He broke the stalemate. ‘Go see your family.’ He gave me a gentle shove.
Stupid Elias, always right.
My gaze met his for a long moment. His eyes were shadowed, missing that lively sparkle, but still very much Elias. I didn’t even notice the eyeliner anymore. Or the glasses. Or the hair.
I nodded and turned to head down the driveway. The shadows were getting long and the driveway was shady, littered with gumnuts and leaves. I kicked at them and they skittered away down the slope, tumbling off the edge of the bitumen and into the rocky garden.
I could hear the kids in the backyard as I approached the house. The usual sounds—yelling and arguing, laughing and playing. I felt like I should feel some surge of affection but I didn’t. Except for Josey. The thought of Josey made my heart squeeze for a brief moment. I hadn’t thought much about him while I’d been gone, and all of a sudden I found myself wanting a Josey cuddle.
I slipped in as quietly as I could through the front door.
Mum was, as always, in the kitchen. Micah was with her, rinsing baby spinach in a colander at the kitchen sink. I wondered how much extra housework he’d been drafted into during my absence. The poor kid always seems to end up picking up everyone else’s slack.
I had no idea what to say, so I just paused in the doorway and waited, figuring Mum would spot me there sooner or later. She was turning to get something out of the oven when she saw me. Her eyes widened, just for a moment, and then she nodded briskly. ‘Just in time. Dinner’s nearly ready.’
I wasn’t naive enough to think that would be the end of it. There’d be an interrogation later, I knew. But the evening routine is set in stone. Dinner, baths, books and bed. Nothing short of the Second Coming was going to interrupt that schedule.
I took my stuff upstairs and dumped my bags on the floor in my room. There was a pile of neatly folded washing sitting on the end of my bed, the last things I’d worn before taking off. I nudged the pile aside and stretched out on my back.
Lying there, it felt both familiar and utterly strange, too. Like I’d somehow slipped back in time. How many nights had I been gone? Less than a week, but it felt like months. I could hear the kids gathering downstairs. I wasn’t in a huge rush to go join them; they didn’t have Mum’s restraint, and I could imagine she wasn’t going to be pleased to have my absence and return as the primary dinner table conversation. But on the other hand, I had to face the music sooner or later. Besides, I was hungry.
I looked up at the photo of Frankie tacked to the underside of Grace’s bed. The last few days with Elias I’d felt like I was actually achieving something. But it wasn’t my something, was it? And in some ways, the last week might as well not have happened. I was right back where I’d come from. Lost and stagnating, no way of moving forward.
Everyone was sorting themselves out at the table when I got downstairs. Climbing into seats, squabbling over water jugs, whingeing about serving sizes. Vegetarian lasagne tonight. Josey was already digging into his. I noted that my plate was on the table, my usual seat next to Josey’s waiting for me.
His face lit up when he saw me, and I smiled a little. One reason to come home. Maybe the only one.
The kids had a billion questions, of course. Mum shut them down quick smart, turning the conversation to what she calls the Daily Report, news from the kids’ days. It was all the same as always—they played with this kid at lunch, their teacher said something funny, someone’s friend has a new kitten.
I wondered how she could stand it, the same stuff over and over. I didn’t understand how she could keep having babies and going back to the beginning all over again. Surely there’s a point where you’ve changed enough dirty nappies and you never want to do it again, where you’ve read enough bedtime stories, kissed enough sore knees, faked interest in enough childish trivia. I feel like I’ve already reached that point, and they’re not even my kids.
I was in my room making a half-hearted effort to sort out my dirty clothes when Grace came in. Not in her usual way, barging in oblivious to what I might be doing. Cautiously, looking almost wary. She stood self-consciously in the doorway.
I thought about the last conversation I’d had with her. My birthday. Grace breaking the news to my parents that the bubble of blissful ignorance they’d worked so hard to craft for her had popped long ago.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about Frankie before?’
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting from her, but that wasn’t it. In all honesty, it had never occurred to me to tell the kids—other than Josey, in a very abstract way—about Frankie. Mum and Dad’s ‘we don’t talk about it’ narrative had become so ingrained in me by the time Grace was old enough for conversation that I’d never even considered it.
Looking at Grace’s face now, I realised something. She wasn’t looking at me and wondering why I’d kept something to myself. She was wondering why I’d kept something from her. Something that had shaped her life so fundamentally.
And what could I say? That, in all honesty, I thought so little about her feelings that I’d never even considered it from that perspective?
‘Mum and Dad would’ve killed me.’ It was true. It was also a cop-out. I gestured for her to come in. An apology, as much as I could manage it.
She climbed up the ladder into her bunk and, before I could second-guess myself, I climbed up and lay down beside her. Now we were both staring up at the ceiling. I used to do that sometimes when she was little and she couldn’t sleep. I would do stuff like that sometimes—trying to help, trying to feel connected to her—but it never really felt right. Maybe, like Mum, I was trying too hard to recapture what we’d lost when we lost Frankie.
‘How much did you read about us online?’ I asked after a long silence.
‘Everything.’
I didn’t doubt her, and I didn’t have to ask what she meant. If you google Frankie Evans, there’s pages and pages of hits. Online news stories dating back to when it first happened, ‘Most Famous Missing Children’ lists, a Wikipedia page. I used to read through them all obsessively, in secret of course, to the point where I could quote pretty much any site or article word for word. I haven’t looked for a year or two, but I haven’t forgotten any of it.
‘Did you watch the videos?’
‘Yeah.’
They were the hardest. It was one thing to see the photos—of Frankie, of me and Frankie, of my parents or our whole family together—but there was something completely surreal about watching the videos. Snippets of my parents at the camp site in the bush, dozens of people swarming around them. An appeal to the public where they stood rigidly behind a podium, red-eyed and white-knuckled.
I hate those videos. I hate thinking about that time, but it’s more than that. It’s the devastation I see on my parents’ faces. They both look dazed, deer caught in the world’s spotlight. Whenever I see that look on their faces—on a computer screen, or conjured up by my rebellious mind—I’m seven years old again, sick in my guts and feeling like my whole world has turned upside down because half of me has gone missing.
‘Mum and Dad were different back then.’ Grace’s voice was quiet, which was rare for her. I didn’t know if it was because she was making an effort to not be heard, or if she was just taking it seriously. Finding it hard to talk about. As ridiculous as it sounds, part of me felt some weird relief at finally—finally—having someone to talk to about it. Someone stuck inside the story with me, not just reading it from the outside.
‘I mean, they look younger,’ Grace clarified, voice still small, ‘but it’s not just that. They were just…different.’
And then I was sad for her. Because she’ll never know what they were really like, what sort of parents they could have been to her. At least I have my own stories. I remember made-up games and chasings in the backyard. Carefree bushwalks, picking up every gumnut and eucalyptus blossom that crossed our path. Silly voices during bedtime stories, and tickle monsters, and the million and one ways we thoug
ht of to wake Dad up when he fell asleep on the couch on a Saturday afternoon.
Grace knows Mum the ruthless organiser, and Dad the…empty space.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, feeling wholly inadequate. ‘It’s not fair.’
I left her in the top bunk, and went to see Josey.
He was awake in his toddler bed, little night light on beside him as he painted meticulously in one of his water-colouring books. A hand-me-down from one of the older kids, of course; a Mum-approved toy because it made no mess. When you painted water onto the pages the colours and images appeared; after a while, the water dried and the colours faded away, ready to be repainted. Josey would spend all day colouring them if he could.
He was painting the tractor page, his favourite. I sat on the bed beside him, letting him finish. He blocked in the yellow in the tractor outline and turned to look at me. Put the water brush down and held his hands out, questioning.
I hadn’t told him where I was going or why. Maybe he knew enough about me to know I was always looking for something or someone. Anyway, that’s what I told him.
‘I had to look for someone.’
He frowned and pointed to my face. ‘Sad.’
‘I’m not sad, I’m just tired. I’ve been really busy.’
It was a lie, and he probably knew it. I fought back the tears that suddenly swam in my eyes, silently repeating my justification. I had been really busy. I was tired. Maybe I was a bit sad, too—sad for Elias. But mostly just tired.
I pulled Josey onto my lap for a cuddle. He didn’t say anything, just let me hold him. After a bit, I tucked him into bed and slipped out of the room. It was still early. I was tired, but not tired enough to go to bed before eight o’clock.
I could hear Mum in the living room, busy tidying. Dad was nowhere to be seen. So far so normal. I stood in the doorway, knowing she’d notice me soon enough.
She scooped up the last handful of Lego and glanced up. ‘Josey missed you.’
I wasn’t surprised. The older kids rarely included Josey in their games. I was always the one trying to keep him company.
‘He keeps asking when you’re going to play with him,’ she added, starting in on dismantling the train track laid out on the coffee table.
‘I’ll hang out with him tomorrow,’ I said, mainly to get her off my back. I did feel bad about Josey, though.
‘I assume they’ve done the safe sex talk with you at school?’ She didn’t look up at me.
‘Mum! That’s not…’
‘Well, what do you expect me to think? You’ve just disappeared with a boy for the best part of a week…’ She trailed off. It sounded like she didn’t have her heart in it. Was she even unhappy that I’d been gone, or had it let her exist for a few short days in a parallel universe where Frankie and I never existed?
‘It’s not what you think.’ For a moment I was tempted to tell her. To justify myself, show her that I’d achieved something for once. Not just wasting my time deliberately failing exams, being antisocial, avoiding helping around the house. I helped another person find some answers.
Then I thought: what joy would that bring her? Someone else’s answers. Not hers.
I looked at her. Really looked at her. I tried to think of the last time she’d hugged me, or I’d hugged her, and I couldn’t remember. Years and years. It was like there was something, an invisible barrier, between us.
When Frankie and I were kids, if we did something wrong—being a smartarse or making a mess or whatever—it would only take a stern look from Mum or a talking-to from Dad and we’d be falling over ourselves in tearful apology. And Mum would pull us into her lap, wrap her arms around us, and hold us tight.
‘No matter what you do,’ she would promise fiercely, ‘I will always, always love you.’
I know she still does. But without the arms wrapped tight around me, I don’t feel it. And love seems like something you have to feel.
Mum finished packing up the train track and put the lid on the crate, snapping the latches to lock it in place.
Then she straightened up. I could see her jaw working.
‘Do you have any idea,’ she began, her voice quiet, ‘what the last week has been like for us?’
My mind flashed back to the last angry scene before I left. ‘I only told them the truth.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you being gone.’
‘You knew I was okay,’ I pointed out, feeling my defences rising. ‘I checked in every day, just like you told me to. Just because I finally did what I wanted for once—’
A bitter laugh. ‘For once? You always do what you want. At school, at home…And then you bring up Frankie—throw her name around—as if it’s your loss, so you can keep saying and doing whatever you want, as if your life is the only one that was affected…It’s selfish. So, so selfish.’
I stared at her, incredulous. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Selfish? I spent my life following her stupid rules, treading on eggshells around her, and I was the selfish one? ‘Why,’ I asked, feeling dazed, ‘do your feelings matter more than mine?’
She pressed her lips together tightly. ‘I never said my feelings matter more. But it’s different. I know you lost your sister, but I lost a child. It’s not the same.’
‘How would you know?’
‘Because I have a sister. And I have kids. And I can tell you that it’s entirely different. I would give up a thousand sisters before I would give up a child.’ Her entire body was rigid, like she was fighting to keep control. Her eyes flashed. ‘It wasn’t your job to protect Frankie; it was mine. She was my baby. She was entrusted to me to keep her safe, and I failed. You have no idea what that feels like. You have no idea…’
She trailed off, shaking her head. Looked around the room. Kid stuff, everywhere. Blocks and Lego and dolls in strollers, the detritus of this life she chose for all of us.
When she spoke again her voice was quiet, distant. ‘Do you know that even before Frankie disappeared, I used to pray every day. Every hour. God, keep my babies safe. Like a mantra. Because nobody warns you when you become a parent you’re just going to spend the rest of your life worrying. You worry about SIDS and childhood cancer and choking hazards and drowning in the bath…The responsibility is relentless. Exhausting. Feeling like if you stop paying attention for even an instant, if you stop being careful, your child can just be—gone. The thought makes your blood run cold.’
She looked right at me. ‘I felt that way before. Before I failed.’
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t have said anything. My throat felt like it was closing up and I could feel tears burning in my eyes. I forced them back and looked at Mum. She wasn’t crying either. Like me, tears in her eyes that she was refusing to give in to. It was an awful standoff. Neither of us knowing what to say, or willing to close the physical distance between us.
I swallowed.
‘It wasn’t your fault she got lost. It was my fault.’
She shook her head: vehement disagreement. ‘You were seven! And I let you go off by yourselves when I should have been keeping an eye on you. You wanted to go and play with the bigger kids and I knew it was a bad idea, but the other parents looked at me as if I was being overprotective. So I let you go. I thought at least there’d be safety in numbers.’
I remembered. We begged her to let us go. The other kids were playing games in the bush. Wild adventurers scrambling up tree trunks and cooeeing across the valleys. We desperately wanted to join them. And finally Mum caved to the pressure—where was Dad? He must have been there, somewhere—and we were off. We played for a while, but then there was some squabble with the other kids and so Frankie and I struck out on our own, feeling brave and free.
‘I walked away from her.’ I’d never owned up to Mum and Dad before, convinced they would hate me forever. ‘She would have been safe if I’d stayed.’ Safety in numbers. ‘But I got annoyed at her and left. She was calling my name, but
I didn’t go back. I just kept walking away till I couldn’t hear her anymore.’
Mum stared at me. I realised we were on the precipice of the confrontation I’d been dreading for nine years.
She didn’t yell.
Didn’t tell me it was all my fault and I could never be forgiven.
She repeated, quietly: ‘You were seven. I should have been watching you.’
38
Grace and Evie were asleep when I got back to my room. I told myself that it had been a big couple of days, I should be tired. I wasn’t. My mind replayed the moment when Elias realised it was Yvonne, not Sephora. The crushing disappointment on his face. And me, so damn useless I couldn’t work out the right thing to do to make it better. And Mum…
I had spent nine years blaming myself for Frankie’s disappearance. Never once had I thought to blame Mum. But my God, she did.
No wonder she pushed herself so hard to be the perfect parent. She was trying to make amends. Maybe even, in some dark part of her subconscious, hoping that enough hard work—enough penance—would be rewarded with the miraculous return of my sister.
I wondered about Dad, whether this all-consuming guilt was a shared burden. They always presented a united front when it was needed, never criticised each other in our hearing. But to listen to Mum, you would think she was carrying the load entirely by herself.
I thought back to the moment when I had wished aloud for Frankie back. I had known it was a reckless move, but the only thing I’d been concerned about was how much trouble I’d get into for breaking Mum and Dad’s number-one rule. Not why they’d constructed such a fragile architecture of denial in the first place. And then I’d bullied them into telling the kids, when I knew it was the last thing they wanted. Out of some sense of outrage, I guess, that they’d set the rule in place to keep me contained. Not thinking even for a moment that it was a raw need to keep at arm’s length the grief and horror of any parent’s worst nightmare—because how else could they get out of bed each morning?
The Finder Page 24