Only Daughter

by Anna Snoekstra

  The water stopped. Throwing the phone back onto the bed, she hoisted herself out of the window. In one swift movement she fell into the brightness of the summer morning. She ducked down and crawled back past the window of the sleeping fat man, back under the low-hanging branch and onto the glaring concrete of the front driveway. Then she started to run, without turning back.

  15

  2014

  Last night I had the dream again. But it’s different this time. I watch Bec walk down her street and a car pulls up but she isn’t scared. She says hello to the driver. She smiles as she gets in. Firstly the driver is Lizzie, and then it’s Lizzie’s father. Then the driver changes to Bec’s mother, her eyes alight like I’ve never seen them, her teeth slightly pointed as she smiles a huge clownish grin. The car drives away and I hear Bec crying, knowing she’s going to die.

  I sip my coffee slowly. The caffeine doesn’t help, though. There was no way the journalist had sent that text. He hadn’t sent the first one either. I’d been so stupid to assume that.

  Someone is after me. Someone wants to do to me what they did to Bec. I need to go. I should have left last night. But the street is still cordoned off, the reporters waiting for me to reveal myself. If I walk down there, my face will be on the front of every newspaper in the country. It’s not just that—in my gut I know I can’t just leave. To let whoever took Bec keep walking around wearing the mask of a normal person. For there to be no consequences for erasing her from this life. I know I should go, save myself. But I don’t. I just sit here, drinking coffee. Feeling trapped.

  My phone rings and I almost jump out of my skin. It’s Lizzie.

  “Hey, it’s me,” she says. “Listen. Jack told me what you said. I want to fix things. Do you feel like going out for a drive? Maybe grab a coffee?”

  “Okay,” I say. Even though I know I should say no. I know I should just leave and never look back. “There’s a roadblock, though. You’ll have to get the cop who’s guarding it to call the house.”

  “That’s fine. See you soon.”

  I watch through the front window, feeling suddenly jittery. I desperately want to tell someone. I need to tell someone. Really, the person I should be calling is Andopolis. But if I tell him about the text messages I’d have to also tell him the truth about me. I don’t want to go to jail. Impersonation plus credit card fraud would definitely mean jail time. But worse, I’d have to go back. I’d have to face my stepmom. Maybe jail would be better than that.

  Lizzie pulls up in a purple Volkswagen. I run out of the house and get in, pulling the jacket over myself again. As she drives slowly through the hordes of journalists, their yells get louder and louder.

  “Rebecca? Bec? Is that you?”

  “Where have you been, Bec?”

  I hear hands banging on the windows, the clicks of shutters, scrapes of feet against cement. My heart starts to race, like they are everywhere. I press my head against my knees.

  “Go away!” Liz yells, honking her horn. She revs her motor, and as the crowd quiets for a moment, she speeds away.

  “Ha, I wish you hadn’t missed that. Their faces… It’s like they really thought I’d just run them down!” She laughs.

  Pulling the jacket off slowly, I look out the windows. We’re on the main road now. A moment of awkward silence.

  “So, you and Jack, hey?” she says, breaking it.

  “I dunno,” I say. I don’t want to talk about him. He’s already texted me a bunch of times this morning but I hadn’t replied. I knew it was cruel but I had no idea what to say.

  “Don’t play coy with me,” she says. “He always had the most massive crush on you, you know.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “Slut,” she says, smiling at me. I don’t smile back.

  “Let’s go to that café in the Yarralumla Woods. I can grab some takeaways so we can sit in the park and no one will bother you,” she says, trying to clear the air, I suppose. “Have you been there since you’ve been back?”

  When I got in the car I was so ready to tell her everything. Now it feels impossible.

  “No.”

  “Cool. You know, that place was really lucky. It hardly got touched by the fires.”

  “That’s good,” I say, barely listening. “Did they do a lot of damage?”

  “They wiped out a few suburbs, Bec,” she says, looking at me. “It was terrifying. People died. Jack and I sat on our roof watching them get closer and closer until we had to evacuate.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “It was.”

  Silence again.

  “How’s your mom going?”

  “She’s okay, I guess.”

  “She seemed a bit weird when I was over the other day.”

  I tried to remember what the mother had been doing that day, when Lizzie had been standing in the doorway crying. She’d seemed the same as always.

  “Weird how?”

  “I haven’t been around her in a really long time but I remember her being so strict. She looked like she was sleepwalking the other day, though. I almost didn’t recognize her.”

  Strict was probably the last word I’d use to describe the mother. I couldn’t imagine her being anything close to that. Except for that moment in the garage yesterday when she’d basically ordered me to get out.

  “I used to be a bit scared of her. I was so sure she thought I was some dumb blonde, that you should have someone better as a best friend.”

  I pull off my jacket and lean back. Perhaps this coffee won’t be bad. At least it will be a distraction from thinking about the text message yesterday and that awful hurt look on Jack’s face when I left.

  “I guess it’s losing a child. It must affect people in different ways,” Liz is saying.

  She looks over at me, then stares down at my dress, a funny look on her face. It was one of the slightly more adult dresses in Bec’s closet, made from a brown gingham material.

  “Do you remember when we got that dress? It was from the Bus Depot Markets.”

  “Yeah,” I say, and she still stares at me, as though she’s expecting more. “That was a fun day.”

  Lizzie says nothing and I realize she’s pulling over. We’re next to a huge lake; there’s no café around anywhere.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She turns the car off, but doesn’t say anything. She just looks blankly ahead of her, at the wide blue lake and the black swans floating over it. The clouds above are slightly grey, as though it’s going to rain later.

  “You know your voice sounds nothing like Bec’s,” she says suddenly.

  My heart stops.

  “I guess most people might forget what she sounded like after all this time, but I haven’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, desperately wishing I’d made more of an effort.

  “You look a lot like her—I’ll give you that. But you don’t act anything like her at all.”

  “Lizzie,” I say, trying to save it, “it’s me. I’m Bec.”

  She turns on me, her eyes flaming.

  “Don’t fucking lie to me anymore. I don’t know who you are but you aren’t Bec.”

  I don’t say anything. I can’t. I feel so deeply ashamed.

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  There is no point now. She knows.

  “No. I never met her,” I say.

  Tears begin running down Lizzie’s cheeks.

  “Why would you do this? You came back and I thought she was okay. Now it’s like she’s gone all over again.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  We sit in silence. Staring out at the lake. My body feels cold.

  “Please don’t tell anyone, Liz. Please. I couldn’t stand to do it to her family.”

  “As if you give a shit!”

  “I do.” And I really did.

  “Please, Liz. I’ll leave. I’ll tell them I want to start fresh and I’ll call them every few weeks. You won’t ever have to see me again.�
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  “Get out of my fucking car.” She hates me.

  “Someone is threatening me. I’m scared.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I need your help.” She says nothing, so I continue, my words tumbling on top of each other. “I think the person who took Bec is still out there. I think it was someone she knew—”

  “No more bullshit!” she yells.

  “It’s not bullshit, I promise.”

  She doesn’t believe me, and who would blame her, really? There’s no way she’s going to help me.

  “Please,” I say, “just give me until tomorrow. I need to know who it is.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it. But get out now. I’m worried I might hit you.”

  I unclip my seat belt and jump out of her car. I look back at her. Her eyes are vacant but her mouth is twisted with the force of unthinkable pain.

  My head feels hot and heavy and I feel a hard pressure against my chest. I lean against a tree, forcing myself to breathe deeply. Behind me I hear Lizzie drive away.

  The evil of what I’ve been doing hits me hard. This was unforgivable; it was the worst thing someone could do to another human being. I really was going to have to leave. But I didn’t want to. If I left and everyone still thought I was Bec, that she was safe living a new life somewhere, then that would be the end of it all. It would be final and whoever was responsible for what had really happened to her would never be punished.

  I look over at the lake; its surface is perfectly reflecting the sky. Bec’s body might be in there, floating in a garbage bag, weighed down by rocks. She could be anywhere. The only person who knew where she was right now was the killer. The person who’d texted me. But that gave me an advantage, because they were also the only person who would have known straightaway I wasn’t who I said I was.

  I think back over the time since I arrived. There must be something, some kind of sign that the person was lying.

  The map on my phone directs me and I begin walking home. It is getting cold. I feel vulnerable walking out here in this barren landscape, the only figure amongst the sparse white trunks of gum trees, glowing in the fading light.

  I’ve always been good at pretending. At playing roles. I realize that’s what I’ve been doing here. Trying on Bec for size. Being a tourist in someone else’s life. A parasite. Just like the person who had taken Bec, I am always wearing a mask, playing a character. Perhaps because I’m afraid of what will be under the mask, something ugly maybe or, worse, nothing at all.

  The urge to leave Bec’s life is strong now. Someone is after me. I might be killed. But I can’t run away. I have to stay. I owe Bec that. Just one more day. Even if it means getting caught.

  I get home just before the rain starts. My phone died and I had wandered the streets in the dark until something familiar stood out. As I approached the street I could see the glow from the cordoned-off journalists area. They had set up lights.

  They had no plans to move on anytime soon. Keeping to the shadows, I watched them numbly for a few moments. They were smoking cigarettes, rubbing their hands together to keep warm. Laughing in small groups.

  I didn’t once consider turning around and not going back. I’d made my decision. Instead I walked around the block to the street on the other side of the cul-de-sac. I could see the second story of our house dwarfing the small cottage in front. I sneaked around the side, keeping low under lit-up windows and then jumping the back fence into our yard. I rushed to the front of the house and now, as the first drops of water begin to fall, I brace myself. Liz might have already called them. I unlock the door with frozen fingers.

  “Hey, Becky!” says Paul. He’s sitting in the lounge room with his iPad on his lap and his feet up. “Andrew and I were starting to get worried that you forgot we were leaving tomorrow.”

  “Or that you’d prefer to spend the night with your new boyfriend!” calls Andrew from the kitchen.

  Lizzie hadn’t called. Somehow, she’d found it in her heart to give me my last day.

  “Of course I didn’t forget,” I say, and the relief is overwhelming. I sit down next to Paul on the couch. The warmth of him next to me is soothing. I feel safe again, just for a moment.

  “Good,” he says, putting an arm around me. I watch as he scrolls through his emails.

  It makes me think of Jack’s father, the weird way he looked up at me from his iPad. He didn’t seem surprised to see me that day, not like everyone else. A shudder runs through me. Paul rubs my arm, as though he thinks I’m still shivering from the cold.

  The way he looked at me was all wrong. Was it because he knew? Knew I wasn’t Bec because he’d killed her himself. He’d lied to the police; I knew that already. He must have had a reason to do that. The image of him dropping the hat at the vigil comes into my mind. How did I miss it before? He shouldn’t have had Bec’s McDonald’s hat; surely she would have been wearing it on her walk home that night.

  Whatever the parents are cooking smells amazing. I get up and go into the kitchen to have a look. The mom is stirring something in the pot and the father is cutting vegetables. Andrew sits at the table, tapping at his phone.

  “Do you want to grate the cheese?” asks the dad, pushing the grater toward me.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Tonight is the last night. None of them know that I will be leaving tomorrow, along with the twins. I try to push the feeling of loss away and just enjoy these precious last moments with them.

  “So what are you up to tomorrow?” asks Andrew. “Seeing Vince again?”

  “Maybe,” I lie. “I might go and see Lizzie.”

  But it wasn’t Lizzie I was going to see. It was her father.

  16

  Bec, 17 January 2003

  When you are absolutely exhausted and numb and hating the world, there is nothing quite like having the house to yourself.

  The twins weren’t speaking to her and had gone out on their bikes to who knows where, and her parents were at work.

  Bec was still in her pyjamas and she had no intention of changing out of them until she absolutely had to. For once her house felt like a safe place from the tornado her life had become. Here, she was safe from her fight with Lizzie, safe from having to look Luke in the eye, safe from Ellen’s disappointment. Lying on the black leather couch in the living room, she stared at the ceiling and tried to make her mind go blank. Instead of thinking, she focused on the way the leather felt under her bare feet, the squeaking sound it made if she rubbed them against it. She tried to imagine that this cool, quiet house was her world. That the baking, bright outside didn’t exist.

  She had three hours until she had to go to work. Thank God she was working with neither Lizzie nor Luke. Slowly, she slid herself off from the couch. Picking up her coffee cup, she took it into the kitchen and washed it, watching the soap suds slip from its surface and gurgle down the drain. She dried it softly and then put it back in the cupboard, like she’d never used it at all. She feared turning on the television would break the spell. With nothing else to do, she went back up to her bedroom.

  Yesterday she hadn’t wanted to come home, afraid of a confrontation with her brothers. So she’d spent the day wandering around the city alone, sweating through her bathers. Eventually she got so sick of carrying around her beach towel she threw it in a rubbish bin.

  She’d been so angry that, when Luke’s face flashed into her mind, her fists would clench and she had the overwhelming urge to hit something. She had never, ever felt like that before. The steaming combination of anger and shame twisted in her stomach all day; she was sick with it.

  Today she felt a bit better, though, if feeling nothing could be counted as feeling better. Sitting on her bed, she waited for the minutes to tick by. Enjoying these last few hours of being alone before she’d have to go to work and try, somehow, to put on a smile. Being alone here felt so right, so easy. But she knew it wouldn’t look good, wouldn’t look pretty. She saw herself from a distance for a moment
: a hunched back, a blank look in her eyes, oily hair dangling limply around her face. Her gut wrenched at the familiarity of the image: when Max first got back from the hospital, he’d looked just like this.

  She remembered the hurt look in Lizzie’s eyes when she told her to leave, but then she also remembered Lizzie spinning her and laughing and falling over on top of each other at the party the other night. She remembered going to the flower festival together every year, having breakfast at Gus’s at three in the afternoon and feeling like an adult, going paddleboating and Lizzie screaming as she took them right underneath the big fountain. Without Lizzie, her life would be darker. When it came down to it, Luke meant nothing. She didn’t even know him. He had made himself into a mirror reflecting her own desires back at her. Lizzie was different. Lizzie was moody and opinionated and annoying and the other half of Bec’s heart. She would take on the worst things in the world if she had Lizzie to laugh and bitch about them with. It wasn’t Luke who she should be telling everything to; it was Lizzie. Without even thinking about it, her hand shot out for her mobile. She called the number and waited. It went to voice mail. But she had time. If she left now she could go past Lizzie’s house before work. She’d have only about half an hour to plead her case, to ask for forgiveness, but it would have to be enough.

  She was only just out the door when she got that feeling again, that awful feeling of being watched. She kept walking, determined not to look over her shoulder.

  When she got to Lizzie’s house she was already feeling relieved. Just the monotonous walk up her street from the bus stop was comforting. The dog that always barked when you walked past his gate, the fertilizer on the garden at the corner that always stank. Things were already getting back to normal. She knocked softly on the door and waited. For a moment she thought perhaps she had knocked too softly and was about to try again, when she heard footsteps come slowly down the stairs. The door swung open. It wasn’t Lizzie’s face that stared down at Bec, but her father’s.