Lost Without You

by Rachael Johns

  She nodded and he let out a deep breath.

  ‘So, you found your mother? I didn’t know you were even looking.’ His tone was slightly accusing as if this was just another thing in a long line of things she’d done recently to let him down.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she said indignantly. ‘I was at Paige’s mum’s house this afternoon with her and—’

  ‘That blood isn’t stopping,’ Nik interrupted, gently peeling back the now-red paper towel. ‘I think we’re gonna have to take you to the hospital. I reckon you need stitches.’

  ‘No,’ she groaned. After her miscarriages, she hated hospitals and they’d all think her some stupid drunk who’d got sloshed and then injured herself. All those weeks of being sober wouldn’t mean a thing.

  But Nik wasn’t taking no for an answer. Within minutes, he’d bundled her—and two more rolls of paper towel—into the car and they were on their way.

  ‘Okay, I’m all ears,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ Josie began. ‘So. Paige and I found a letter.’ Her head started to throb, so much for the anaesthetising qualities of alcohol—and suddenly she felt like she might throw up. Telling him the rest of the story was not an option right now.

  ‘A bottle of wine will do that to you,’ Nik said dryly as she tried to stop herself from hurling all over their car. She thought she deserved a little more sympathy considering the circumstances.

  When they arrived at the hospital, Nik helped her out of the car and she leaned on him as they headed inside. He dumped her in an uncomfortable plastic chair, grabbed a cup of water for her from a dispenser in the corner and then went to register at the arrivals desk. By the time he returned, Josie’s nausea had settled a little and she managed to get the gist of the story out.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ he said when she’d finished, ‘you wore your mother’s wedding dress when you got married?’

  Oh good grief—until that moment she hadn’t even thought about that connection.

  ‘Biological mother,’ she corrected him. Thinking of Rebecca as anything else felt not only weird but also a betrayal of the woman who’d raised her. Her real mum.

  He shook his head slowly and scratched his chin as if still trying to get this straight. ‘Fuck, Jose,’ he said eventually and then pulled her against him. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to interrupt you at work unless it’s an emergency.’

  He pulled back slightly and gestured to the blood still seeping through the paper towel and all over his shirt. ‘I kinda think this fits.’

  ‘I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Geez. So does Rebecca know you know? How do you feel about this?’

  ‘I guess Paige would have told her by now—I’ve had missed calls from her and someone buzzed the intercom this evening, that could have been Rebecca, but I pretended I wasn’t home.’

  ‘I wonder who your dad is. Are you even the slightest bit curious?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ she snapped. ‘But …’ Before she could continue, she glanced upwards and her gaze caught on a sign on the wall.

  ARE YOU AN ORGAN DONOR? was in big bold print and beneath it a list of all the reasons you should be.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Realisation dawned hard, fast and cold.

  ‘What?’ Nik asked, looking worriedly to her hand.

  ‘That’s why Rebecca has suddenly decided to look for me!’

  Nik frowned; although she was the one half-cut, she had to explain it to him.

  ‘Remember why Paige wanted to find the wedding dress?’ It was a rhetorical question but Nik nodded as she continued. ‘Because Rebecca is sick. She has kidney failure and needs a donor to save her.’

  He took a moment and then, ‘That fucking bitch. How dare she!’

  Josie found herself torn between the rage Nik felt and heartbreaking pain. For the briefest of moments she’d thought maybe her biological mother wanted to find her because she actually cared but the timing was hard to ignore. Tears came to her eyes.

  ‘Josephine Mitreski?’

  They looked up to see a stern-looking nurse standing a few feet away.

  ‘Coming,’ Josie said, rising to her feet and almost falling right back down again. Nik caught her and assisted as they followed after the nurse.

  She hoped the hospital would give her some very good drugs that would make her sleep very well and when she woke up she’d discover this had all been a dream, like one of those badly written stories some of the kids in her class dared to hand in.

  Paige

  Paige was in full-swing cleaning mode when Sol arrived home from work just after midnight.

  ‘Do not enter the kitchen!’ she screamed as he came to a grinding halt in the doorway.

  He held up his hands as if the mop she was wielding in hers was a weapon. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘You will not even believe it,’ she told him, dumping the mop in the bucket. ‘Turns out Josie is my sister.’

  His eyebrows caved inwards and he shook his head slightly. ‘What? Josie and Nik, Josie? But you don’t have a sister.’

  ‘So I thought,’ she replied, her grip tightening on the mop handle as her rage burned strongly. ‘Turns out, Mum had a baby when she was sixteen with her bad-boy musician boyfriend that Jeanie and Grandpa didn’t like. Her parents helped her “take care of it”—Mum and Gran went to stay with Jeanie’s sister in Perth and she had the baby there, then adopted it out.’

  ‘Jesus. I didn’t think stuff like that still happened in the eighties. Your poor mum. Did she want to give the kid up?’

  Paige ignored his sympathy for her mother. ‘Well, as you said, it was the eighties—forced adoption was a thing of the past.’ She’d checked that this evening just to be sure. ‘So if she really wanted to keep it she could have.’

  ‘This is big news.’ He nodded towards the mop. ‘Want to abandon that and come talk while I shower? I stink.’

  She glanced around the kitchen; one corner still hadn’t been done. ‘How about you shower while I finish up. You hungry?’ Not that she wanted to dirty up her now-pristine kitchen but, despite her mood, she wasn’t a beast.

  Sol shook his head. ‘Nah. We had to go to a small house fire tonight and we stopped for burgers on the way back to the station.’

  ‘Okay.’ She nodded. ‘I’ll be in soon.’

  Sol walked out of the en suite with a fluffy white towel wrapped around his waist just as Paige was coming into the bedroom. As he finished drying himself and pulled on some boxers, she flopped onto the bed.

  ‘How did this all come to light?’ he asked, coming to sit beside her. ‘Did Josie or your mother tell you?’

  ‘Neither,’ she began, curling her legs up on one side of her and leaning into him. She told him about her and Josie finding the letter.

  ‘Geez, and how’s she handling this?’

  ‘Who? Josie?’

  He nodded and Paige shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She left almost as soon as we found it. And then Dad came home and he explained everything. I tried to call Josie tonight a few times but she’s not answering.’

  ‘Understandable. Give her time. So, what did Hugh say?’

  Paige repeated their conversation almost word for word—how he’d only known about the adoption a short time, how apparently her grandfather had threatened her mum’s boyfriend with prison or something if he didn’t cut all ties with her, and how they’d lied about the gender of the baby. ‘All these years Mum thought she had a boy.’

  ‘That was a pretty shitty thing for your grandparents to do,’ Sol said. ‘Plenty of people have kids at sixteen and make fine parents. Doesn’t sound like they gave your mum much choice, and what about the bloke? I’d be furious if someone kept me from my baby like that.’

  Paige let out a frustrated breath. She hadn’t given a thought to the father. ‘Maybe so, but that’s ancient history. The fact remains Mum went out of her way all these years not to tell us about her other chi
ld. I’m not sure I can forgive her.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit?’ He sounded slightly bemused by all this.

  Overreacting? She turned to glare at him. ‘How would you feel if you found out you’d had another sibling all your life and nobody ever bothered to tell you?’

  He considered this a moment. ‘I guess I’d be a little upset, but then I’d think about how my mum must have felt having a baby when she was still practically a child herself and how painful having to give it up and never see it again must have been. I’d try not to make it all about me.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ She felt her cheeks flush. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying think about Rebecca—she must have been carrying a lot of pain, anguish and maybe guilt throughout the years. Why do you think now, all of a sudden, she’s decided to get information about the adoption?’

  ‘Apparently her health scare prompted it all. She didn’t want to die not knowing, but when she was going to tell all of us I have no idea. Oh, and the reason she changed her mind about accepting your kidney was because she didn’t want her child to think that’s why she wanted to find them.’

  His eyes widened. ‘She said that?’

  ‘Well, not exactly but why else the sudden turnaround?’

  Sol frowned. ‘I guess that makes sense. A lot of people who are hurt in fires or lose their houses report that their brush with death made them reassess a whole load of other things in their lives.’

  Whatever. Paige was in no mood to listen to statistics about strangers. Fires and adoption were nothing alike. ‘Anyway, I told her the offer is off.’

  ‘What offer?’

  ‘The offer of your kidney of course.’

  ‘Um.’ Sol lifted his hand from her knee. His stern expression was one she’d rarely seen aimed at her. ‘Don’t you think that’s something you should have run by me first? My kidney, my decision.’

  ‘You’re my fiancé—you wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t for me. If we weren’t together you wouldn’t even know Mum needed a kidney.’

  Sol puffed out a breath as if he was trying not to lose his cool. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I get it, you’re upset, you’re still in shock, maybe you’re a little jealous of Josie too, of the fact you weren’t actually your mum’s first child, so maybe we should both calm down a little bit and sleep on—’

  ‘I’m not jealous of Josie!’ she interrupted, outraged. ‘I like Josie—she’s not the one who lied all these years.’

  Sol raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh? You’re normally so empathetic to the plights of others, can’t you give your mum the same courtesy?’

  ‘What?’ She shook her head in anger. ‘You can’t compare Mum to the people I champion! They haven’t chosen their circumstances but Mum chose to keep this secret.’

  ‘Rebecca obviously thought she had good reason to do what she did,’ he said evenly.

  Was he kidding? ‘So, you think secrets are okay in relationships? In marriage?’

  ‘I don’t think life is as black and white as all that.’

  ‘Do you have secrets from me?’

  ‘No. You know everything about me, but I haven’t got something tragic like your mother had in her past and no one has ever told me anything in confidence that they didn’t want you to know.’

  Paige couldn’t believe her ears. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Was he really saying that if someone asked him to keep a secret from her he’d consider it?

  Enraged, she grabbed her pillow and stood.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sol asked.

  ‘To sleep on the couch.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous,’ she retorted. ‘I just thought you’d be a little bit more supportive and I can’t believe you and I have such fundamentally different views on honesty in marriage.’

  ‘Paige. Let’s talk about this.’

  But, no longer in a mood for conversation, she continued towards the door.

  ‘You stay here,’ Sol called. She heard his feet land on the floor indicating he was getting out of bed. ‘I’ll take the couch.’

  And because he was the one in the wrong and being so damn unsupportive, she decided to let him. ‘Okay,’ she said, stepping aside so he and his pillow could walk through the door.

  He had the audacity to say ‘goodnight’ as he passed, but Paige didn’t say a word; she simply slammed the door behind him and then burst into tears.

  Of course they’d had disagreements before but this was the first time either of them had slept on the couch since they’d moved in together. The shit had got real today—she’d needed his support, for him to be on her side, and instead he’d all but called her irrational and selfish and made her question if they really knew each other at all.

  Clara

  Wednesday morning, Clara was baking a carrot cake to take to Gregg—the way to a man’s heart and all that—to apologise for ruining their cruise, when her phone rang. Although she hadn’t stored Rebecca’s number in her contacts, she immediately recognised it and was tempted not to answer. This woman had brought nothing but pain and heartache to her life. In some ways Rebecca and her baby had felt like the third person in her marriage, like Camilla had been to Charles and Di.

  ‘Rebecca?’ she said—not bothering with niceties.

  The other woman made no attempt at small talk either. ‘She knows.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I said she knows, but I didn’t tell her.’

  Rebecca was talking in riddles. ‘What do you mean? If you didn’t tell her, then who did?’

  ‘No one,’ she whispered. ‘You know how I didn’t have the adoption information in my bag yesterday? Well, Josie was at my place with Paige and they found the letter.’

  ‘Oh my goodness. How did she take it?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. Paige refused to give me Josie’s number, so I went to her apartment but if she was there she ignored my attempts at the intercom and this morning Solomon, Paige’s fiancé, called me. Josie’s husband phoned and asked him to ask Paige and me to give Josie a little time; she’d contact us when she was ready. Nik said Josie had taken it pretty badly—I’m really worried about her but I want to respect her wishes. Do you think you could check in on her for me?’

  What a shambles! Of course Clara would call Josie, but it wouldn’t be for Rebecca. ‘Yes, okay. I can do that.’

  ‘Thank you. And can you let me know when you’ve spoken to her?’

  Rebecca sounded desperate—why couldn’t Clara bring herself to feel sympathy? Because now, knowing about Rob’s visit to Rebecca the year Josie turned eighteen, she couldn’t help resenting her for turning him away.

  Still, Clara found herself promising to call with an update once she’d made contact with Josie. She disconnected and stared at the phone. Perhaps an in-person visit would be better. People could pretend to be okay over the phone but face to face it was harder to hide true emotion. And something told her that although today was a ‘school day’ Josie might not have made it in to work.

  ‘Sorry, Gregg,’ Clara said to herself as she finished smothering the cream-cheese icing over the cake and then popped it in a container to take it round to Josie’s. She’d make it up to him some other way.

  Decision made, she drove to Josie’s apartment.

  She pressed their button on the intercom and held her breath as she waited for a reply.

  ‘Hello?’ came a wary male voice a few moments later.

  She leaned closer to the wall. ‘Hello. Is that Nik? I’m Josie’s friend, Clara. I’ve brought her some cake.’

  ‘Um … that’s nice, but I’m sorry, Josie’s not feeling very well today. I’ll tell her you stopped by.’

  ‘Can you just tell her I’m here and ask if she’s up to talking to me?’

  He gave a deep sigh. ‘Can you wait a sec?’

  ‘Of course.’
Luckily with spring finally here, the weather had improved and it wasn’t too cold waiting outside on the doorstep.

  About thirty seconds later, Nik’s voice came back through the wall. ‘I’ll buzz you in.’

  The door in front of her made a click sound and she pushed it open. An incredibly good-looking, dark-haired young man, whom Clara immediately guessed to be Josie’s husband, was waiting for her in the hallway between the ground-floor apartments.

  He offered her a warm, welcoming smile and then lowered his voice. ‘Josie told me who you are. Thanks for all you’ve done. She’s been doing quite well, until a setback yesterday.’

  ‘I understand. That’s why I’m here.’

  He frowned, but then Josie called out, ‘I hope you’re not giving Clara the Spanish inquisition!’

  ‘Sorry,’ he called back through the open door, then indicated for her to follow him into the apartment.

  ‘Hey, Clara.’ Josie was sitting on the sofa, her legs curled up beside her, hugging a cushion to her chest. She once again looked like the shell of a woman she’d been the day they met. And, her hand was wrapped in a bandage. What had she done to herself?

  ‘Oh, sweet darling.’ Clara’s heart felt as if it could burst with love for this girl. She rushed over to her, sank down beside her and pulled her into her arms. ‘It’ll be okay.’

  Josie’s whole body racked with sobs as Clara held her a good five minutes until they finally subsided.

  ‘How did you know to come?’ Josie asked eventually.

  ‘Rebecca called me,’ Clara said. ‘I know you said you needed time and didn’t want to see anyone but I just wanted you to know I’m here for you. If you want to talk, we can or if you’d—’

  ‘Hang on.’ Josie blinked and pulled out of Clara’s embrace. ‘How did Rebecca know to call you?’

  Clara’s heart stopped—Josie had no idea of her connection to all this. Oh boy.

  She glanced up at Nik. ‘Do you think you could make us a cup of tea?’

  He looked to Josie for the go ahead—no way was he going to leave her if she needed him.