The Boy in the Photo

by Nicole Trope

  ‘People who hurt other people need to pay for what they’ve done.’

  She looks over at him, at her son. In the dim light of the garage, his eyes are dark, his gaze flat.

  ‘Is that what happened to Dad, Daniel?’ she whispers. ‘Did he pay for hurting you?’

  A wide smile crawls across his face and Megan feels herself stiffen.

  ‘Dad got burned in a fire,’ he says, and then the smile disappears and he drops his head into his hands.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she whispers. She reaches over to touch him but he opens the car door and darts upstairs.

  He didn’t just say that. He didn’t just smile and say that, Megan thinks as she hears him call ‘hello’ to his grandmother.

  Megan listens to her own voice tell her mother, ‘Thanks for babysitting,’ but after she has closed the front door, she watches her hands shake as she fills the kettle. Why had he smiled? What was he thinking? She watches Evie chewing on a toy, babbling and dribbling; a smile appears whenever she catches sight of her mother.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she says, getting down onto the floor and kissing her daughter’s soft, dark hair.

  ‘Mmm, mmm, mum, mum,’ says Evie.

  I cannot do this anymore. I cannot take it anymore. ‘I wish he had never come home,’ she whispers, just loud enough for her own ears. But as soon as she says the words, guilt slams into her. She shakes her head, wishing the words away, tears rolling down her face.

  You’re a terrible mother, an ungrateful bitch. You don’t deserve to have children.

  There he is again, in the room, dead but not dead. Greg will never go away, never stop tormenting her.

  Megan stands up and returns to the kitchen. She throws her newly poured cup of tea in the sink and instead pulls a bottle of vodka out of the freezer. She has two quick mouthfuls, savouring the acidic burn before she puts it away again. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.

  ‘Stop it now. Enough,’ she says loudly enough to make Evie stop playing with her toy. Her daughter crawls over to the kitchen, searching for something else to do.

  She is being ridiculous. She needs to deal with things one day at a time. She does not want Daniel to contact Audrey and William. She knows that, in their grief, they will not hesitate to blame her. She knows, without a doubt, that they will take an innocuous conversation about their family tree and find a way to discuss her, to denigrate her. She is struggling enough, trying to get him to fight through the lies his father has told him; there is no way she is letting his calculating parents speak to her son until she is sure that he is in a more stable place.

  She rehearses the conversation she will have to have with him when she tells him he is not allowed to contact his grandparents. Round and round she goes in her head, debating if preventing him from speaking to them is the right thing to do, if she is just being selfish and paranoid or if she has a legitimate reason for saying no.

  After ten minutes of standing in the kitchen, mindlessly watching Evie unpack her drawer full of pots and pans, she realises that she is doing exactly what Greg wants her to do. She is questioning herself, arguing with herself, judging her choices instead of standing by them.

  ‘Screw you, Greg,’ she whispers. ‘I’m not letting them speak to him. No way.’

  The following Monday, she makes a call to the school. She speaks to Mrs Oxford, explaining the situation with his English grandparents. She talks until she is sure she understands and she tells her so. ‘I don’t want you to worry, Mrs Kade,’ she says. ‘I will sort it out. We have a lot of complicated families in the classroom, and more than one child who doesn’t speak to one set of grandparents. I should have thought this through more thoroughly. My apologies.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for Daniel, for all the kids with – as you say – complicated families. I don’t want you to feel you have to change the project for Daniel. I just thought you could have a word with him, maybe explain that he doesn’t need to trace both sides of his family.’

  ‘Leave it with me, Mrs Kade. All will be well.’

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-two days since Daniel’s return

  A few days of relative peace follow. Daniel spends time with his grandparents, looking through old family albums and composing charts and a family tree, after being told he need only trace one side of his family. With each day that goes by without incident, Megan allows herself to take deeper breaths.

  He gets more comfortable interacting with Evie in front of her, and she’s grateful she didn’t mention seeing him in her room as she watches him handing her a toy and showing her how it works. Evie, of course, thinks he’s the most wonderful thing she’s ever seen.

  ‘No project work today?’ Megan asks Daniel as she watches him spread his books over the kitchen counter after school.

  ‘Nah, I’ve got advanced maths to do.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were in the advanced maths class.’

  ‘Well, duh, Mum, I’m the best at maths in the whole class.’

  Megan allows herself a small chuckle. ‘I’m sure you are.’

  She would like to ask him how he got so good at maths if he barely attended school in the last six years, but she knows it’s best to keep quiet and let Daniel tell her about his life with his father when he feels like it. It’s starting to come out in snippets. Little pieces of information trip off his tongue almost by accident.

  ‘I played that game on Dad’s computer,’ he’d told her when she’d opened up a reading game on her iPad that introduced letters to babies.

  ‘It goes all the way to year twelve,’ he’d explained when she’d looked at him questioningly.

  ‘I learned to make my own scrambled eggs with Dad,’ he’d told her when she’d found him in the kitchen on Sunday morning cooking himself breakfast.

  ‘I went there with Dad,’ he’d said when they were watching a programme on Venice and its canals.

  If Megan ever pushes, asks more questions, he simply shuts down. Sometimes it feels as though he would like to tell her more but something is stopping him, something is holding him back.

  Megan opens the fridge and then she curses quietly under her breath.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asks Daniel.

  Megan had assumed that Daniel was engrossed in his maths problems and not paying any attention to her at all, but she is starting to realise that whatever her son is doing he is always paying attention to everything.

  He watches her feed Evie even though he seems to be staring at the television. When Michael comes home from work and kisses her on the lips, Megan invariably catches sight of Daniel out of the corner of her eye, standing stock-still, staring at them. Michael has told her to ignore it, but sometimes when Daniel watches her it doesn’t seem to be because he’s interested; it’s something stranger.

  Stop being ridiculous, she tells herself, chasing any unpleasant thoughts away. This is a good afternoon, she reminds herself. Everything is fine.

  ‘I’ve run out of milk and Michael is working late tonight,’ she says.

  ‘You can get some more,’ he says.

  ‘I can but I don’t want to wake Evie from her nap – she’ll be so cranky. I’m just being lazy, I suppose. I’ll go and get her.’

  ‘I can watch her,’ he says quietly.

  ‘Oh… oh, no, that’s okay, you’ve never really watched her before and she can be… difficult.’

  ‘She’s asleep. Every afternoon she sleeps for forty minutes exactly. That’s what you told Michael. She shouldn’t be asleep now because she’s usually awake by now but she didn’t sleep this morning; that’s what you told Nana when we came home from school. She’s been asleep for twenty minutes so you have twenty minutes to get milk from that store we go past every day on the way to school.’

  Megan laughs and then she stops when she sees that he is not smiling at all. Instead he is looking at her without expression. He has not made a joke. He has simply conveyed some information.

 
; ‘I… I suppose I could duck out quickly, but what would you do if she wakes up?’

  ‘I would pick her up and sit on the rocking chair in her room until you came home. That’s what you do with her. She likes the rocking chair.’

  ‘But you’ve never picked her up before. I know she’s not a tiny baby but you have to know how to hold a baby.’

  ‘Okay, then I’ll just talk to her until you come home. I can show her some toys she likes. She likes the ball that lights up and makes all those sounds. I know she likes that toy.’

  Megan begins to shake her head to say no to Daniel’s idea, but something stops her. He has been home for nearly a month already and he has never offered to do anything at all to help her. He makes his bed and puts his dishes in the dishwasher if she asks him to, but he never takes the initiative to do anything beyond get himself dressed in the morning and make himself some food if he’s hungry. Even that feels like an achievement because the first time she’d found him in the kitchen with the fridge open, he had started, ‘Sorry, I was just…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Daniel. It’s fine to get something from the fridge if you want to. It’s your house, your home.’

  ‘It’s his home,’ he had said, closing the fridge.

  ‘No,’ she had answered him firmly, ‘it’s our home. Mine and Michael’s and Evie’s and yours as well.’

  He had looked at her and then opened his mouth to argue. She had watched him go through the same process she had seen him go through many times before. He wanted to say something but he felt another way. There was a correct way for him to respond but he didn’t want to do that.

  ‘Okay,’ he had finally said.

  Despite this small step forward it still feels like he is treating her and Michael as benevolent hosts rather than as his mother and stepfather. But right now, he is trying to take a step forward, to take a proper step forward into being a big brother. She should encourage him.

  Megan takes a deep breath, interrupting her churning mind, and says, ‘That would be good, or you could read her a book or something.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says and then he goes back to doing his homework while Megan runs through the idea in her mind. The store is a two-minute drive away and she knows that there is usually parking outside. She could be there and back in ten minutes.

  ‘Right,’ she says, grabbing her purse. ‘I have my mobile phone so you can call me. The number is right here on the fridge. I’ll be so quick you won’t even notice I’m gone.’

  He smiles at her and she takes a deep breath. Maybe giving him a little responsibility will help. He has not yet bonded completely with Evie, and Megan knows that is something that will take time. So far, she hasn’t left them alone together for even a moment. She wants him to learn to love his little sister, to treat her with the kindness and patience he used to treat Lucy with.

  On the way out, she stops her car in front of the post box and grabs the letters that have been delivered that morning. At the first and only traffic light, she glances through what she had quickly dumped on the front passenger seat. She gasps aloud at the sight of a familiar blue envelope with her old address written on the front. She has been redirecting her mail from her old apartment for the last year and a half in case Daniel somehow found a way to contact her. She recognises Audrey’s handwriting instantly. Neat, cursive script with each letter perfectly formed. The last line of her address wavers a little as though her hand has begun to shake with the effort of keeping the letters precise. Megan cannot help a slight twinge of sympathy for her. Age is catching up to Audrey.

  She rubs her arm, cold in the afternoon sun. It feels like the woman is watching her, listening to her. Why has she written after all this time? Why has she written just days after Daniel mentioned wanting to get in touch with his grandparents?

  Parked outside the store, she opens her car door to go inside but closes it again and opens the letter. It is short, only half a page. Vicious, spiteful words leap into the air. Her hands may have begun to shake, but she is still the same judgemental, aggrieved woman she has been for her whole life.

  Dear Megan,

  I never wanted to write this. I never wanted to contact you again. You do not deserve to hear from William and me, but you have finally had your wish granted. My son is gone. He is gone and you have Daniel back with you. I will never recover from hearing how my darling son lost his life. I cannot believe I had to give them a sample of my DNA because my child’s body is so damaged, so broken that they cannot identify him. Do you know what it feels like for a mother to hear how her child suffered in death? My heart is broken. It can never be repaired. William told me not to contact you but I have decided to appeal to the smallest shred of love you may still have for your ex-father-in-law and myself. Daniel is my only grandchild. I am eighty years old and don’t imagine I will live much longer, so I am asking you to allow us to see him. We will send money and plane tickets for both of you, or we will come to Australia. I am not asking for much, but I may be asking for a miracle. Look into your heart as a mother and consider allowing us to see him one last time.

  Thank you,

  Audrey

  Megan gets out of her car, holding the letter, her hands trembling, and then she stands outside the store in front of a garbage bin and rips it into tiny little pieces. She watches them float down and land in a pool of pink liquid oozing out of a paper cup.

  When she is done, she glances at her watch and runs into the store and down the right aisle to get the milk.

  In front of her house, she checks her watch again. She had been gone just over ten minutes but it feels like forever. Everything is just fine, she thinks as she pushes the button to open her garage door.

  As soon as she gets out of the car, she hears Evie screaming.

  Twenty-Seven

  Megan leaves the milk and her bag in the car and rushes up the steps from the garage to Evie’s room. Her daughter is sitting up in her cot, her face is beetroot-red and tears are streaming down her face.

  Daniel is crouched in the corner of Evie’s room with his fingers in his ears. As he sees her, he takes them out of his ears and grabs his mobile phone from the floor in front of him. His thumb automatically begins its compulsive rubbing of the screen and his body rocks back and forth, back and forth.

  Megan grabs Evie out of the cot and holds her close, shushing her and bouncing her, checking that she isn’t hurt in any way. She doesn’t say anything to Daniel, aware of her rapid heartbeat and the adrenalin rushing around inside her. She looks Evie over, touching her arms and legs, checking for marks or bruises.

  Finally, Evie settles and Megan carries her into her bedroom, where there is a bouncy chair in front of the television for her. She seats her and turns on a short video that entrances her, giving her a baby rusk to chew on from a stash in her bedside table. Evie stares at the television. Whatever had bothered her is long forgotten.

  In Evie’s room Daniel is still crouched in the corner. Megan fears the pressure of his thumb on the phone screen will force cracks into the glass. Shock makes his face pale.

  She fights the urge to shake what happened out of him and instead sits down on the floor next to him. ‘What happened?’ she asks.

  ‘She woke up,’ is his wooden reply.

  ‘Okay, so she woke up, but she usually wakes up happy. Why was she screaming?’

  ‘I tried to pick her up, but I didn’t know how heavy she was going to be or that she wouldn’t want me to touch her, and she squirmed around and I kind of dropped her back into the cot and then she started screaming. She just kept screaming. Her voice is so loud. It’s so loud.’ He sounds completely bewildered.

  ‘But we talked about this. I told you to just talk to her. Why did you try to pick her up?’

  ‘I wanted to see if I could do it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In case I needed to.’

  ‘But you won’t need to pick her up until you know how to do it. I’ll teach you if you want, but I told you not to pi
ck her up.’

  ‘I think she hates me,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ she protests. ‘She doesn’t hate you, she just doesn’t know you yet. I think she can sense that you’re her big brother. The more time you spend with her, the more you’ll get to know each other.’

  ‘Half-brother,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Megan, ‘you are her half-brother but you are her brother. I know that me being married again and having another child is hard, but this is how things are now, Daniel. I’m your mother too and I love you the same way I love Evie. Lots of families have more than one child. A mother can love as many children as she has. You have no idea how happy I am to have you home again. I have missed you so much.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me when I lived with Dad, then?’

  ‘How could I have called you? I had no idea where you were.’

  ‘He said he told you. When we were on the plane to go on holiday and visit Granny and Grandpa, he said he told you and you wanted me to go with him. He said that he told you to call me every day but you never called.’

  ‘Believe me, darling, I would have called if I’d known where you were.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Daniel, standing up. ‘He told me you would say that.’

  Megan wants to scream in frustration. Daniel walks out of Evie’s room and then she hears his bedroom door slam.

  ‘I can’t win, Greg,’ she mutters, ‘and I’m sure that’s exactly what you wanted, you bastard.’

  She goes back downstairs to the garage and picks up the milk and her bag, taking Evie with her, trying not think about why she doesn’t want to leave her daughter alone for even a minute.

  In the kitchen she begins preparing for dinner when a thought stuns her into stillness. She runs upstairs and knocks quickly on Daniel’s bedroom door, opening it without waiting for him to invite her in.

  ‘When we talk about Dad, Daniel, why do you keep telling me that he said I would say that? Did he tell you he was going to send you home?’