He studied my face. ‘I was waiting until you were stronger. Until you could make a decision.’
‘No need to wait. I’ve made my decision.’
He frowned. ‘Sunny, I—’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘This, all this, was never meant to happen. Everything was fine till you came along.’
Kevin’s face whitened. ‘Sunny—’
‘You changed everything,’ I went on. ‘You messed it all up. We were just us, her and me. We didn’t need anyone else.’
He moved back, bumping into the post. I walked past him and stepped down into the rain, the suitcase handle twisting in my hand as it bounced down the wooden stairs.
The light shining from inside the garage caught my eye. I turned and saw the front of a blue car. I knew that car. I’d seen it before.
‘Is that …’ I squinted, trying to see through the grey curtain of rain. The domed bonnet of an old FJ filled the front of the tiny garage. I shrugged off my backpack and dropped the handle of my suitcase. Not bothering to pull up the hood on Mum’s raincoat, I headed for the garage. I knew what it was – Mum’s FJ Holden. I jogged the last few metres to the open doors.
I had always imagined a little man cave, lined with tools and engine parts, littered with beer cans, maybe a camp bed where he slept sometimes, but as I came closer another world was revealed to me. Three lights joined by extension cords hung from the rafters, illuminating the garage like daylight. The space was neat as a pin. Shelves lined either side of the walls and an array of tools hung along one side in their neatly stencilled outlines. The floor was bare and raked. Parked in the centre and gleaming with new baby-blue paint, was Mum’s old car. Chrome gleamed on its shiny domed bonnet and the headlights gaped at me.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This was what Kevin had been doing.
I wheeled around as he came up behind me, soaking wet. ‘You’ve been hiding this from me? I suppose you’re selling it. Hoping to make a nice profit?’ I said.
‘No, I’m not selling it.’ He scraped water from his forehead.
I swung my head around. My wet hair flicked across my face. ‘What?’
‘I’m not selling it.’
‘What then? What are you doing with it?’
Kevin glanced up into the rainy sky and then back at me. ‘It’s for you.’
The words didn’t make sense. ‘For me?’
‘Your mum wanted you to have it, for your birthday. For your seventeenth.’
His words blasted into my consciousness. I frowned and turned to look at the newly refurbished body of the car, the shiny chrome.
‘We’d been working on it for six months,’ he added. ‘She was so excited about …’ He cleared his throat.
I stood there, staring at the gleaming utility with my mouth open. I wiped water from my face, my mind reeling and trying to process this new piece of information.
‘Your mum wanted to surprise you so I thought … I was trying to finish it in time …’ Kevin’s voice trailed off.
It hit me then. Hard. The Swiss Cheese Effect realigned, the pieces shifting backward, like a movie in reverse, leading all the way to me. ‘You mean all this time you were working on this car for me?’
He nodded.
‘So that day, the day she … She didn’t take this car because …’
‘What day? What do you mean?’
‘What day?’ My mind raced, theories and ideas flying around. ‘What day? The day she died. What other day is there?’
He stared at me, not understanding.
‘Don’t you see?’ I said. ‘If she’d taken this ute instead of the old Datsun to the show, she wouldn’t have crashed.’
‘Sunny, what are you on about?’
I circled the ute, my head spinning. It was:
All. My. Fault.
‘And if you hadn’t been working on it,’ I said, ‘you might have gone with her, right? You would have been with her.’
‘I don’t see …’ Kevin was confused. He didn’t understand. How could he? He didn’t understand the way things worked, the holes, the connections.
For a moment I couldn’t speak. All that time I’d been blaming Kevin, but it was me. Me! I’d caused the whole thing. I’d made the holes in the cheese and lined them up. At that second I hated that old car more than anything in the world.
‘I don’t want her stupid car. I never asked for the stupid car!’ I screamed.
‘Sunny!’ Kevin walked toward me, hands extended, as if trying to calm a wild animal. ‘Please, settle down.’
‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t you get it? Can’t you see? It’s my fault. I killed her. I killed her.’ I stared at him. ‘All this time I thought it was you. But … it was me! I never wanted the FJ. Why did she …’
I turned and grabbed the hammer from its neatly outlined hook on the wall. I raised it above my head and smashed it down across the shiny new bonnet, cracking the paint and denting the smooth domed top. ‘I hate this stupid car. I hate it.’
‘Sunny, no!’ Kevin lurched toward me, trying to wrestle the hammer from my hands.
I struggled against him, all the while screaming, ‘I don’t want it, I don’t want it! I don’t …’
I managed to writhe away from him and went to the front of the car. I wanted to destroy it, smash it to bits. A sob shuddered through me as I raised the hammer once more and swung it into the front right headlight, shattering the circle of glass.
‘Sunny, don’t! Please,’ Kevin shouted. He came after me and wrenched the hammer from my grip.
‘I don’t want a stupid car. I just want my mother back. I just want her back. That’s all I want. Please.’ My body doubled over. ‘I just want her back.’ I pushed past Kevin and ran out into the downpour. I turned back to him, feeling the raindrops mingle with the warm tears on my face. ‘Is that what we do?’ I screamed.
