Life was already so terrible, she thought, swallowing thick, tannin-y wine.Why this? Why now?
“Edgar, Samantha and Nicole were devastated,” Scott said from somewhere outside the Milky Way. “Your distress after Deborah left wasn’t just because you’d lost your mother. You thought you’d betrayed her by forgetting her plan. You were... tormented by the idea that you’d let her down.”
Scott’s voice broke slightly on the word ‘down,’ and Tabby felt a pang of pity for him. For Sam and Nix and even Noah. They all looked so upset. All she felt was numb and dizzy.
“So… why me?” she asked the twins. “Why not you guys?”
Too late, Tabby realised she sounded like a brat, but neither Sam nor Nix looked offended.
“The psychologist thought it was because you were the youngest,” Sam said. “Easier to move around and lie to. But me and Nix thought…”
“… we were daddy’s girls,” Nix said, her voice thick with phlegm. “She always saw you as ‘hers.’”
Sam and Nix were finishing each other’s sentences, a habit they’d broken in high school. But she guessed old pain brought back old instincts. One was surely rising in her—the need to run. To get out of here before the real trouble started. She’d left school as soon as exams were over, booking a one-way flight to the hot centre of Australia and not coming home for three years.
Run. Fucking run.
“Well… she didn’t try super hard to kidnap me,” Tabby said, trying to bring some lightness to the iron-heavy atmosphere. “Telling a three-year-old to put her own shoes on and then what? Just wait outside the back gateonce? Seriously sloppy shit.”
Again, no one smiled.
“We wouldn’t let you out of our sight after we found the backpack,” Sam said, scratching a nail across the table. “We were sure that cunt would show up and snatch you if you were alone for too long…”
“… And no one would notice her taking you because she was a woman,” Nix whispered.
“We carried you everywhere. Barely let you walk…”
“You started crawling again, we carried you so much,” Nix said. “Eventually, Dad took usallback to the child psychologist…”
“Who was a snotty fucking cow,” Sam said. “Charged a bomb, then glared at Dad’s tats like he was a fuckin’ serial killer. But eventually, me and Nix got better at letting you play by yourself…”
“…and by then, you were starting pre-school, which helped. We knew she couldn’t take you away from there. The playground was fenced in, and only Dad had permission to collect you.”
Looking at her sisters, hearing their voices sharpened with childish panic, Tabby finally felt something. The sensation pulsed beneath her urge to run—a sharp, painful feeling. A striving tofixsomething. But it wasn’t new, it was old. Older than recall and always there. Like the whisper inside a seashell.
Mum trusted me, and I forgot.
“I need to run,” she whispered. “I need to get out of here.”
“What’s that?” Noah said, and the low growl of his voice made everyone jump.
Tabby shook her head, drawing all her focus onto her brother-in-law’s face. “Nothing. I just… this is a lot.”
Noah’s gaze remained locked on hers, and Tabby’s icy blood began to heat. She needed a subject change, stat.
“Why…” She looked from sister to sister. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
An awkward silence fell over the room.
“Samantha and Nicole felt,” Scott began, but Sam held up a hand.
“Babe, I should probably…”
“Of course,” Scott said softly.
“After you’d been seeing the psych for a few months, you stopped having nightmares and pissing yourself. You stopped talking about Deborah. You never even seemed to think about her anymore. It was like you forgot she even existed. You were so happy.”
“So happy you decided I didn’t need to know someone tried to Shanghai me in the dead of night?”
