The house was quiet except for Pan rustling in her makeshift nest. Mara made herself a cup of black tea. The milk ran out two days ago and she had no more bread, butter, or cereal. But that was fine because she didn’t deserve any of it. She was hiding in her grandmother’s house like a hypocrite. Black tea was her penance.
She’d told Chase she only owned one place—but she had two. She bought her grandma’s house after she’d left home and told herself it wasn’t immoral because she hated it more than any other house in the world. But that was no excuse. The Dark House, as she called it, could have been some nice family’s refuge instead of her misery hole. But still, she kept it. A place away from the perfection of her real life. A place to hold all ugliness.
Pan crawled out of her newspaper nest and into her lap, licking her face. She really hadn’t taken to the house, but that wasn’t surprising. It was musty and full of the crap she’d dragged here over the years—old books, splintered frames, discarded canvases, and oil paints. She’d never been much of an artist, but she’d tried her hand at it over the years, creating hideous monuments to hideous moods.
She’d returned to Albury for the first time in 2015, driving a rental car and wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. She’d stayed a week, crying and painting and screaming. Purging herself of what felt like a mountain of demons. Then she’d put on a Dolce and Gabbana romper and flown back to Paris, light as a bird.
After eight years of visits, the house was a shambles. She’d hammered things into the walls, flooded both bathrooms, and smashed the kitchen table to bits. The entire house looked like an art installation to madness. She could only imagine what Chase would say if he saw it. Although, now that he knew about her parents, it would probably make more sense.
Mara couldn’t remember her mother. She’d been reduced to flat images, a cloud of dark hair, and huge eyes. The crooked teeth and wide ears she’d inherited, then shaved away. Her mum must have had hard days, but Mara couldn’t remember them either. Everything bad in her childhood had been him. The dark cloud consuming everything in its path. When she’d found their bodies, she’d known exactly what had happened. He had finally taken her mother away. And to her eternal shame, her first thought wasn’t grief or sadness but the sharp fear of what everyone at school would think.
The answer was, they’d thought she was a freak. Faces changed when they looked at her. There was sympathy but also disgust, as though what her dad had done had rubbed off on her like a fish smell. And as she’d sat in hostile classrooms, she’d vowed to one day change her name and run away. And she’d done it. She’d managed nine-ish years of freedom before it ended.
For two weeks she’d kept her phone switched off. Every time she was tempted to turn it on, she reminded herself that the world beyond The Dark House was one where her name was synonymous with murder. She could almost hear people talking about her.
Why is she so obsessed with housing? Shouldn’t she be bringing awareness to domestic violence? Doesn’t she care about people trapped in situations like her Mothers?
Of course. But she couldn’t talk about it. It hurt too much. It cut too deep. She didn’t want to be ‘Mara Temple: girl with dead parents.’ She just wanted to be Mara, a girl who arranged beautiful things and hosted parties. Who loved her friends and her dog. She wanted peace, or she wanted The Dark House. There didn’t seem to be a middle ground.
Pan wriggled out of her arms and ran back to her nest, tossing up scraps with her nose. Mara watched her, her heart twisting in two. Pan had enough kibble and treats to last months, her little bed, and a bag of toys—but she didn’t belong here.
And Pan being here seemed to be robbing The Dark House of its power. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t purge, and her thoughts returned to Derek again and again. She had never been the girl with the dead mother to Derek, but he’d put her in a box all the same. ‘Pure, perfect Mara.’ His Little Miss. The girl who loved him so much he could leave. The sad thing was, he’d been right. In ten years, she’d never really moved on.
Restless, Pan ran to the door and scratched at the wood. It was full of darts Mara had thrown at it in 2019. As Pan’s motions intensified, Mara climbed to her feet and let her outside. As usual, she sprinted into the reserve without a backward glance. Grumbling, Mara followed. Unlike The Dark House, the reserve was still beautiful. Sunlight dappled the trees and fell in shining patches at her feet. She walked slowly around the wide pond, watching Pan romp in the water like a little wet cloud.
A wattlebird called, and as Mara turned to follow it, she saw a huge Monarch butterfly flitting across the sky, bright orange with sharp black markings. It only had days to live, but it was perfect now.
Pan gave a sharp bark, racing out of the water and tumbling headfirst into the grass. Mara smiled and felt a sudden sharp craving for salad. Green kale and fresh tomatoes, thinly sliced carrots. All she had at the house were muesli bars.
But she didn’t have to eat muesli bars. She could go into town and buy milk and bread. If everyone already knew she was Mara Kennedy and a millionaire, why did it matter? But if she followed that logic, why stay at The Dark House at all? She could sell it. Or burn it down. She could drive back to her nice house in Fitzroy and be sad there. No one would stop her.
And if she was going to go home, maybe she didn’t need to avoid Chase or any of her friends. God knew she missed them. Maybe she should invite them over for brisket and homemade pecan pie and show them a PowerPoint presentation called ‘My parents are dead, and I won the lottery—the more you know!’
Mara smiled, turning her face to the sun. If she was going to talk to her friends, perhaps she could even talk to Derek. She could tell him he was right. She had hooked up with Troy to spite him. Troy had approached her the week Derek left for Melbourne. But it wasn’t until a year later, when Derek hadn’t come home to sleep with her, that she’d gone to Troy at a party with gritted teeth and a pounding heart.
It had felt awful being with him, almost worse than being left, but she’d done it anyway. Her Daddy had gone and so she’d run—to another man, to another name, to another country. Higher and higher, like the Monarch butterfly. Climbing into the infinite sky. But she’d never found peace. She’d never found a place, an object, or a person who made her feel the way he did.
She opened her eyes and watched the Monarch butterfly fluttering through the trees. She’d demanded he apologise, but she hadn’t apologised to him—for hiding from him for years, for not telling him about her past when they’d reconnected. For never driving down to Melbourne and just demanding he take her virginity. Forcing him to see they were perfect for each other. If she’d done that… anything could have happened. Everything could have happened. Instead, she’d acted like a child. And was still acting like a child. Still running away.
But she could always grow up. She could stop waiting.
Pan sprinted toward her at full speed, soaking wet from the grass. Mara bundled her into her arms, kissing all over her velvet face. “What do you think, Pan-Pan? Should Mama grow up? Should we go home?”
Pan yipped.
It took a while for Mara to work her way up to turning on her phone. For days it had laid like a black rock in her bag, taunting her with the information that was piling up behind the screen. She finally turned it on, then practically threw it across the room as it buzzed like a beehive. When it finally stopped, she saw she had over three hundred calls and messages. Not bad for a girl who used to go the entire summer without talking to anyone. The most recent message was from Chase.
I don’t know if you’re still using this number, but I hope you are because you need to watch something.
He’d included a short link.
This is only the raw footage. I’m getting Christopher to edit it before it goes anywhere so let me know if there’s anything you want to be changed. I miss you, please come home. No one cares that you won your money, and I can’t sue that heinous journalist without you.
Love forever, Chase.
Ps. He saved us, by the way.
Pleased and deeply confused, Mara re-read the message. Who had saved them? And how? She clicked on the link Chase included. It re-directed to a video. Squinting, Mara realised it was the HFA conference room. The table had been cleared away and the company banners framed a lectern. As she watched Chase, Derek walked into frame.
“What?” Mara almost fell through her phone. What were they doing together? And why was Derek wearing a suit? Had he committed some sort of crime?
Chase stepped up to the lectern. “Good afternoon, everyone. You’ve been invited to hear Derek Hardiman speak on an issue that matters a great deal to him.”
An excited mutter ran around the room and Mara’s blood ran cold. Chase didn’t mean her and Derek’s relationship, did he? But why would Chase help Derek have a conference about her? Besides, Derek didn’t look like he wanted to speak. He looked like he was going to be sick.
“Without further ado, we’ll get started.” Chase stepped aside to allow Derek to move behind the microphone. Flashbulbs went off as he swallowed. He was green around the gills. Mara suddenly recalled the English presentation when Derek had read his cue cards so fast the ten-minute speech was done in three. “Oh, no.”
“I’ll keep this short,” Derek said, his voice shaking at the edges. “I’d like to publicly announce I’m an ambassador for Housing For All.”
“What?” Mara whispered.
The invisible crowd made noises of dissent. They had to be journalists. Maybe they’d thought they were coming to a press conference about Derek’s relationship?
Chase’s face hardened. He glared around the room, then nudged Derek in the ribs. Derek cleared his throat. “I’ve never given a press conference before, or associated my name with a not-for-profit, but I’m doing it now, for HFA. I grew up in government housing and I know how hard it can be to get by when you don’t have a place of your own. I want to help change that, however I can.”
There was a small smattering of applause that grew louder as the seconds passed. With a small smile, Derek stepped aside, and Mara breathed a sigh of relief. Compared to his speech on Hamlet, that was excellent. But why was he doing this? For her? Had Chase asked him? She watched as Chase approached the lectern. “Now we will be taking questions. Yes, you in the green?”
“Yup, Derek! Over here!”
Her ex-boyfriend turned to the man’s voice. “Yes?”
“Does this have anything to do with the fact HFA is your girlfriend’s company?”
Derek’s face went blank. Chase leaned into the microphone. “The terms of this conference were made very clear before you arrived, Johnathon.”
A few invisible journalists tittered.
“We’re not here to discuss Derek’s private life. Next question?”
“Hello, Derek, I’ve got a question?” It was a woman.
Derek gave the woman a curt nod.
“Do you think HFA’s policy of selling houses at drastically low rates is fair to people paying off their homes without assistance?”
Mara’s heart contracted. Derek’s right eye was flickering. This was his hell. He was putting himself through hell for her.
He cleared his throat again. “If you want to look at a company putting a roof over a single mother’s head and see that as bad, you can. But it seems like the decent thing to do to me.”
There was a small shock of laughter. Mara smiled. He sounded like himself, but she could hear Chase behind his words. She tried to imagine the two of them sitting together workshopping responses to possible questions. The two most important men in her life on the same team…
Chase flicked his hand, accepting another question.
“Hi, Derek?” the journalist said. “Do you own a home?”
“Not yet.”
“Then, are you in a position to speak about housing issues?”
To her surprise, Derek smiled. “I’ve lived in a few. Does that count?”
More laughter. Pan whined at her feet and Mara scratched her ears as Derek gestured to another journalist. “Yes?”
“Seeing as you’re a millionaire, mate, do you feel you have a right to be shilling for free houses?”
Derek didn’t even flinch. “There are ways to be rich that don’t deprive other people of homes. I don’t have to give away every penny I have to justify saying the system we’ve got doesn’t always work.”
There was a low murmur from the crowd, but it sounded more positive than before.
Chase clapped his hands. “Okay, one more question. You, in the red.”
The man stepped into the line of the camera, a stocky guy in a red polo shirt.
“Hi, Derek, according to HFA’s statistics, over a million people in Melbourne alone would qualify for one of their houses.”
Mara’s stomach contracted as Derek stared the man down.
“Well?” Polo Shirt pressed.
“Mate, you didn’t ask a question.”
Laughter rang out around the room and the journalist scowled. “My question is, how are you going to give even a fraction of the people who need houses a home?”
Derek shrugged. “Well, I’m not giving away homes, I’m just an ambassador. But part of my role will be helping Chase and the team at HFA lobby the government for housing reform and other long-term improvements.”
“Do you think that’ll be enough?”
Derek scratched his ear. “Why do you lot hate poor people having homes so much? It’s starting to feel personal.”
More laughter. Even Chase grinned. “I think we’re done here.”
Derek stepped away, looking relieved but pleased with himself. He clasped his hands behind his back as though posing for a team photo. Mara wanted to kiss him all over his face.
“That’s all we have for today,” Chase said. “Thank you for coming, everyone, and thank you, Mr Hardiman, for accepting this hugely important role.”
There was another burst of applause and the video ended.
Ps. He saved us, by the way.
Things must have gone completely pear-shaped with the Minister for Housing if Chase had called Derek. But he’d stepped up. He’d become the face of HFA and loaned them unimaginable clout and publicity. What politician would want to publicly take a knife to the charity Derek Hardiman worked for?
Chase was right, he had saved them. He’d saved her. And he’d done it by doing one of the things he hated the most—public speaking. Mara wiped a small tear from her cheek, and then she saw it, magnetized to the broken fridge—Derek’s letter.
She stood, her knees weak as jelly, and reached for the envelope. Removing it felt momentous, like sliding Excalibur from the stone. She tore the envelope open and pulled out three sheets of paper, all covered in Derek’s small, spacey writing. “Oh my god.”
Pan leaped against her legs, desperate to snatch more paper for her nest. Mara held the pages away. She leaned against the kitchen bench and read.
Hey baby, It’s late and I’m pissed, so hopefully, this makes sense. Remember how you could do a technical essay or a creative assignment for English and I always picked the essay? And you made fun of me because you knew I wanted to write, but you said I only did things I was already good at? You were right. So, I’m gonna try it now. I know if I want you back, I have to be better. I have to do things I’m not good at and hope you’ll love me anyway because I love you anyway. I love you forever. Sorry for being such a dickhead. Derek.
Mara turned the page.
The Wolf Girl
“Oh.” Had he written her a fantasy story? Like the ones he liked reading? She looked across at Pan. “Would you like to hear a story?”
Pan wagged her tail.
Mara slid onto the floor, pulled her puppy into her arms, and began to read aloud.
“A wolf girl and a mercenary lived together for a time, in a cave with dirt floors. They were young but they weren’t children. To be a child would have meant protection, of which they had none. But they loved each other. They laughed and fed one another, slept in the same bed, and forgave each other their wrongs. They tried to be what they’d never met.”
Mara drew in a deep breath, already staving off tears.
“At the end of the rainy season, the mercenary decided to leave. He had to earn a living while his body was young. And he was not made for the caves. So, the wolf girl packed him an oilcloth bag and filled his canteen with water. Then she gave him a small brown hair. ‘Carry this always. When it turns white, return to me.’
He asked why, but the wolf girl stared silently at him, her eyes full of secrets. She was strange, the wolf girl. From somewhere outside time. And so, the mercenary took the hair and promised he’d return.
He traveled to the nearby city where he found work as a soldier in a king’s command. At first, he thought of the wolf girl often, but he found that when he pictured her, his heart filled with fear and longing. So, he drew a curtain between them and thought of her only when she came unbidden to his dreams.
Moons grew and shrank, and the mercenary earned a name for himself on the battlefield. Soon he took only the best jobs, traveling further south to richer lands. One day, a brother’s misplaced blade tore his leg. He lay in his barracks howling until his men brought him the oilcloth bag. Inside, he found the powder the wolf girl had prepared for pain. And as he pulled it aside, the hair fell to the ground, white as bone.”
Mara drew in a shaky breath and Pan licked her cheek.
“Thank you, baby. Should I keep going?”
Pan licked her again.
“The mercenary knew he should go to the wolf girl. He’d given his word. But a mercenary’s word is always compromised by gold. He was injured, and it was only a hair. The wolf girl had not told him why he was to return. Perhaps he wasn’t needed. Perhaps it was a trick.”
A fat tear fell onto the paper. Mara swiped it away.
“So, the mercenary stayed, his leg healed, and his coin purse grew fat, but his sleep was stolen from him. Every night the white hair hissed, calling him a traitor. Calling him a liar. If the mercenary was wise, he would have returned home, but he wasn’t as sharp as his sword. It was many months before he was humbled enough to depart for the cave that was once his home. He walked alone, the white hair whispering in his hand.
The mercenary found the cave empty. He walked to town to ask the people who had once shunned her where the wolf girl had gone. Some said she died. Others said she’d been stolen. All agreed she had been harmed when he left for war. He had betrayed her twice.”
Pan licked more tears from Mara’s face. Mara let her. It seemed better than letting them fall on Derek’s story.
“That night the mercenary dreamed of a great green place and a woman who ruled as a god. When he woke, he knew where he needed to go.
With the white hair in hand, he walked to the edge of the world—a wild place where men tore out their hair and forced themselves onto their own swords. The mercenary found the castle, wide and impenetrable, guarded by small, twitching creatures.
‘Who are you?’ they called in one chattering voice. ‘Why have you come?’
‘I want to see the girl.’
The voice laughed like a thousand skulls gibbering and their hands seized his body, pulling him deep inside the castle. He was thrown at the feet of a great white being and as soon as the mercenary saw her, he knew the wolf girl was gone. She had forgotten her human ways and mostly forgotten him. From the way she bared her teeth, what she remembered, she didn’t like.
The mercenary struggled to his feet and produced the white hair. ‘You gave me this once and told me to return to you. I have finally come.’
The wolf goddess looked at the hair, and with saber teeth, plucked it from his fingers, swallowing it whole.
‘Go,’ she said in a voice that wasn’t a voice. ‘Go or die. Go or die. Go or die.’
The mercenary crawled to the great gate and collapsed just beyond the castle walls. The wound in his leg had reopened and he bled freely into the mud. As his vision blurred, the mercenary stared up at the walls of the great forest sanctuary and understood. He had not asked the wolf girl if she had a body made for caves. He had seen her power, but not that it would grow. And for a hill of gold, he had thrown aside the chance to rule beside his beloved in infinite darkness and delight.
So, he waited at the edge of her walls. He waited as he once bid the wolf girl to wait, and he prayed that in a thousand years she might remember the children they had been and that she, of all beings in the universe, had once loved him.
The End
Hopefully, that didn’t sound as bad as I’m worried it is. I’m going to take this to your office then go to bed. I’m sorry, Little Miss. I love you. Please come home to me.
“Oh,” Mara whispered. “Oh, Daddy.”