Everly

Six months after the explosion

Dear Bella,

I remember the first time I saw you.

You were a face amongst many. Ten or so women in the waiting room, some with partners, children in tow.

Not you.

You were alone.

Your hands clutched your belly, even though it barely swelled against the jeans that hugged your legs, and there was that look in your eyes I knew so well—anguish. Not just pain, but something bigger, something deeper that consumed your every waking thought.

“I’ll take her,” I’d said to Stacey, and she’d glanced at the files in front of her before handing me yours.

“Ten weeks. First child. Asked to visit early because she’s having pain and doesn’t know what to do.”

Six simple words.

Six simple words that so many of us feel.

I don’t know what to do.

When I called your name, you looked up, and I saw it—a brief glimmer of disappointment. You wanted me to be the doctor. You wanted an ironclad guarantee your baby would be saved, and you didn’t think a midwife could give you that.

But that wasn’t what surprised me.

When you followed me into the consult room, you sat on the seat across the desk from me. You let me take your blood pressure, listen to your heartbeat. Your hands clenched at your sides as you waited while I took your history, all the boring nitty-gritty while your mind was no doubt on one thing and one thing only—is my baby going to be okay?

And then you spoke.

“My husband doesn’t know I’m here,” you’d said. “I don’t want him to worry. But I want you to tell it to me straight.” Your lips had thinned; your shoulders rolled back. And even though just moments ago I’d seen anguish in those eyes, fear in your rounded shoulders, tension in the clutch of your hands, I knew.

You were strong.

You were going to fight for this.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to accept that you’re gone. That someone who’d fought so valiantly for life could be wiped out in one instant, one fast decision from some man whose beliefs weren’t public enough for his conviction.

It’s his fault you’re gone. I know that. I know that like I know one and one is two, like the southerly that blows in across the ocean will send an Antarctic chill through my beach-side home.

But it’s the other stuff I believe—that’s the problem. The less tangible facts. The what ifs that haunt your mind and eat at your soul.

Darkness consumed my mind that day. I’d felt so desolate, so without hope, so ready to end it all. But then something called me away from that cliff. Some silent voice reached out to me, beckoning me to stay and fight. So I sat in the car across from my husband, and I turned the radio up to drown out the deafening silence that stretched into a chasm between us. I needed something to mute his thoughts of ‘my wife has gone crazy’.

The radio played. And when the announcer told us about the attack at the Three Swallows, the two male survivors of what the anchor described as “the worst terrorist attack Australia has ever seen”, I knew.

My life changed.

It shouldn’t have been you. You had so much to live for.

It should have been me.

With all my heart,

Everly

I sat at the grave, placing the letter on the tombstone in front of me. My hand moved to trace over the freshly inked gold letters for what felt like the hundredth time. Isabella Anne Kennedy. Beloved friend, wife and daughter. May she rest in peace.

It took three months for the plaque to go up. Three long months of weekly visits, of checking in to see if progress had been made. Three months where anyone could have walked past this spot, anyone could have casually traipsed by and not known that underneath this freshly turned soil, a woman rested. Underneath this freshly turned soil, a body slowly disintegrated.

Why the delay? Insurance money? Red tape with an investigation into her death? Or something more simple? How did you condense the story of a life into enough characters to fit on a stone? How did you summarise a woman’s journey into the equivalent of a tweet?

“Everly.”

I glanced up. Joanna sat in the car, her head hanging out the window. I didn’t miss the look in her eyes. Pity. It screamed it, loud and clear.

“It’s time to go.”

I nodded, looking back at Bella’s name one last time, tracing those letters again as if I could imprint my emotions upon them using force. “Goodbye, Bella,” I said. The wind whispered sweet nothings to the leaves in the gumtrees nearby—the only response. “I’ll visit again soon.”

As I hopped in the car, softly pulling the door behind me, I felt the wave of disappointment before she even spoke.

“You have to stop visiting here, Ev.” Joanna turned the wheel, inching the car along the road leading out of the cemetery. “It’s not healthy. You barely knew the woman.”

“I knew enough,” I muttered, but my hand grasped the door handle tighter.

“It’s not like you were friends. You spoke a few times a week during the month leading up to her death.”

“We were friends. We had lunch. Coffee. And it’s my fault she died. My fault she—”

“You forced her to go to that café, right at the time when a terrorist was about to attack?” Joanna flicked on the indicator with aggression, even though no cars travelled along the lonely country road. “You called the guy in advance, told him not to detonate that bomb until Isabella whatever-her-last-name-is was well and truly within firing range?”

“Stop!” I said, my heart hammering. My breath ached as it scratched the back of my throat.

“No! You stop.” Joanna slammed her hand on the horn.

A cow in a nearby field raised its head to stare.

“You need to snap out of this. You need to move on with your life and address the real issues.” She softened her voice, stretched out her arm to place a hand on my knee.

I flinched, not wanting her touch. Not needing it.

“Your husband is an arse. Your boss isn’t going to wait much longer.” She squeezed, as if to impress the gravity of those facts into me. “You need to do something. And fast.”

“I have done something.” I rested my head against the seat, staring at the grey felt ceiling of the car. “Bentley is gone. I took leave without pay.”

“And soon, you’ll need money. To finance a divorce.”

Rolling green fields flashed us by as we stopped at an intersection, ready to turn left toward my house. The place I lived.

Not my home.

It stopped being my home when I found my husband in our bed with another woman.

But somehow, that had lost its importance. After the terrorist attack, I didn’t care. Didn’t care about her. Didn’t care about him.

I just. Didn’t. Care.

That was why I hadn’t pushed for a divorce. As long as Bentley no longer lived in the house, I could pretend he didn’t exist. As long as Joanna was there to look after things, remind me to shower every few days, make sure I paid the bills on time, I could pretend nothing bad had happened.

I could pretend reality didn’t exist.

“I’m going back to Melbourne.”

“What?” I jerked my head to face her.

“I can’t stay here forever. I have a house to get back to.”

“Mum. You’re going back for Mum,” I mumbled.

“I am,” she agreed, unperturbed. “Mum’s house, my life. My friends. You’re just lucky I’m a freelancer, or I could never have stayed this long to begin with.”

“You’re right. Your life.” I toyed with the corner of the car seat, picking up a piece of lint between my thumb and forefinger before facing her and feeling every bit the petulant child. “Joanna, I’m sorry. I know it’s been crap being here with me during all this—”

“That’s not what I said—”

“I’m saying it, okay? I’ve been hard. Hard to live with. Hard to … watch.” So many nights she’d found me scrubbing the shower at two a.m. So many nights she’d left out Ibuprofen for me, a neat foil sliver of two tablets, the rest of the pack hidden who knew where in case I decided to try overdose, no matter how many times I told her I wouldn’t. “Anyway, you’re right. You need to get back to your own life, and I’m so grateful for all you’ve done while you’ve been here.”

She shot me a quick glance as she slowed at the lights. “You sure?”

“Positive.” I nodded.

“Good.” The car surged forward with the rest of the morning traffic. “But because I worry about you, I’ve booked you some sessions with a grief counsellor.”

“Grief? I’m not the one who lost—”

“You’re grieving, Everly. Can’t you see that? You may not have known this woman, but you’re exhibiting the classic signs of loss, and I think you need help.”

Old me would have scoffed at the idea. I wasn’t the sort of woman who needed help with anything. I could change a tyre, a light globe, and fold a fitted sheet, all by myself. I wasn’t one of those women who relied on others to get by.

It was one of the things Bentley had found so attractive about me, and something I’d liked about him. He was strong, a real alpha. He made decisions like he was dropping an anvil, hard and fast, then saw them through and faced the consequences.

Perhaps that was why he cheated. Perhaps he’d wanted me to know our relationship was over.

He’d made the decision and he was ready for the fallout. Unlike me.

The handbrake protested as we stopped in the driveway, and I followed Joanna out of the car and into my house. She unlocked the door, holding it wide for me to go first, even though it was my place. That was who my little sister had turned into—the woman ready to look after me.

I tossed my handbag on the sofa, just missing the photo on the coffee table of Bentley and me. Back when things were happier. When things were good.

My fingers itched to pick it up. He was a jerk, but we’d been through so much together. What if it wasn’t supposed to end? What if—

Joanna walked over and turned the photo down, hiding our smiling faces.

She was right.

Bentley didn’t have a place here anymore.

Emotion surged through me. She’d come when I’d needed her most. She’d been there for me for six months. Six long, hard months of heartache and confusion and pain. Six months of me losing that strength I’d always had and being reduced to this confused mess. She’d moved her whole life to be here, and I loved her incredibly for it.

I threw my arms around her shoulders, grasping her to my chest in a close hug. “Thank you,” I whispered into her curly hair, the complete opposite to my own. “Thank you so much.”

Slowly, one hand patted my back. “It’s fine,” she sniffed, always reluctant to show affection. “Just promise me you’ll show up to those appointments, okay?”

I pulled back and nodded. “Sure.”

“Think of them as an early Christmas gift from me.” She winked, and I managed a small laugh. “But part of this agreement means you have to go back to work. Or at least get some kind of a job. And sell the house.”

“Sell the house?” I looked around at the tall wooden walls that had seen so much: Bentley sweeping me off my feet and over the threshold. Cooking experiments gone terribly wrong in that kitchen behind the ancient but beautiful Aga. Cries of ecstasy that had echoed against the high ceilings as we made love on that couch.

“Come on, Ev. It’s huge. You don’t need all this space just for one.”

“I know, but …” I made a face. She’s gonna kill me for saying this. “Bentley wants me to keep it.”

“You are not keeping it.” Joanna threw her handbag to the ground. “He’s emotionally manipulating you. Sure, he’s saying ‘you keep it’ now, but give it a few months. He’ll come here with his tail between his legs, begging you to take him back, and you’ll be all, ‘Oh, well I guess he was really sweet about the house thing.’”

I rolled my eyes. “I talk nothing like that.”

“You do when you’re letting your heart make decisions your head should sort through.” She shook her head. “He’s doing this as a grand gesture to absolve his guilt. I get you might not want to sell, but at least rent it out. You can’t keep living here. There are too many memories. It’s time to move on,” Joanna said, then pasted on a smile and headed toward the kitchen. “Now let me move my arse on to the fridge and make us some lunch. I refuse to eat another pizza.”

“Spoilsport.” I laughed, but followed along behind her, fetching the ingredients she required for her salad.

As I chopped cucumbers, her words stuck in my head. There are too many memories. You need to move on.

Sometimes, that was exactly how it felt. As if I had too many memories, all fighting for space inside my head. All loud, dominant, and demanding to be heard.

But then I thought of Bella. Of the woman who’d never breathe another breath. Of Cameron—the man whose wife and child were cruelly stripped from him in one fast second.

I might have too many memories.

But at least I hadn’t lost a family like that. Lost my future.

“Pass the tomatoes, please,” Joanna said, and I handed them from the counter next to me on autopilot.

You need to move on.

Maybe I did.

But maybe first I needed to make my own grand gesture.

I needed absolution from my guilt.