by Unknown
“I insisted. She needs her family, not faceless caretakers. They’ll send a physio-nurse to check on her twice a day. They gave me a list of things… . I can manage, just like with your father, when he went.”
Candice really does love her. And you. And Sam.
Becca stared at the vacant woman who looked like her sister. Julie’s eyes followed people when they spoke, and she moved her lips as spittle slowly slipped out the corner of her mouth. Gone, though, was the laugh, the flash-in-the-pan grin, the need to be into everything, understanding everything, the intensity when she listened like she was reading off the back of your skull. Gone was the banter which wound up offending people as often as not, the wit that invented codenames for Candice’s tactics in their Skype calls. Gone, even, was the bitter resignation at returning to Candice’s clutches a widow, Sam in tow, and that steel-eyed determination to climb free again. Nothing in this stranger’s face was Julie.
Becca crumpled against the bed, but the tears wouldn’t come.
Candice wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pressing her into her perfumed jacket, and soothed the nape of her neck. “She’s going to be fine. You’ll see,” she murmured in her soft voice, the motherly voice from Becca’s childhood fevers. She pulled a tissue from her purse and gently blotted at Becca’s dry cheeks.
“Sam shouldn’t see her like this.” Becca glanced out the window where Sam quietly wrote a letter to the lost soldier who might be his father.
“She’s his mother. He’ll love her whatever she looks like.”
“Except she doesn’t really look like she loves him, now. He won’t understand—”
“He should know she does,” Candice said sharply. “She needs him. She won’t get better without him to come back to. So no more of that nonsense. I know you gave into him. Head full of fluff just like your father. Soon as we get home, you’re putting that thing back in the attic where it belongs.”
Back in control. Becca opened her mouth to protest, to explain the new wonder. She just lost her daughter, whatever she says. She needs this. Instead, she said, “Yes, Mum.”
Why do I keep excusing her?
Candice nodded. “We may as well get it over with, then.” She opened the ICU door and beckoned Sam inside. “You can say hello, now, sweetling. She’s coming home with us this afternoon.”
Sam bounded in, pulled up short.
“Mum?” The lost tone in his voice sank like a knife in Becca’s ribs.
“It’s okay, mate,” Becca murmured. “Her brain is bruised, so it’s hard for her to move. But you can still tell her all about the soldier.” Becca shot a hard look at Candice. “She’d like that.”
Candice raised her eyebrow, but said nothing.
oOo
The typewriter disappeared into the attic to make way in the living room for Julie, her equipment, and pills. Sam sat beside her on the fold-out bed with his notebook, filling the otherwise silent room with his theories until Candice snapped.
“No more nonsense, that’s enough!” She snatched his notebook up. “Your mother needs rest and care, not silliness and running about.”
“Mum,” Becca said, clearing plates from dinner.
Candice spun on her heel. “And you, as bad as your father, nothing but a waste of time and energy, leaving the work to everyone else.”
Sam started to cry. Becca opened her mouth, but Candice cut her off with words from twenty years ago: “Don’t start with me, young madam.”
“He needs this. He’s seven years old!”
“Old enough to grow up. You both are. Other people are more important than nonsense!”
“Oh, like ‘she’s going to be fine,’ that kind of nonsense?” The words shot out of Becca’s mouth before she could stop them. She stepped forward, hand stretched out as if she could snatch them back.
Candice’s face paled, her mouth an ‘o’ of shock, two pink spots of fury in her cheeks. “How dare you talk back to me.” Her voice dropped to a growl. Becca flinched. Candice snatched up the gravy boat, marching into the kitchen with notebook and gravy.
“Mum,” Becca began, but Candice didn’t pause. “Mum, I didn’t mean it, I—”
Candice threw the notebook in the bin, dumped the gravy on top of it, and slammed the boat in after so hard it shattered. She turned to Becca, hand half-raised for a slap. Clenching the plates to stop them rattling in her hands, Becca fought not to flinch again. Sam hugged his knees, heels slipping off the edge of the seat, and Candice seemed to suddenly remember him. The hand dropped to rub his shoulders.
“It’s time for bed, sweetling,” she said. “In the morning, you’ll see this was for the best, for your mother.”
Sam slunk off to Becca’s old room. Becca glared in the silence.
“You shouldn’t have taken it out on him,” Becca said softly.
Candice stiffened and whipped the tea towel off the rack. “You know not to answer back.”
oOo
Sam didn’t appear for breakfast. Becca checked every cupboard she’d hidden in as a toddler, the ivy behind the house that Julie had always made her cubby, under every piece of furniture she could lift or wriggle into, even up the apricot tree in the rain. No Sam.
“Why would he do this?” Candice fumed. “Doesn’t he know how hard things are already?” She all but wrenched the cupboard door off its hinges. “This is what I’m talking about, running away instead of learning to cope!”
“He was coping, in his own way. Not everybody has to cope your way!” Becca shot back.
Candice sucked in a breath in shock. Becca plunged ahead, using anger as courage.
“Why did you have to destroy his notebook?” she shouted. “Why do you always have to win?”
The slap came out of nowhere. Becca reeled against the wall, her cheek on fire.
“I raised you better than that,” Candice spat.
“Dad raised me. You just controlled me. There’s a difference.”
Candice raised her hand for another slap, but Becca swatted it down and shoved past her into the cluttered hallway. “Check the street!” she shouted before Candice could follow. She barged into her room and snatched her bag from under the bed. I can do it. I’ll just leave. It’s my life. I’ll fix things with Rick, go to work, drinks with the guys, live my life. I love Julie, but I’m not helping her here. Becca shoved her clothes in the bag with numb hands. She’d find Sam, and then she’d …
What? Leave him here? She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against the nausea that clawed up her throat.
She couldn’t leave him here.
Years stretched out in front of her like a prison sentence. Starting over again, no job, no friends. Facing Candice alone, without backup. Without Julie.
Dragging at air, she squeezed her fingers around her wrists, ran for the bathroom to be sick—
And tripped over a bucket, landing on a fire poker.
The hell are a bucket and fire poker doing in the hallway? Massaging her jarred ankle, Becca rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, where the attic ladder pull-cord swung slowly.
A shifting thump came from the ceiling. Becca smiled despite herself. She’d discounted the attic ladder as out of his reach. But standing on a bucket to twirl the ladder cord around a fire poker and pull the ladder down—that sounded like her father’s grandson. Becca eased the stairs down and crept into the attic.
Sam stared at a box, almost ravenous, scribbling on the backs of envelopes. As she approached, the typewriter clicks came, muffled—he’d wrapped her dad’s old shirts around the machine to quiet it. Becca couldn’t stifle the grin. He frantically pressed a key over and over, scribbling as he went.
Becca sat, but he didn’t look up.
“Grandma’s mad at me,” he whispered.
“Grandma’s worried about your Mum.”
“Are you mad at me?”
Becca hugged him close. “What’ve you got there?” She pointed at the envelopes.
Sam bit his lip. “She took
my notebook, but … I’d already gotten pretty good at remembering the codes. I was working on remembering the rest.” He cringed slightly, breath held.
Becca looked over his scrawl. The patterns held steady, three symbols to a phoneme. “Do you remember how you figured them out?” She sifted in the attic piles for some pieces of card and a pen. “Let me show you how to make a decoder ring.”
Sam grinned.
“So how’s our soldier doing?”
“Someone’s chasing him. He almost got caught near Yoorannis but that’s when the shuttles showed up.”
“Near where?” Becca peered at the envelopes in the dim light of the attic window. Sam pointed, and she squinted harder. “Yoor … Uranus. It’s a planet.”
“Like in space?” Sam’s eyes widened. “He’s a space soldier?”
“Maybe an astronaut. He must be clever, sending the message out.”
“He did what you said, asked what he didn’t know,” Sam pointed to another section, then frowned. “If he’s in space, then … it’s not my Dad.”
Becca sighed and squeezed Sam close.
Feet slammed on the attic stairs. Candice’s head rose from the floor, her face like ice. She glanced at them, and Becca was nine years old again with her new dress covered in mud. She clutched Sam, leaning between him and her mother.
Candice loomed down. “I don’t understand what you’re doing, when you know how much Julie needs you. But if you can’t do it yourself …” She hefted up the typewriter, crate and all, and carried it over to the attic window. Becca watched, her legs refusing to move, as Candice opened the window and dumped the crate through it into the rain. Sam shuddered at every thump and ping of metal as the crate and its contents burst apart on their front lawn.
“I put your bag away.” Her consonants could have cut steel. “When you have realised there are more important things, I’ll be in the living room, looking after my daughter.” She stalked down the stairs. Becca’s face burned.
Sam shivered. “Does Mum think I don’t love her?”
“No, mate,” Becca rubbed his arms as if to warm him, or perhaps herself. “Your Mum knows how much you love her.” Her voice sounded hollow, even to her.
oOo
Becca lay awake on her childhood bed, studying the scrawl on the bottom of Julie’s bunk. Sam slept, the rise and fall of his breath like a tiny piston, but sleep eluded Becca.
The pre-dawn birdsong niggled. They were the wrong birds. She missed the magpie warble, the cackle of Kookaburras as they hunted worms for their young.
Who would raise Sam? Her? Her mother? No, Becca had made too many hard choices to break that cycle, she had to spare him that. But how could she take him away from Julie? Rick would never sign on for a kid, he didn’t even want a dog. And Candice couldn’t care for Julie on her own, not even with a physio-nurse visiting.
Was this her life, now? Walled in with Candice by guilt? Caring for the body of a sister she’d never see again? Becca bit down on her cheek until she tasted blood.
What would Dad do?
Figure it out. Find what you’re missing. Build your decoder.
Typewriter pieces sprang forward in her mind. Where had that astronaut come from? How did he contact her?
You’re just distracting yourself from the problem. She winced at her mother’s voice in her head. If she stayed here, she’d turn into Candice.
She had to leave. They both did. Julie would want what was best for her son, even if that didn’t include her. Becca’d find a school nearby, ask work for flexible hours. Her friends would visit, and Rick… She’d work something out with Rick. He’d come around, he’d like Sam. She’d make it work.
Becca swung her legs out from the covers and felt for a torch. The only dressing gown she could find in the dark was Sam’s blue Thomas the Tank Engine one that barely covered her hips, but it would have to do. She eased open the dresser that held Sam’s clothes and quietly bundled them into his backpack. Candice had hidden hers somewhere. She’d buy a new laptop when she got home. If she didn’t go now, she might lose her nerve. She’d put his backpack in the car, then come back for him.
Becca crept down the hallway, past her sister’s laboured breathing. In her head, Candice’s voice cursed her: selfish child. Becca held her breath and slipped the latch on the front door.
The rain had lifted, leaving a pre-dawn sogginess that clogged the air. Becca tip-toed out to the car, the mud squelching through her toes. Shoes. She should get some shoes when she got Sam. She eased the car door shut, and turned back to the house.
The typewriter still lay in pieces on the grass near the bins. Sam would need it. As if it could somehow fill the void of what she was taking him from.
He’s already lost her.
Not the point.
She picked over the remains, laying out letter-levers and keys in a sad little row. She couldn’t put it back together again; most of it was a twisted mess. She held the ‘A’ in her hand, its long arm bent from impact and twisted in the ribbon. Broken, like her sister, never to be whole. Her ink-purple fingers blurred as hot tears wet her cheeks and neck, and sobs pulled up from her gut. She curled over her chest, squeezing the broken pieces in her hand until her palm cramped, sobbing so hard her stomach ached.
Her mother had been right. She’d just been hiding behind the puzzle. Becca stared down at the ink marks in her hand, drained.
A clear symbol sat on her palm where the A had rested. It wasn’t an ‘A’. Slowly, hand shaking, Becca pressed the A key through the ribbon into her palm.
Another symbol.
Electricity surged through her blood stream. She sifted through the rubble. The decoder had disintegrated in the rain, but—but Sam’s notebook might be salvageable. Trying not to breathe, she flipped the lid off the garbage bin and rummaged inside, dug out the gravy-sodden notebook and wiped the worst of the mess off with the mountain of used tissues.
The gravy had eaten half of Sam’s notes, but with her laptop, she could re-translate it with ocular character recognition. Give it a dictionary and the translations from the notebook, it could take educated guesses at the rest. She could figure it out, finish it for him.
One problem: Candice had her laptop.
Conviction wavered under Candice’s imaginary glare.
You could just leave it. You’re taking him away from everything, he’s probably not going to care. You could just slink away, like always. Because she scares you. Your own mother scares you.
Fist closed around the ‘A’ key, Becca marched inside.
She found her carry-on bag stuffed in Candice’s wardrobe and lugged it halfway to the hall before the lights flicked on. Candice stood in her vermillion dressing gown, one raised hand gripping a leather belt.
“I thought you were …” she began, expression foggy. She glanced at Becca, then the bag, hardened her gaze and drew herself up, setting her face into battle-mode. She let the silence play out, the seconds battering at Becca’s walls like artillery.
“I deserve better than this. So does your sister.”
Becca flinched as the words shot through to her gut. “It’s not about you.” Her voice whined like a child’s.
Candice strode towards her, the belt swinging ominously. “She needs you. You can’t run away because you don’t feel like dealing with it. You don’t get to pretend anymore while someone else cleans up the mess.”
The bag slipped down Becca’s arm like a weight fixing her in place and her mind narrowed to the words, to Candice’s voice, struggling to gain an edge.
Candice loomed within striking distance. “Your sister understood that,” she said. “We had our differences, but she worked hard for her family, for her son. She buried her husband while you ran off to your koalas. And now she needs you, and you’re leaving it to everyone else, like you always do. Leaving us behind.”
Shaking her head mutely, Becca tried to drum up words, thoughts, anything.
Candice leaned close. “You selfish child. Alway
s, no matter what I did. She’s not the one who deserved this.”
Sickening heat flooded up from Becca’s belly, swallowing her.
Candice’s eyes glinted in triumph. “Were you even going to say goodbye to Sam? Or are you leaving that to me as well, to explain why you’re abandoning him.”
Sam.
Becca found an edge. Protect Sam. She clutched it like a spear, lifted her chin, locked eyes with Candice. “I’m taking him with me,” she snarled.
Candice reared back, mouth open.
Drawing her anger from her voice, Becca pulled herself straight. “I gave up every friend I had to move away. My sister. My job. My possessions. I didn’t run away, I made a calculated choice. I paid a price.” She took a deep breath, chin thrust out like she could push the words out and not hear them. “It was worth leaving everything behind to be free of you.”
Silence again, but this time it couldn’t touch her. Her blood surged like ice through her chest.
“How dare you,” Candice breathed. “You ungrateful—”
“I’m just being honest with you,” Becca shot back. “Without the nonsense, just like you wanted. Without pretending this is okay.” I can do this. I can stand up to her. I can protect him. “Because it’s not. You are toxic, and if you want to get anywhere near Sam, things are going to have to change.”
Candice brandished the belt. “You can’t take him away from me. From Julie.”
Becca snatched it out of her hands. “I’m his legal guardian. Anyone can see she’s not fit for motherhood.” She took a deep breath and leaned close enough to smell the laundry soap on her mother’s gown. “I will miss her until my heart stops, but it would have been kinder to everyone, especially her, if you had just let her go.”
Becca re-shouldered the bag. “I’ll bring Sam to you to say goodbye.”
oOo
Sam had mumbled groggy goodbyes. Becca had tried to wake him, but the boy just wanted to sleep, so she’d tucked him in the car with her carry-on and the remains of the typewriter and driven to the airport to wait for their standby flight. He slept the whole way, and barely woke when she piloted him to an empty gate lounge. Becca sat in the row next to him and rifled through her bag for her jeans and jumper to drag on.