Echo Point

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Echo Point Page 19

by Virginia Hale


  She’d been given pearls and sapphires by Rae, which were hidden at the back of a drawer in her apartment in Boston, but never had a piece of jewellery made her heart swell the way the simple silver bracelet in the box did.

  “You can return it if you don’t like it,” Ally said as Bron carefully pried the delicate chain from the pillow box with her middle finger and thumb.

  “Al,” she sighed. “It’s beautiful. I love it. Thank you.” She gestured for Ally to clasp it to her wrist.

  “When I bought it, the girl asked me who it was for,” Ally whispered, her fingertips dancing across Bron’s inner wrist. Bron grinned down at the bracelet as Ally locked the clasp. “I told her it was for my girlfriend.”

  She read the loyalty and fulfilment in Ally’s vulnerable gaze. She couldn’t help the way her eyes dropped to Ally’s lips. She ran her thumb across Ally’s chin and drew her lips to her own. She felt Ally smile into the kiss.

  “I’m staying. I’m moving home.”

  A moment of silence passed between them. “Really?” Ally breathed.

  Bron drifted her fingers across Ally’s prominent collarbone. “Yes.” She gently pressed a hand against Ally’s sternum. “I’ve already notified my press, and I’ve got a new job lined up in Sydney.”

  Ally’s eyes bored into her. “And the job?”

  Bron swallowed. She shook her head and willed herself not to get teary at the thought that MIT no longer had a place in her future.

  Ally’s expression was tentative. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I have to pack up everything in Boston. It’ll take a couple of weeks. I thought I could take Annie with me?” She phrased it as a question, respectful of Ally’s opinion. “Maybe we can stopover in Los Angeles so she can have a few days at Disneyland. She goes back to school at the very end of January, so I want to have her back in time for her first day.”

  Ally smiled. “I think that’s a really good idea.” She paused. “So you’ll be leaving soon?”

  She nodded. “After New Year. But when I come home…it’ll be for good. I think I want to look into getting my own place in town too. As much as Mum likes having us here for company, she’s getting older and she needs her own space.”

  Ally kissed her firmly.

  “I wish you could come with us to the States,” Bron said. “Parole’s a bitch.”

  Ally leaned back against the headboard, her face inches from Bron’s. “I know. I’m going to miss your…supervision.”

  Bron laughed softly. She swiped the pad of her thumb across Ally’s lips. Ally kissed it, her chestnut gaze darkening.

  Her bedroom door creaked open. Annie poked her head into the room. Annie was the cutest, most angelic thing Bron had ever seen, with bedhead, eyes squinty with sleep, in her little nightie. Too distracted to even realise the oddity of her aunt and Ally being in bed together, she shouted, “There’s a flag in my Santa sack!” She was visibly wired with excitement, her hands gesturing wildly.

  “A flag in your Santa sack?” Ally feigned curiously. “Maybe Santa brought you a golf course?”

  “No, no,” Annie said, struggling to handle the exhilaration bubbling through her. “It’s, it’s coming out the top,” she sputtered. “I think it’s a bike!”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Bron gasped. “You lucky girl!”

  “Can you please, please hurry?” Annie begged.

  “Can you please, please go and wake up Nanna and Uncle Dan before you touch any presents?” Bron mocked. “And wake Nanna gently.”

  Annie was out the door before the last part of the instruction could fully leave Bron’s lips.

  The two sat still for a moment, listening as Annie told her grandmother that she’d already woken Ally too, “because Aunt Bron and Ally were having a sleepover” in Bron’s room.

  Ally made a sweeping motion over the crown of her head to indicate Annie’s obliviousness. Bron laughed and Ally cut it off with a chaste kiss. “Merry Christmas, Santa,” Ally murmured.

  Just as Ally swung her legs over the edge of the bed, Jackie stopped in the doorway. She leaned against the doorjamb. “Merry Christmas, loveys.”

  Feeling herself flushing under Jackie’s perceptive stare, Bron averted her gaze, reaching for a hair tie on her bedside table. “Merry Christmas, Mum,” she said, pulling her hair into a ponytail.

  “I heard that we had a sleepover,” Jackie teased.

  Ally grinned. “We did,” she declared, a hint of rebellious teenage girl in her tone.

  Silence fell upon the three women, but Ally’s lingering grin was louder than words.

  Jackie tightened the sash on her robe, the corners of her mouth twitching in a poorly suppressed smile. “I’m going to put the kettle on before missy moo passes out with excitement.”

  When Jackie was out of earshot, Ally chuckled. “Come on, Aunty Bron.” She reached across the bed and squeezed Bron’s knee. “I want my Christmas presents.”

  Bron took her tea from the coffee table and sat down cross-legged next to the tree. When Annie held open the laundry door to let Tammy in, the dog was utterly confused by the early morning excitement. Her tail wagged eagerly as she followed her littlest boss around the lounge room, appraising Annie as she informed Tammy which Santa sack belonged to each member of the family.

  To little surprise, the bike was the first to be unwrapped from its Santa sack. Annie squealed with delight, running her tiny hands over the glittery paint of the mud guard. “Santa is just the best!” Annie whispered in amazement. “Can I ride it now?”

  Bron grinned at Ally. “How about you open the rest of your presents first?”

  On opposite sides of the tree, Bron and Ally read the labels on the gifts and handed them across the room to Daniel and Jackie. Bron marvelled at the basket of art supplies that would last her a year. “Mum,” Bron berated. “This is too much.”

  “Hogwash,” Jackie replied, turning to Ally who had just unwrapped Jackie’s gift to her—a pair of UGG boots. “Do they fit?” Jackie asked Ally as she strode across the room in them.

  “They’re a bit tight, Jacs,” Ally said.

  “They’re supposed to be. Come here and let me feel where your big toe is,” she commanded, as though Ally were no older than Annie and couldn’t determine whether or not the shoes fit.

  After Jackie asserted the UGGS didn’t need exchanging, Ally was so preoccupied showering Annie with attention each time she opened a present, oohing and ahhing over the toys, that when there were only a handful of presents still under the tree, Bron knew most of them had to be for Ally. At the very back of the tree, she eyed the icicle-patterned gift box that contained the leather satchel.

  Bron’s gaze skirted around the room. Jackie focused on cutting an intricately tightened bow from the present Annie had made for her. Daniel reclined back in the lounge, his head buried in the instruction manual for the portable Bluetooth speakers Bron had given him. She pulled the box from under the tree and pushed it in Ally’s direction until the cardboard corner lightly pressed into Ally’s thigh.

  “For me?”

  Bron nodded. Ally reached across the coffee table for the extra pair of scissors. She cut the glossy white ribbon and lifted the lid. As she held up the bag, the corners of her lips twitched.

  “Do you like it?” Bron asked.

  “Yeah,” Ally said huskily, running her hand over the smooth leather. “It’s really great.” She pressed her nose against it and inhaled. “Thought it must be real leather,” she conceded with a wink. “This is a lot.”

  “So is this,” Bron said softly, her fingers trailing over the fine silver chain of Ally’s bracelet.

  Ally held her gaze for a long moment. When she muttered, “I’ll thank you properly later,” Bron felt heat rise to her neck.

  The base of the tree was cleared but for a few biscuit tins wrapped for Father Jeff and the neighbours. Jackie heaved herself up from the floor. “Who wants breakfast?”

  From the floor Bron looked around at the
mess. World War III had erupted in their lounge room without any of them noticing. Opened toy boxes were cast across the floor between small mountains of shredded wrapping paper and sliced ribbons. The Santa sacks, empty and lifeless, were draped over the lounge, the base of the tree, the coffee table where their empty mugs sat forgotten, an inch of cold, leftover tea in each. Bron had never seen a clean-up so impressive.

  Without being prompted, Annie rounded the room and pressed thank-you kisses to everybody’s cheeks, hugging her uncle, her grandmother and Ally. When it came to Bron’s turn, Annie plonked herself down between Bron’s legs. “Thank you for all of my presents, Aunty Bron. I love them all.”

  Bron pressed a kiss to Annie’s temple. “You’re welcome, baby.”

  “Annie,” Ally said. She lifted up a smaller Santa sack. “You still have a present from Santa.”

  Annie got up and hurriedly padded over to Ally. She peeked inside. “Oh,” she said, her despairing tone obvious. “Silly Santa went and got me books.”

  * * *

  Bron was passing the potato salad across the backyard dining table to Father Jeff when Annie squealed at the top of her lungs. Bron looked up and, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, watched Annie slide to a stop at the end of the Slip N Slide mat. Annie stood up quickly.

  “Hey, Father Jeff, watch this!” Annie jogged across the grass to the beginning of the mat and threw herself down again, mouth agape as she pistoled across the grass on her belly.

  “Ann, Father Jeff, is trying to enjoy Christmas lunch,” Ally called out as she shelled a prawn. “How about we give him a break?”

  “Okay. Hey, Tammy, watch this!”

  “She’s a remarkable child,” Father Jeff said. “You should all be very proud.”

  Ally smiled. “We are.”

  Bron liked Father Jeff. He’d been good to their family—from Libby’s beautiful funeral service, to comforting a grieving Jackie. When Jackie had suggested the week before that they invite him over for Christmas lunch, Bron relished the idea. With Daniel at Carly’s for Christmas lunch, it was nice to have an extra adult around.

  “It’s been mighty hot, hasn’t it?” Jackie asked.

  “Yes, yes, very hot,” Father Jeff agreed. Bron watched him look across the table at Ally who sat next to her, deeply focused on shelling a prawn. His gaze raked over Ally’s tattooed sleeve. “And how has life outside been to you, Ally?” he ventured.

  Ally reached across the table for the Thousand Island dressing. “Pretty hot, Father, especially when we’ve got an outside paint job. I forgot how much that sun burns.”

  Father Jeff chuckled. “I actually mean out of prison.”

  “Oh,” Ally said. “I thought you meant outside as in outdoors.” She dipped a prawn into the pink sauce and bit into it. “Yeah, it’s been good,” she said. She playfully squeezed Bron’s thigh beneath the table, and Bron instructed her body not to seize in front of company. “Bron’s been helping me a lot. I’m really going to miss her when she goes back to America.”

  Bron didn’t miss the way Jackie’s features fell in distress at the mere mention of her return to the States. Jackie was well aware Bron would be flying back to Boston sometime in the near future but she was still oblivious to the fact that it would be the last time. She’s going to be so happy, Bron thought, deciding that she would tell her mother the good news when Daniel was back for Christmas dinner.

  “Are you staying much longer after Christmas, Bron?” Father Jeff asked.

  Beneath the cover of the table, Bron linked her fingers with Ally’s. “I’m in no immediate hurry to get back.”

  At dusk, Bron stood behind the front screen door, watching silently as Ally tried to teach Annie how to brake by back-pedaling. It hadn’t taken long for Annie to get the hang of riding a bike. She only needed a push off every third time, and she was getting much better at braking each time she came to a stop at the front of the driveway loop, just before the hill. Bron thought of the training wheels she’d secretly purchased, hoping she’d put the docket somewhere safe to refund them. She watched Annie pedal away, the skirt of her new pale pink dress flowing behind her as Tammy chased alongside the bike.

  Ally took a swig of her alcohol-free ginger beer. When she turned, she spotted Bron in the doorway. “I was just helping Mum with the last of the washing up,” she said, stepping outside. “She’s gone to have a lie down before Daniel gets here with Carly for dinner and we have to start cooking all over again.”

  Ally nodded. “Not sure she’ll be able to get any sleep with this one yahooing.”

  Bron sat down on the front step. “Don’t worry. Mum could sleep through a stampede.”

  Ally sat beside her and Bron kissed her bare shoulder. “What was Christmas like in prison?”

  Ally shrugged. “It wasn’t much.” Just when Bron thought she wasn’t going to get more out of Ally on the subject, she said, “We were allowed visitors for two hours in the morning on Christmas Day. Libby came twice—two Christmases in a row—but I didn’t want her to.” She sighed. “There’d be a bit of a dinner thing in the dining room. It was shit. Food on an average day was a one out of ten. Christmas lunch was maybe a two and a half at best.”

  Bron smiled sympathetically. “You don’t talk about prison very often.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly a nice experience, babe. I mean, sure, it could have been a lot worse. But I just wanted to come home.” She picked at the label on her glass bottle. “Lately I’ve been thinking that maybe life handed me a bad go for a while so I could have all of this.” She inclined her head in Annie’s direction before focusing her gaze on Bron. “So that I could be really happy, you know?”

  Bron paused. “Do I make you happy?”

  “Yeah,” Ally said hoarsely. “You make me happy.”

  “Good.”

  “What about me?” Ally asked tentatively.

  Bron wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing at her upper arms. It was cooling down. “What about you?”

  Ally rolled her eyes. “Do I make you happy?”

  Bron leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to Ally’s cheek. “You make me very happy.”

  Across the circular driveway, Annie was on her way back toward them. Bron reached over and took the ginger beer from Ally’s hands. She grinned as she took a swig.

  Ally scoffed. “Are we sharing now?” she wondered, lightly nudging Bron with her elbow.

  Bron looked out across the driveway—at Annie, at Tammy, at her beat-up Toyota. She smiled. “I suppose we are.”

  Bella Books, Inc.

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