by G. Benson
Anna threw back a shot and slid one over the bar to Jake. “Right, yeah, I’d be great with the kids.”
Anna stared at the lawyer, mouth still open. Jake Foster, that was not a conversation about me raising your children in your absence. She suddenly felt irrationally pissed that he wasn’t there for her to throttle.
A glance at her parents told her they weren’t surprised. Then she looked at Hayley, who was staring at the lawyer with horrified, wide eyes.
Anna’s world just kept falling apart.
CHAPTER TWO
Two hours on from meeting with the lawyer and Anna was still shell-shocked. The silence in the car as she drove Hayley to the airport was pressing in on her ears. Both of them stared numbly at the road, Anna’s mind churning over everything, ignoring the fact that her girlfriend had retreated completely inside herself. Focussing on the anger bubbling in her stomach was easier.
It probably wasn’t healthy to be so mad at her dead brother, but she was—which was almost a relief, because it stopped everything else from overwhelming her.
Being angry stopped the feeling that her chest was restricted and she couldn’t breathe, the feeling that everything was spinning while she stood still, the feeling that overtook her when she watched her father close his study door and heard the clink of a bottle on glass or when she caught her mother staring vaguely at a plate, hands covered in drying dish water.
A red light turned green and it took her too long to notice. A loud horn blasted behind her as she tried to forget the memory of Ella staring wordlessly at her untouched food. Anna accelerated, trying to concentrate, but she couldn’t stop thinking of the kids. When she and Hayley had left the house, Anna had had to choke down a lump at the sight of Toby sitting in his sister’s lap with a book. Ella’s arms had encircled the small toddler, and he’d been gripping his blanket to himself as he leant back against her chest, looking up at her and then back at the book with captivated eyes.
That sight hurt. The fact that those two kids didn’t have their parents hurt. A six-year-old who would forever remember feeling abandoned and a fifteen-month-old who wouldn’t remember anything—what would happen to them now? Would Ella forever be taking on a role too big for her?
Anna’s eyes flicked to Hayley, who was steadfastly staring out the window, looking ready to bolt. The worried thought that she would gnawed at Anna, but then anger boiled in her stomach again, overshadowing everything else. How could Jake and Sally put her in this position when they knew damn well how she felt about having kids? The grip she had on the steering wheel turned her knuckles white. Despite what he seemed to think of a random bar conversation, Jake had never spoken about this, had ignored the fact that she didn’t want children. Anna’s grip on the wheel tightened even more at the implications. This type of commitment was something she had spent her entire life avoiding. Anna had been nervous enough just thinking of buying an apartment with her girlfriend. Jake knew that.
Eyes glued to the road, she swallowed heavily, her breathing getting out of control. Jake was dead and she couldn’t even yell at him.
Being angry at Jake was easier than being sad about Jake.
Anna hit her indicator harder than she intended and drove into the departures section of the airport. The hideous silence was making her feel like crawling out of her skin.
“We’ll figure this out,” she said.
Hayley blinked and looked over at her, hand slipping onto Anna’s thigh. “We’ll figure something out.”
“My parents can take them.”
Anna found a spot to pull over and killed the engine. They looked at each other, the space wide between them.
“Maybe.” Hayley hesitated. “They seemed on board with Jake’s will.”
“It looks like he may have talked to them about it.” Anna suddenly slammed her open palm against the steering wheel. “Damn it, Jake!”
Guilt slammed into her stomach as Anna dropped her head back against the headrest. Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them away.
Hayley looked at her, grip tightening. “Hey. Like you said, we’ll figure it out.”
Cheeks burning, Anna didn’t open her eyes.
“I’m sorry I have to go when—well—with everything like this. I’m sorry I have to go so soon. I booked your ticket for two days from now—you’ll fly back then?”
Anna rolled her head to the side, finally looking at Hayley. “Yeah. I’ll talk to my parents. Figure out what all this actually means.”
When they slid out of the car, Anna pulled Hayley’s bag out of the back, then leant against the passenger door.
Hayley moved forward, kissing her once. “I’ll call you when I land?”
Anna nodded.
“Try and survive without the constant sex, hey?” Hayley smiled.
Anna rolled her eyes. “It’ll be hard.”
Bag in hand, Hayley started to walk off. Metres away, she paused and turned to look back one last time, head tilted slightly. “It’s okay to cry, Anna.”
Unable to look her in the eye, Anna shrugged, tight lipped, and Hayley turned away again. Anna watched her walk through the doors before sliding back into the car. Heart thudding, she clutched the steering wheel, started the car, and pulled out too fast, trying to remind herself to pay attention as her stomach turned over. Her reality was inescapable. And her brother must have been insane.
Jake had made his decision, but surely she could speak to her parents, tell them it was best they took the kids. They saw them regularly; it made a lot more sense. She was just the fun aunty, and she didn’t want this. Kids deserved to be with someone who wanted them.
She slammed her hand into the steering wheel again, saying out loud, “Talk to them, but not to me. Makes real sense.” She bit her lip. Now she was talking to herself.
There was a thought that nagged in the back of her mind. She loved her parents, and she and Jake had been incredibly lucky compared to a lot of other children. But Jake had made it a point to her that he didn’t want his kids raised by them. What had he said? Their father wasn’t warm. Anna gave a snort of laughter. That was the understatement of the year. Andrew could be a distant, foreboding man. What little physical affection he had given when they were small had stopped quickly. He had kept them at arm’s length and expected them to be stoic, non-complaining, quiet children. Her father now expected them to be quiet adults.
Anna pulled the car into a spot at a park near her parents’ house and rested her head heavily on the steering wheel. A glance at the clock told her she could avoid going back for a little longer, and she shut her eyes tightly as she thought of Jake as a father.
She’d been curious about how a man raised with a closed-off father like theirs would be as a parent, but children had changed her brother, had enlivened him. Parenthood had suited him and Sally both. Bright, loving and warm, Jake had been everything their father was not, loudly encouraging where their father was a harsh disciplinarian. Jake didn’t want his kids growing up in that household. That much he’d said.
With a sigh, she finally pulled out of the park an hour later. Sally’s parents were off the table without even a question. And as Jake had said, that left Anna. These kids were all that remained of her brother.
And that thought scared the shit out of her.
By the time she pulled into the driveway, the streetlights had switched on, and Anna knew the kids would be in bed. Guilt gnawed at her stomach, but she pushed it down. She had no idea what to do about any of this.
After letting herself in, she padded softly down the hall to the kitchen, where her mother was pouring cups of tea as if she’d been waiting for Anna to appear. Anna leant on the centre bar top and rested on her elbows, accepting the mug with a grateful look.
“He wanted it to be you, Anna.”
She looked up and caught her mother’s eye, which was red-rimmed and shadowed by d
ark smudges. “Mum, why? Why would he want it to be me? I live in another city. I’ve never wanted kids. Plus, I work God-awful hours.” Anna wrapped her fingers around her mug, tilting her head to look at Sandra, who sat down opposite her at the kitchen island.
“You don’t think I said all of that to him?” Her mother raised an eyebrow playfully.
The half joke didn’t even insult Anna. “See, even you agree with me. I’m as nurturing as a teaspoon.”
“You and I both know you can be nurturing. And, actually, I agree with Jake and Sally’s decision.”
“You don’t want the kids?” Surprise caused her to raise her voice, and she glanced upstairs, even though it was late and Ella and Toby were fast asleep.
Sandra’s look hardened. “Those children mean the world to me. But your brother explained his decision, and it made sense. Your hours are better now that you’re out of your internship and residency. You’re more settled since you met Hayley—we won’t talk about your drinking and partying before then.”
Anna avoided her mother’s eye and sipped her tea. Maybe she had enjoyed herself a touch too much.
“You’re responsible, love those kids, and your job can easily be moved to a hospital in Melbourne. Or you could move the kids to Brisbane, but I don’t think that would be fair.”
Anna barely managed to push down the urge to throw her tea to the floor and scream hysterically about how unfair all this was. Acting like a child wouldn’t solve her problem.
It wouldn’t be fair to the kids? She was being asked to drop her entire life and move cities to take care of her brother’s children—permanently. Her brother and sister-in-law had just died. Since the will had been read, her girlfriend could barely look her in the eye, and now Hayley was on a plane, probably panicking about what had just happened. Her father was comforting himself with a bottle of scotch as he hid in his study, and her mother’s eyes were a permanent glazed red. Fair was a concept Anna was struggling with.
Her mother seemed to sense her internal struggle. “It’s what he wanted, Anna.” The words sunk in, heavy, as Sandra reached forward and rested a hand on her forearm. “Your father and I are, well, grandparents. We’re old. J-Jake had a point.”
It hurt to hear her mother stutter over his name. It hurt to know she spoke the truth. Everything hurt and Anna just wanted out. She knew it was selfish. But at least she was honest enough with herself to admit that.
Anna was going to be taking her brother’s children.
She would be moving to God-awful Melbourne.
Her girlfriend was going to be pissed.
Two incomes, no kids.
Shit.
The next two days passed in a blur of trying to keep the kids settled, calling lawyers, and figuring out the next steps. Andrew stayed hidden away, and Sandra did most of the work with the kids, while Anna tried to hide from the reality of her situation.
Yet she couldn’t escape the reality of what had happened.
In the shower, the loss of her brother would slam into her full force, only to be quickly drowned out by irrational anger at both him and Sally. What had they been thinking? Pacing the house like she was caged, Anna would finally go for walks, desperate to escape the grief that followed her. With her heart pounding, she would walk blindly and hope the ache in her chest would cease. Never had she thought she could feel like this; she could still barely believe her brother was gone.
The night before she flew out, Anna found herself tiptoeing into the kids’ room before she went to bed. The room was dark, and she could hear Toby’s soft baby snores coming from his cot. She padded softly over, and even she was thrown by the cuteness of the toddler, sprawled on his back, pacifier discarded to the side. She pulled the blanket up over him and ran her fingers over the silk of his hair. He really was the sweetest thing, this little boy who moved with a vengeance and had a vocabulary of less than ten words. He was never going to know his father and mother. His future had just been inexorably altered, the man he would have grown into changed. Nature versus nurture was about to take point.
“Aunty Na?”
She turned.
Big eyes stared at her from Ella’s pillow.
Walking over, she squatted next to the bed, resting a hand on the blankets. “What’s up, Ella Bella?” she asked in a low voice, anxious not to wake Toby.
“Do you have to go in the morning?”
Anna smiled softly. “I do. But I’ll be back very soon.”
“And then we’re all going back home?” Ella scrunched up her little face, still trying to wrap her head around all the changes. “You, me and Toby?”
“Yep. Is that okay with you?”
Ella’s face remained blank. She didn’t respond but rolled over to face the wall, little hand gripping Anna’s.
Anna sat for a few minutes, waiting for Ella’s breathing to even out and her grip to slacken. Then she made her way out the door and pulled it closed quietly. Jake had always laughed and said Ella was a miniature Anna in personality. Apparently he wasn’t far off. She leant against the wall, eyes closed. A long, slow breath left her body.
What was she doing?
“So, you’re doing it?”
Heart pounding, Anna nodded.
They both sipped their wine, Hayley almost gulping hers before licking her lips, “And, uh—when do you need to go back?”
Anna tried to calm herself down. It had been a long day, flying back home and trying to organize everything as quickly as she could. None of that had been helped by the fact that she had spent an hour on the couch alone waiting for Hayley to come home, going over and over what she had to tell her. “I spoke to my boss at work today; he’s supportive.” She let out a long breath. “I’m thinking within a week, depending.”
Hayley leant forward, putting her wine glass down on the coffee table and turning to look at Anna. “Depending on what?”
“On us.”
Hayley licked her lips, taking her time to answer, as if she was carefully thinking out her response. “Does it have to be so soon?”
“My mum thinks the sooner the kids get settled back into normal—”
“Nothing will be normal for them.”
“No. It won’t.” Sighing, Anna ran a hand over her eyes. “But she thinks the closer we can get them to it, the better.”
Anna clung to her wine. This was unfair. They had both built a life avoiding exactly this situation. But where Anna had no choice in it, Hayley did. “This isn’t something we ever wanted.”
Hayley nodded again.
“You don’t have to—we can just—I can go. And you can stay.”
With a sigh, Hayley reached for her wine again. “I just—you’re right, this isn’t anything I ever wanted. I was just promoted. But—we—what if we try? I can’t promise anything. But what if we try? I’ll still live here, but I’ll come on and off and see how we go. I’ll come in a few weeks or so and we’ll try distance.”
Barely daring to breathe, Anna stared at her. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to.”
Relief bloomed in Anna’s chest and she kissed Haley before pulling back to try to lighten the mood. “I almost had a tantrum at my mother.”
Hayley smirked, bringing a hand up behind Anna’s neck, pulling her close. “I don’t blame you. Can I throw one?”
The next six days were full of boxing up items, seeing friends before she left, sorting out lease payments, and overseeing last-minute handovers at work. Hayley was only home late in the evenings after long days at her firm. Anna kept busy with organising and packing up her life and then by pushing Hayley to the bedroom the second she walked through the door. She managed to not think at all. Compartmentalising had always been her strong point.
She pushed the thought that Jake was dead to the back of her mind, buried it as deep as she could. But there were t
imes, when she was doing something completely mundane, that her chest would tighten and, for no apparent reason, it felt like she couldn’t breathe. Before she could lose herself to that feeling completely, Anna would bite her lip to distract herself.
They had decided that Hayley was going to join her for a week, after a month or so, and then try and fly out as regularly as she could on weekends. A newspaper was sprawled on the table, red circles around job offers in Melbourne. Anna really had no idea what she was doing. Uprooting her entire life for two children. Uprooting herself for her dead brother, whom she longed to hit as hard as she could.
The anger hadn’t really gone.
Six days in, the night before she flew out, she stood blowing hair out of her eyes, her messy ponytail coming apart as she pulled packing tape over her final box. The whole apartment was in shambles, her own boxes packed up amongst Hayley’s things, tape dispensers and stuff scattered everywhere. She sighed heavily. Her love for this apartment bordered on the extreme. She’d made it so pretty—a home with her girlfriend. While they had always been working so much they hadn’t spent a lot of time there, it was still home.
A sound from the bedroom made Anna turn. Hayley was half falling over a box on her way into the living room.
“Smooth.”
Hayley shrugged, looking around.
Anna bit her lip.
Wide eyed, Hayley stared at all the boxes. She had her freaked-out face on, looking ready to burst with something she needed to say. The expression had been crossing her face regularly the last few nights.
Anna crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her other foot, waiting until Hayley finally made eye contact with her.
“It’s okay, Hayley. Say it.”
Hayley flinched slightly. “I can’t do this.”
Anna swallowed. She waited for Hayley to say what she needed to.
“I don’t want to delay it. I don’t want to come out in four weeks, to leave a week later, and then only see you every few weeks. For us both to be miserable until I finally panic and end it.” She gritted her jaw and took a step forward. “We both know that’s what I’ll do.”
