Honest Love

by Lauren K. McKellar

  “He—how did he—”

  My father’s sigh stole my words.

  How did he get so bad? I turned to Eleanor, fire pumping through my veins. “What happened to make this—”

  “We don’t know,” she answered, gesturing to the hall. “Let’s discuss it outside.”

  I followed her, pulling the door to and folding my arms across my chest. “What the hell happened?”

  A peaceful smile tugged at Eleanor’s lips. Did they teach that look in nursing school? “He was having one of his usual episodes, where his mind went back to the café. He reached the part where the bomb went off, but instead of a few minutes of horror, it got … stuck. Like his mind was on a loop.” She gestured to the door. “We tried the ocean music, the television, and then we called you. In the last two minutes, it took a turn for the worse. I’m glad you came. I managed to get an IV into him and prepared to administer a sedative once we had your permission. I was about to call again to ask your permission.”

  I glanced back through the slit in the door. Dad lay peacefully on the bed, his once sharp hair fanned out in silver curls around his face.

  How I’d failed him.

  How I’d let my father down.

  “The doctor is on his way now and will conduct a thorough examination once Donald wakes. In the meantime, if you’d like to hang around, you’re welcome to make use of the common room.” Eleanor gestured down the hall. “There’s tea and coffee there, and a bathroom with a baby change facility, should you need it.”

  What was she—

  I followed her gaze. Everly stood next to Piper in her pram, both pairs of eyes on me.

  My lips tightened. “Thanks,” I muttered, and charged down the hall in the direction she’d pointed.

  I couldn’t believe I’d brought Piper here, I’d brought anyone here. How could I let my father, my strong, stoic father down by showing his weakness to others?

  I stormed through the door with the ‘common room’ sign out front and flicked the switch on the stainless-steel kettle. Rage vibrated through me like the ocean, anger so big it could barely be contained by my own skin. I clenched the orange laminate bench top. The sharp edge dug into the palms of my hands. My arms shook as I thought it over and over again: How could I have done this?

  “Cam.”

  Everly. I turned, staring at the woman in the doorway to the kitchen, her face so pale under the fluorescent lights. “What do you want?”

  “Are you okay?” She took one, two tentative steps inside the room, Piper staring at me from the pram. “That was pretty—”

  “That was none of your goddamn business,” I hissed.

  Her mouth opened into this O of shock as her eyebrows rose and she slowly stepped away, headed back toward the door. “I’ll just leave you to it then. When you decide to be less of an arsehole, I’ll be the one in the garden. With your daughter.” She leaned heavily on the last word.

  My daughter.

  I’d just snapped, yelled at a woman, one who’d done nothing but be nice to me, in front of my daughter.

  What sort of a monster was I?

  I was never like this before. With Bella, I was lighter. Happier. I thought before I spoke, instead of letting those emotions rule my body, my brain.

  I opened my mouth to apologise, to say something, but she’d already left the room. Instead, I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, my eyes on the kettle as bubbles began to roll inside of it.

  Why did I do that? Why did I push her away when she was only trying to help? It wasn’t her fault she was here. I’d wanted this. I hadn’t realised it at first, but I’d needed it.

  The kettle continued to bubble. Thoughts churned in my mind in response. My father. Why now? Why, after nearly two years, had he gone this far?

  Nothing had changed.

  Nothing.

  Nothing except …

  My visits.

  I hadn’t been to see Dad in nine long days.

  “Damn it,” I growled, my fist smashing in to the bench. Pain bit through my knuckles. My jaw clenched. Damn it. I should have come. I’d thought I was doing the right thing. It wasn’t goddamn fair.

  And that was the crux of it all. How could I have done this? How could she have done this?

  Only, I wasn’t talking about my father and Everly.

  I was talking about myself.

  I was talking about Bella.

  Because if I hadn’t gone to get a beer, if she hadn’t gone and goddamn died, then none of this would be happening right now.

  As the high-pitched whistle of the kettle rang in my ears, an echoing scream from my father played in my mind. Salt stung the corners of my eyes. My chest tightened. Air was hard to find, and my shoulders shuddered as pain tugged at them, dragging them down, pushing me under. Memories swam in my mind as I fought to stay afloat, fought to breathe. Bella, smiling. My father, tugging her close and pressing a kiss to her forehead. A wedding that never happened. A baby that was never born.

  A baby that would never be born.

  No. Please, no. It hurts too much.

  But as my eyes cinched tighter closed, as they blocked out the orange laminate of the bench, my warped reflection in the silver kettle, I only saw one thing.

  One face.

  Piper.

  For some goddamn reason—that little face of hers, watching, observing, silent—it was stuck in my mind.

  Chapter 14

  I found them in the yard, Piper sitting on a patch of grass, Everly squatted nearby, gesturing to a pink flower.

  “Rose,” she said, running one hand over the petal. “This is a rose.”

  As she turned back to face Piper, she caught a glimpse of me and stopped. Her arms folded across her chest like she was protecting herself, and she shifted closer to my daughter. As if I’d ever hurt her. As if I ever could.

  I snapped at her in the kitchen.

  I took a deep breath, slow. There was something I needed to say. A sentence that was going to be hard, but that I needed to speak, that I needed her to hear.

  “Everly, I’m sorry,” I said, and the words I thought would be so hard flowed out easily, like a wave onto the shore. “I’m sorry for how I acted to you, and how I acted in front of Piper. I shouldn’t have snapped. It was wrong, and it won’t happen again.”

  “Well, it better not.” She scooped Piper in her arms and straightened, her head high as she met my gaze with those storm-blue eyes of hers. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  It was a challenge and an invitation, all at once.

  I didn’t want to talk about it.

  I never had, not when the policeman asked me to give my report, not when Bella’s mother begged me to tell her what I’d seen. Each time I was asked, the memory had flashed in my mind in vivid technicolour. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t tell anyone what we’d been through.

  If the memory playing in my head hurt me so damn badly, why would I want others to see it? Why expose them to this brutal, painful picture when I could protect them from it instead?

  Because that was what I’d always done.

  Protect people.

  The right thing.

  “I’m a pretty good listener,” Everly said, a small smile at the corner of her lips. “You can tell me if you want.”

  “Okay,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “Okay.”

  Once more, I pushed the pram, this time along a path by the lake a few minutes from the recovery centre. Still, blue water stretched out into the distance, rolling green hills dancing across it on the other side.

  Everly didn’t push me to speak. She kept pace, even when I was walking too quickly. Even when I was slow. It was as if she were determined to match whatever speed I was ready to go at, and I couldn’t help but feel the idea applied to the situation in more ways than one.

  But why was I ready now? Why was she the one?

  Perhaps it was because she hadn’t recognised me that day. She didn’t want to fix me, like all the others had.

&nb
sp; Or was it just that something was different about her? She’d been teaching me so much about looking after this new life—now I needed to teach her about my death.

  We reached a wooden bench, and I checked Piper’s eyes were still closed before slowing the pram to a stop, sinking down onto the weathered timber seat. It creaked as it took my weight, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

  Everly sat by my side, her eyes on the lake in front of us. Three black swans swam a few feet away, gracefully dancing through the water.

  “Almost two years ago, there was a … a terrorist attack in Sydney.” The words didn’t sound as if they belonged to me. The voice was distant, level. Devoid of any emotion. “At a café just off Oxford St. The—”

  “The Three Swallows,” she said slowly, still not meeting my gaze.

  “Yes.” Huh. I thought she didn’t watch the news. “And that uh … that explosion. I was there.” I pressed my lips together. Dry. They were so goddamn dry. “We all were.”

  And we were. The people I loved most were all at that café: my dad, Bella, our unborn child. The only person missing was Mack, because he hadn’t been able to get the Friday off work. At the time, he’d sent me a text saying he was an unlucky bugger.

  He was the luckiest bugger I knew.

  “We were meeting to discuss last-minute wedding plans. The funny thing was, we didn’t have a booking and there were no seats. But my wife really wanted to go to that café, said she’d been there a few times with someone from—” I stopped. Someone from her obstetrician’s office. “She’d been there with a friend, and I always tried to give her everything she wanted. I saw an empty table, and I begged the waiter to let us have it until the people who were supposed to be there arrived. I still remember the reserved sign in the middle of the table with the name ‘Anderson’ on it …” I gave a bitter laugh, shaking my head. “We weren’t supposed to be there. But we were, and it was all my fault.”

  “Who’s we?” She didn’t argue. Didn’t say it wasn’t me. Her eyes were still on the lake, and it helped. It helped me feel as if this was a confession, not a conversation.

  “Bella and me. She was the—” Dry. My throat was so dry. The woman I loved. The mother of my child. The words halted on the tip of my tongue every time I went to say them, and I shook my head, letting it go. I didn’t need to tell her that. Not when the only people we’d told about our unborn child were my dad and Giselle. “Bella and I eloped in Vegas a year earlier, and my dad had always insisted that while he was okay with what we’d done, he wanted us to have a real ceremony. Like he and Mum had. Honest love needs honest commitment in front of family and friends. That was what he’d said.” I could still hear him saying those words, clear as day. “He asked Bella to tell him all about the wedding, only I’d heard the story a thousand times. So I decided to go to the—”

  The bar.

  The bar.

  But the missing word didn’t come out. It climbed my throat like reflux, shooting up and then dropping away to nothing, leaving an acidic taste in my mouth.

  “Honest love.” Everly reached out her hand and rested it on my leg, even though her eyes were still fixed on the horizon. “I like that. Honest love.”

  “Honest love,” I repeated, biting down on my lip. “You know the rest of the story. The bomb went off. I survived. They …” Cold, hard facts. You’re reciting the news. Something that happened to somebody else. “Bella died. Dad lived, but the shrapnel was so deep, so treacherous, that they had to amputate both his legs. His mind couldn’t be … it couldn’t be operated on. It couldn’t be fixed. And now, he can’t remove himself from the café that day.”

  “God.” Everly’s voice cracked over the word. “That’s …”

  “Just don’t,” I blurted out. “Just don’t say that’s horrible, or you’re sorry, or you wish there was something you could do.” I placed my hand over hers, giving it a small squeeze so she knew I wasn’t angry. “They’re all nice things people say, but they mean jack shit to me. They don’t change what happened. They don’t make it better.”

  “But you know what? Sometimes words aren’t about healing.” Everly looked at my hand, still over hers, and a brief flicker of something passed over her face. For one long moment, it seemed as if she were in agony, as if someone was ripping her soul in two.

  She muttered something under her breath, then turned to face me. “They’re about letting someone else know that you would fix it if you could. That you’re there if they’d like to talk.”

  “Maybe,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I agreed. I rested back against the chair. “Anyway, so that’s my father. He’s been in care because of the episodes. Most of the time, he just thinks he’s stuck at the café, but you can talk him out of it eventually. Whenever they give him too many sedatives, though, he drifts further and further away.”

  I looked at the lake. One of the swans waddled up the bank, its gait surprisingly awkward for such a graceful creature. “Dad’ll sleep all day now. Most of tomorrow as well. He’s always been like that with drugs. His body just doesn’t cope with them.”

  “And what about you?” Everly asked.

  “Me?” I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I meant you you. How are you after all that?” she said, a soft smile on her lips.

  “I’m …” I searched my mind for the answer. I couldn’t watch the news. I punched bags in a garage in the middle of the night.

  I was scared I was going to forget.

  I was so goddamn scared of that.

  “I … when it happened, I was a wreck. I stayed home, got drunk, did anything and everything I could to make it all go away.” I paused, looking at Piper. “I made choices I … well, I did things I shouldn’t have. One night, I was drunk. My friend Mack had dragged me out, and I … I slept with someone because she … for a moment, I thought she was …” My teeth gritted together.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to say—”

  “Bella,” I finished, nodding. “She looked like Bella, and I just needed to forget. I just needed to pretend things were okay.” I ground my jaw. It sounded pathetic, saying it aloud.

  “Did it work?” Everly asked drily, and I breathed out in relief. She wasn’t judging me. Not mad.

  “No. But that’s how I have Piper. And now, I guess things are getting … better.” I nodded, slow. “I’ve been dealing with it. I did the denial, the anger, the bargaining and the depression … all the stages of grief, I passed. But the thing is, there’s this sixth stage they don’t talk about.”

  “Oh yeah?” She arched an eyebrow. “And what is this stage, Dr Cameron?”

  I nudged her ribs, and she laughed. “It’s fear. Fear of forgetting. Fear of moving on when the person you loved could not.”

  Everly reached for my hand and linked her fingers through it.

  That simple action spoke of all the words I needed.

  But it wasn’t until we were in the car on the way home that I truly realised what I’d said.

  Loved.

  Fear of moving on when the person you loved could not.

  Past tense.

  Chapter 15

  Dear Bella,

  I still miss you. I miss you so much, it keeps me awake.

  I wake from my nightmares, a sweat-soaked mess. I never remember the details—all I remember is the smoke. The pain. That aching in my body that makes me wonder if I’ll ever be whole again.

  But the days are a little less empty now. It’s hard to keep on hurting when someone needs you so much. When you have to give every part of yourself to another human being who depends on you to stay alive.

  I feel out of my depth all the time. I put Piper down the other day, just for a moment while I went to the toilet, and she crawled away.

  She was fine, just in the next room, but it scared the life outta me. I fucking hated that fear. I hated it more than I’ve hated anything in a real long time.

  I have been getting some help, though. Some advice. A woman I—<
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  A woman I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  A woman I couldn’t mention in a letter to my wife.

  I screwed the note up in a ball, tossing it in the trash as I went to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Just another letter I’ll never be able to complete.

  It was time to sweat out my anger again.

  I didn’t see Everly for seven days. She said she had things to do, and I didn’t ask what. Perhaps my story reminded her of her own loss, of not being able to have children. Perhaps she had to work. Perhaps she just needed space.

  Either way, I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t reach out. I just focused on spending time with Piper.

  Slowly but surely, we were becoming a team. I looked forward to the time when she opened her eyes in the morning—the smile she greeted me with when I entered her room. When I picked her up, she didn’t cry—she smiled, and sometimes, she lifted her hands high above her head, ready for me to pull her into my embrace.

  We were growing, and I liked it. I liked it a lot.

  But after one long week of radio silence, one long week of just the occasional hi from mothers at the park, I was craving adult interaction. I missed the easy camaraderie Everly and I had. I missed talking about Piper, what she was doing.

  More than that.

  I missed … sharing her. Having someone else comment on how cute she was when she laughed. How clever she was when she pointed to the door and said “siiiigh”, as if she were telling us she wanted to go outside.

  And since Everly didn’t seem to be an option for us anymore, I took Piper on a road trip an hour up the coast, and we went to visit Mack.

  “If it isn’t the baby daddy himself.” Mack’s arms opened wide as he took me into his embrace, pulling me tight to his chest. He slapped one hand on my back, then stepped away, crouching in front of the pram. “And his divine little lady. Nice to see you again, beautiful.” He reached forward and took her hand.

  She cried.

  A tiny part of me smiled. Looked like this was one woman Mack couldn’t win over.