As Annie ran off, Ally’s gaze unabashedly dropped to Bron’s legs, bare in her short denim cut-offs.
“I’m jealous,” Ally smirked playfully.
Bron quickly licked her lips and shoved her left hand into a pocket of her shorts. “Pardon?” she prompted curtly, hoping the way she leaned against the banister looked as casual as intended.
Ally gestured to her own tight, dark denim jeans. “Next time I decide to spend a five-year holiday behind bars, I’ll be sure to commit a crime that’ll land me there long enough to leave the same season I go in. It’s a fuckin’ sweat bath down here.” Bron tried not to flinch at the profanity, watching intently as Ally ran a hand through her short-cropped, ebony black hair. Ally pinched the material at her thigh. “Thought about chopping these off at the knee.”
Bron pursed her lips. “It’s quite hot. We’re expecting bushfires relatively soon.”
Ally gasped dramatically and her eyes widened playfully in that sarcastic way that had always been so, so Ally. “Well, good thing I’m here now. I was a firey,” she pointed out cockily. “Pretty sure you remember, Bron.”
She did. Ally’s past as a volunteer firefighter had been perhaps her single redeeming quality. “Yes, well…bushfires aren’t anything to joke about,” Bron admonished.
Ally’s expression hazed over. “You think you need to lecture me about bushfires?”
She swallowed in sudden recollection. Her face grew hot at the faux pas and the back of her neck burned uncomfortably. Yes, Ally knew all about fire.
There was that cocky grin again, glazing its way across Ally’s face. “Maybe one day, if you’re lucky,” Ally rasped, “I’ll show you the scars.”
“I see you haven’t lost that sense of humour Libby was so fond of.”
“I see you haven’t lost your Aussie accent. I was worried you were going to sound like a Yank.”
The screen door at the back of the house squeaked open. “Bron! Al’s here!” Jackie’s voice rang out before she stepped into the hall. “Oh! You found her.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “Come in here and have a cold drink.”
Ally held Bron’s stare for a moment before following Jackie.
Daniel held up a small bag. “You want this upstairs, Al?”
Ally hesitated and she looked to Jackie.
“We’ve put you in Lib’s old room,” Jackie said into the fridge. “You don’t mind?”
Reaching into the cupboard for five glasses, Bron watched Ally’s expression in the reflection of the oven glass across the room.
“No,” Ally replied lowly. “Lib’s room is fine.” She cleared her throat as she took a seat at the kitchen table.
Daniel swung the small gym bag full of Ally’s belongings over his shoulder. It was evidently half-empty, the cracking vinyl sunken at its sides. Roughing her hair up, he bent down to kiss the top of her head.
“Get off,” Ally laughed, pushing him away as he took off down the hall.
Bron set the glasses down for Jackie, contemplating the exchange with guarded amusement, trying to remember the last time her brother had been comfortable enough to be so playful with her. She pulled out a chair at the end of the table and sat back.
Ally smiled at her and Bron crossed her legs.
“Lemonade good?” Jackie asked Ally, already pouring her a glass from the plastic Schweppes bottle. She slid the fizzing drink in front of Ally.
“Thanks, Jacs.”
Bron took her in. The way Ally held herself was…captivating. The way she splayed herself out in the kitchen chair, relaxed and comfortable, commanded the attention of everybody in the room. At least, it commanded Bron’s attention. Jackie was preoccupied, shouting instructions out the backdoor for Annie to wash up for dinner.
She watched, irritably, as Ally twisted her glass of lemonade, swirling the ring of condensation across the wooden tabletop. She was completely unapologetic for the grief she had caused this family—a family that wasn’t even hers. Bron imagined Ally’s legs, spread apart with the impropriety of a teenage boy. She could almost remember the way Ally’s knees used to tap against hers at dinner when they were kids…
“God,” the rough timber of Ally’s voice started. “Haven’t seen you since before Annie was born. It must have been Christmas of…what…’06?”
Bron looked up, the realisation suddenly dawning upon her that Ally’s question was directed at her.
“Before that I think.”
“Bet Boston’s missing you.”
Bron forced a smile, surprised that Ally seemed to care enough to remember where she now called home. “It is.”
She wasn’t going to give Ally any more than that, not when her parole was the main reason Bron still found herself in the mountains, three months after Libby’s funeral and well into the hot Australian summer.
Bron loathed the Australian summer. The week before, temperatures had spiked to forty degrees Celsius, and she’d dreamed about a snow-clad Boston Common. She’d woken in a sweat, the old rainbow ribbons her newly out-and-proud twenty-year-old self had tied to the bars of her fan fluttering weakly on the pathetic, oscillating breeze. But the night after that had been unbearable. Annie had climbed into her bed midmorning, and Bron, alien to the uninhibited nature of a sleeping child, had laid awake, sweltering as her unconscious niece threw her limbs across the mattress and her aunt like a possessed ragdoll. When Bron finally dozed off around four a.m., she’d had another nightmare: herself, floating naked in Boston’s very shallow and very public Copley Square fountain in broad daylight.
Clearly uncomfortable under Bron’s scrutiny, Ally watched Jackie chase Annie into the laundry to wash her hands for lunch. When Jackie disappeared, Ally craned her neck backward, looking to the stairs for Dan.
Even with a wall between them, Bron knew the second Jackie turned on the high wash tub tap for Annie. The old pipes shuddered violently in the wall between the kitchen and laundry, so much so that Ally flinched, until she put two and two together. Bron would call a plumber to look at the problem before she left for Boston. On just a pension, Jackie had been struggling to make ends meet since her retirement. When Bron had first arrived home, she’d caught Jackie adding water to her jar of anti-ageing face cream to make it go further. That week, as she shopped for groceries in a grief-induced haze, Bron had bought the store out of the face cream in Jackie’s favourite brand.
Ally caught Bron’s gaze again. “How long are you here for?”
“Depends.” On how long it takes me to trust that you won’t do anything stupid when I leave you here with my family.
Ally motioned to the wheezing fan on top of the fridge. “That fan’s not doing a whole lot for us.”
“My apologies if the air-conditioning system in Oberon Women’s Correctional Centre is more to your liking than our ancient appliances.” It hadn’t meant to come out so biting. Bron added a chuckle to soften the blow.
Ally placed her hands behind her head, sat back even further in the chair, and clicked her tongue playfully. Bron tried to shift in her seat, too, but in the heat, the backs of her thighs had already glued themselves to the vinyl base.
“Hey, Ally!” Annie called, steered into the kitchen by Nanna Jackie rubbing vigorously at Annie’s drenched forearms with a hand towel. “You know what I found out while I was washing my hands? Your name is just like mine but you got two Ls and I got two Ns. And I got an ie and you got a y. But it don’t matter ’cause they mostly sound the same, yeah? We’re like twins!”
“We are,” Ally agreed. “Want to see something cool?”
Annie nodded.
Ally pulled down the right band of her tank top, baring her black bra strap.
Bron raised an eyebrow at Ally’s blatant immodesty, averting her gaze, not giving Ally the satisfaction of appearing startled. Until she saw it. An angry red welt of fresh prison ink.
“That’s my name,” Annie said in wonder, her little fingertips scanning the letters that travelled at least four inches across the
right side of Ally’s chest.
Bron fought the urge to roll her eyes. She’d never seen anything so ridiculous in her life. She’d thought parents who got the names of their kids tattooed on their bodies was stupid, but this was something else.
And then it dawned on her. What better way for Ally to weave her way into this family? If she screwed up, made one wrong turn, Bron knew Ally would play the Annie card to get back into Jackie’s good graces. The contract was inked into her skin. The tattoo may have appeared to be healing—a week old at most—but the whole thing just screamed infection.
Annie was off on a roll of interview questions: Had it hurt? Had she cried? Did it still hurt? No? Who did it? Ally did it herself? She was so brave. It seemed Annie had found a new toy to play with. Boring Aunt Bron the children’s book illustrator paled in comparison to decorated deviant Ally.
“Uncle Dan, look,” Annie instructed as Daniel reached into the fridge and pulled out a beer.
“Wow,” Daniel remarked, surprised. “That’s super nice.”
“She did it herself,” Annie informed him.
Pulling out one of the kitchen chairs, Daniel visibly cringed at the redness of Ally’s skin. “I wouldn’t do that, not even for you, Ann.”
Bron sipped her lemonade between clenched teeth as she listened to Ally and her brother talk about their plans for the upcoming work week—how many homeowners had booked Daniel for painting jobs and how many quotes they’d give before the end of the week. Weeks before, Ally had taken up Daniel’s offer to work in his business to satisfy the requirements of her parole agreement. Bron hoped to God that Ally wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise Daniel’s reputation as one of the finest house painters in Katoomba.
With a quick glance around the room to see if anyone was watching her, Annie stood up on her chair, turned to the fan, and drew her singlet up over her head, clearly as bored with the conversation as Bron was. The vinyl squeaked as her tiny feet twisted on the clammy surface. “It’s so hot, Ally!” Annie sighed deeply, throwing her singlet to the floor.
“Be careful,” Bron instructed.
“Remind you of someone?” Jackie wiggled her eyebrows at Ally.
Ally grinned. “Yep.”
“Did you have a swimming pool in prison?” Annie wondered, the golden blond strands of her long hair flying about her doll-like face.
Bron let out a chuckle.
Ally shot Bron a pointed stare. “No, babe,” she answered, her gaze locked on Bron, “but I took a lot of nice long cold showers.”
“Well, bad luck for you then,” Annie sighed. “Uncle Dan only lets us have two-minute showers ’cause there’s pretty much no water ’cause of the drought! Better go back to prison!”
“Annie!” Jackie reprimanded.
“What?”
“That was rude!”
“I was only joking!”
Bron cleared her throat. “Annie, can you do me a favour and go pop some ice from the back fridge into Tammy’s bucket?”
Annie sighed. “’Kay, but I’m not putting my shirt back on. Too hot.”
Bron smiled softly. “Deal.”
“She’s been a bit mouthy since the accident,” Jackie whispered when they heard the suction of the back fridge pop. “Just tell her off if she gets smart with you.”
“She’s all right,” Ally said, brushing Annie’s rudeness aside.
Jackie shook her head. “She needs to be put back in her place.”
Bron couldn’t help but pipe up. “Her psychologist says it’s completely normal. Expected, even. She was in a car accident and she lost her mother. Give her a break, Mum.”
Jackie took a seat at the table. “And what do you think Lib would have to say about the cheek she’s been giving?”
“Libby had a mouth on her,” Ally cut in. “And she turned out just fine.”
“Annie doesn’t have a mouth on her,” Bron insisted.
“I remember when Libby came to bail me out…the first time,” Ally chuckled.
Dan must have kicked Ally under the table, because suddenly they were both laughing and Jackie was telling them to stop mucking around. Suddenly Bron felt like she had no place in this comfortable, relaxed family dynamic.
“Anyway,” Ally continued, “as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted,” she said with a wink at Dan, “Lib gave the screw so much shit that the fucker decided to leave me in there three hours after she handed over the cash. I could hear her from out back. Can still hear her. ‘I went all the way into town to take out two bloody grand and you’re still givin’ me shit.’”
Jackie and Dan laughed politely, but the room slowly fell silent. They all listened to Annie’s distant voice instructing Tammy. “Drink ya water, matey.”
“I never did pay Lib back that bail money,” Ally whispered, her eyes fixed on the bottom of her glass.
Jackie reached for Ally’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “Love, what’s done is done. She wouldn’t have minded…wouldn’t have given it a second thought.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Bron interrupted. “It wasn’t Libby’s money.”
Ally looked up. “Huh?”
Bron had waited twenty-three years for this moment. “It was my money she used to bail you out.” She let her words sink in for a moment before she added, “The first time.”
Ally squirmed and sat up a little straighter. “It was yours?”
“Uh-huh. And it wasn’t two grand. It was three grand she borrowed from me. I drove her into town, and I took the money out on my credit card.”
For a long moment, nobody said anything.
“You were paying off uni as you went. Where the hell did you get three grand?” Jackie wondered, her greying eyebrows fussing together with worry.
“The money I’d been saving for New York. Plus some more I took out on credit.”
At the other end of the table, the tendons in Ally’s neck tensed.
“Never mind,” Bron muttered. “A year later, I had it back.”
Ally’s gaze shot up again. “So she paid you back?” she asked, relieved.
How convenient, Bron considered, for Ally to think her debt died with loyal, hard-working Libby. Bron leaned forward in her chair and ran her finger along the rim of her glass. “No. After approximately two hundred four a.m. bakery shifts I had it back.”
She met Ally’s stare. The wooden legs of Ally’s chair screeched as she stood up. She pushed it back under the table roughly. In a second, she was gone from the room.
“Why can’t you just let it go?” Dan huffed.
She shrugged and glanced at Jackie. The pain and disappointment swimming in greyish-blue eyes made her look away quickly.
Heavy boots pounded back down the stairs.
Bron jumped when Ally slammed her hand—and a small wad of fresh, crisp fifty-dollar notes—down on the kitchen table in front of her. “There’s three hundred to start and I’ll get you the rest next week,” Ally rasped.
Bron swallowed nervously, thrown off her game.
Ally kicked her chair back out and slid down into it, her arms crossed tightly across her full breasts, across the tattoo. “Just let me know how much interest you’ve calculated over the years, Bron,” Ally spat. “Because clearly, you’ve given it a lot of thought.”
Chapter Two
The headlights of a neighbour’s car returning home threw a weak glow along the path of the pitch-black driveway. With Tammy under her feet, Bron’s toes gripped her thongs tighter as she watched her step down the steepest part of the driveway. How on earth had they sped down it on their bikes every day as kids and not once toppled over the handlebars?
She held Daniel’s phone up, knowing she most likely wouldn’t be able to get a decent signal until she reached the gate. Two bars of reception—enough to call an ambulance, but not enough to check the messages left on her home phone in Boston. She groaned, picturing her shattered phone again.
She smiled at the home screen of Daniel’s phone, his girlfriend Carly
, beaming, at her university graduation last month. Daniel’s arm wrapped around her robed shoulders, pretending to bite at the gold tassel of her graduation cap. Despite his childishness in the picture, the suited man in the picture was anything but immature.
The last time Bron had been home, Daniel had been studying for his Higher School Certificate. Now twenty-three, he had his own painting business and was off every night with Carly. They seemed serious but Jackie had a different impression, which she’d expressed to Bron in confidence. Carly was already furthering her studies in graduate school in the city, while Daniel was a painter with a backup plan to head out further west rather than coastal east if there was ever a shortage of work in the mountains. They wouldn’t last, Jackie believed. But to Bron they seemed happy, in love, and as depressing as it seemed, mature enough to make sacrifices for each other. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were engaged by Christmas. There’s an eighteen-year age difference between us, Bron thought, and yet I’ve never had a relationship based on mutual compromise.
Bron doubted forty was going to be her lucky year in the romance department, because it had been miserable in every other respect. Since losing Libby, things had been on a downward spiral. The first challenge had been getting Annie’s grief and anxiety under control—doctor’s appointments, counselling appointments, spending the first few hours of each Monday morning in Annie’s kindergarten classroom until she’d adjusted enough to let Bron leave without having a meltdown. Bron’s commitment to her family meant not only had she been forced to postpone the start of her new project with Yellowstone Books, she’d also had to ask MIT for additional time to think over their teaching job offer. And just when things had finally been getting back on track, Rae had decided to call things off with her, a month from their one-year anniversary.
And now there was Ally.
As she locked the home screen, she took note of the time. Three minutes from eleven and Ally still wasn’t home. Bron had been stupid to think there was even a remote possibility that Ally would respect her curfew—and Bron.
Echo Point Page 2
