Echo Point

by Virginia Hale

  “Gosh, Annie, are they teaching you to make mud pies at school or what?” Ally mumbled.

  “The dirt ain’t coming from my hands. It’s your dirt!” Annie argued.

  Ally’s laughter was deep and genuine.

  When Bron came closer with a handtowel and into her niece’s line of sight, Annie’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re home, Aunt Bron! You gonna wash up too?” Annie’s eyes fell to the wrapped iced tea bun in her hand. She squealed and wiggled down from Ally’s grip.

  “Pink icing! Yes!” She pumped her fist into the air, running forward and grabbing for the bag of bread.

  Bron pulled back and set the plastic bag down on the lid of the washing machine. “No tea bun until after dinner, missy. Dry your hands and then take the bread rolls outside to Nan. How was school?”

  Annie took the handtowel from Bron. “It was okay. Ally and Dan picked me up.”

  As Annie made her quick escape outside, she smiled at Ally, who was vigorously scrubbing her forearms. Ally smiled back. Bron reached for the bottle of hand soap and squirted a coin-sized amount onto her palm. The words Ally muttered were too soft over the running water.

  “I missed that?” Bron said.

  Ally cleared her throat. “I said, ‘nice dress.’”

  Almost on cue, the soap Bron was rubbing into her skin soaked into the paper cut, reopening the wound. The damn dress was cursed. Bron wet her lips. “Thank you.” She tried to ignore the bloodless sting. “It must have been a hot day outside for you and Daniel,” she tried. “I wasn’t exactly doing hard labour and even I’m perspiring.”

  Ally’s lips twisted into a grin. She looked Bron up and down. “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Suddenly, Ally bent forward and stuck her whole head beneath the tap, saturating her short hair. Water ran down the curve of her neck, drenching the razor back of her navy singlet. Bron forced her gaze away from Ally’s firm, tanned breasts spilling over the rim of her singlet. She couldn’t help but notice the skin surrounding the tattoo, violently red the day before, was now just irritated pink.

  Ally pulled back from the tub. Slicking a hand through her hair, she looked around for a towel. Bron offered her the handtowel to wipe at the water raining from her chin, but Ally reached behind her to the washing basket, full of fresh linens from the clothes line. She snatched up the pale blue towel with the embroidered ‘B.’

  “Oh—”

  “Let me guess. This one’s not okay?” Ally sighed.

  Bron looked up and met Ally’s stare. No, she hadn’t imagined the bite in Ally’s tone.

  Ally cocked an eyebrow. She looked…completely drained.

  It wasn’t worth the argument. “No, I…it’s fine. Totally fine.”

  Ally leaned back against the linen cupboard, rubbing at her wet hair, her jawline, her arms, all with Bron’s towel. She gestured toward the running tap. “Are you going to wash those hands sometime today?” she wondered, the scrape of her voice gravelly.

  Right, hands. Soapy water.

  “Excuse me,” she mumbled, widening her legs over the puddle at the base of the sink.

  Ally pulled the towel over her neck and disappeared out the back door.

  Five seconds was all it took. “Hey, that’s Aunty Bron’s towel!” Annie immediately chided. Bron closed her eyes and cringed. “She doesn’t let anyone use her towel!” Annie continued. “You better put it back before she sees.”

  Ally knew Bron was within earshot. She had to say something. “That’s okay! Don’t worry about it,” she called, but Ally’s work boots were already climbing up the back steps.

  Bron licked her lips and turned off the tap as the back screen creaked open.

  “Really, it doesn’t matter,” Bron began.

  “I think this belongs to you.” Ally deposited the towel in Bron’s wet hands. “Wouldn’t want to get in your bad book again,” she said, making for the door.

  Bron pressed against the tub. “What makes you think you’re in my bad book?” she asked. Even the way Ally said it sounded too polite, too contrived.

  When Ally met her gaze, it was obvious Ally believed she’d never been in Bron’s good book. Ally hesitated at the door for a moment before she crossed the room and stepped directly in front of Bron, so close she could feel her body heat. Unsure of Ally’s reaction, she was unmoving. She dropped her gaze to the floor, and watched out the corner of her eye as Ally’s fingers curled tightly around the lip of the tub.

  Ally craned her neck slightly so her words were for Bron’s ears only. “Here’s the thing: I don’t care if you like me, Bron,” she whispered. “You don’t have to like me, and you don’t have to trust me. I know you think I’m no good because I owe you a shitload of money and I fucked with Libby’s life. But this family’s all I’ve got, and I know they’d like it if we got along.”

  Bron raised her gaze from the sink. In weariness, Ally’s eyes, usually the colour of a fine cognac, were lighter. It was the setting sun streaming through the window, Bron realized, which set golden rays flickering in Ally’s irises.

  A deep sigh fell from Ally’s lips. “So how about we just call it a day and be done with it?”

  She searched her face for any hint of insincerity, but only found frustration in her expression. “Don’t look at me like that,” Bron asserted.

  Ally was infuriatingly calm. “Like what?”

  “Like that. The way we look at Annie when she’s pushed it too far. Like I’m at fault.”

  “This,” Ally said, waving a hand between them, “is exactly what I’m talking about. I’m ready to be done with it. Are you?”

  Bron was ready to be done with the conversation. Dropping the towel on top of the full load in the washing machine, she nodded.

  “That’s a yes?” Ally encouraged, searching Bron’s face for confirmation.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Ally clicked her tongue. She paused, unmoving. “Is there anything you want to say to me?”

  “Nope.” The intensity of Ally’s stare bore hotly into the side of Bron’s cheek as she turned the dials on the machine.

  “Good,” Ally said, pushing off the tub and heading back outside.

  Bron drew a deep breath. She could forgive for Annie’s sake, for her family’s sake. But she wouldn’t forget.

  Chapter Four

  Holding the garden hose loosely in one hand, Bron watched Daniel scrape charcoal from the barbecue grill plate. At her feet, Annie splashed around in the shallow kiddie pool Bron was filling with cooler water, mumbling mindlessly as she constructed an imaginary rainforest world with Jackie’s water can and Libby’s old Safari Barbie. Bron appraised her brother, so charming in his sophisticated button-up and his pale grey dressy shorts. She thought about just how serious his relationship with Carly Jamieson actually was.

  Carly’s parents had timed their overseas cruise to arrive in Sydney Harbour that Friday morning, the morning of Carly’s twenty-first birthday. But an upset Carly had arrived on their doorstep the night before, after her parents had called with the unfortunate news that, due to poor weather conditions that day, the ship was behind schedule. The Jamiesons wouldn’t be back in Katoomba until the early hours of Saturday morning. Daniel suggested Carly reschedule the extended family dinner to Saturday night, when her parents were back in the mountains. On the night of her birthday, he’d cook for her. From the lounge in the front room, Bron had watched Carly’s fallen expression transform into one of elation.

  She watched Daniel count out the marinated steaks and tip a prepackaged bag of lettuce into one of Jackie’s salad bowls that had been around since the eighties. She had to give him credit for effort. Although she felt underdressed in her shorts and singlet, she imagined if there was going to be an award for the Most Disappointing Aspect of Carly Jamieson’s Twenty-First Birthday Dinner, it probably wasn’t going to be her outfit.

  As Daniel crouched down and checked the gas bottle, Bron raised her Aviators to the top of her head. “You know they’ve called
out a total fire ban?”

  He scoffed, his focus trained on lighting the barbecue. “Yes, Bronwyn, I am familiar with the NSW Rural Fire Service Rules and Regulations.”

  She squinted in the sun. “Well, isn’t it a better idea to cook those inside?”

  “Excuse me, Miss High and Mighty, it’s gas-fired. Besides, am I lighting it for cooking, or for comfort and warmth?”

  She wiped at her clammy forehead. “Definitely not comfort and warmth.” Even after five thirty, it seemed the burning sun had no intention of ever setting. As it was, the wading pool was more like a spa bath. She was surprised the cheap plastic hadn’t melted flat into the grass beneath.

  Annie twisted on the plastic mat of the pool lightly splashing Bron’s shorts and the minute patch of skin where her navel was exposed.

  “Why are you complaining?” he played. “Don’t you want barbecued octopus?”

  “As we’re all well aware, this family doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to following RFS laws,” she said casually, flicking her wrist and allowing a thin fountain of warm water to drizzle over Annie’s hair. “Especially former firewomen.”

  He ripped open a packet of sausages with a sharp knife. “Can you just let it go?”

  “I have let it go,” she retorted.

  “When are Nanna and Ally coming back with the seeing food?” Annie interrupted.

  “Seafood,” he corrected. “Soon. Ann, how about you go get dried off and put on the new dress Carly gave you for your birthday?”

  Annie reclined in the pool and shook her head. “It itches.”

  “Well,” he continued, “I’m sure Carly would really like to see you in it.”

  Annie sighed deeply. “Okay.”

  When Annie was out of earshot, he turned to Bron. “You know why Ally lit up his garage, right?”

  Bron raised an eyebrow and nodded. She knew he was referring to Annie’s father and Libby’s ex.

  He shook his head. “Then I don’t understand why you can’t be a little bit more sympathetic. He wasn’t a good guy, Bron. He wasn’t good to Libby or Annie.”

  She dropped the hose and turned it off. “I know that, but Ally could have killed him. And you know how she got when she didn’t have Libby’s undivided attention.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You were barely seventeen, Dan. You don’t know the half of it—”

  “I know all of it. She wasn’t trying to kill him. The garage was twenty metres from the house. Besides,” he raised a hand, knowing exactly what Bron was going to protest, “she knew he wasn’t home. The only life she intended on taking that night was that of his Mercedes, and she did a bloody good job of it, let me tell you.”

  Bron blinked twice. “How do you know?”

  He shrugged. “My friend Matty and I rode over there the next night—”

  “You’re an idiot!”

  “Relax. He wasn’t even home. We only went into the garage, saw the car and took off.”

  Bron was curious. “How badly burnt out was it?”

  “Well, she called the RFS like two minutes after setting it alight, so it wasn’t that bad. There mustn’t have been much fuel in the car or maybe she emptied it first. I don’t know. But the roof had caved in, and the car was scorched like it had been to hell and back. You just can’t make this shit up.”

  She blew at a few loose strands of hair. “That’s ridiculous. What I can’t get over—I couldn’t even believe it when Lib told me—was that she called the RFS. Why do it in the first place if you’re just going to dob yourself in?”

  “She was being responsible.”

  Bron couldn’t help but laugh. “Responsible?”

  Daniel couldn’t find the humour in it. It amazed her how completely Ally had their family wrapped around her little finger. “Look, say what you want, but she knew how to play with fire, Bron. She knew how to start it, maintain it, and when it was time, put it out before it spread. And before you go and put your foot in it like you did with the money she owes you, it wasn’t calling the RFS that dobbed her in—it was her mum.”

  Bron couldn’t hide her shock. She hadn’t known that. “Ally’s mum told the police?”

  He nodded. “She told them Al hadn’t been home and she’d seen her take off in the truck around eleven that night with what looked like a bag—the fuel. The old bitch’s statement fit with Al’s boot prints outside his house and the security tape of her filling up a fuel container outside Leura a few days before.”

  “Yeah,” Bron said quietly. “I knew about the print and the fuel container. I just didn’t know about her mother.”

  He looked toward the house and then down at his sister. “I think he used to hit Libby,” he said, his voice thick with solemnity.

  The thought choked her hard. “What?”

  His jaw clenched. “I mean I never saw her with a black eye or anything, but I’m pretty sure he did something. I think Ally found out after Libby left him to come and live with us. That’s why she went over there and went all firestarter on his ass.”

  She shook her head. “No. Libby would have said something to me.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe she told Ally instead.”

  It wasn’t as though dark thoughts of Libby’s ex hadn’t crossed her mind before. After Annie’s birth, he’d become a full-fledged jerk. But she was certain that if domestic violence had been the case, Libby would have confided in her. Wouldn’t she? Even if oceans had separated them, the sisters had always been incredibly close. But Daniel’s suggestion was not out of the question. She looked down at the raw steaks swimming in soy sauce and felt like she was going to throw up.

  He cleared his throat. “If I had known back then, I swear I would have done something myself.” She looked up at his face, his expression etched with too much severity and frustration for a twenty-three-year-old. “But I didn’t realize until much later.”

  She pressed a hand between his shoulder blades and rubbed his back. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t because you’re too damn pretty to go to prison.”

  He chuckled as he always did when the mood became too serious. “Don’t try to school me,” he said, but Bron was too consumed by thoughts of how lucky they all were to have Daniel—especially Annie. “Your American accent is showing,” he added. She was about to banter before a flash of red—her old car—stopped at the end of the driveway and caught her attention. In front of the car, the postman rode past on his motorbike, lifting a hand to thank Ally and Jackie for stopping.

  Panic instantly flushed through Bron, breaking over her in a sweat the very second she remembered the drafts for her upcoming deadline. Barefoot, she jumped up the back steps, the screen door swinging behind her. She bounded upstairs, the sound of Daniel calling after her carrying through the house. “The postie!” she shouted back.

  In a mad rush, she swept the drafts off her bedroom desk. Where was the bloody Express Post envelope? Her heart hammering, she quickly glanced up from the pile of papers strewn across the desk and out the window. Through the trees and bushes, she could see the postbox outside the bakery at the bottom of the street and the postman’s fluorescent orange vest as he pulled up to it.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered, scanning the room until she found the plastic yellow envelope beneath her bed.

  She took the stairs two at a time. Jackie had the boot of the car open and was in the process of unloading groceries when Bron ran out the front door. “Quick, chuck me the keys. I’m going to miss him!”

  Jackie’s eyes fell to the papers, pen and envelope Bron held. Understanding quickly rained on her. “Ally’s around the side. She’s got the keys. Love, he’ll already be at the box…”

  Just as the hot, dry breeze caught the top paper in her arms and carried it across the front lawn, Ally came from around the side, the car keys jingling from her fingers.

  “I need the keys!” Bron exclaimed, bending down to chase the page.

  Ally grabbed it and handed it to her
. “Come on, I’ll drive you.” Before she could protest that Ally’s licence was expired, Ally added, “You still need to address the bag and it’s just to the end of the street.”

  As Ally turned the car around, Bron shoved the drafts into the envelope and scribbled down the publisher’s address. She sealed it, her heart racing. “I cannot believe I forgot.”

  Ally looked down at the envelope. “Work?”

  “Drafts for a new book. They need to be in Sydney by Monday.”

  “You can’t just scan and email them?”

  She shook her head, concentrating more on getting ready to jump out to open the front gate than Ally’s questions. “Scanners don’t pick up fine detail.”

  “Well, I’ve got all night to drive into the city if we miss him.”

  “You have until exactly ten o’clock.”

  Ally pulled the car to a rough stop. “I’ll get the gate,” she said and pointed to the bag. “You’ve forgotten to fill in the sender’s address.”

  Bron groaned and picked up the pen again. By the time they turned into the street, Bron could see the postman was gone. She sighed deeply. “Which way do you think he went?”

  Ally made a left onto Eveleigh Street. Her gaze fell to Bron’s bare, bouncing knee. “Relax, we’ll catch him.”

  Bron looked out the back window and surveyed the cross streets for the postman. When they turned onto the main street of Katoomba and passed the café where she’d had her meeting earlier that week, she told Ally to pull over.

  “Come on, what are the chances of getting caught? Besides, you haven’t even got your licence with you.”

  She huffed, deeply irritated. It was worse than arguing with Annie. “Just pull over, okay?”

  Reluctantly Ally groaned and flicked the blinker to pull into a space. Her jaw seemed to tighten with frustration at being told what to do. Bron had never seen such an attractive scowl. She could almost be attracted to this woman—purely on a physical level, of course—if Ally didn’t behave like a petulant child ninety percent of the time.

  As if on cue, Ally cut the engine completely just for added effect, but Bron refused to bite. They got out and swapped sides, their arms colliding as they passed in front of the bonnet. She started the engine, listening desperately as it kicked over twice and finally grabbed. She didn’t doubt for a second that the car’s hesitancy to kick over would have brought Ally great pleasure, but she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of a glare.