When Aunt Elizabeth came out of the bedroom five minutes later, Sarah was sitting beside Ryan at the kitchen table, feigning innocence. I stood at the sink, rinsing his plate. I had a worse poker face than Sarah did—and hers was pretty bad—so I thought it better to keep my hands busy until I got my emotions under control.
My mother?
“So … what was all that about?” Sarah asked. Her casual voice was even worse than her innocent look. Her mother wasn’t buying it.
“All what?”
“You know. You saw the painting and freaked.”
“I did no such thing.” Aunt Elizabeth put a hand on Ryan’s forehead to check his temperature. He was watching the interplay with a frown. “How do you feel, Ryan?”
“Bit better,” he mumbled.
“It looked like you freaked to me,” Sarah said. I willed her to pursue the subject, widening my eyes, but she shot me a helpless look in return. She didn’t want to reveal we’d been eavesdropping.
Hell with it, I decided, jamming the plate in the dishwasher before turning to confront my aunt.
“I listened in on the phone call,” I said. There was no point in ratting us both out.
“Isla!” Aunt Elizabeth’s mouth fell open.
“Well, that painting looks a lot like me. But I heard you say it’s of my mother. Why?”
Aunt Elizabeth tugged a chair out from under the kitchen table and slumped into it. Her mouth pulled down at the corners and her shoulders rose and fell in a sigh. “Because it is.”
“Why would I paint a picture of Isla’s mother?” Ryan asked, bewildered.
“That’s the sixty-four thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” She grimaced. “Are you sure you didn’t find an old photo somewhere?”
“No, I had a weird dream of her. She wouldn’t stop staring at me.”
“When?” I asked. Sarah glanced at me.
“Um.” He frowned. “It was the night of your birthday dinner.”
“Not Halloween?”
He shook his head.
I’d had my dream days before Ryan had his. I guess he wasn’t seeing into my head after all. Thank god.
“The painting looks a lot like me,” I said slowly, turning to my aunt. “You’re sure it’s her?”
“It’s the spitting image of her.” Aunt Elizabeth rubbed her temples.
“You haven’t seen her for eighteen years. Maybe you’re remembering wrong?”
“No. She’s not the sort of woman you forget.” There was an uncomfortable silence, before Aunt Elizabeth added, “Your father’s driving in now.”
Admitting I already knew that would amp the tension. The air was already thick, laced with uncertainty. I fought to keep the edge out of my voice. “Why?”
“He’s worried about you.”
“But it’s just a painting. Right?”
She shrugged. She either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell me. There was another silence, and I decided to approach the subject from a different direction. I grabbed the last kitchen chair and sat so I could see her face. “Tell me about her. My mother.”
“That’s something you should talk to your father about, not me.”
“He won’t talk to me about her. Until today I didn’t even know what she looked like.” My frustration wasn’t feigned. I’d tried for eighteen years to be patient with my father and his sensitivities about my mother, but this was too much.
Aunt Elizabeth’s expression softened. “You’re right.” She nibbled her lip for a moment, then began to speak. “Your father met your mother when he was on a trip to Scotland. He brought her home, and it was clear from the first time we saw them together that he was besotted. She loved him too, but it was hard for the rest of us to get to know her. She was distant, I suppose. Cold. Our mother didn’t like her, and I have to admit I wasn’t a fan either.” Sarah gasped, and Aunt Elizabeth’s eyes widened. She reached over to pat my hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. Melanie just wasn’t very friendly. She was private, I suppose, and we were a tight-knit family. But she was beautiful. Breathtaking.” She said this like it was a consolation prize, but added a little sourly, “Almost every man who met her fell a little in love with her.
“They got married after returning from Scotland. There were rumours, of course; everyone speculated she was pregnant, and we discovered a couple of months later that we were right. Your father was over the moon. I’ve never seen him as happy as he was that year. He had everything he had ever wanted: a beautiful wife, a daughter on the way…”
“And she died giving birth to me.” That was the one part of the story I did know. I’d never shaken the guilt, not since Dad told me when I was four the reason why I didn’t have a mummy.
Aunt Elizabeth hesitated, and I gave her a sharp look.
“What?”
“You have to understand, I was distracted too. I was pregnant with Sarah; my due date was about six weeks after Melanie’s.” She looked down at her hands and murmured, “And three days after you were born, Andrew died.”
Andrew was Sarah and Ryan’s father. We knew that part of the story too. He’d been jogging at dawn one morning and had tripped, hitting his head. A silly accident, but one that meant he’d never met his daughter. Sarah arrived a month later. After all these years my aunt had never remarried, although she had dated a few times, and once saw a man for almost six months before breaking it off.
My father had never even dated.
“Distracted from what?” Sarah asked, drawing me back to the conversation.
“It’s just that something occurred to me when I was at your father’s funeral.” She turned to me. “David was cradling you, Isla. Such a tiny, solemn baby, you were. He looked as sad as I’ve ever seen him. And I realised…” She hesitated.
“What?”
“I realised there was never a funeral for Melanie.”
There was never a funeral for my mother?
She. Is. Not. Dead…
The reply spelled out at the séance. An upturned scotch glass and a cruel practical joke … or so I’d thought. But what if my father never had a funeral for my mother because she hadn’t died at all? What if she’d run off after I was born, leaving me in the hospital nursery like unwanted baggage? What if the séance was real?
And if Emma had tapped into some supernatural thing, what else was possible? Had Ryan really dreamt of Melanie? Had I? Why?
She. Is. Not. Dead…
“Isla, are you okay?” Sarah’s voice sounded concerned, and very far away.
“I think I need to sit down,” I whispered.
“You are sitting down.”
Oh. So I was. The others were staring at me from afar, as though they were sitting at a different kitchen table on the other side of a great hall. Sarah got me a glass of water; when she handed it to me I curled my fingers around it but didn’t drink. The glass weighted my hand, too heavy to lift to my mouth.
“What do you think happened? To Melanie?” Ryan was saying.
“I don’t know. I never saw her again, so I thought I was being paranoid—making nothing into something. David applied for a visa to come to Australia shortly afterwards, and for citizenship for Isla and himself when he was able. I thought he was fleeing the place where he had such painful memories.” She looked down at her hands and added softly, “Goodness knows I could understand that.” My aunt had moved to Australia with her two small children five years after Dad and me.
“I’m sure you were being paranoid,” Sarah declared. She always was a bad liar.
“I think I’m going to rest for a bit,” I said, putting the glass down. Water slopped across the battered tabletop.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Sarah asked.
“No. Thanks. I’m just going to lie down.”
Kicking off my shoes, I crawled onto my bed and curled on my side. I left the bedside lamp off. The hall light was on, providing more than enough illumination for my mood. I could hear murmured conversation in the kitchen, and the sliding door to the bac
k porch being opened and closed.
I tried to still my swirling, incoherent thoughts and be rational. Séances weren’t real. Dad probably didn’t have a funeral for my mother because she’d said in her will she didn’t want a big fuss. Or because he couldn’t afford it. Or because it pained him too much. Who knew how anyone would react in that situation, grief-stricken and with a newborn baby?
My father never lied to me about anything.
That I know of. That treacherous thought wouldn’t be silenced. If he’d lied to me about this, what else could he have lied to me about?
It wasn’t possible.
Of course, it wasn’t also possible Ryan and I had both dreamt of the same woman. I racked my brain, trying to recall whether I’d ever seen a photo of my mother. But I was sure I hadn’t.
Sarah appeared, silhouetted against the hall light. “I’m just bringing your books in from outside,” she whispered, leaving my study things in a pile on the desk. She hesitated. “Do you need anything?”
“No, thank you.”
“You know where I am if you need me.”
“Okay.”
I heard her pad barefooted down the corridor to the lounge room. The television came on. A moment later Hamish appeared, jumping onto my bed and snuffling my face before scrambling over me and settling against my stomach, his small head resting on my waist. He sighed. Sarah must have turfed him off the couch, knowing he’d come in here. She was looking after me even when I hadn’t asked her to. What would I do without her?
“I’m not sure which is worse,” I whispered to Hamish, stroking his fur, “believing I killed my mother, or believing she abandoned me … and that Dad lied about it.” Hamish didn’t answer. He was already asleep. “Well, you’re no use.”
Against all odds, the steady rhythm of Hamish’s breathing lulled me into a doze. It seemed like no time had passed when I awoke to a change in the light: my father’s large frame was in the doorway, blocking the glow from the hallway.
“Isla? Are you awake?” His voice was tentative.
“Yes.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Hamish grumbled a protest.
“Can I turn the light on?”
“Sure.”
I blinked and stared at my father as the light clicked on. He looked dishevelled and his eyes were wide, like he’d seen a ghost. He was holding the gift bag he’d given me on my birthday. “You left this at the restaurant the other week, when you went out for dessert with that boy,” he said, his voice strained.
As confused and resentful as I was feeling right now, I still loved him, and his appearance worried me. “Dad, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. He was an even worse liar than Sarah. He came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Here.” He tried to hand me the bag. Vomit burned the back of my throat, and I flinched back.
He saw the flinch, and his face grew even more drawn. “Isla, take it.” There was an urgency in his tone that I neither understood nor liked.
“No. Dad, what’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”
He looked around the room. “Do you have any of my work in here?”
The question confused me. I felt my cheeks warm. “Um, I’m not sure.” The answer was no. Pretty much every piece of ironwork he’d given me was in the shed. The rest I’d given away to friends.
“Here.” He upended the gift bag. The heavy iron circlet tumbled into my lap.
My stomach twisted with nausea so severe I clenched my teeth, afraid I’d throw up. Where the iron touched my thighs through the denim of my jeans it felt ice-cold, and yet it burned at the same time. I gasped, shoving it away from me and onto the floor. It singed my hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” I jumped to my feet. Hamish leapt up too, yapping.
Dad said nothing but the look on his face was wild, despairing.
“You’re crazy,” I cried, fleeing the room.
“Isla, wait,” Dad yelled after me. But I ran, snatching my bag from the hallway before rushing out the front door. I ignored the bite of tiny rocks on the soles of my feet. I had to get away from him, from everything.
“Isla,” Sarah called as I jumped into my little car. I hesitated, but Dad was right behind her, clutching that stupid circlet like a talisman. Seeing him made me feel sick and confused all over again. I had to get away.
My hatchback’s tyres squealed as I sped around the corner at the end of our street. My heart pounded and tears stung my eyes as I drove, the pedals cold against the soles of my feet. What had happened? Why had my father attacked me?
How had my father attacked me?
Chapter Six
Isla's Inheritance Page 8