Tilly
Those words were almost visible in the air in front of her, then careening towards Evie, then dispersing. Impossible to take back.
Tilly swallowed, and the movement scraped at her throat, tore at it. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so exposed as right then. She didn’t think she’d ever said those words out loud. Not once. And now here they were, in the open.
Evie was staring at her, lips parted.
Eyes burning, Tilly opened her mouth to say something else, then closed it. After finally saying it, finally putting it out there, it all felt too big and she wanted to take it all back. Wanted to lock that truth away and not let it out again. It helped no one by being out. Absolutely no one.
Except maybe Tilly.
And she wasn’t so sure she deserved any help. Not for this.
She’d given up any right to feel better about any of this.
Finally, Tilly said exactly what she’d first thought. “I’ve never said that out loud before. Not in sixteen years.”
Evie blinked heavily, as if taking a moment. Finally, she stepped a little closer.
Tilly was wound tight, her entire body squashed. Pressed. She might shatter in this parking garage and she hadn’t even realised she had tears on her cheeks.
How long had it been since she’d cried for Laura?
Evie was too close. The smell of her, the warmth radiating off her. After weeks of weirdness, after years of holding things back, after sixteen years of a mistake and a decision that she knew had been the best for everyone involved, the closeness of Evie was too much. Her eyes were wide and unreadable. Tilly pulled her arms around herself, needing a barrier.
She didn’t need it though. Apparently.
Evie stepped right up to her and wrapped her arms around her, tight. Pressing all those pieces that felt ready to shatter into the universe back together, holding her in one place when Tilly felt like she was going to shake apart.
“Oh, Tilly,” Evie breathed into her ear. “Tilly.”
She didn’t appear to have anything else to say and Tilly didn’t either. But something cracked in Tilly’s chest and she gave a sob, and she didn’t know if it were fifteen-year-old her doing it or thirty-two-year-old her, but it hurt in a relieving way all the same.
* * *
“Does she know?”
Evie’s question broke the silence of their little bubble in the Royal Botanic Gardens. They’d found a bench next to the lake and were watching ducks trail through the water.
“She knows she’s adopted,” Tilly whispered. It was so hard to talk normally. To talk about all this, as if it weren’t something she was supposed to bury. “And she looks a lot like him, like the father. Blonde, paler. But she… She doesn’t know it was me. I—It’s what I wanted, then. Now I’m sometimes not so sure that was for the best.”
“How old were you?” Evie asked.
Footsteps thudded as someone jogged along a winding path behind them. People sat about on picnic rugs, and kids chased each other around the trees.
“I was fifteen when I got pregnant.”
Evie tensed a little next to her, though she had to have done the maths.
“I had her a little before my sixteenth birthday. Sweet sixteen.” Tilly laughed, though there was no mirth in it. She could feel Evie’s eyes on her, but Tilly kept her own on the lake. “I was too young to be having sex, really. So was he—he was the same age.” Tilly gave a shrug. “We only did it a few times before I got pregnant.” She rolled her eyes, the tears in them threatening to spill over. She felt as if she’d been crying for days. She felt like that day she’d realised she was pregnant. “We were so dumb. It was all so dumb.”
“You were a kid, Tilly. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Tilly huffed. “I was a dumb kid. We knew you were supposed to use condoms. We tried once, but he didn’t like them, and I’d only started my period a while before. I didn’t really think it would happen to me.” She turned her head finally, Evie’s face so close, her shoulder pressed into Tilly’s. She hadn’t stopped touching Tilly in some way since the parking garage: a hand on her knee in the car, her arm through Tilly’s as they walked through the garden. It made Tilly’s chest ache. God, how she’d missed her. “You always think it won’t happen to you,” she whispered.
Evie gave her a soft, half little smile. “Tell me about it.” She put a hand on her stomach, big and round and a reminder of oh-so-much.
Not that Tilly would let herself think about that reminder. Not at all. “At least you were a little irresponsible at a time you could accept the repercussions.”
“Lots of teenagers are having sex. It happens. Maybe it was a bit dumb, but it happens.”
Tilly sighed and looked at the sweeping weeping willows whose branches swayed over the lake, sending ripples out to collide with the ones created by the swimming ducks, the water sluicing over the surface in all directions. Tilly felt the same: pushed and pulled and sent in all directions by forces she couldn’t control. “I guess.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No.” Tilly turned back to find Evie’s gaze still there. She’d never stopped keeping an eye on her. Tilly tilted her head, let their heads rest against each other. “You deserve to know. I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
“Is that… Is that what you came back last time after rainy pub night wanting to tell me?”
Tilly gave a wet little laugh. “Rainy pub night? Did you just say that?”
“Well…yeah. It’s how I’ve been thinking of it in my head. It’s not that funny.”
“No—it’s, well—” Tilly sighed, the laughter leaving her quickly. “That’s exactly how I’ve been thinking of it.”
“Shut up.”
“No, really.”
Evie’s lips curled up, amused, a little. “So was that what you’d wanted to tell me?”
“Yes.” Not a whole lie. But not the whole truth. “I’d come back here, to Melbs, and I talked to my mum about some stuff. But mostly I thought about that fight, and how little you and I could understand each other, because you didn’t have all the pieces. Not that that excused me not listening more to how you felt. But it all… It left us lost. And I realised that it left us a lot of things, actually. And none of them on the same page. And I was tired. Of this being a secret here, but also at what felt like my real home, with you and Sean. I wanted to tell you. But then…”
“Then I was pregnant and everything went belly up.”
Tilly chuckled half-heartedly. “Yup.”
Two ducks took off from the water, wings beating furiously and water raining down off them as they headed for the sky. It was cooler in Melbourne than Perth, but still warm enough that the sun bit a little at their skin when they were out of the shade.
“Tell me about it,” Evie said. “Tell me what you wanted to tell me.”
Tilly sucked in a breath of warm air, the taste of freshly mown lawn on her tongue, the tang of summer in Melbourne. The scent of a barbeque somewhere not far from them. She let out that breath slowly. “Okay.” Evie settled into her, her ear on Tilly’s shoulder and Tilly’s on top of Evie’s head, each other’s support while Tilly gathered herself, gathered her story and let it out in bits and pieces. “I was fifteen when I realised I was pregnant. I took a little while to tell my parents. They had a…very typical parental reaction. They were shocked, and disappointed. That was the typical part. It felt awful. They weren’t all bad, though. They didn’t yell or disown me. It wasn’t like some kind of teenage TV special.” Tilly gave a small, humourless laugh.
“Did they make you feel awful?”
“No…” Tilly bit her lip, thinking back on that day and the way her heart raced, feeling like it was in her throat as she sat on the couch and tried to figure out how to tell them. “They were shocked, I don’t think they thought they had to worry about me and sex yet. I mean, I was barely fifteen. They didn’t…”
“You could have been older and they still would have been shocked.”
“True. They just stared at me, though. Completely disbelieving.” To this day, she remembered their opened mouths. The way her dad kept blinking, yet her mum had sat utterly still. Frozen. “I think they still thought of me as a little kid. Which I was, in some ways.”
“But they weren’t awful?” Evie asked, apparently needing to hear Tilly had some support.
“No. I knew someone who got pregnant when she was seventeen and her parents…lost it. Not mine. They hugged me, even as they were probably drowning in their own shock. It was a really long process. Figuring it out, I mean. I was pretty far along, having been in denial for a lot of it.”
“Did they talk about options with you?” Evie’s fingers fiddled with Tilly’s own, resting over her thigh, as she asked questions, plucked the story out of her bit by bit.
“Once it all kind of, settled. We talked. Mum and I did, more than with Dad. She told me about the options, and I didn’t want to have an abortion. It may seem weird, but…” Tilly needed a second, and Evie let her have it, fingers running over Tilly’s. “I was attached to the thing growing in me, to the idea of it. And so, we talked about keeping it, or adoption. And I think Mum was surprised. I think she may have wanted me to have an abortion, but she never pushed anything. I… I don’t know, now I’m older, I have no idea how hard it must have been, trying to help your teenage kid make decisions that would affect her for life.”
“I can’t imagine.”
A duck landed, sending up an ungraceful splash, setting the others off honking. Tilly sighed. “I was… I was so lost, in what to do. Eventually, we—well, I—came to the decision that Mum and I would go away and come back and we’d say there was another baby. Like a story you hear from the fifties. Except, it still happens.”
“Really?”
“Mhm. Not as common, obviously. But I’ve heard of some others since… People could assume what they wanted, but mostly it was raised eyebrows and acceptance. It was… It was a mess.”
Tilly had drawn away from her friends, whom she’d loved. The boy had disappeared, not having to take responsibility for it all. She’d felt completely in limbo, with this huge pregnant stomach that felt wrong on her. Missing the life that now seemed so far away from her reality. They’d rented a tiny flat and Tilly would sit in the lounge room, watching TV, feeling this little thing doing somersaults and kicking at her. She’d been so uncomfortable, and there had been an aching in her chest for her life and friends and normalcy.
Evie’s fingers kept running over her own, a gentle touch to ground her.
“Mum homeschooled me for over a year, but I fell behind anyway. Laura was—was born…”
Her voice cracked on the word born. The memory of pain, and a needle in her back. Of her own voice tearing out her throat as if everything was going to implode within her before the epidural kicked in. Her mum’s hand in her own, the entire time. The squeeze of it. The way she’d squeezed back, twice as hard. She never thought about it anymore. That birth. She never let herself go there and now here it was, so fresh in her mind, as if it were a smooth worry stone she’d picked up every day since, rolling it over and over in her hands to inspect every inch, and not something pushed away to the darkest recess of her mind.
The overheated hospital room. It had been so hot. The way her hair had stuck to her sweat dampened cheeks, forehead, and neck, wisps of it irritating her skin. The sound Laura had made when she’d finally slithered out. That shuddering, life-filled cry at the shock of the world she’d been pushed out into. The sight of her over Tilly’s knees, her hands shaking as Laura screamed in protest with everything she had. The sob that shook Tilly’s chest, the feel of her mother’s arm wrapped around her shoulder, her face against Tilly’s temple. The whisper of her words the only thing that stopped Tilly leaving her own body.
Good job, sweetie. Good job.
Evie’s hand slid over her own, reminding Tilly she hadn’t finished. “After I recovered, I went back and started in a new school.” Tilly’s cheeks were warm and a ball of melancholy sat in her stomach. “I had to repeat the year. It’s why I went straight to uni and didn’t have a gap year like you and Sean did. I wanted to catch up to everyone else. Before uni, while still in high school, I tried to get back into life, but it became obvious I was distracted. Being around Laura but not being her mum was both easy and…terrible?”
Tilly’s fingers on her free hand picked at a thread in her jeans and Evie laid her hand over them, linking their fingers properly. Tilly squeezed them. One night, when Laura had been about three or four months, Tilly had snuck into her room, feeling like an intruder. It was the early hours of the morning, but Laura was awake, all-seeing eyes staring up at the ceiling where the glow-in-the-dark stars and moons above her cot were dimly lit. When Tilly’s face had appeared over her cot, the biggest smile had split over her face, gummy and happy and delighted to see her. It had cracked something inside Tilly, and she’d left quietly, heart racing. “I didn’t feel like she was mine. It sounds awful, but she was born, and I was so scared of her. I gave her straight to Mum. She and Dad legally adopted her and I would only hide, in my room, or I went out. I tried to hide from her. She was so tiny. She cried like a baby bird, all squawks.” Tilly had to pause for a moment, and Evie squeezed her hand. “But even though I wanted to hide from her, I wanted to be with her? I can’t even explain it. I wouldn’t let myself go near her; I was so scared of loving her. My parents had a new baby, and I was clearly a mess and they were trying so hard to be there for me too, but I was pushing them all away. I don’t even know why. I mean, I do. It made it easier.”
“And harder?” Evie whispered.
The feeling of being separate from her own family, of being close to scared of them. To be apart from it.
Tilly pressed a hand to her throat. “And harder. They got me a therapist and then, in my final year of high school, I lived with my grandparents.” Evie twitched and Tilly rushed to speak. “No, I wanted to. I wanted Laura to have…to have good things, and my parents argued with me and wanted me to stay. But I insisted. The therapist said that if my grandparents were supportive, and as long as I wasn’t retreating, it may not be a bad idea. To have an environment where I could focus on school and my friends and being a teenager. Not one where I had the reminder of everything in the room next door, cooing and crying. They only lived twenty minutes from my parents, so I saw them a lot, but I kept distancing myself from them. And then I got into uni, and I ran to Perth.”
Tilly paused, letting everything she’d said sit for a bit.
“God, Tilly.”
Tilly blinked out at the lake, barely seeing it now. The feelings of it all felt wrapped around her. “I didn’t even see Laura, before I left. I couldn’t. She was so little.”
Evie drew in a sharp breath, but said nothing.
“That first year of uni was when Laura got sick. She was so young, and I went home. I was…terrified. She wasn’t my daughter; she isn’t my daughter. My parents are her parents, you know? And that’s good. They’re great, and she’s got me as a weirdly distant sister, and she has two parents who are the best and she’s funny and creative and so weird, Evie.” The words rushed out of her, a torrent of emotion. “But when I heard she was sick I had to see her. And it’s since then that I’ve seen her more. And tried to be more of a sister. She was so forgiving.” Tilly’s voice broke a little. She pushed past it, annoyed at herself. “It was as if I hadn’t mostly ignored her all of her life. She lit up when I walked into the hospital and talked non-stop to me. I’m her sister.” Tilly shrugged, making both of them shift a little with the movement, though neither moved away. “It’s so weird, I know. And well, since then that’s usually where I go, home to see her when she was sick, and then I, sometimes, need some time alone after seeing her. Everything is a bit hard. After she first got sick, it took a few years for both her kidneys to fail, and I was a match, so…”
It was strange, to sum up those last few years of complication in so few words.
“Was that the time you were gone almost a year?”
“Mhm.” Tilly nodded, her cheek rubbing against Evie’s hair. “I donated one of my kidneys and didn’t want anyone here to know, I didn’t want to tell the story—my recovery took a while and I didn’t wanna come back until I was one hundred per cent. It doesn’t really affect my life day-to-day.”
“You could have told us you’d donated to a sister? This whole time you could have told us you had a sick sister and were visiting her.”
“I almost did. But it felt like a lie, and…” Tilly clenched her jaw. “I didn’t want to lie to you and Sean. I didn’t want to start that… But I wasn’t ready to share the truth. I just…choked on it.”
“I think I get it.” Evie paused, fingers pushing hair behind her ear. “That’s okay.”
Was it though? Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it simply was what it was. Whatever that would be. Maybe for now it was okay, and she and Evie had a lot more to talk about. But for now, Evie was giving her that: some forgiveness.
“I didn’t want admiration, for donating my kidney to my sister when I was trying to fix something for Laura. To do something good for her. I wanted to help her, in some way.”
“You did.”
Tilly gave a tight shake of her head.
Evie straightened up and turned on the bench to look at Tilly, that earnest look she was so good at in her eye. Her hair was full of static, standing up on the side of her head where Tilly had rested her cheek. “You did. I can’t—I can’t even imagine going through what I’ve been going through now when I was fifteen. Then to add in making the decision you did to make sure Laura would have the best possible life? I can’t even… I don’t even understand how brave you are. How much you sacrificed. And then you donated an organ.” The earnestness was too much and Tilly broke the eye contact, looking down. Evie’s finger came under her chin, tugging gently until she raised her head again, meeting that honest look. Her fingers brushed gently from Tilly’s chin to cup her cheek. “Tilly, you did everything you could do for her.”
Tilly swallowed. “I’m sorry about the fight with your dad. It—It terrified me, that one day I could try to tell Laura and she could hate me. Which she’s allowed to do. But it hit so close to home.”
“Tilly, it’s so different. My dad just left. He disappeared one day. Up and abandoned us because he could. Your situation is not even comparable. You had a baby and you did the best thing you could for her. And if you’d decided to be her mum, you would have done great too. But you made this choice for her and for yourself. This meant you got to have a life and go to uni. And your baby got an amazing family, and you know she did because you were lucky enough to know how she’s ended up. You’re in her life, you know your parents are great and she’s surrounded by love and support. And you were there to give her a kidney when she needed it. Like, Tilly…you gave her a part of your body years after she left yours.”
The lump in Tilly’s throat was so big it was impossible to swallow over. “I… I know. I know she was much better like this. Some people could handle having a baby and raising it at that age. I knew I couldn’t. And I wouldn’t have. I know this was best. But sometimes…”
Evie’s brow scrunched as she stared at Tilly, thinking. “Sometimes it’s a decision that you have to deal with all over again?”
“Yeah. And I know I’d do it all again. The same. I’d make the same decision.”
“That says a lot.”
“You don’t judge me?” Tilly hated that her voice was so very small.
Evie’s brow scrunched. “What? Tilly, no. Not at all. I think this is such a complicated situation. But no, I don’t judge you at all. I understand your reasoning. We met when you were, what? Eighteen? Nineteen? I understand why you hid it then. I guess I wish you’d shared it with us earlier. But I’m so glad you have now.”
“Yeah?”
Evie gave her one of her gentle smiles, leaning forward to press their foreheads together. “Yeah, you weirdo. Of course I am. I mean, do I love how some things have played out? How much I’ve worried about you sometimes? No. But I’ve got your back, no matter what.”
Letting out a shuddering breath, Tilly almost didn’t understand this easing in the muscles in her shoulders, the giving of something in her lungs.
“And I’ve got yours.” Saying it felt like she was really offering truth, this time. Like she could say it and maybe, maybe, Evie would believe her despite all the times Tilly had up and disappeared.
She closed her eyes, let the softness of Evie’s warm breath wash over her lips, the pressure of their foreheads pressed together, the hand still cupping her cheek: let it all ground her, keep her here, in this moment.
“I’m still kind of mad, though,” Evie whispered.
Tilly squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t blame you.”
Evie pulled away.
Tilly opened her eyes to find Evie’s boring into her own. “You wanna talk about that?” Tilly asked.
Evie considered for a moment, then gave a shake of her head. “Not right now. I need to think.”
“Okay.” Tilly gave her a tight smile. “I’ll wait for that.”
“Why didn’t you ever just tell us you were visiting family, all the times you left?” Evie asked, leaning back with a sigh.
Tilly shrugged. “The same reason I didn’t tell you about donating the first time. I panicked. I had to leave so quickly, and I didn’t want to say my sister was sick because I didn’t want to… How do I tell you my sister was sick and not share the rest? How do I half share with you both? And then I got back, and you were so mad, and Sean was mad, and everything was…complicated. And you told me about your dad, and…”
“Ah.”
Tilly let out a long, slow breath. “Yeah. I was scared… I was scared you’d see me like him.”
Evie sighed, cocking her head, so close Tilly could lean forward, if she wanted…
With a slight shift of her hand, that had never left Tilly’s face, Evie pushed some of Tilly’s hair behind her ear, fingers stroking gently over the shell of it, down her neck to rest her fingers against her collarbone. “Well, it’s all out there,” Evie said.
Tilly bit her lip. “It is.”
Except it wasn’t. But it almost was.