branches. “We decided that we didn’t want Christmas without you so we put it off until tomorrow… or I should say today.”
“What about Santa Claus?”
“Oh, he came.”
“And Emma didn’t want to open her presents?”
“Oh, she did. It almost killed her, but she wanted you here.” She lightly kisses my lips. “We all did.”
Julianne slides her body away from mine and stands, pulling me upwards. “To bed with you.”
“Let me sleep here.”
“No.”
She leads me upstairs, pausing at the open door to Emma’s room where we watch our youngest sleeping, surrounded by stuffed animals and her gloriously imaginative paintings.
Then we pass Charlie’s room, which has a sign on the door banning entry to little sisters and anyone below a certain height. A height chart is helpfully provided.
Julianne doesn’t stop outside the guest room. Pulling me onwards, she takes me into the bedroom we once shared and helps me undress. When I try to speak, she puts her finger over my lips and draws me to the bed and wraps my arms around her body, across her breasts.
I smell her hair. I feel her heart. I listen to her sleeping. I want for nothing.
Michael Robotham
(2012) Say You're Sorry
M y name is Piper Hadley and
I went missing three years ago on the last Saturday of the summer holidays.
Today I came home.
