bothering us if you don’t come tonight. She will make us listen to her poetry again. All night.”

  I smile, despite the fact that I am in girl-shell-mode at the moment, and somehow that smile starts to spread out inside of me, filling me up again. First some ribs, then some muscle, then a heart...

  Ivan’s grandmother, ‘Teta’ I call her, which means ‘Aunty’ in Croatian, has been encouraging me to go outside the past few weeks. She shoos me into the direction of the front door and gives me encouraging smiles whenever I head outside. But when I wallow in bed, waiting for Ivan to return from military dues, she becomes sad and sits by my side, stroking my hair and reading to me.

  I don’t understand what she reads, but I know that it is poetry and it rolls off her tongue so beautifully that sometimes I cry even though I don’t know what I’m crying about. And suddenly the world seems so beautiful and I want to be a part of it again.

  But then I remember that I can’t be a part of the world because I don’t know who I am. It’s like, Remember. Forget. Repeat.

  The beautiful, glittery bay of water in front of me blurs through my tears.

  “Nemoj placati, draga,” Ivan says in the soothing deep voice of his and I nod and wipe my face. Don’t cry, he says.

  “Okay. I will go to your friend’s birthday.”

  Ivan smiles and punches the air like he’s just won a war.

  “Good. We won’t stay long, just until cake and coffee.”

  Coffee. I’ll need coffee to stay awake. I nod and yawn, a deep tiredness that has been plaguing me for weeks takes over and as strong as I felt a minute ago I now feel like a wilting flower.

  Ivan leads me to my room and I climb into bed. He disappears for a while and returns with a stack of newspapers. He always brings back a week’s worth of news. Even if it is in Croatian, I enjoy looking at the pictures and trying to suss out what the article is about.

  “Read just a little and then small sleep. Then I wake you before birthday party.”

  I nod and give him a salute. He salutes me back and walks out of the room laughing. It’s a deep, rich sound that somehow penetrates my skin and grows me more new organs. I have lungs again and I inhale deeply and enjoy the sensation. I fluff my bed pillows and settle back against them to read, no longer feeling like a girl-shaped shell.

  The newspapers are dated back to last Monday, so I put that one first on the pile and sort the rest out so that I’m reading the papers in date order.

  When I find Thursday’s paper, what I see on the cover pag
e makes my blood run cold and my body feel empty again.

  There is a picture of a body covered in a white sheet, an ankle exposed. Long strands of blonde hair, the same shade as mine, sneak out from beneath the sheet. But that is not what has chilled my blood.

  It’s the bracelet the girl is wearing—a chain of tiny golden suns.

  Mine.

  This dead girl with my hair is also wearing my bracelet.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and think hard. Ignoring the screaming, green-eyed woman, I push past that memory, way past, to something that must have happened a long time ago.

  A man smiles at me. He has kind eyes and looks a lot like the girl with the round face and wide eyes that keeps appearing in my head. They both make me feel warm and filled up inside. I know they are my family and I know that I love them. The man is covered in sweat and dust, but his eyes are bright and sparkle with so much love. He is handsome and loveable and funny and he knows me so well. He hands me a tiny, pink box tied with golden ribbon. I open it with eagerness.

  Inside is a bracelet, a bracelet he so lovingly hand-made for me. I step into the man’s open arms and press my face to his chest. He smells like cement dust and Brut 33 aftershave. And suddenly I know who he is.

  He is my Dad.

  I break out in a sweat and throw the paper across the room.

  “Ivan!” I shout, because I need him here right now.

  Ivan bursts into the room, asking me what is wrong, but I can’t explain the bracelet. I can’t explain my father when I don’t even know his name. I can’t explain anything. Tears spring from my eyes and trickle down my cheeks.

  I sink back against the pillows, my head filled with images of a place where there is lots of sunshine, a place where my parents are from. A place where I am from.

  A sudden wave of panic hits me. I see the brown-haired, wide-eyed girl’s face and she is crying. I can’t see my parents anywhere. I see a house. I see my parents’ bed and it is empty.

  They are gone.

  They are gone and it hurts. It hurts so much.

  Ivan is beside me, stroking my hair. He knows I am remembering something and his blue eyes are deep with concern.

 

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