‘That’s my cue to go,’ Aiden said. ‘I’ll go check on Alice and let you two talk, as long as you girls aren’t going to—’
‘Aiden!’ the twins warned in unison, synchronised hands hitting their hips, eyes glaring, one eyebrow each raised.
‘Okay, okay, I’m going, I’m going. I’m gone.’ His voice trailed off down the hallway, leaving the two of them.
Rory spoke first. ‘Look, Ebony . . .’
‘It’s Paige.’
‘Yeah, right, whatever.’ She fell into a chair and picked at a chipped fingernail. ‘I had two choices: live my own life, or waste my life and money I didn’t have trying to find a mother who didn’t want me. What would you have chosen?’
Paige bit down hard, although what she wanted to do was scream at the casual arrogance of this woman who dared fire moral questions at her. Paige was not the deceitful one. Holding back tears, Paige spun on her heels, forgetting about her bad leg and toppling over, lunging for the mantel of the disused fireplace.
Rory’s face flashed concern, her body lifting from the chair, but Paige thrust a palm in Rory’s direction. She wanted no sympathy. Paige wanted answers.
‘Did you never want to know what happened? Where I was? What I looked like?
Rory shrugged, her voice hard again. ‘Nope.’
Tears flooded Paige’s cheeks, angry, disbelieving tears trickling into the corners of her mouth.
‘Why not?’
‘I didn’t want to know anything about you because . . .’
‘Because why?’
‘Because . . .’ Rory stared, unblinking. ‘I. Hated. You.’
The audible gasp that escaped Paige’s mouth filled the museum-like living room.
‘Sorry, but you did ask,’ Rory continued, her tone softening a touch. ‘And we should be sticking to the truth. I knew you’d have everything I didn’t. I can tell by that fancy gold necklace that I’m not wrong. I gather those earrings are real? I don’t take you for the fake diamond type.’
Unconsciously Paige clasped at the heart-shaped locket she never removed, then the small diamond studs Robert had bought her last Christmas. Last Christmas! She could have ripped them out on the spot and thrown them at Rory. Not the locket though. That had been Nancy’s. Inside was her mother’s photograph. On the other side was a picture of the tiniest stillborn baby boy with the most beautiful blue eyes. He would have turned two in a couple of months.
‘Everything that glitters is gold,’ Rory said. ‘Discovered that was the truth when I was young. Fancy cars filled with fancy people would come here to inspect a horse. Dad would tell me which horse to retrieve from the paddocks. I would’ve spent the morning washing and grooming the animal in preparation. My job was to lead the horse around the yards until the visitors’ pointing, muttering and nodding stopped and they got back in their fancy cars. Some horses got the nod—picked to go back to racing or breeding, or whatever. Many didn’t. Out of those rejected, the lucky ones stayed in the bottom paddocks. The others ended up a dog’s dinner. Dad enjoyed telling stories about the animals nobody wanted: the ugly, the sick, the weak.
‘I never understood what those fancy people saw in a horse that made them pick one over the other. To me, every horse was beautiful and deserved a good life. Call me pathetic, but I always had a soft spot for the ones left behind.’ The hardness in her voice wavered. ‘Fuck, listen to me!’ Another shrug seemed to steady it again. ‘So, how’s it feel to be at the top of the food chain and have it all?’
Paige flinched and swallowed a gasp, but she couldn’t stop tears spilling over. Words failed her, although clearly not Aurora.
‘Sorry, again, but you wanted honesty,’ Rory continued. ‘When they diagnosed me with cancer at sixteen I got to go to a big city hospital. I met a patient, a girl on the organ transplant list. Life for her was about waiting for some hospital administrator to choose her name from the list. Everything in her life, every decision, had two scenarios: picked or not picked. Life can be short. No way was I going to hang around to see if my mother and sister came back for me. I was going to do it all. And I have. That’s why I left this shit of a town, to make a life on my own and live it the best I could, while I could. No doctor provides a guarantee. Not back then and not now.’
Paige had not taken her eyes off Rory, taking in every detail, looking for signs of a family resemblance. Despite a rage building inside her there was an overwhelming desire to hold her sister, to connect. She was unsure how or what to do next.
‘I-I don’t know what say.’
‘Maybe I’ll apologise for calling you a bitch.’ Rory smiled and Paige felt the tug of emotions pulling her one way, then the other, the whole back and forth sloshing a bilious sensation around in her stomach. ‘And I’m sorry about whatever other hurtful name I might have called you during that earlier spray. Here.’
Paige accepted the ball of white tissue Rory pulled from the pocket of her peacock-coloured harem pants.
‘Princess.’ Paige mumbled through the ball of tissue she dragged across her nose. ‘You called me a princess.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Rory let a small laugh escape. ‘I think I might’ve.’
The sisters had spent the last hour moving between tears and laughter, every now and then stopping to look at each other. No words, just silence. What more could they say? They’d both said sorry too many times already, even though a million sorries could not begin to make up for Nancy’s part. With a hot drink, agreeing green tea with a dash of honey was their favourite, they sat next to each other at the big, round kitchen table. Paige compared their hands, the way they both gripped the body of the coffee mug, sipping their tea from the portion of rim directly opposite the handle. When the mug was on the kitchen table they would both toy with the handle, their index fingers making the mug swing from side to side, then around in a circle.
‘Kinda nice to know she didn’t really choose you over me,’ Rory said, tapping the teaspoon on the rim of the mug three times. ‘That it wasn’t her fault—the way things turned out. Well, I mean it was her fault; she did run off. Obviously Dad was never going to make her happy.’
‘I guess not.’
‘He never forgave her and I’m guessing he didn’t want me to either. When Dad told me she hadn’t wanted me enough, you have no idea how much I wanted to be you, how I used to imagine what you might be doing. Then I got older, Dad got sicker, we both got angrier. Time to forget.’
‘What sort of man was he—my father?’
‘Broken,’ Rory said. ‘At least I know why he never trusted another woman, and why he wouldn’t show his face in town. Eventually he stopped going to church. Preferring his own sanctuary. Anyone would’ve thought he was the sinner by the amount of time he spent praying. I used to hate that cottage. My grandparents were alive then and I reckon they gave him plenty of grief. The shame my mother brought on the family was too great, even for a strong man.’
‘Would he have been any different if Nancy had left him for a man?’
‘I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not. Aiden’s mother ran out on him, but rather than mope around or hang his head in shame old Ant knocked himself up a new missus. Hello Eamon!’
Paige dunked her Digestive biscuit into the steaming tea, smiling when Rory followed suit. ‘So you think people knew it was a woman all along?’
Rory shook her head, her mouth full of soggy biscuit. ‘No one knew anything for certain. There was gossip. People guessed. They put two and two together and came up with six. You know how it goes.’ She laughed, grabbed the teaspoon and fished out the broken bit of biscuit that had sunk to the bottom of the cup. ‘I heard stuff as I was growing up, not that I always understood. Dad’s version of the event was, of course, totally different to Alice’s.’
‘You believe Alice though?’
Rory shrugged. ‘Got no reason not to. I don’t think she’d lie about stuff at this point. In fact, it all kinda makes sense. I had terrible nightmares when I was younger. All very cryptic: screams,
breaking glass.’
‘Me too. I’d be clenching my fists so tight that if I didn’t keep my fingernails filed short I’d wake up with my palms bruised and sore.’ Paige inspected the inside of her palms and saw Rory do the same, running a finger across the centre. ‘Was I holding on to you?’
Rory lifted her face to Paige and smiled. ‘I’d like to think we were holding on to each other.’
With a subtle glance towards the wall clock behind Paige, Rory stood and walked over to the sink. She filled a glass with water from the tap and slipped something from her pocket into her mouth.
‘Look, Aurora, I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened, and I am so very, very sorry that you’re sick. What can I do?
Rory’s face hardened, her eyes sharpening into unspoken words as she drained the glass empty. ‘For a start you can stop calling me Aurora. Then you can stop with the sorries. The last thing I want is pity. I came all the way out here to escape that crap. It is how it is. I’m sick, end of story—which it will be for me one day.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s true. Reality sucks and this is simply another crappy part of my life that I have no control over. Like you and Nancy.’
‘I understand your needing time away from all the crap, believe me I do, but it makes no sense living out here in your condition.’ Paige had been shocked at how sickly thin the woman was under the loose-fitting clothes she wore. Until now the glimpses hadn’t allowed her to notice the yellowing complexion that seemed so obvious in the stark fluorescent lighting of the kitchen that Paige wondered how anyone could not notice.
‘Coming home to the country makes perfect sense. For a start, I’m broke. I sold off bits of Nevaeh when I needed money—first to travel, then to live, now to stay alive. Dying’s not cheap.’
Paige struggled to listen to the defeatist attitude. She knew how easy it was to give in, to fold into the foetal position and wish your life would end; for months Paige had longed to join her beautiful baby boy, the thought of him alone and cold too unbearable. Only later had Paige realised depression had concealed the warning signs of postpartum stroke: the desensitised feeling when she’d wash her face each morning, confusion, difficulty finding the right words to scream at Robert, blurred vision that tipped her off balance. Then there were the heart palpitations, the headaches, the hiccups.
She eyed Rory to ask, ‘You sound as though you’re giving up. Is that why you’ve come here? To give up?’
‘Don’t look at me like that. Aiden will tell you; I’m hardly the melodramatic type so I’m not about to do anything stupid. What good is life if you don’t enjoy the journey? That’s what people say, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Sometimes I’ll miss a couple of dialysis sessions, just because I choose to.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘No one can ever understand until they’ve spent half their life hooked up to a machine. The renal nurses and the doctors are all bloody marvellous, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some of them are guessing half the time. One quack got it so wrong that I figure I might as well occasionally push the boundaries to see what happens, in case by some miracle the doctors have missed the fact that I’m better and I can choose to have dialysis once a week, or once a month, or maybe never. Of course, never is unlikely.’ She sighed. ‘Reality is I don’t get a choice. Choosing is a luxury I’ve not experienced very much. Everyone seemed to choose for me. Even Aiden tried to make my choices years ago.’
‘You and Aiden were close?’
‘We were once, but not like that. Poor bugger. I probably shouldn’t’ve led him on, ’cause it was never going to happen. I simply wasn’t that into him. We had stuff in common; how could we not connect on some level when both our mothers walked out, both choosing to live their lives without us? Hardly a solid foundation for a relationship.’
The thought that crossed Paige’s mind at that moment was too incredible to be true, but she had to ask. ‘Do you think the woman Nancy ran away with that night was Aiden’s mother?’
‘Rosanna? Shit no! Aiden’s mother simply wasn’t cut out to be a farmer’s wife. Country life was too quiet. She missed that chaotic Italian family thing. Unlike our mother, Rosanna’s departure was slow. She started with the odd trip back to the city to stay with her parents. The stays became longer over time, turned semi-permanent, and one weekend she left and never did come back. Once it was obvious she was gone for good, that’s when old Ant had a few flings. Him and Aiden’s mum never did divorce and I don’t think Ant ever stopped hoping his wife would choose the country over the city. In the meantime, one of those flings resulted in Eamon popping up on the scene. Mother and baby turned up on the doorstep one day, moved in and surprised everyone, including old Ant. By his second birthday, Eamon was diagnosed with some sort of autism and the mum took off and left Ant holding the baby—literally.’ Rory was smiling. ‘For a while poor Aido had found himself tolerating a wicked stepmother and a mollycoddled baby brother. No wonder he spent all his time with me. And didn’t we have bloody fun. I got him in all sorts of crap. No idea why he was so fixated on me. I was trouble.’
‘I’d heard that.’
One eyebrow shot skyward. ‘And more I’d reckon, depending on who was doing the telling.’
For a while genuine laughter filled the quiet kitchen of the rambling house, until melancholy nipped at Paige. The sadness of the room was suddenly overwhelming. This room, this table she now shared with her sister, should have been the heart of the family home, echoing with the sounds and smells of baking days, Sunday breakfasts and burning birthday candles. All the smells Paige now missed.
‘What happens now?’ she asked.
Rory’s casualness was gone, the signature shrug more soulful. ‘Look, I didn’t expect any of this when I came home—whatever you call all this.’ She threw her arms wide. ‘I only knew living above a takeaway shop in a shitty little suburban studio that smelled of hamburger grease most of the time was not working for me. I could be dead for a week before anyone noticed. Even then, I reckon I’d smell better than the greasy exhaust fumes.’
‘How can you make jokes?’
‘Hey, I’ve been sick with one thing or another for most of my life so you need to cut me some slack if I come across a little pissed off. I didn’t expect this and I sure as hell didn’t expect you. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone to care.’
The first glimmer of tears welled in her sister’s blue eyes. The tough girl nicknamed Trouble wasn’t looking so tough, and the need to touch, to connect, was never stronger for Paige as she leaned over to draw her sister to her tight. Somehow, amid the swell of emotions, she found the strength to hold her own sobs in as her hands patted the protruding bones in Rory’s back.
‘Well, you’d best get used to me caring.’ Paige tightened her grip, terrified of breaking her, but even more terrified of someone ripping her sister out of her arms again. This time Paige would hold on much tighter. ‘I also have two very fine kidneys.’
With Rory back at the cottage and Alice in her room, Paige picked up the portable telephone from the kitchen counter, dialled Sharni’s mobile, and in the calmest voice she could muster asked her to occupy the children for as long as she could. When Sharni said Aiden had already called and suggested she arrange a night at the pub—they were going to have a slumber party and Banjo was already in grandpa mode—Paige thanked her. Later she’d thank Aiden. First she needed to talk with Alice—alone.
While Paige needed her daughter with her more than anything, to cuddle her and to know she was safe, she had to safeguard Mati and protect Nancy’s memory. Things were going to be confusing enough as Paige and Alice rode out the unavoidable conflict. And there would be plenty of tension based on their conversation in Alice’s room just now.
When they got back home and Paige confronted Robert, demanding the truth about Meeschell, protecting Matilda would be paramount. At least out here, Paige could control the dissemination of info
rmation over time in the hope of limiting the impact on her daughter.
The thought of her husband and Meeschell playing pretzels in the backseat of the family’s BMW, combined with the day’s revelations, was suddenly too much for Paige. If she didn’t get air into her lungs soon she felt certain she’d collapse. With the swirling remains of food she hadn’t really wanted, and too many green teas with Rory, Paige clutched her stomach, the other hand pressed against her mouth to hold back the rising nausea as she barged outside. Before the screen door had a chance to bang shut she was heaving over the railing.
‘Whoa there!’ Aiden did a jig at the bottom of the steps to avoid the lumpy liquid splattering around his feet. ‘We must stop meeting like this.’ Paige could tell by the mumbled cussing that followed Aiden had instantly regretted his flippancy. ‘Sorry. That came out wrong.’
Like Rory, Paige had had her fill of apologies today. With a swipe of her hand over her mouth she ran back inside and up the stairs to throw herself under a shower and shock herself awake.
‘This is another bad dream. It has to be.’ She dragged the small hand towel down her face to reveal mascara-stained eyes staring back from the mirror, a red nose on the verge of running, and finally her down-turned mouth more exaggerated than ever.
A surge of emotion rose up from deep inside, the quivering lips further exaggerating the drag at the corner of her mouth. With the hand towel muffling the sobs, she sat on the closed lid of the toilet, lowered her head to her knees, and howled for her mother.
‘Paige?’ It was Aiden who whispered her name after a short rap with his knuckles on the bathroom door. ‘I’ve left peppermint tea in your room to help with the nausea.’ He paused. ‘I also wanted to let you know I’m here if you need to talk. Okay? No rush. Whenever you’re ready.’
When his footsteps faded, Paige opened the door to the bathroom and tiptoed back to her room, easing the door shut without a sound. Steam rose from the mug of hot tea, fogging the mirror on the dresser. Dragging the lightweight wicker armchair alongside the window, she eased her trembling body down, her head dizzy from the gazillion questions ricocheting around her brain. One answer at a time wouldn’t cut it. She had to have all of them if she was to make sense of this and start dealing with the fallout. But her chat—make that yelling match—with Alice had only created more questions.
Season of Shadow and Light Page 40
