A Heart Worth Mending

by Amanda Canham

  She heard the trickle first, but as they drew closer, the path widened and the pounding flow of water took on the sound of a quiet roar. The path they were on came to a stop in front of the receiving pool, a large wooden, two-plank fence preventing the horses from stepping close to the edge.

  Travis pulled Boom to a halt, the horse circling around the area close to the fence. Kelli slowed Lila, and looked out towards the waterfall, all the happy memories fading away, pitched into the dark shadow of her recent past.

  Breathe. Just breathe, she told herself, staring into the rush of water as it crashed against the rocky base. It wasn’t the same waterfall. She knew that. But it didn’t stop the pain, the fear, the heartache, when she stared into it.

  All she saw was Jimmy, tumbling down, banging into the rocks the water pounded into.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ Kelli asked softly, staring at the water a moment longer before turning to Travis.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t. She’d never told him.

  ‘I thought we could go for a swim. Riding can be hot work,’ he pulled at his sweat soaked shirt. ‘I thought it would be nice to cool down.’

  ‘So you brought me to a waterfall?’

  The images were coming, flooding in faster and faster. She needed to stem the tide. But she couldn’t stop them, she couldn’t…

  ‘Well, if you’re too chicken, you don’t have to come up, but I’m going to have a dive,’ he said, swinging off the horse in one deft movement. He looped the reigns around the fence pole and unstrapped his helmet.

  Those words…Did he know? How could he? No one knew they were the very last words she’d spoken to Jimmy. The pain in her chest, the dull ache that was always there, flared up, expanding within the cavity of her ribcage, until every inch of her torso ached. She couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ he asked; his eyes wide, the picture of innocence. ‘I didn’t peg you for a chicken.’

  ‘I’m not, but I would never, ever, dive into a waterfall again. After what happened—’ Kelli broke off, the sob rising in her chest, choking off the words. She fought the tears as they pushed against her eyes and she tore away. She couldn’t stop Travis if he wanted to do this, she couldn’t force him not to. But she wasn’t going to stay here and watch.

  Pressing her knees in to Lila, Kelli took off the way they’d come, her vision blurred by tears, merely trusting the horse could find its way. They rode like the wind, back down through the trees, across the yellow-green paddock, slowing only once they’d reached the car. Kelli slid off the horse and collapsed on the ground, a pile of tears and recrimination and fear.

  Sobs racked her body as she played the image over and over in her head - Jimmy diving off the cliff, his foot slipping at the last moment, his body tumbling against the rocks, scraping, tearing and plunging into the water.

  Fuck!

  Travis slung his helmet on and jumped back on Boom, thundering after Kelli. They galloped into the paddock moments after her, and he pulled the horse to a halt, leaping onto the ground next to her, his helmet quickly following suit. She didn’t seem to notice him until he wrapped his arms around her, dragging her off the ground and into his lap.

  ‘Shh, shh,’ he murmured over and over into her hair, rocking her back and forth as her tears continued to fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ he offered, his lips brushing her ear. Gradually, the tears dried, her keening slowed down and she was able to pull herself together enough to look up at him.

  ‘It was a day like this when it happened,’ she finally said, her voice sounding disembodied, somehow. ‘Except… it wasn’t quite as hot, I don’t think…’ she broke off, staring into the distance, and Travis knew she wasn’t really present. Not in her mind.

  ‘It’s stupid, isn’t it? That I can’t remember how hot it was? I should. I should be able to remember. It still feels like it happened only yesterday.’

  ‘That will pass,’ Travis assured her, hesitantly running a finger along her cheekbone.

  ‘Will it?’

  ‘It did for me.’

  Still staring into the distance, Kelli blinked, and turned her head towards him slowly, her eyes thoughtful. ‘What happened to your mum?’ she asked quietly.

  Travis held her gaze for a moment, before looking down at the ground beside them, tugging at the tufts of grass. ‘It was a home invasion gone wrong. I was supposed to be home that day. I was grounded, but I’d snuck out and gone over to Cam’s place. When the thief broke in, the house was empty. He was only a young guy - twenty at the most. A junkie, apparently, he needed cash for his next fix. At least, that’s what the police said.

  ‘Mum and Ana sprang him in the kitchen, when they got back from getting the groceries that night. His… his bag was full of all her jewellery, and the cash they kept upstairs. When they caught him in the kitchen he pulled a knife on them. Ana started screaming. God, how she screamed. She was calling for me.’ The guilt of not being there still twisted his gut up raw.

  ‘I should have been there. If I’d been upstairs, like I was supposed to be, I would have been there in an instant. I could have stopped it. I could have… We could hear her screaming from next door, and Cam and I raced over. Brad was already there when we got in. He had the guy pinned to the ground. Mum was on the floor and there was so much blood. Her eyes were all glassy, but I was too young, still in high school. I didn’t know what that meant. I ran over, I tried to close up the wound, to stop the blood, but it wouldn’t stop coming. I cried, over and over, calling her name, telling her to stay with me. The next thing I knew the cops and ambos were there, taking Mum away. They said she was dead before I got to her.’

  ‘Oh, Travis, it wasn’t your fault. You should know that.’ Kelli shifted in his lap so she could press closer to him, lifting a hand to cup his face.

  ‘I know now,’ he captured her hand and pressed his lips against her palm. ‘But for a long time I kept it buried. I was too ashamed to tell anyone. But that kind of guilt, that kind of pain…It fucks you up.’ He looked into her eyes, desperate to convince her of the truth. He didn’t want to see her go down the path he had. ‘Kelli, if you keep it inside, if you let it fester and grow, it’ll eat you alive.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she insisted, dropping her hand, and he could feel her pulling away, trying to cut the connection between them. But he couldn’t let her do it; he couldn’t let her close up again.

  ‘You can,’ he told her, threading his arms around her before she could move away. ‘It’s just me. You can tell me, can’t you?’

  She rolled those big emerald eyes of hers up until they met his, and his breath caught at the world of guilt and pain reflected in them. How could she live like that?

  When she broke contact, when she shuffled off his lap and onto the grass by his side, he thought he’d lost her. But then, eyes staring off into the distance, she finally opened the floodgates.

  ‘It was a couple of days after Christmas, and we both had the day off. That hadn’t happened much in the last year or so, since I’d been doing my fellowship. And Teegan had been busy, which felt like its very own Christmas gift. Now don’t get me wrong, I always liked Teegan. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t like her, but it was nice to have Jimmy all to myself for a day.’

  Travis leaned back, resting on the palms of his hands as he watched Kelli fidget with the loose threads in the knees of her jeans.

  ‘We drove up into Killarney. We used to do a bit of hiking with our parents when we were in our teens, and we kept going at least once a year as we got older. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I’ve always enjoyed the most enormous thrill from climbing to the peaks of the Great Dividing Range.

  ‘We hadn’t been up that way for several months but everything looked the same as usual. We trekked through the bush, taking one of the rarer tracks through to Condamine Gorge. Have you been up there?’ she paused her story, to glance over at him.

  ‘No,’ Travis shook his head, batt
ing away a buzzing fly.

  ‘It’s beautiful. After all the rain we had before Christmas, a new waterfall was flowing over the cliffs of the gorge. I knew straight away I wanted to go cliff diving. We’d done it heaps when we were at uni. But not so much since we’d hit thirty. I guess I was out to prove a point. Jimmy was feeling his age more than I was, I think, because he didn’t want to dive. Or maybe it was because he had someone to come home to now.

  ‘But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I taunted him, called him a whipped puppy and a chicken, amongst other choice names, until finally he rose to the challenge. He said if he jumped this one time from Devil’s Point—which was the very apex of the cliff—then he’d put all “chicken” calls to rest…and he said…after that one…he’d never have to jump again.’

  Kelli broke off, silent tears streaming down her face. Travis leant towards her, running his thumb across her cheeks, helping her wipe away the tears. He wanted to do more; wished he could wipe away the pain for her as easily as he was wiping away the tears.

  ‘It was thirty metres higher than where we were and jutted out towards the other side of the gorge, over the narrowest passage of water. We’d never tried jumping from there before because it was so dangerous. I scoffed at him, told him there was no way he’d do it, he was too whipped. “No, I’m not,” he’d answered through gritted teeth, and before I knew it he was climbing up to Devil’s Point, scaling the steep rock with the stealth of a mountain cat. I didn’t know what to do, so I just… I just stood there. Maybe I should have chased him, but even I’m not that crazy. When he got to the top, he turned and saluted before taking a running leap off the cliff.’

  She drew her eyes from the distance and focused on him. ‘It happened so fast. One moment he was waving at me, the next he jumped from the cliff. But something happened just as he was taking off and he seemed to stumble over the edge, like he’d slipped or something. After that he was plunging into the water, banging against the rocks. It’s all fuzzy now. I can’t remember if he hit the rocks first or the water. I’m just not sure. All I know is he went under and I stood there waiting for him to come back up.’

  Kelli’s tears flowed fast now, and so did her words. It was as if she was in a rush to get them out, to rid herself of them.

  ‘But he didn’t. He didn’t come back up, so I jumped in after him. It was deeper, wider where I was. I swam upstream and finally found him floating face down close to the cliff. I flipped him over and tried to swim to the embankment, but I couldn’t move him. He was snagged on something. I ducked under the water and he was…he had…he’d fallen straight onto a pile of jagged rocks, submerged just below the surface. His board shorts had caught on one of the rocks in the centre of the pile. I ripped his pants off and towed him to shore. Once I had him on land, I performed CPR and he started breathing. He started breathing! I was so relieved. I rolled him into the recovery position so I could call for help. By the time I’d reached the bags and returned, he’d stopped breathing again. It took so long for the rescuers to arrive, and I kept pushing and pushing and breathing and breathing until they winched him into the chopper. But it was no use. He was gone.’

  The sobs took over then, deep gut-wrenching sobs shuddering through her body. Travis closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around her, holding her so close there wasn’t even space for air to pass between them.

  ‘Can you see it? Can you see now what I did? How I killed him?’ She sobbed the words into his chest, desperately needing the solace, the comfort to support the guilt she was clinging to. But Travis couldn’t give it to her. He couldn’t support the cycle of blame she had fallen in to.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, but I can’t. Kelli, Kelli, look at me.’ He grabbed her face between his hands, and pulled her up so they were pressed together, forehead to forehead, eyeball to eyeball. ‘You didn’t do it, Kelli. You didn’t kill him. You have to stop blaming yourself.’

  ‘But I did. I did kill him. Travis, you’re wrong,’ she cried, wrenching her face from his, huddling over herself. ‘If I hadn’t pushed him, if I hadn’t challenged, if I hadn’t forced him up that cliff…’

  ‘But you didn’t. Granted, you did prod him into the whole exercise, but you can’t force anyone up a cliff, and you could never have known he’d climb all the way to the top.’

  ‘No. That’s not true. I forced him. It’s my fault he’s dead.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. It was an accident. You said yourself that he slipped.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have been up there if it wasn’t for me. He wouldn’t have tried to jump, which means he wouldn’t have slipped. I did that. I made him go up there.’

  ‘You can’t force someone to jump, Kelli. At some point, they have to make that decision themselves. As soon as they do - it’s not your call anymore. You didn’t push him off. He jumped. He could have chosen not to, like you did today. It’s why I brought you here, so you’d see—’

  ‘Wait!’ Kelli slammed a hand into his chest, her eyes searching his, desperately seeking the truth. ‘You what?!’

  FUCK!

  Why did he say that?

  ‘I’m trying to help you. That’s all,’ he rushed to assure her, but she was already pulling away from him; throwing up her wall.

  ‘You brought me here on purpose? Why would you be so cruel?’

  ‘It’s not...I wasn’t doing—,’ but she wouldn’t let him finish.

  ‘How did you even know he died that way?’

  Travis closed his eyes, the only way he could hide from the accusation in hers. But he wouldn’t lie to her. She deserved the truth. ‘Teegan told me. At Ana’s party. After you left.’

  ‘What?! How could she? Teegan wasn’t at the waterfall. She doesn’t know what happened.’

  ‘She read the police report. She talked to the rescuers. She’s been looking for answers.’

  ‘Oh. My. God!’ Kelli pushed herself to her feet, pacing back and forth, like she was trying to step her thoughts into place.

  ‘Kelli, I knew you didn’t want to talk to anyone, and it’s pretty clear you won’t listen to anyone telling you otherwise. Hell, I was the same after Mum. I know what you’re going through. But what I needed to do then, and what I figured would be the same for you, is to realise on your own that it’s not your fault. I wish I’d had someone to tell me earlier. I spent so long blaming myself for not being home, when it was no one’s fault but the man wielding the knife.

  ‘Kelli, you need to realise you can’t possibly force someone to take a risk they don’t want to take. No matter how much pressure or coercion you put on someone, it is not your fault if they do something. It took a long time for me to realise that. And I hurt a lot of people in the process. I didn’t want you to do the same thing.’

  ‘So you think you can fix me? You think taking me to a waterfall, and asking me to jump, seven weeks after my brother did the same thing and died is going to fix me? You are screwed in the head.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think of it like that. I just -’

  ‘No. You didn’t think, full stop. Or if you did think, you thought about you, not me.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? I was just trying to help.’

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want your help?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts. I’m not a project you can fix, Travis. I have to work through this on my own,’ she threw the words at him before turning on her heels and stomping towards the fence.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Travis called out, watching her slither between the barbed wire fences.

  ‘Away from you!’ she threw over her shoulder as she started walking through the next field.

  ‘Fuck,’ Travis muttered under his breath and started racing after her. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere. Just wait until I get the horses unhooked and I can take you home.’

  ‘No thanks. I’m done with you.’

  ‘But -’

  Kelli stopped in her tracks and s
wivelled around to face him. ‘Don’t you get it? I can’t be around you right now.’

  ‘But I can’t leave you stranded out here.’

  ‘Damn and blast! I grew up on that mountain behind you. I’m sure I can get someone to come pick me up. Satisfied?’

  He wasn’t. He wanted to take her home. He wanted to make things right. But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. So he nodded, and stood there watching her walk away from him.

  He just hoped like hell she wasn’t walking out of his life for good.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Hit me again,’ Kelli ordered, slapping some more money down on the bar. The alcohol was just starting to turn the edges of her mind to fuzz. So clearly she hadn’t had nearly enough yet.

  The image of Jimmy lying face down in the water was still front and centre in her mind. She grabbed the shot of tequila off the bench and downed it in one fell swoop, not bothering with the almost-mandatory salt and lemon. She needed the full hit tonight; she didn’t want anything to take away the bitterness of the drink.

  As the warmth of the liquid burned down her insides to settle like a spark in her belly, she heard Travis’ words again, over and over, like they were on repeat.

  You didn’t kill him.

  He jumped.

  It’s not your fault.

  More. She needed more alcohol to drown out his voice. She caught the barman’s eye and indicated she’d need another.

  ‘Do you really think that’s a good idea?’ Simon’s eyes were worried as they looked at her.

  A childhood friend to both siblings, Simon had been more than willing to come to her rescue this afternoon, given she hadn’t spoken to him since the funeral. She hadn’t spoken to any of her friends. But that was set to change tonight. Simon had rounded up some of the old gang when it became clear Kelli needed their company.

  ‘What are you, a pussy?’ Kelli demanded, turning ferocious eyes his way. ‘I don’t need a big brother. I had one. He died. Now either drink up or shut up!’ Without waiting for his response she reached for her own shot, downing it in one hit. From the corner of her eye, she saw the barman pour another shot for Simon. ‘Now that’s more like it,’ she said, giving him a firm back slap after he’d downed the shot.