All That Was Left Unsaid

by Jacquie Underdown

Maddison was finding it much more difficult to move past that time in their marriage. She continued to dwell in the shadows cast by her husband. And so, they were always stuck back in time, his last conquest on repeat, over and over again. It droned like crazed circus music in the background of everything. All their decisions, reactions, and private thoughts stemmed from that day. All stemmed from the belief that Ben had once entertained about the importance of his genitals. Turned out, he was right—his genitals were important, just not in the way he had assumed.

  Some people weren’t analytical enough, self-reflective, nor willing to change their behaviour without life swinging a metaphorical wrecking bar at their face and forcing change to happen. Ben was that kind of person. He was getting help now. Saw a therapist every single week without fail. He didn’t drink a drop of alcohol, nor take any kind of medications. He was dedicated to doing the work, no matter how hard it was.

  His actions now propelled him upwards, away from that man he had once been. In many, many ways, he already was a better person for his wife and, mostly, for his kids. They had never deserved the older model.

  When Maddison had painfully made it to her bedroom like she was a withered, sickened nana rather than the forty-one-year-old woman she was, she showered, crawled into bed, and laid back, looking up at the ceiling through the darkness. Even with the air conditioner running, the fan above her tiredly turning, humidity crept into the room and coated everything.

  Outside, the streets were dark, illuminated by dull streetlamps. Quiet. Moisture was thick in the summer air. No breeze to shake the leaves in the big gum tree that stood tall in the neighbour’s front yard. Families in the surrounding households were getting children to bed, having their evening showers or sitting together in the living room to watch TV.

  That kind of normality didn’t find a home in the Brooks’ house anymore.

  As the medication took effect, leading Maddison away from the uncomfortable dross of reality, her blinks grew long and slow. Her thoughts and emotions ebbed away, quietened. The next wave crept up without her even realising, swallowing her whole.

  By the time Ben came to bed, blinking was like rubbing sandpaper over his eyeballs. He collapsed onto the mattress, climbed under the covers and watched his wife in the darkness. She was on her back, mouth open, snoring. He could scream, and she wouldn’t wake.

  He stroked a hand down her face. “I’m sorry. I wish I could take it all back. Every last moment. But I can’t.” And that was his agony; he couldn’t change what had happened. What he had made happen. He just had to watch on as the aftermath fell around him like molten lead and bones spewing down upon them.

  Chapter 6

  Tina’s house was a partially renovated Queenslander, set upon two-acres of cleared land and surrounded by arid bush. No light from streetlamps reached her property. On that night, a new moon hung in the air, offering little illumination. When Tina’s eyelids snapped open with a start, her bedroom was smothered in blackness.

  Something had awoken her. A sound. She reached for her bedside lamp and doused the room in dull light. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest as her gaze flittered around.

  Nothing there.

  She tilted her head. Listening hard. Listening long. Her loud breathing filled the silence. The corrugated roof ticked and clinked—usual sounds. Crickets. The odd caw of a lone bird still awake at that hour.

  She was daring herself to get up and investigate, but she had seen enough movies to know that searching for danger always ended badly. But it was no more comforting to stay where she was and be chopped to pieces in the dark as she tried to go back to sleep.

  One foot over the side of the bed. Then another. All the worst imaginings filled her mind: a hand shooting out and gripping her ankle, a man standing motionless behind the curtain with an axe, or a grinning lunatic tucked away in the darkest corner of the house.

  She rushed to stand, leapt her next step and scurried into the hall, throwing on the light. One room after the other, she checked for unwanted visitors.

  Nothing.

  But something had awoken her. Something loud. She searched her sleep-laden memory for an answer. Was her name called? Was it a knock? Perhaps a scampering of footsteps across the timber floor? Small, light feet, quick as a greyhound. She couldn’t pin down an answer.

  Maybe it was a dream? Sure, that’s one very reasonable explanation. Not the right one, but it was enough to ease her mind at that moment.

  Tina turned on the light in the kitchen and went to the sink to fill a glass with tap water. She was hot and thirsty, so she gulped down the water. Her heart was beating wildly.

  In her peripheral, a blur of colour sped past. She gasped, dropped the glass in the sink with a loud crash and spun.

  But nothing was there.

  She turned a circle.

  Still nothing.

  A hand to her head and a long, deep breath to calm her nerves. Only then did she notice the yellow sticky note stuck to her fridge door—a bright, small square against monochrome white. She owned sticky notes, but she kept them in her desk drawer in the room designated as her office. She never used them. Certainly not to then stick on the fridge. It would look too untidy.

  Something was written on the note. She tiptoed to the fridge and read it.

  Milk

  Bread

  Washing powder

  Hand soap

  The handwriting wasn’t hers. Her brow furrowed as she read the list over and over again.

  “What the hell is this doing on my fridge door?”

  She stepped back. Tingles fanned down her neck and over her arms. Her stomach clenched with fear as realisation dawned—someone had been inside her home. She raced to the fridge door, ripped the note off, scrunched it in her fist and threw it across the kitchen.

  She sought a rational explanation and eventually landed on a couple of panicked excuses. Maybe Chris had come over. He hadn’t lived in that house for years now, but he did still own half of it. From time to time, he would stop in and help her with the lawn. Two acres of land was difficult to manage single-handedly on top of full-time work.

  After their break-up, she hadn’t the mental strength to move from the one place where all her memories were housed, and she didn’t have the money to pay Chris out. They came to an arrangement where they would continue to each pay half of the mortgage payments. When they would sell in the future, Chris would get his money back. That’s why he tried to keep the place maintained—to protect his asset.

  But he never visited without her asking him to. Not that she was aware of. Then again, she had never changed the locks. Never a need. Not even a thought to. Maybe the ghostly presence lingering in her home the night she arrived back from the cemetery was Chris’s. He may have dropped by to look at Kadie’s belongings in private.

  But the note’s handwriting wasn’t his and it still didn’t explain why he would write it.

  Maybe a neighbour had called in while she was out. She wasn’t strict about locking up the house. Not out there in the middle of nowhere. One of the older residents nearby could have dementia. Came walking. Disoriented. Entered her house. Made a note. And left.

  Tina pressed her fingers to her temples, squeezed her eyes closed.

  Perhaps it was a friend. Stopping by to help her out during that tough time. Either Mandy or Saskia. They would be worried about her. Probably checked the fridge and cupboards and wrote a list for her, knowing that grief would leave her scattered. They may have thought they were helping by ensuring she wouldn’t forget anything when she visited the shops.

  She would text Mandy and Saskia tomorrow and find out for sure.

  The rational explanation was there, waiting for her to find it, but it was late, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.

  She kept all the lights on in the house and went back to her room. Despite the glow from her bedside lamp, she closed her eyes and, in time, managed to fall asleep.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, Tin
a was more rested than she had anticipated. The grief cloud had shifted. A sliver of sunshine had returned. After a shower, coffee and some Vegemite toast, she dared to pick up the scrunched note from the kitchen floor and unfurl it in her hands. The crinkled veins distorted the handwriting a little, but the certainty she had last night that this scrawl was unfamiliar, returned.

  “What the bloody hell is going on?” she mumbled.

  During Tina’s marriage to Chris, they’d had many close friends, but Mandy was the only one remaining from that time. Mandy’s husband, Trevor, had worked with Chris at the mine. Tina’s other friends had slowly drifted away—the heavy, messy emotion of the last three years too much for them. She didn’t resent them for it. Her own emotions were too much, so she could understand that others wouldn’t have known how to deal with them.

  Tina typed a text to Mandy.

  TINA: Did you stop by yesterday and leave a shopping note for me on the fridge?

  It took only thirty seconds for a reply to ping back.

  MANDY: Not at all. I’ve been flat out with work and kids. You know how it is. We should catch up for a coffee next weekend.

  TINA: Sounds good.

  They decided on a place and time to meet before Tina started typing a text to send to Saskia. Saskia was an old friend from high school. They had lost contact until Saskia returned to Gladstone a couple of years ago after residing in Brisbane for a decade. She had missed the messiest part of Tina’s life, which was most likely the reason they were still friends.

  TINA: Did you stop by yesterday and leave a note for me?

  Tina was almost through her coffee before Saskia replied.

  SASKIA: No. I’m spending the week camping at Moreton Island, remember?

  TINA: Of course. Completely slipped my mind. We will have to catch up when you get home.

  SASKIA: Sure. I’ll let you know when I’m back in town.

  Tina sank onto a chair at her dining table. A small circular table with four seats that fit snugly within the kitchen area. She focused on the note again. How it got there was a complete mystery.

  But as people were apt to do when they didn’t know the real reasons why something was occurring, she readily accepted the next best answer—she was in error. She must have written it while tired and muddled. After all, that week had been the most exhausting and distracting of the year. It could also explain why the handwriting was unfamiliar and why she forgot writing it and pinning it on her fridge.

  A one-off incident. Didn’t warrant fixating on it. So, she wouldn’t. And she didn’t.

  Chapter 7

  Isabelle’s legs and shoulders ached, and her eyes were dry and sore when she arrived home. She had barely been able to last another minute on her feet, so she left the salon early, delegating Renee, one of her senior hairdressers, to close up.

  Her house was a brick, three-bedroom lowset in a suburb where original industry-workers’ homes were built. Not what anyone would call upmarket. But until she had met Chris, she had paid her mortgage herself.

  Thankfully, she’d bought her house before the second big boom had hit the town—during the construction of three LNG plants. An influx of blue-collar working men, some with families, many without, converged on Gladstone. Out-of-town investors flocked to buy properties while the rents were soaring. Residents raced to get into the market. A firehose of lending. Mortgage brokers won awards for simply turning up to work. House prices and the cost of every single service in town went through the roof.

  During those five years, renting was impossible for some. The buyer’s market was unattainable for anyone not earning the big bucks on the gas project. Some original residents left. Outsiders took their place, changing the face of Gladstone.

  But like a prick to a taut, overinflated balloon, all that ended when the gas plant construction was complete. House prices crashed and rents bottomed out almost at pre-boom levels. Businesses closed down. Workers left town in the thousands.

  Isabelle had ridden the wave up and down.

  Chris’s big, black ute was parked on the street out the front of her home when she drove into the single, covered garage. She had offered that car space to Chris when he had moved in, but he refused, said it didn’t feel right to come in and take it over.

  The scent of smoke and the undercurrent of roasting meat was strong in the air when Isabelle went inside. Chris had spent the afternoon in the backyard with the barbeque. That’s one thing those old houses had going for them—they were situated on big, spacious blocks of land. A smile flittered across Isabelle’s lips. She had never had anyone, since she was sixteen, to take care of her. As a single mum, a business owner, and with her parents living three states away in Tasmania, that’s just how it was. Sure, she ate out some nights and some lazy Sunday mornings, Juliette had made her Vegemite on toast and a cup of coffee, but that was as far as it went.

  She kicked off her shoes at the back door and joined Chris on the patio. The scent of caramelised meat and smoke intensified. A new passion of his.

  He had got suckered into watching hours of meat smoking YouTube videos. Nothing much else to do when alone in his donga each night while in camp at the mine. Last Christmas, he had bought himself a smoker and, on his days off, he would prepare slow-cooked pork ribs or brisket, sometimes roast lamb or grilled steak.

  When married to Tina, he didn’t cook. Never even considered it. Their marriage had been traditional—he hadn’t known there was another way to exist. He hadn’t wanted to know. He liked Tina taking care of him.

  He mowed the lawns when needed and fixed things around the house—usually months, sometimes years, after being made aware of the loose hinge, stuck window, or leaking tap. And he earned the lion’s share of the money, so that’s where his obligations ended.

  Tina never complained, so it wasn’t an issue. Maybe. That’s what he told himself. Truthfully, he had an inkling their situation may have benefited him more, but he didn’t change because he never had to.

  Repeating that same mistake with Isabelle was not an option, though. That morning, like most days he was home, he vacuumed, loaded the dishwasher, and made their bed. Small tasks that filled him with a sense of pride, especially when Isabelle flashed a big, appreciative smile and thanked him. If he had smiled and thanked his ex in the same way, maybe their marriage would have survived.

  After a quick change into shorts and a singlet, Isabelle joined Chris outside on the back patio.

  “Hello there,” Isabelle said, kissing his cheek as he fumbled with probes that pierced a piece of meat wrapped in aluminium foil on the barbeque plate.

  Smoke and the acrid scent of burning coal filled the air. Her stomach swirled a little and she swallowed hard.

  “Hi. You’re home early,” he said.

  She nodded, swallowed again. “I’m exhausted. So unlike me.”

  “I hope you’re not getting sick.”

  “That’s the last thing I need.”

  “Go sit down. I’ve got dinner covered.”

  She didn’t need her arm twisted and sank onto the cushioned seat of the new outdoor setting Chris had recently bought. Hers had been an old set that she had owned for fifteen years. The heritage green enamel had chipped off, revealing the blackened and, in places, rusted steel beneath. But mostly, it had hurt to sit on. Like a cold rock.

  “What are we having tonight?” she asked, trying to summon some enthusiasm. Usually, she loved everything he cooked, but that afternoon, the smells were making her salivate and not in a good way.

  “Beef ribs. Got another hour or so to go.” He turned to her and frowned. “Your face is very white.”

  Her throat was thickening. A slight gagging sensation. “I don’t feel great. It’s the… I’m sorry, but I can’t handle the scent of that coal. Smells noxious.”

  He grimaced, bent to look at the big pack of briquettes sitting beside the barbeque. The thick paper bag ruffled. “It’s the same brand I always use.”

  She got to her feet. “I
might go sit inside.”

  “I hope you don’t have a stomach bug or something.”

  She stopped mid-stride. The last time she had experienced sensitivity to odours, she was pregnant. Her mother had kept an empty glass bottle—clean and dry, but it had once contained crushed garlic—in the cupboard near the drinking glasses. The scent of garlic had subtly lingered, so every time she had opened the cupboard, it would waft out and make her gag. That’s how Isabelle’s mother had known her teenage daughter was pregnant.

  She shook her head and laughed.

  “What?” he asked, a wavering half-smile.

  “I was thinking about when I last felt like this. I was fifteen and pregnant. Can you imagine if that’s what this is?”

  His eyes widened. “It’s not possible, is it?”

  She shrugged. “I’m thirty-eight. It’s certainly possible, but highly unprobab…” she trailed off. Just before the wedding, her contraceptive pill packet had fallen behind the side table, unbeknownst to her. By the time she was able to book an appointment with her doctor to arrange another prescription, five days had passed. When Chris arrived home from the mine, she was back on track, but it would have been enough time to affect her fertility.

  “What?” he asked.

  She waved his question away. “Nothing. I’m sure it’s just a stomach bug.”

  The backdoor screen opened, and Juliette bounded out. Her blonde hair was tied up in a high ponytail. She wore the yellow high-vis shirt and bottle-green trousers that all workers at the alumina refinery had to wear. Her hastily toed-off boots were left outside the front door.

  When no greetings or even a smile was offered her way, she frowned and looked between her mother and Chris. “Have I interrupted something?”

  Isabelle shook her head. “No. I’m not feeling well. That’s all. I was just heading inside for a shower.”

  Juliette lifted her hands in a warding off gesture. “Don’t come near me with your germs. I haven’t earnt any sick leave yet.”

  Isabelle laughed. “So bloody dramatic.”