The Ties That Bind

by Lexi Landsman

  ‘Are you here long?’ Annabel asked when she returned. She handed the document back to Courtney.

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I was hoping to find them quickly and stay a week. But now,’ she shrugged, ‘I just don’t know.’

  Annabel sat at her computer and quickly typed ‘Rose’, ‘1979’ and ‘Silver Creek’ into a web search. She made small talk to buy time as she waited for the results to load on her computer screen. ‘So, are you staying nearby?’

  ‘Actually, I don’t know. I was at a hotel in Melbourne and wasn’t sure where this meeting would take me. So, I guess I’ll have to find a hotel here.’

  ‘You can try Betty’s Bed and Breakfast. It’s not too far. Twenty minutes maybe.’

  Courtney smiled. ‘Thank you, but you’re right, who travels across the world with one piece of paper and nothing else? It’s probably best if I head back to Melbourne and go home. I’m not going to find anything here.’

  Annabel took a sip of water and clicked on the first article that came up. Momentarily distracted by what appeared onscreen, she suddenly realised that Courtney was already at the doorway. ‘Wait. I can help you,’ Annabel said quickly. ‘Or I can try at least.’ She didn’t yet know how she could help but she needed more time – to find out if this woman was who Annabel thought she might be.

  ‘But if the records are gone, what else is there to go on?’

  ‘I’ve been here forty years, Ms Hamilton,’ Annabel said, trying to keep her voice even and her expression unchanged. ‘In that time, I’ve recorded every birth and every death. I can’t promise anything, but I will try.’

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate it. But I really need to get back to my son. I have a few more days here at most.’

  Annabel could see the anguish in her face at the mention of her child and it suddenly seemed as though her search was spurned by something far greater than an adoptee trying to reconnect late in life with their birth parents.

  ‘Is your son with you?’

  ‘No, he’s with his father in Miami,’ Courtney sighed. ‘He’s the reason I’m all the way over here. I’m searching for my birth parents because he’s not well. He desperately needs a stem-cell transplant from a matched donor.’

  When the woman walked out of her office, Annabel felt a chill all over her. Hearing the reason for Courtney’s search made Annabel more determined to make sense of the hunch she had and help this woman in any way she could.

  Annabel closed the door and meticulously scanned through each and every online article she could find. She wasn’t searching for evidence to validate what she thought could be possible. She was looking for any article to convince herself that her hunch was wrong, a simple impossibility. Because if it wasn’t, Annabel knew that a piece of history had just found its way back into her office. And she wasn’t going to let another record disappear. Especially not this one …

  42

  JADE slept over at Adam’s every evening. She had told her grandmother about him but didn’t broach the subject with her father, who wouldn’t have asked questions anyway.

  Jade and Adam often walked through their shared insomnia, getting to know all the paths carved between the tall trees of the forest around Riley’s house. Sometimes he brought his guitar and they sat under the maple trees on a bed of red leaves as he strummed tunes and hummed along. She liked that there were things about him she was discovering every day. The sleepless nights she had once dreaded became the hours she looked forward to most because it was just the two of them in the moonlight among the falling autumn leaves.

  On the day Jade was going to introduce him to her grandmother, the liquid amber and oak trees that had survived the bushfires had turned a deep red and yellow, their leaves the colours of a flame. It almost seemed like the new season was paying tribute to what had passed before it.

  ‘I’m warning you,’ Jade told Adam as they arrived at the construction site, ‘she will ask you a million questions. And she’ll be testing you too.’

  He grinned cheekily. ‘So, how do I win your grandmother over?’

  ‘Be yourself,’ she smiled, ‘and hopefully that will be enough.’

  Jade was holding his hand as they walked through the small vineyard where she had started to weave grape vines through trellises, hoping they would grow buds within the year. But when she saw Helena carrying a basket of fruit for the builders, she released his hand self-consciously. Nervousness overcame Jade and she tried to shrug it off. A part of her desperately needed her grandmother’s approval, her blessing. Something her mother would never have given. Asha was so critical that she would have found fault in anyone Jade cared for.

  Her grandmother put the basket down and watched them approach. ‘Agapi mou,’ she said, smiling, and hugged Jade tightly before pausing to size Adam up.

  ‘So, this is the secret behind your smile,’ Helena said, grinning, her eyes trained on him. He leaned forward to shake her hand, which made Jade cringe at the awkwardness of it all, especially when her grandmother ignored the gesture. ‘You can give an old lady a hug,’ she said instead, breaking the ice.

  ‘He’s very tall and handsome,’ she whispered loudly to Jade.

  ‘YiaYia,’ Jade chided. ‘This is Adam. He’s the firefighter I told you about. The one who saved my life.’

  Adam squinted in the strong morning light.

  ‘I know who you are.’ Helena smirked playfully. ‘I asked Pamela when I was working in the kitchen who the mysterious man was who had my granddaughter beaming from the inside out.’

  Jade blushed again, avoiding Adam’s eyes. ‘YiaYia, please,’ she said.

  ‘She’s a beautiful girl, my granddaughter,’ Helena said, turning her attention back to Adam. ‘Eyes the colour of mint and a heart of gold. She’s very special.’

  Jade’s cheeks felt hot. ‘Apologies, Adam. I didn’t pay her to say all this, I promise.’

  Adam laughed. ‘No, you’re right. She is a special girl. She must take after her grandmother,’ he said.

  ‘Well, she certainly doesn’t get her kindness from her mother. Looks maybe, but that is all.’

  Jade glared at her grandmother, hoping she would get the message. She hadn’t mentioned her mother to Adam and she didn’t want him to know anything about the woman.

  ‘Have you two eaten? I have some fruit, delicious apples. Have one.’ Helena handed them each one before they had a chance to get a word in.

  They sat on the milk crates and Jade quickly changed the conversation. ‘Adam has moved here temporarily from Melbourne.’

  Helena looked curious. ‘Why would anyone choose to move here with the way everything is right now? It all is such a mess.’

  Now Jade wished it had been her grandmother she had prepped about their first meeting instead of Adam. ‘He wants to help us rebuild,’ Jade said quickly.

  Her grandmother paused, the realisation that he had come there for Jade suddenly dawning on her. ‘Well, that is very nice of you, Adam. You must be a kind person. But I shouldn’t be surprised. Jade wouldn’t be going steady with someone who wasn’t.’

  ‘No one says going steady anymore, YiaYia,’ Jade laughed.

  ‘Where do your parents live?’ Helena asked.

  ‘My father passed away a few years ago. And my mother and brother live in Sydney. I felt like I needed a change so I moved to Melbourne. My brother is expecting his first child in a few months.’

  ‘That’s wonderful news,’ Helena said. ‘But won’t that be hard for you, being away from them when he has the baby?’

  Adam took Jade’s hand and rested it on his knee. ‘Actually, I’ve done a lot of thinking since the fires. That night made me realise how short life is, how quickly things can change. My mother has been pretty lonely since my father passed away and I’m starting to think that,’ he inhaled deeply, ‘that it’s time for me to go back to Sydney. Especially with my brother’s baby on the way. I’ve applied for a job at a station there, so I’m waiting to find out.’

  Jade’s
chest tightened at the revelation. She was shocked into silence. Why hadn’t he mentioned it before? And why did he pick his moment now, in front of Helena?

  ‘It is important to be with family,’ Helena said. ‘In fact, it is the only thing in life that truly matters.’ Her eyes glossed over Jade’s face and she seemed to read the shock in her granddaughter’s expression even though Jade tried hard to suppress it. Had he failed her grandmother’s test?

  One of the builders appeared and Helena stood to greet them. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

  When she was out of sight, Jade turned to Adam, feeling betrayed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I’m telling you now,’ he said softly, surprised at her reaction.

  A familiar sense of abandonment clouded over her. He took her hand but she flicked it back. ‘Jade, what’s wrong?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.

  ‘You told me you were moving here until you figured things out. And now you just drop the bombshell that you’re going back to Sydney.’ She couldn’t keep the hurt out of her voice. ‘How did you expect me to react?’

  He studied her face, softening his tone. ‘I was going to ask you if you’d come with me.’ He smiled now. ‘So, what do you think?’

  His suggestion caught her off guard. Wasn’t this exactly what she had hoped for – a sign that he wanted some sort of future for them together? So, why did the idea alone make her so uneasy? She stood up and looked ahead at her house taking shape, her grandmother laughing with one of the builders and the green shoots creeping through at the base of some olive trees.

  ‘So, you’re serious, then,’ she said, turning back to him, ‘about moving to Sydney.’

  ‘Yes.’ He stared at her quizzically, as if trying to read her thoughts. She wanted desperately to smile back at him, to accept his offer graciously, to start a life together, but it felt like there was a chain attaching her to the countryside. She just couldn’t leave this place.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he pressed again, now standing beside her. ‘What do you think? Will you move there with me?’

  ‘I could never leave my grandmother and my father. They need me here.’

  He reached for her hand again and this time she let him but it was limp in his grasp. ‘I’m not asking you to leave right now,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll wait as long as you need to finish the house and get them settled in. In the meantime I can find us a place to live in Sydney and look for work until you’re ready.’

  Jade cast her eyes down and ran her foot into the soil. ‘Adam, I don’t mean I can’t leave right now,’ she said softly, her voice almost a whisper. ‘I mean at all.’

  His smile faded in an instant and he took a step back as if she’d burned him. ‘Really? Or is it just that you don’t want to leave?’

  His tone rattled Jade. They had never snapped at each other, and she hated seeing his disappointment in her.

  ‘Just promise me you’ll think about it, okay?’ he asked.

  Jade nodded, uncertain. Was he giving her an ultimatum? If she said no, was this it, the end of their relationship? Why had she shut him down so quickly without even contemplating the suggestion? What was it she was afraid of?

  The idea of leaving her home made Jade feel as if her core were being uprooted. She pictured herself like the pristine ivory-and-pink rose her mother had always loved. It was a beautiful rose, but when you picked it, the petals fell apart.

  43

  DAVID was staring at his phone, willing himself to call Courtney. They had only communicated in sparse text messages since she left. She had called him twice but he hadn’t answered. Although he wasn’t consciously doing it, David knew he was punishing her for leaving. Silence was the best ammunition he had.

  But now he had to call. He had just received the results from Matthew’s bone-marrow biopsy: the first course of chemotherapy hadn’t sent his body into remission.

  Doctor Anderson said it was to be expected because Matthew had high-risk ALL, but that didn’t make it any less devastating. He would now have to endure more induction chemotherapy starting in a few days before he could move onto the next phase of treatment. Not going into remission from this cycle meant it was more likely that he could relapse when he did eventually go into remission. David knew he had to tell Courtney, but he held the phone in his hand, unable to dial her number.

  ‘Sweetheart, just call her,’ his mother said. Her dyed black hair was sitting in a bun and she was wearing heavy make-up. She had always gone to an effort to groom herself, even if her only company was David’s father.

  ‘That’s not why I was looking at my phone,’ he lied.

  She gave him a knowing shrug but he returned his attention to the dirty dinner dishes. She came into the kitchen and took the rinsed ones, placing them in the dishwasher. ‘I know you’re angry with Courtney. But you’ve got to try to understand where she’s coming from. She’s. His. Mother.’ She said the words slowly, individually. ‘I’m your mother,’ she continued. ‘And if anything happened to my baby, you bet I would go across the globe trying to do everything to keep you safe. Even if I knew the odds were stacked against me.’

  David kept his eyes focused on the red-wine stain on the marble bench.

  They finished doing the dishes in silence but her words resonated in his mind. He was Matthew’s father and what was he doing?

  David went upstairs to say goodnight to his son. It had been years since he’d tucked him into bed but tonight he wrapped the sheets tightly around him like he had when Matthew was a baby. He didn’t know how to tell Matthew that the chemotherapy hadn’t worked as planned. Instead, David decided to avoid telling him anything negative. All Matthew needed to know was he was having more treatment to make him better.

  David looked up at Matthew’s hanging planets; the ceiling of his room was nearly covered in them now. It had started as a school project and had quickly grown to become a hobby for his son. Matthew had crafted some of the planets out of papier-mâché and others by painting styrofoam balls. ‘You haven’t made a planet for a while,’ David noticed.

  ‘Betelgeuse is next but it’s not a planet, it’s a red star in the constellation Orion. I was going to make it today but I felt tired.’

  David hid his alarm. ‘Were you, like what?’

  ‘Tired, you know, sleepy,’ he said sarcastically as if David had asked a stupid question.

  ‘And how do you feel now?’

  ‘Sleepy,’ he said. ‘It’s bedtime. Aren’t you supposed to be tired?’

  David forced a smile. ‘Hey, you know, if you ever feel different, you’ve got to tell me straight away, okay?’

  Matthew was tucked into his Manchester United bedsheets, his bald head almost luminous against them – a sight David would never get used to. ‘Dad, do you know what the difference is between the light of planets and stars?’

  Matthew seemed to have memorised his school astronomy textbook. ‘Nope,’ David answered.

  ‘Planets glow because their light is constant, and stars twinkle because their light is pulsed. And Betelgeuse is one of the largest stars in the sky; it’s, like, hundreds of times bigger than the sun. But soon, it’s going to become a supernova and burn out. Poof,’ he gestured an explosion with his hands. ‘Just like that. It’ll be gone. As if it was never there.’

  ‘Wow,’ David said. ‘I’m sure it’ll be thousands of years before that happens.’

  David kissed his son’s forehead and turned off his lights. He stopped to admire the glow-in-the-dark stickers Matthew had stuck all around the ceiling and walls. It was beautiful.

  When David was lying in bed that night he thought about what his son had said about the red star, which had burned brightly for millions of years: Poof. Just like that. It’ll be gone.

  44

  COURTNEY woke in the early hours of the morning disoriented in the small farm cottage. It was nestled amid the inland slopes of the Great Dividing Range, not far from the fire-damaged regions. She opened the blinds to s
ee a shadow of purple fog hanging over the towering trees and lush rolling hills.

  She went out of the bluestone-and-timber cottage and sat on the steps of the deck to take in her surroundings. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos and kookaburras rested in the upper branches of the silver birch and lemon-scented gum trees. In the distance she could see kangaroos hopping behind a pond and maple keys twirling to the sides of a sand track path.

  It was a startling thought that only a few kilometres away from the beauty in front of her, whole towns had burned to the ground.

  She grabbed her phone to call David again. When he picked up, the sound of his voice made her realise how much she missed him. It was deep, rough around the edges, reminding her of winter evenings snuggled up in bed against him.

  She had just started to tell him about the picturesque farmland cottage she was staying in and her disappointing visit to the hospital when David abruptly interrupted her. ‘The results came back,’ David said. ‘Matthew hasn’t gone into remission. He needs to go through induction therapy again.’

  Courtney’s chest tightened. She breathed deeply, struggling to absorb the news.

  David’s tone was clipped as he continued. ‘He’ll have to go back to hospital and be treated as an inpatient again.’

  ‘That’s not what I wanted to hear.’ She sighed deeply, feeling a wave of emotion overcome her. ‘Poor Matthew, having to go through it again. What did the doctor say?’

  ‘He said we shouldn’t feel despondent. He has high-risk ALL, so it’s harder to treat. But he was more confident that this next round would send him into remission.’