“Can we go back to Lotti Boutique? I think I need that belt we saw there earlier.” Bianca bounced on the balls of her feet, chirping like a happy little bird as we waited for the escalator to deliver us to the third floor of the shopping complex. Bianca’s enthusiasm for shopping knew no bounds, and I enjoyed her overly positive presence. “And you need to buy that dress you tried on.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. I’m still tossing up between that one and the green one at Lisette’s.”

“Both are hot. Wear the black one tonight when we go out and we’ll dance and drink and find you a man.” She wriggled her eyebrows at me suggestively, but her face fell when her gaze met mine, and concern furrowed her forehead.

I laughed, hoping it didn’t sound as forced as it felt. “It’s fine, B. I’m over it.” My tongue felt thick as I forced out the lie. I was still as in love with him as the day I’d written it on a Post-it note and pushed it under his door. Feelings like that didn’t just go away.

“Are you, though?” she asked quietly.

“Of course!” I said, trying to sound breezy and carefree. I’d been trying to put on a brave face in front of my friends for months. I didn’t want to be a downer, and pretending to be okay even when I wasn’t helped keep me going. I’d lived with the pain of losing my family for over a year, and now I felt Low’s absence just as keenly. I couldn’t let myself think about any of it too much or it would consume me whole.

Bianca narrowed her eyes and I wished the damn escalator would hurry up so I could get out from under her eagle eye gaze.

“You never talk about him or what happened. It would eat me alive if I were you. Wondering where he is and why he left.”

I shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I’ve told you this before. We weren’t even officially together.”

“Yeah, and I already called bullshit on that. You might not have been calling him your boyfriend, but that was only a matter of time. For him to just up and leave without a word...” She shook her head.

“He left a message at work, letting us know he wasn’t coming back, so it wasn’t exactly without a word.” Except it was. It was without a word to me.

“Oh, come on. He left without saying goodbye to any of us. I’m still annoyed about it and I wasn’t the one sleeping with him.”

“I wasn’t sleeping with him.” At least that part of the story was true.

Bianca waved her hand around the air dismissively. “Details, details, whatever. You two were totally digging on each other.”

I sighed as we finally stepped off the elevator and headed towards the boutique we’d already spent an hour in that morning. “Can we please drop it? I don’t want to do this again.”

She reached out and squeezed my arm. “Yeah, of course, I’m sorry. The whole situation just pisses me off. The way he…Reese?” Bianca’s blond head flipped back to where I’d stopped in the middle of the Saturday afternoon crowd.

My hands clutched at my stomach, the sudden ache within as surprising as the abrupt stabbing pain in my heart. Bianca rushed back to my side as a guy behind me mumbled something under his breath and detoured around us. “Reese! What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

I tried to form words, but I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. My vision narrowed and focused on a family across the walkway. The woman wore a long, flowered dress that brushed her ankles and a pair of brown leather sandals. A man with dark denim jeans, a flannel shirt, and a Stetson perched on his head. But the cause of the sudden pain inside me was the dark-haired girl looking up at the man from her wheelchair. He smiled fondly at whatever she had said and ruffled her hair. The woman said something before pointing to a sign, and the three of them headed to the food court.

They were out of sight before my feet unfroze and moved me in the same direction. Bianca asked me something, but I didn’t answer, her voice just a drone in the background. I picked up the pace, breaking into a jog before I lost the family in the crowd. My family.

My heart thumped and a tiny cry escaped my lips. Was it really them? Why would they be here in Sydney? Our property was a twelve-hour drive from here, and my father hated the city. I could count on one hand how many times he’d brought me here as a kid. I slowed as I entered the food court and watched them find a table.

A sudden pain bloomed in my arm and I snapped my head to see Bianca pinching me hard.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Oh, hallelujah! You’re back! You were off in fairy land and I had no idea where you were taking me. I thought I was going to have to call a medic for a moment there.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, I just…”

Bianca followed my line of sight to my family sitting around the table. My mum and sister had their heads close together, discussing something. Maybe the menu of the burger place? I edged closer, as if taking two steps farther would allow me to hear their conversation above the din of the food hall.

Bianca went quiet for a minute. Her voice was quiet when she spoke again. “Reese, that little girl in the wheelchair could be your twin. Is she…?”

I nodded. “My sister. With my parents.”

Gemma was eleven now, I realised. Her birthday was in October. I’d been too scared to call her. Too scared to hear them say Gemma was still in a wheelchair. I’d nurtured the glimmer of hope until I’d almost convinced myself that Gemma’s injuries were non-existent. I’d planned to show up there at Christmas with a new horse and everything would go back to normal. But the truth was right here in front of me. Even though I’d tried to hide from it, it had found me anyway. There was no denying the serious nature of Gemma’s injuries when they were staring me in the face.

“Are you going over?” Bianca asked.

I shook my head. “I can’t.” The words were heavy in my throat like lead.

“Why not?”

“We don’t talk. We’re…estranged.”

Bianca nodded. “But you look like you really want to go over there…”

I glanced over at her, silently pleading for her to understand without explanation. “I can’t, B. They hate me,” I whispered.

Bianca rubbed a soothing hand in circles on my back while I tried to blink back tears.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“I put Gemma in that chair, B, and I thought by now things might be different. My dad…he…I just can’t. I don’t want to make a scene.”

With one last glance at my little sister, I dragged Bianca away. She followed me reluctantly, shooting me concerned glances every few steps. “Okay, well, if you’re sure.”

I didn’t answer as I tried to control the vicious trembling in my hands. I tucked them into the pockets of my cut-off shorts before Bianca noticed. “I’m sure. Can we just go, please?”

Bianca gave up her search for the perfect dress immediately and led me out to the car park where we’d left her little red Suzuki. She slid behind the steering wheel as I slumped into the passenger side, dropping my chin to my chest and letting my hair form a protective wall around me.

Gemma was still in the chair. The knowledge hit me like a sledgehammer over and over, again and again, taking chunks out of the hope I’d been secretly harbouring for months. What a fool I’d been to even think she might just magically get up and walk again. Had I really thought she’d have some physical therapy and then walk and run around like other kids her age? A tear dripped from my eye and landed on my jeans. It had been over a year. If Gemma was still in that chair after a year, then she wasn’t getting better.

“She looked happy,” Bianca said, breaking the silence.

“Who?” I looked at her blankly.

“Your sister. She was smiling and laughing. She looked happy.”

“She’s in a wheelchair because of my stupidity. I ruined her whole damn life.”

“She didn’t look as though her life was ruined. She looked like a happy kid on a shopping trip with her family.”

She didn’t get it. She hadn’t been there when my father had kicked me out of the hospital and told everyone within shouting distance that I’d ruined our family. She hadn’t seen the venom in his eyes or heard the rage in his voice. She hadn’t seen my mother’s tears as she stood silently behind him. Bianca hadn’t felt the way my soul had torn in two at the sight of my little sister crumpled on the ground, a mess of arms and legs, or the way her tiny body had been rushed through the corridors on her way to surgery.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Bianca shook her head. “It seems there are a lot of things you don’t want to talk about.”