Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  ‘Jesus, the poor bloke,’ Brix said. ‘So the ring got back to Darwin with the candlemaker lady.’

  ‘Yes!’ The store owner beamed. ‘I only saw it because I bought a candle and she had the ring in her money pouch and when she pulled out my change the ring fell out on the table. I saw it straight away and I thought it was stunning. I commented on it, and she told me the story. She was going to take it back to the jeweller the next day and see if they’d buy it back. She figured they’d know exactly the quality, you know?’

  ‘I know,’ Brix murmured.

  ‘I had a feeling about it, and I always follow my gut. I said to her that if I met her at the jeweller’s and paid her the same as what the original jeweller offered her, would that be okay and would she sell it to me?’

  Jaydah slipped the ring on her finger, testing the size.

  ‘Maybe it’s because the colour is so much like the oceans around here. Just such a clear aquamarine. I was sure that the perfect couple would walk in one day and just see it and love it. That’s why I wanted it.’

  The ring really was pretty. The blue gave it a cold fire that suited JT, and the double white-gold band twined through the blue gave it strength.

  Jaydah held her hand to the light, making the blue fire dance. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s you,’ he said simply. ‘And I think we should buy it.’

  He could have sworn the shop owner had a tear in her eye.

  CHAPTER

  11

  ‘It’s all messed up,’ Jaz cried. ‘It’s not fair. Stupid lights.’

  She threw the ball of lights towards the house where it thumped into the door.

  Jaydah had been making lists on her phone and she logged out and laid her phone on the verandah rail to free up her hands so she could help her sister.

  ‘Don’t pull on them, Jazzy. If we want to untangle them we have to be gentle. Here.’

  She picked up the string of Christmas fairy lights. Well, it should have been a string but it was more of a snarl. She found an end and sat, pulling the mess into her lap, deft fingers working to get the line of lights straight.

  It took a while.

  ‘There.’

  ‘Thank you, Jaydah,’ Jaz said, springing up from where she’d been holding the long end while Jaydah worked out the tangles.

  ‘I’ll hold this bit for you, okay? You start winding and I’ll help you keep this bit straight.’

  Jaydah followed Jaz slowly along the length of the farmhouse porch, letting her sister take the lead as Jaz wound the lights around the horizontal post.

  Putting up the Christmas lights was Jaz’s job.

  Pretty soon her dad would say the verandah posts and decking timbers needed staining again. The jarrah was almost weathered to grey, and the cracks had opened up. Staining the deck was her job, but if everything went how she planned she wouldn’t have to do it this year because she’d be spending the summer in Margaret River with Brix. They’d be married.

  Her mum and her sister would be with them and they’d be safe.

  The monster had been so mellow since that night at the club, she almost believed it.

  Out the back of the house, Hammer barked from his chain and she wondered if the dog could hear her father’s ute.

  Her dad had taken her mum into Mount Barker to do the Christmas shopping. If they took much longer she’d have to lock Jaz in the laundry when she went to work and she hated doing that, but she couldn’t take Jaz with her nor could she leave her by herself.

  Once, years ago, Jaz had started the excavator in the shed and had succeeded in shoving it in first gear—like she’d seen their dad and Jaydah do—and crashed it through the shed wall. It only got stopped before the dam because she’d rammed an old cement water tank.

  That was the first time her father whipped her with his belt, and back then she figured she’d deserved it. Jaz could have been killed.

  She’d been mucking about with Brix after school at the bus stop near Quarry Road that day when she should have gone straight home to look after her sister because her mum and dad were out doing deliveries. After that, her dad always locked Jaz in the laundry with her farm animals and Ginger Puss if she was home alone, and Jaydah was never again late home off the bus.

  She was never late home. Period.

  Beside her, Jaz stopped twining the string of lights and stared up at the rusting underbelly of the roof iron.

  ‘Think about it, Jazzy,’ Jaydah said, looking up too. ‘We need to run it up the post but it’s too high to reach. What do we need?’

  ‘The step!’ Jaz declared, letting the string of lights drop into Jaydah’s palm as she dashed into the house and returned with the kitchen step-stool, setting it carefully on the edge of the verandah in the middle of the posts. ‘Pass it to me,’ she demanded, and she looped the string of lights up the post to a purpose-built nail from a Christmas past, and then strung it across to an identical nail banged in the post on the other side.

  ‘Great job,’ Jaydah said.

  Jaz beamed and for a few seconds she even forgot to cover her mouth with her hand. Then she stepped off the step, and started winding the lights down.

  Jaz loved Christmas, something she picked up from their mum. Everything else their mum did was met with derision or, increasingly, hostility from their dad, and Jaz tended to copy what their dad did.

  She mightn’t have a high IQ, but she had her own smarts.

  Her mum always talked about how Christmas used to be in the Philippines. The Christmas tree would go up in November and the carols would play.

  At New Year they carried coins in their pockets, or buttons if they didn’t have coins so they’d jangle as they walked, and they decorated with round things everywhere, round fruits—like sliced pineapple—because circles were shaped the same as money and they’d bring you prosperity and good luck. They didn’t eat chicken at New Year. Chickens had to peck and scratch for everything. Eat chicken on New Year and you’d be pecking and scratching for money till next New Year’s Eve.

  Her dad had stomped most Philippine traditions out of her mum over the years, but he let her have her way at Christmas.

  Jaydah’s phone buzzed. She picked it up, keying in her code and flicking through the screen to see the text.

  ‘Two days, Mrs-Nearly-Honeychurch. Merry Christmas. I’ll be over tomorrow, staying at the farm. Are you working Christmas Eve? I’ll call in to the club. See you at the airstrip on Christmas Day if not before. I’ll be the one in the suit. I love you. Cannot wait for you to be my wife.’

  Reading the text brought a spiking, shooting star of pain to her chest. A dream she’d never dared dream was almost within her reach.

  Two days. Then Brix would be here, and they—all of them—would be out of this nightmare.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve, Brix phoned Jake as he left Whale Rock Wines to tell his brother he was on his way, and he tried to talk Jake and Ella into meeting him at the club for a drink.

  Ella said trying to get a babysitter for Sam and Charlotte on Christmas Eve was a nightmare, plus they had all their Santa wrapping still to do, and Jake said he had to leave carrots out for the reindeer and make hoofprints in flour as if it were snow.

  Brix didn’t blame Jake for not wanting a beer at the club. His brother had twelve years of hoofprints, carrots and Santa to catch up on. Plus, Jake had to go get Charlotte’s Christmas present—Starburst the pony—from next door’s farm.

  Next, Brix tried Abe. Abe told him he was taking over the lease on Ella’s rental place in town because Ella and Sam had finally decided to make the permanent move out to the farmhouse to be with Jake. Plus Taylor was coming down from Perth. ‘And once she’s here, mate, I won’t be going anywhere till tomorrow morning.’ Brix heard Abe’s leer all the way down the phone.

  He didn’t blame Abe for not wanting a beer at the club, but Brix wanted to party, which wasn’t usually like him. Of course, his brothers didn’t know it was his last
day as a single bloke. Tomorrow he’d be married. Technically, he thought as he pushed through the double doors of the Bowling Club about eight o’clock that evening, this is my stag night.

  The first thing that caught his eye on his stag night was Irene Loveday wearing antlers on the karaoke stage, singing ‘Jingle Bell Hop’ with Lester Huxtable. Lester was wearing a Santa suit and its cushion was threatening to jingle bell hop right out of his pants.

  Then Brix found Jaydah and nothing else mattered.

  She was taking an order from a bloke he didn’t know in a shirt with a collar—formal-wear in Chalk Hill—and the guy was looking her up and down in a way that made Brix think the collared shirt was for JT’s benefit.

  Tough luck, mate. She’s mine.

  Pure pride rocked his chest.

  Mr Collared Shirt better get out of the way because Brix was coming for his girl. The girl he’d loved for most of fifteen years. The only woman he wanted.

  Mine.

  Jaydah glanced up then, her automatic check of the opening and closing door. Their eyes met across the crowded front bar and all sorts of sizzling started in Brix’s stomach.

  Mine.

  Her lips curved. The nearest thing to a smile when she was working, and she lifted the beer she’d poured for the dude with the collar and dipped it at him.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Brix! How about a song?’ Irene bellowed across the microphone.

  He waved her off. ‘Nah, Irene. I can’t compete with that!’

  He shunted further towards the bar, kissing cheeks of the women he knew, shaking hands with the men, wishing so many people Merry Christmas he must have made a dent in healing world peace. Finally, he found elbow room at the very end of the bar where the gate let waitstaff in and out.

  JT spoke briefly with one of the relief staff called in to help on such a manic night, and that lady glanced across at Brix and nodded, and Jaydah poured a beer and walked it over to him, lifting the gate to come through to the punters’ side.

  She didn’t speak and neither did he, but she put the beer on the bar and went up on tiptoes to put her arms around his neck, and he leaned into the sweetest kiss there’d ever been.

  It was a kiss that took its time and for once wasn’t something to be locked away. It was sweet because they were together and the years of hiding were almost over.

  Then it got hot enough to make the bloke at the bar tug at his collared shirt and say, ‘Steady on there, hey?’

  In fact, maybe he’d had to say it twice.

  It got so hot that when Jaydah came down off her toes and unwound her arms from his neck, she picked up the beer she’d poured him and took a deep swallow.

  ‘Phew. I needed that.’

  Her top lip got covered in a layer of white foam, and Brix kissed her again just because.

  * * *

  Jaydah drove into the Tully farm, shut off the engine and sat in the car staring at the house and concentrating on the faint taste of Brix on her lips. It had been wonderful having him sitting at the bar, knowing his eyes were on her and his eyes were only for her.

  She concentrated on that taste on her lips and the promise in it.

  One more night in this house. One more night and then she’d be with Brix.

  She could do this.

  The fairy lights Jaz had so carefully put up so Santa could find the way were turned off, and the house was dark like always, except for that faint glow around the piece of cardboard in the window that said someone was awake inside.

  Jaydah picked her basket off the passenger seat and got out of the car, making her way towards the house. She heard carols. Her mum must still be up.

  When she opened the front door, Ginger Puss burst past her legs and she almost dropped the basket.

  She stepped carefully inside and the carols got louder.

  Jaydah ghosted into the house.

  The carols came from the darkened television room, and when she looked in she saw her father on the couch watching the annual carols by candlelight show on one of the commercial stations. He never watched the commercial stations. A glass glinted in his hand and the smell of bourbon overpowered everything, even white rice.

  ‘Here she is,’ her dad said, lifting the glass to tilt it at her, showing a glimpse of yellowed teeth. ‘Happy Christmas.’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  He swallowed the remaining liquor in a gulp. ‘In the kitchen.’

  Jaydah left her father in the dark listening to ‘Oh Holy Night’.

  * * *

  Brix drove into his family’s farm and laughed. Strobe-light candy canes had been strung along the low stone rock walls and there was a fat-bellied Santa higher up in the garden and a sign that said: Santa Stop Here!

  When did kids stop believing in Father Christmas anyway? Sam was eleven on his last birthday and Charlotte was older. Had he still believed in Santa at their age?

  If you don’t believe in Santa he won’t bring you a present. That’s what their mum used to say … and just in case it was true, he and Jake said sure he was real. Abe still believed back then, but Abe was the baby.

  Brix climbed out of the car. He grabbed his overnight bag from the backseat and the suit he’d hung from the hook inside the rear window, along with the wedding dress he’d collected from Doug Loveday before he’d gone to the club to see JT. He took it all across to his parents’ caravan parked over to the side. It was good of them to lend the van to him. He’d said he didn’t want to cramp Jake and Ella’s style, given they had Sam and Charlotte in the house now—but the truth was he was planning to tow the van back to Margaret River for Mrs Tully. He hadn’t explained that minor detail to his folks yet, but he knew they’d be fine with it. It wasn’t like they would need the van anytime soon.

  The caravan wasn’t locked and he turned the interior light on. The bed had been neatly made and he shoved his bag along the floor for later and laid the suit and dress across the table. Closing the van door against the bugs that were already bombing the exterior globe, he made his way up the steps.

  Jess greeted him at the top, all wagging tail and baleful eyes that said she’d been sound asleep and did he know how late it was?

  ‘Get on your bed, girl,’ he said softly to the kelpie, moving to the front door which was adorned with his mum’s old Christmas wreath.

  Brix took a last breath of fresh air and walked into a house warm with memories of Christmases past. It even had the sound of running feet, young voices raised and squabbling, and a woman scolding that it was past both their bedtimes and if they weren’t good, Santa wouldn’t come.

  * * *

  Jaydah found her mum turning circles between the kitchen table and the tall pantry cupboard by the fridge. Her hands alternated between being thrown in the air, to catching at her hair, and then they’d drop to worry the skirt of the apron spread over her hips.

  A glass mixing bowl—her mum’s biggest—shone on the sink. Packets of flour, sugar and brown sugar decorated the kitchen table, alongside a pile of flattened green canvas shopping bags.

  Instantly, Jaydah knew her mum’s problem and a part of her shrivelled inside.

  ‘Ayayay, Jaydah,’ her mum whispered through lips so tight Jaydah’s name came out on a whistle, ‘have you seen the glutinous rice?’

  Yes. ‘No, Mum. Sorry.’

  Her mum’s hands worked free of her skirt, wrapping palm over palm.

  ‘I bought it in Albany to make the bibingka your father likes. You know the packet, my Jaydah? I know I bought it.’ Her fingers formed a steeple in front of her mouth and she breathed deeply through them. ‘I know it was here. I saw it. I unpacked it. It is on your dad’s receipt from the shop. Now I can’t find it.’

  ‘Have you checked the back of the car? Could it have fallen under a seat?’

  ‘I checked the car,’ her mum said, wringing her hands, turning another circle.

  ‘I bet you left it behind at the checkout, Rosalie, because you’re an idiot.’

  Jaydah whi
pped around to face her father in the doorway, one hand on the architrave where he stood watching them both.

  ‘I should call the police and they’ll send you back to that slum where I found you. You’re useless.’

  ‘Ayayay,’ whispered her mum, and her father slapped the painted doorframe so hard it sounded like a door slamming.

  Her mum shivered. Jaydah shivered too, but hers was the shiver of guilt. This was the only plan she’d been able to come up with when she’d tried to work out how she’d get out of the house on Christmas morning without raising the monster’s suspicions.

  ‘I ask you for one thing,’ her dad said, stepping further into the kitchen. ‘One thing! I put up with you and your laziness for all the rest of the year, Rosalie, and I ask you for this one thing and you can’t even get that right.’

  He swiped at the ingredients on the kitchen table, knocking the pile of bags, the scissors, sticky-tape and wrapping paper to the floor. The scissors split apart. Two handles. Two blades.

  All three of them watched the blades spin.

  ‘I remember now!’ Jaydah slapped her forehead and groaned. ‘I think I know what happened to the rice. I think I took it to work by mistake.’

  ‘It’s at the club?’ her dad barked.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mum. I thought it was normal white rice and I picked it up without checking. We were short at the club and the kitchen manager forgot to buy more. I said I’d grab ours from home.’

  ‘You took my food into the club?’ her dad demanded. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘I meant to replace it. I just forgot. It’s been so busy with Christmas and tonight was crazy.’ She couldn’t over-do it. Her father was dynamite on a lie.

  ‘Can you get it back, Jaydah?’ her mum asked, wringing her hands, not looking at her husband as she stooped low and began picking the mess of utensils from the floor, placing them above her head on the table.