As he backed the ute close to a front door that was hanging off the bottom hinge and leaning precariously forward like a late-night drunk angling for support, she studied the place she was to call home. That she would be forced to call home. It was nothing like the expansive, five-bedroom, three-bathroom and one fucking great kitchen that she had left behind. One with an island in the middle that she literally couldn’t touch the centre of without standing on the step Dylan had for reaching the toilet when he was younger. The dilapidated state of the house felt intimidating, like it would crash around them at any point.
Dylan, however, was unbound by such worries and rushed off to check it out.
‘Don’t go inside,’ she called out as an arm slid around her shoulder. Whether it was her edginess at the new place or at the dead surroundings, she tensed her shoulders against his grip, almost fighting to get away. She took it as a sign, trusting her body.
‘Well?’ asked Lorcan.
‘Well, you’ve got a lot of work to do,’ she replied.
‘It’ll be worth it.’
‘I’ll reserve judgement. First, check inside. Once I get the all-clear I’ll come in.’
‘Just keep an open mind.’
‘It’s been open since we left Perth. Believe me, if we didn’t have to lie low I wouldn’t be here.’
There was a pause. She knew what Lorcan was thinking. This was punishment for what he had done and for what he had tried to do to rectify it. But she wasn’t entirely innocent herself. He had lost the house but she had made plenty of enemies too.
She watched as he left her side and half-lifted, half-pushed the front door open, some of the blue paint crumbling onto the front step. He stepped inside and took what he had called adverse possession of the house. More adversity they didn’t need.
Grasping Dylan’s hand to prevent him from following his father inside she waited for the assessment.
Dylan fought her grip, pulling strongly against her. She had never been one for exercise. The intensity of the charity and campaigning work kept her naturally slim, working until she realized that she hadn’t eaten. Her genes helped too, her father and mother little pockets of dynamism. People who had suffered more adversity than she could ever dream of; who had survived a long and torturous trip here only to be faced with a wrathful government and suspicious population. But even they wouldn’t speak to her now. Bloody-mindedness was obviously inherited too.
Her mind returned to the present. As did a spark of fear. It entered her body through the right side of her gut where her appendix had been removed when she was eleven, the scar pale and raised against her skin.
‘Lorc?’ she called out at the house.
There was no answer.
‘Shall I go in and get Daddy?’ offered Dylan but Naiyana retained her grip. The house had already taken one. She wasn’t going to lose another.
She licked her lips. They were already beginning to crack in the dry heat. Another thing she missed about Perth. The air around here was like an oven, as if just waiting to reach critical temp, ignite and burn everything to cinders. She couldn’t wait to see a beach again, feel the sea lap at her ankles, dive in.
‘Daddy!’ called out Dylan.
Again no answer.
She began to wonder if he had fallen down a hole in the floor, or if silently some wall on the far side of the house had collapsed on top of him. But surely she would have heard that. Nothing fell in complete silence. The saying about trees falling in woods was bullshit. Everything solid made a sound. Especially if it fell and hit that block of wood Lorcan called his head.
Letting Dylan drag her she approached the front door. Inside was dark, which was both fantastic and forbidding. It meant the roof was still intact, something that her husband could work with. Whenever she found him.
He had carefully rested the door against the inner wall but the wide split in the wood looked like a drunken mouth laughing at her stupidity and growing terror. She would have to go inside.
She pulled Dylan’s hand, yanking him back with all her strength. Another few years and he would be stronger than her. ‘Get into the ute.’
‘I want to—’
‘Wait in the ute. We have to make sure that there are no… animals living in there.’ It was the insects she was more worried about. But Dylan was at the age where he was more afraid of things that were bigger than him than smaller.
‘But I don’t—’
‘There’s a KitKat in the esky,’ she said. That finally broke the resistance, the boy pulling away from her, not in the direction of the house but in the direction of the ute and the ice-cold chocolate bar that awaited in the cooler. It would keep him occupied for a few minutes, enough time for her to figure out what the hell was going on.
She turned back to the doorway. The laughing drunk continued mocking her foolishness. She was reminded of Lorcan’s grandfather, the Irishman who was unable to pronounce her name and took to calling her Neeve, a disrespect she lived with for the sake of family appeasement. He had died not long after their wedding. She had used the excuse of being pregnant to avoid going to the funeral.
‘Lorc?’
She tested the front step. It was solid underfoot, maybe the only solid part of the whole structure. Again a multitude of horrors that could have befallen her husband choked her thoughts. Could she and Dylan drag him out from under a wall if needed? She doubted it. The thought of being without him suddenly seemed real and distressing. Was that a sign she loved and needed him? Or that out here he had suddenly become of use once again, that his physicality – one of the reasons she had been attracted to him in the first place – would be essential to their survival?
Leaning in she went to poke her head around the door. She would call out again before entering. As if asking permission of the previous owners so as to not disturb their ghosts.
‘Lor—?’
A face popped into view.
Stepping back and almost falling off the front step, she screamed.
The face was smiling, and almost demented with glee.
Lorcan came to the front door and looked out. A grin that she thought looked almost evil was stuck on his face.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said.