By the time I shower and go into my bedroom to select something to wear, I’m back on an even keel. The bed stirs memories of Lachlan, of his body sending mine into orbit, and my cheeks flush even though there’s no audience to see.
My phone beeps as I’m getting dressed and I grab it, eagerly scanning the screen.
“Sorry. I’m going to be tied up until late afternoon. There’s a show at the art gallery I thought you might like. I reserved a ticket at the front desk.”
The Ron Mueck exhibition is absolutely something I might like but between the cost and the absence of free time, thought I’d never be able to attend. Now, with work postponed until I’m healed and a free pass thanks to Lachlan, I’m ecstatic.
After a quick breakfast, I head straight for the centre. It takes a few minutes to prove I am who I say I am, then I’m through the entrance doors and instantly transported to another world.
The first sculpture is just through the doors, an enormous face on its side, asleep. My head contorts itself trying to place the object in context. It looks so real but is such an inappropriate sizethat it feels like trying to stuff a square peg into a disastrously small square hole.
I lose myself in the art, laughing at some pieces, gut punched by others. The hours tick by and by and by and I still linger, not wanting to give up when there’s a chance I might still spy something that creates a new question, needs a new answer. Even the process videos, usually something that bores me to tears, are a revelation. I sit through them twice, once in a room crowded full of people, again when the late afternoon has dissipated attendance so there are more seats empty than filled.
“Sorry,”Lachlan’s next text reads when I’m back out in reality, walking along the street and wondering why everyone and everything is back to its expected size.“Still not done. Can I meet you at your home and take you out to dinner? Shouldn’t be too much longer.”
I smile, wondering idly about what jobs are taking his attention. Probably nothing I want to know about and certainly nothing I should dwell upon.
After walking through the centre of town a few times, part window shopping and part catching up on everything new that’s been built since I visited last, I go home. The door’s unlocked, a good sign that my father’s home. Something he has been far more often these days, I’m guessing thanks to Lachlan’s interference.
I don’t read it as a warning sign.
I yell out a greeting the moment I’m through the door, and Dad calls back, “In the kitchen.”
The strain in his voice doesn’t register until I push open the door and see he has company. A thin man, mid-twenties, dark clothes, dark hair, dark eyes, holding a baseball bat alongside his right leg.
I spin, trying to backtrack but he’s quicker, grabbing my wristand twisting it behind my back as he forces me to walk in front of him. He shoves me towards a chair, and I sit, glancing at my father, who cuts his eyes away the moment I do.
Anger surges up inside me.
“You were cut off,” I insist, feeling the pinch of betrayal take root immediately. There shouldn’t have been enough time since the last stumble for me to be hopeful but thanks to Lachlan’s interference, I did.
Now I see how long that brought us.
Two weeks.
His line of credit was cut off, he was kicked out of his familiar haunts, he’s spent half his nights athome, but here we are again, a fortnight later. Both staring at the same problem through the same weary eyes, sticking a dagger into the same bleeding wound.
“My daughter’s nothing to do with this,” Dad says. A nice sentiment except it’s too late. It’s always too late.
If he wanted me to get away, he had his chance. He could have shouted a warning the moment I stepped indoors. Instead, he called me straight in here.
My internal narrator tries to get a word in, to explain how it’s an addiction and he can’t help it, but I backhand that stupid bitch right out of the place.
I should have done that a long time ago.
“How much do you owe this time?” My voice is strained, my throat muscles so tense that it’s hard to force out any sound at all.
“Not much,” he lies. Then his eyes fix on my hand. On the rings. “Could we use the jewellery as a down payment on the rest?”
He doesn’t address the question to me. It’s to the man hovering with menace.
I twist the rings around my finger, wondering how much time and trouble it cost Lachlan to find them. All wasted.
And perhaps it’s because my life improved that I finally see it. What everyone else saw long ago, even Spencer. The man who knows more about my father’s addiction than anyone else because he shares it.
I can’t help him. The help I’ve given him so far isn’t actually helping anyone. It just makes things worse.
“I’ll swallow them before I give them to you.”
