Much to his dismay, she did not.
Instead, a single, glassy tear slid down Minnie’s cheek.
“It’s me.”
Chapter Forty-five
2019
It was Minnie who, to Ronnie’s horror, suggested going on a walk with Ross. Just the two of them. Brother and sister.
Although she could sense how furious Ronnie was, Minnie had grown competent at blocking him out, like most couples, she figured. At that moment, she was pulled to Ross as if they were magnets, and something intense was driving her to talk to him away from Paul and away from Ronnie.
She knew that she could have lied. She was good at lying, and the children were good at improvising. The whole thing could have been swept under the carpet. But since the previous evening, Minnie felt cold and vulnerable. When she first recognised her older brother’s familiar swagger of a walk, a million warm memories had flooded her head at once, completely consuming her.
There were so many things she longed to say to him, but yet, as they walked, the metre between them felt like miles. And the distance only grew with every step.
Her chest felt tight, her throat closing up. She looked up at the sunny sky, the golden gleam stinging her eyes. Beneath her feet, the country road was bumpy and dusty, lumps of disintegrating concrete grounding her into this bizarre reality. All around them, fields stretched out. They’d grown up in a suburban town; however, this was the road their father had always driven down when he’d been taken the family to or from holidays. It was like the connection between their home and the big, wider world.
It was Ross who spoke first.
That’s the way it had always been.
“Where have you been, Minnie?” he asked.
He didn’t look at her when he spoke, just stared down at his feet as they walked down the quiet, deserted lane. Although she scrutinised his expression, as she had trained herself to do with everyone she met, she could not read him. She couldn’t tell if he was sad or angry.
“I felt like I couldn’t come back,” she said dumbly. “They were going to make me get rid of my baby, Ross…”
“So why didn’t you come back when it was too late to get an abortion?” he interrupted, still staring down at the ground. His voice was calm, but there was an unpleasant sharpness to it that felt like it was slicing into her flesh.
Minnie laughed. Not because it was funny, but because she couldn’t even begin to comprehend where she’d start to answer that question. Ross stopped in his tracks and shot her a glare of disgust, “is this funny to you?” he demanded, his cheeks flushing red. “Do you have any idea what you disappearing did to us? Did to…” his voice broke, and tears welled up in his eyes, “did to… me?”
Before he could stop her, she lunged forward, wrapping her arms tightly around his towering figure. She breathed in the unfamiliar scent of his aftershave mixed with washing powder that didn’t smell of home. He hugged her back, burying his head in her shoulder.
“A lot of bad shit happened to me, Ross,” she said, her voice crackling. “Bad shit that I don’t want to talk about.”
“We could’ve helped you,” he groaned.
Her heart broke. Later on, when they’d escaped Steve, she’d seen how hard her family had searched for her. She knew they thought she had died. She tried to imagine how painful it would have been if the roles were reversed, and it was Ross who had just gone missing. Vanished into thin air.
Swallowing back tears, she shook her head. “You couldn’t have,” she breathed. “Honestly, you couldn’t. But I don’t want to talk about that.”
Ross pulled away from her embrace. He put his big, grown-up hands on her shoulders and looked intently down into her face. For a while, he just looked at her, blinking in disbelief as if it were a miracle. To him, it was.
“You know what?” he said finally, “it doesn’t matter. The main thing is that you’re back.”
She opened her mouth in protest, “uh, Ross…”
He tightened his grip on her shoulders as if it were a threat. “We’re going to Mum and Dad’s,” he said, “and you’re coming with us.”
“No,” she shook her head, stepping back out of his clutches, “no Ross, I’m not. It’ll cause all kinds of trouble. It’s been amazing seeing you, but…”
His smile dropped. “What? Why?”
Minnie sighed and rubbed her forehead. She paced back and forth, kicking stones and random tufts of grass poking out from the dusty road. “Ronnie is my husband,” she said carefully, “I can’t have Mum and Dad phoning the police, getting him arrested. He never did anything wrong; he never deserved any of that shit. I love him, and I can’t put him in danger.”
Her brother’s shoulders sagged. “You got married?”
“Well, it was an unofficial service,” Minnie admitted. “As I say, we avoid the police, anything government-related, really.”
Ross frowned. “So what about your kid? What about school and a birth certificate, and…” he trailed off. Even after two decades apart, he had an uncanny ability to read his little sister like a wide-open book.
“You’ve been living like an outlaw? This whole time?”
She ran a hand through her hair and forced herself to look him in the eye. “I know it sounds bad, Ross. But you’ve got to believe me, it’s necessary.
He pursed his lips, his pupils scanning her uncertainly from head to toe.
“Mum and Dad won’t care, Minnie,” he said at last. “Nor do I. To put it bluntly, I couldn’t give a fuck if you’re a crack-addicted bank robber. I beg you. Please come to Mum and Dad’s with us.”
Minnie paused. The knot embedded in her chest tightened and twisted as she tried to
