The Maxwell Sisters

by Loretta Hill

  He recalled the gifts he’d showered her with in the weeks before. Sexy lingerie, red roses, jewellery, you name it … he’d pulled out all the stops with the romance. Anything to cheer her up, make her forget what he couldn’t face.

  Sophia.

  They’d lost her.

  When Tash had miscarried, the grief had almost been unbearable. He hadn’t wanted to dwell on it though. But it seemed like that was all Tash wanted to do. She had wanted to talk about their baby. Name her. Put a notice in the paper about her. He hadn’t been able to deal with all that. It was too much like being trapped in a nightmare.

  When she had finally fallen pregnant after so many years of trying, it had been the happiest point in their marriage – the moment where it had all come together for them. And he had wanted to get back to that place. Before Sophia’s death, before everything had started falling apart.

  In hindsight, he cringed at his own foolishness.

  Presenting her with those tickets had been like a bomb exploding in his face. He’d never seen such fury in her eyes. Her voice had been so quiet when she’d finally spoken, like the white light before the big bang.

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this.’

  ‘It’s exactly what we need, Tash. We need to focus on the future and the happy things in our life. A holiday like this … lots of relaxing, plenty of sun. You might be pregnant again by the time we get home.’

  She choked. ‘Our baby was not a goldfish, Heath. You don’t just go out and buy another one.’

  His face had frozen. ‘Hardly, Tash, it’s been months. I wish you would stop harping on like that.’

  Her voice shook. ‘Two months in which you have not grieved or even paused. And every time I try to talk about this with you, you brush me off like it was nothing.’

  This was true. Not the nothing part, the brush-off bit.

  Heath did not talk about his feelings. He never had. And, in fact, had been raised not to. His mother, the wife of a war veteran, had always steered him clear of difficult subjects.

  ‘Don’t ask Daddy about Vietnam. Don’t ask him why he’s crying. Don’t ask him why he’s having nightmares. Leave him alone. You’ll just make things worse.’

  He had been taught to always look to the future, focus on the positives. Don’t look back because the past would only hurt you again.

  ‘Tash, I –’

  ‘You don’t seem to feel anything.’

  ‘Tash, I thought it was obvious how I felt. What have these last few weeks been if not a demonstration of my love for you?’

  ‘Flowers? Jewellery? That’s not the kind of love I need right now. I don’t understand how you can continue to be this insensitive.’

  ‘How am I being insensitive?’

  ‘I don’t want to try for another baby now,’ she’d practically yelled at him. ‘Do you see me, Heath? Do you see what I’m going through at all?’

  And perhaps then, and only then, his head had risen above the fog of his own need to move away from the pain and he had seen her.

  ‘I –’ she placed her hand over her heart, ‘I think we need a break from each other.’

  His body had seized up. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know that transfer your boss suggested earlier this year?’ She blinked back tears. ‘I think you should take it.’

  ‘Tash, if our love for each other is to survive this, living apart is not going to help.’

  She was silent for a moment and an awful premonition had caught him, making his skin tingle.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ she had responded slowly, almost mechanically. ‘I don’t think … I don’t think I love you any more.’

  It was like a blow to the head.

  ‘You’re not the man I fell in love with,’ she blurted. ‘I don’t recognise this new person in my life. This man who won’t talk to me, won’t allow me to grieve the death of my own child and who belittles my concerns.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘At some point, Heath,’ her voice trembled, ‘a person needs to decide whether it’s better to take a step back and heal or let the person you’re with do more damage than what has already been done.’

  He had stared back at her in shock. Her expression had not changed. She had tears in her eyes but her jaw was set. She had made up her mind. And he knew her stubborn streak better than anyone.

  ‘Well, I guess that’s it then,’ he’d responded harshly and walked out of the kitchen. Pride had taken him to Melbourne and kept him silent for a couple of months. However, when all you had was time to think, it wasn’t long before you began to realise that maybe the fault was not entirely someone else’s. And so he’d tried to get back in touch again.

  What he hadn’t banked on was Tash setting up a wall around herself as thick as a hedge and as high as a prison fence. When he’d tried to re-establish contact from Melbourne, she’d cut him off at every pass. Didn’t respond to emails. Didn’t respond to calls, text messages or voicemail.

  Then one day, she’d changed all her contact details so that his messages bounced every time. The last communication he’d had from her was an email saying that she was going on a business trip and would not be home for months. In anger, he’d cancelled the trip he’d planned home to visit her that week.

  In fact, Tash had thought she’d had herself well covered until her sister had called to invite him to the wedding. He was shocked and hurt to learn that she had lost her job and had lied to him about that business trip. And then a kind of grim satisfaction had taken over. At last! Now he had a way to approach Tash where she could not run away.

  It was long overdue.

  They may be separated but they weren’t divorced and there was a lot of water under the bridge that they needed to sort out whether she liked it or not.

  As the two of them walked into the dining room, he noticed that the family had automatically left them two seats side by side. He took his next to her gratefully. At least he had their ignorance on his side. From the looks of the faces around the room, however, this was probably all that was in his favour.

  Bringing their problems to Tawny Brooks might not have been such a good idea. It wasn’t exactly Switzerland. His gaze flitted about the room, pausing briefly on different faces. Eve, Spider, Phoebe. He winced at the secrets he knew and had kept for so long to protect Tash – to protect their family. He didn’t need to keep those secrets any more.

  It was time Tash knew it all.

  He paused longest on Spider, a man he had long struggled to understand. On the surface he seemed harmless, a nice enough bloke. Easy to talk to. Good for a laugh.

  But Tash’s dad didn’t like him. With good reason too. He had wondered how his father-in-law was taking the marriage of his daughter to a man he simply did not trust. The conversation in the sitting room earlier had only confirmed John’s unease.

  Heath focused once more on Tash – the aching vulnerability in her face, at such odds with the way she treated him.

  He had no idea whether he’d made the right choice coming here but it was done now and fingers crossed, it would serve him well.

  Chapter 9

  Natasha knew as soon as Phoebe took the box off the shelf that things weren’t going to go well for anyone.

  I mean, what is that girl thinking?

  We’re not a class of her students.

  She wanted to groan with the awkwardness of it all but knew there was no stopping her sister, who was trying to beat her enthusiasm into everyone else.

  It was a relief to retire to the dining room until Heath fell in beside her and tried to engage her in conversation. It wasn’t what he said, so much as him just being there that affected her. His energy was like a physical field that cut through her body, leaving her breathless. Or was it the fact that he looked so great that had extracted the air from her lungs?

  It wasn’t fair.

  You would have thought by now, after everything they’d been through, that she would be immune to his go
od looks. She pushed the fingernails of one hand into her palm, her heart rate leaping as his arm accidentally brushed hers on the walk down the narrow hall.

  He was the embodiment of tall, dark and handsome. She should be able to see through that shallow label for what it was. But instead, it conjured up good times, the early days of their marriage and the years before Sophia.

  She had always been attracted to his quiet dignity. His loving consideration, unrelenting determination and crooked smile. The way he called her every day from work, no matter how busy he was, to see how her day was going. The way his head bent ever so slightly when he listened to her speak, in deference to her opinion. That wicked twinkle in his eyes when he was pulling her leg. The way he cooked her soup when she was sick.

  All gone … There was nothing left but a stoic awkwardness between them, which sat so heavily on her heart. Right next to the memory of Sophia.

  Everyone was taking their seats while her mother went to get the moussaka out of the oven. The creamy casserole baked to golden perfection had never before failed to set her mouth watering. Now, however, she seemed to have lost all appetite for it. In fact, she felt rather nauseous when Heath took his seat beside hers, his long lean fingers resting on the white tablecloth between their cutlery.

  Questions were racing round her head. She was dying to get him alone, out of earshot, and yet she was afraid too. If she was feeling a pull towards him here with eight other people in the room, how was she going to cope with him all to herself?

  She still needed to ask him what he was doing here. What he meant by turning up unannounced like this when he knew that she had no desire to see him.

  She remembered their countless arguments in Sydney. And also the ones she’d wanted to have but he had walked away from. In the aftermath of Sophia’s death, the most common feeling she’d had was loneliness. In a time of such loss, it was the worst kind of cruelty anyone could inflict upon another person. Let alone the person you were supposed to love. Memories of her confusion and pain scalded her. Had time healed those wounds?

  She remembered the day it had all gone wrong. Her pregnancy was twelve weeks along and she’d gone in for a routine check-up. Their baby had already passed away. Her heartbeat had stopped a few days before. Finding that out had been one of the worst moments in her life.

  Heath had not even been there. Not that this was entirely his fault. He wasn’t to know the news she would receive. But she had expected his time and his support after the D and C procedure in the hospital to remove their child from her womb.

  Instead, the next day he had gone back to work and advised her to do the same.

  She felt like he was angry with her. Angry and disappointed. After all, they had been trying for a child for years. All her life, she’d been able to achieve anything with hard work and perseverance.

  Two degrees at uni, the career heights she aimed for, the house she’d always wanted, the suburb she’d always wanted to live in, the car she’d planned to drive when she was successful. She’d done it all by keeping her focus.

  But all the smarts in the world couldn’t get her pregnant.

  Why hadn’t anyone told her that?

  Conceiving alone had taken a toll on their marriage, but losing their baby had been the death blow.

  ‘We should name her,’ she had pleaded in the weeks that followed.

  ‘No.’ Heath had refused. ‘You’re just torturing yourself, Tash. You’re torturing us.’

  ‘You want to pretend like she never existed.’

  ‘But she didn’t exist,’ he had argued back, the words cutting her like a knife. ‘She was never born.’

  She had named her anyway. And whenever they spoke of her, she used the baby’s name to show him that Sophia had existed. To remind him of what they had lost, so that he might grieve with her.

  But he hadn’t. He’d taken on more projects at work. Made plans for their future. Showered her in meaningless gifts.

  ‘We’ve lost a child!’ she had screamed at him.

  ‘No, I’ve lost you,’ he’d returned quietly before leaving her alone once more.

  She stared at her plate now, unable to look up or respond to the small talk around her.

  ‘Well,’ Heath said quietly, ‘since you wouldn’t tell me over email, perhaps you can tell me in person. How have you been, Tash?’

  ‘Fine,’ she responded shortly, making no move to elaborate.

  So he filled the silence. ‘Work has been really busy for me. I was very lucky to find someone who could take over my upcoming jobs so I could get away and help here.’

  Despite her earlier caution, she couldn’t stop the question springing from her lips. ‘Why are you here, Heath? Why did you come?’

  ‘Because your sister needed my expertise. She wants me to supervise the new floor going in. She can’t afford professional labour, but I can guide you guys to make sure it’s done by the drawings.’

  ‘I’m sure we could have found someone else.’

  He was silent for a second. ‘Do you really want to discuss this now in front of everyone?’

  ‘Wow, so now you’re pretending to be considerate of my privacy after pulling this stunt.’

  Her voice had risen a little and she glanced around the table to see if anyone had heard. But no one was paying any attention.

  After a moment he broke the silence again. ‘I thought you might need me too. I heard you lost your job.’

  Great! The last thing she wanted was his pity on top of everything else. ‘I’ll get a new one,’ she shrugged. ‘In the meantime, I’m happy to be having some time off.’

  ‘If you need any help financially –’ he began.

  Her cheeks burned. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Tash, there’s no shame in leaning on someone else for help now and then.’

  Her food tasted like sawdust on her lips. She shut her eyes. ‘Please, I don’t want to discuss this now.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he said softly and a little too confidently as he stuck his fork back in his salad, ‘we’ll wait till after dinner when we go back to our room … to talk.’

  ‘Our room?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll be able to speak there, alone.’

  Of course. She swallowed hard. How could she not have seen this coming?

  Chapter 10

  In her haste to move away from Adonis, Eve entered the dining room rather speedily and took a chair between her sister and mother so that he wouldn’t be able to sit next to her. Had she had her head screwed on straight, she probably would have picked the seat next to Phoebe rather than Tash, who seemed hell-bent on giving her the silent treatment. Her elder sister stared steadfastly at her plate, refusing to utter a word or even look at her.

  Well, two can play at that game.

  She turned to her mother, who was busy cutting the moussaka into individual portions. She had already served a piece to Phoebe and Spider and was now holding out her hand for Eve’s plate. Eve picked it up and passed it to her.

  With knife and spatula poised, Anita asked, ‘How much would you like, Eve?’

  ‘Not much,’ she said quietly. ‘Just a little piece, please.’

  ‘This much?’ Anita poised the knife to cut a piece that was much too big.

  ‘No.’ Eve shook her head.

  ‘This much?’

  ‘No, still too much.’

  She moved the knife further back. ‘And now?’

  ‘Er … yes, that’s good.’

  Anita huffed. ‘You can’t possibly only want that much.’

  ‘I’m not that hungry.’

  ‘Why not? You’ve hardly eaten anything all day.’

  ‘Yes, I have. I had heaps of nibbles in the sitting room just now.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t see you.’ Her mother frowned. ‘Not to worry. I’ll just give you a bit extra.’

  She returned the knife to the original piece she had been about to cut, sliced it and transferred it to her plate. With a sigh, Eve accepted her giant piec
e of moussaka and placed her plate down in front of her.

  ‘Bread?’ She looked up to find Adonis, sitting across the table from her, holding out the bread basket, his eyes twinkling in amusement. How stupid of her to avoid sitting next to him, when being face to face was much more deadly. In any case, she didn’t know why he was taking such an annoying interest in what she was doing. She liked staying under the radar and he was totally ruining that for her. Still recovering from events earlier that evening, her nerves couldn’t sustain more embarrassment. Couldn’t he just leave her alone?

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Are you sure?’ His eyes danced even more wickedly.

  ‘Yes,’ she hissed and averted her gaze to watch her mother, who had started to serve Patricia and Graeme.

  ‘Here,’ Tash spoke quietly to her, ‘I don’t want much either.’

  While their mother was distracted, Tash cut Eve’s piece evenly in two and transferred one half to her own plate.

  ‘Quick, get some salad,’ her sister whispered but Eve already knew the drill. How many times had they done this as teenagers?

  They covered half their plate in leaves to disguise the actual size of their slices. By this stage, their mother had worked her way around the table and had just finished serving a slice to Heath.

  ‘Natasha?’ She held out her hand for her plate.

  ‘You’ve already served me, Mum.’

  Anita frowned. ‘Have I?’

  ‘Yes, see.’

  ‘So I have.’ She rested the spatula and sat down.

  Eve and Tash exchanged a look.

  ‘Thanks,’ Eve whispered.

  ‘No problem,’ Tash said back with a slight smile.

  A wave of nostalgia squeezed Eve’s heart. In horror, she realised she was starting to tear up. For goodness sake, Eve. Pull yourself together.

  She blinked rapidly and looked at her hands.