My heart lifted when I heard the dogs barking, Mervin’s high-pitched yap and Wolfie’s low growl, but they didn’t come running. Kevin pulled my suitcase from the tray and we crossed the patchy lawn.
‘Where are the dogs?’ I asked.
‘Tied up out back.’ Kevin mounted the wooden steps and walked across the wide veranda to the front door.
‘Tied up! Why?’
‘They’ve been wandering around when I’m out. They went over to the Harrison place the other day.’
‘Mum never tied them up.’
Kevin shrugged and was about to say something but didn’t.
‘What about the cat?’ I said.
‘Haven’t seen Reggie for a few days. He’s around somewhere.’
I stood on the veranda, waiting as Kevin pushed open the door. It’s true what they say about country people. They don’t lock up.
I glanced across to Mum’s favourite chair in the far left corner of the veranda. She’d had it for years: a white wicker rocker with a big green cushion. I could picture her sitting there. She used to curl one leg underneath her, her long dark hair falling between her shoulder blades like a song. When I was home on holidays I’d taken to sitting on the love seat opposite; it hung on chains from the rafters and I’d swing back and forth, pushing with my toes while we chatted. She loved gazing out toward the purple ranges to the east. She said it calmed her as well as chamomile tea.
A gaping hole opened up inside me. How could it be possible that she would never sit in that chair again? That I’d not be opposite her, swinging back and forth, laughing at her pathetic jokes.
Kevin stopped in the hallway and I felt his eyes on me.
‘You okay?’ He started toward me, like he was going to put his hand on my shoulder.
I held up my hand. ‘I’m fine.’
I could do this. I could.
I followed him down the hall, past the living room and the main bedroom to my little bedroom on the left. Kevin had tidied it and made the bed. Mum and I had plans to completely redecorate but we hadn’t got round to it. I still had the same bedcover I’d had since I was ten: swirls of pink flowers. Mum had promised me a new one when we’d moved to Kelly’s Crossing, but we hadn’t got round to that either. I’d been over pink flowers for a while, along with My Little Ponies and other childish things. But she was like that, always promising stuff and leaving things until the last minute. And dying didn’t help.
I stood in the middle of the room, facing Kevin. ‘Well, there you go,’ he said.
‘Thanks for picking me up.’
‘It’s good to have you home.’ He stared at me for a moment too long, so I broke his gaze and held out my hand for the suitcase. ‘Right, well,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you settle in.’ He went out, closing the door behind him.
I sat on the bed staring out through my window at the orange and mandarin trees. I can’t explain what it’s like, wanting someone back as much as I wanted her back at that moment. You’d sell your soul to go back in time for just a glance, a touch, a word. In that second I would have settled for one little piece of her, even just a whisper, like I’d felt in the library. Anything would be better than the sheer nothingness of being there without her.
There are a lot of firsts to deal with when someone dies on you. There’s the first meal, the first time you watch a TV show you both liked, the first time you laugh, the first day of the Christmas holidays.
Without them.
Each first is a shock, like being born again, but not emerging as a helpless, unknowing infant; you’re yourself, fully-formed, knowing everything. The new world is completely different from the world you once knew because it’s a world without that person – a parallel universe. I was learning to push the shock of all the firsts away into some deep dark file in my brain like the ones on your computer labelled ‘cookies’ that never get opened but cannot be deleted. To open up to the firsts was just too hard, like being forced to start a new life before the old one really had a chance to get off the ground.
Luckily, something took my mind off that first day.
The phone rang at some ridiculous hour. I hadn’t slept well and was not planning on getting up anytime in the near future, but it kept ringing for so long that I rolled off the mattress and manoeuvred myself upright.
Hadn’t they heard of voicemail in Kelly’s Crossing?
Using the one per cent of my brain that was functioning, I found my way down the hall and into the kitchen at the back of the house. It took me a few seconds to find the cordless phone that had been left on the bench near the back door.
‘Hello?’ I croaked.
‘Oh, g’day, it’s Shelley Hanigan here. That must be you, Sunny. How are you?’
‘Um, yeah, hi, good.’
Shelley was one of the town cops and a burst of adrenaline woke me up. Generally phone calls from police were not good things, but then again she knew Mum – an old school friend. Maybe she was checking up on us.
‘Kev not there?’
‘Um …’ I looked out the window, past Mervin and Wolfie, curled up on their beds on the back porch. Kevin, wearing yesterday’s chequered shirt, emerged from the small corrugated-iron garage. He played with the door for a second, locked it, and then came striding across the lawn toward the house. ‘He’s coming,’ I said, realising Kevin would have heard the phone ring because of the extra bell they had installed on the outside wall of the house.
‘Right. Thanks, love.’
I put the phone down on the counter and went in search of the kettle. The
