“Bella just knows her father is missing.” Kim twists the wineglass in her hand. “I can’t tell her he’s dead, as then she’ll look for facts, things I don’t want to tell her yet. But she should know.” She stares down into her glass. “I tell her he must be dead because he would never have left us otherwise, but on some level, she’s still waiting for him to come home. When Bella sawthe psychologist, she insisted her dad was alive. She didn’t go for long—her choice.”
“If we tell our kids the truth, Bella will know her father is dead.” Danika’s fingers twitch. There’s a greyness about Kim as she talks about what Bella does—or doesn’t—know.
“Whenwe tell our kids.” Kim looks up. “I can’t withhold this from her forever. And I’m sorry; I know it will drag you and Cami into it. I hope in time you’ll see that as a positive thing.”
“I’m getting there. We’ll do this, Kim.” She gives in to the urge to touch Kim, maybe for a tiny moment of comfort, of support. She touches Kim’s hand, slides her fingers along the back to where her palm rests on the counter. Kim’s hand is warm, dry, and even touching the back she feels the tremor.
An indrawn breath, and then Kim looks up. Her eyes are damp, shining with unshed tears in the harsh kitchen light.
Danika keeps her fingers on the edge of Kim’s hand. The touch is light, but she feels where their skin connects.Connects. That’s what they’re doing here.
Kim lifts her hand and turns it over, palm up, and clasps Danika’s hand. Her gaze flicks to where their hands are joined, then back to Danika’s face. The tiniest of nods.
Danika’s breath catches. She and Kim are joined, she realises, in ways that can’t be undone. They both built their lives with the same man. They both have daughters, so close in age. And now, well, now, they have each other as… Well, that she doesn’t know. It’s too early to be friends. Too late to be nodding acquaintances. What else is there? But they can’t go back.
And Danika doesn’t want to.
Slowly, she disentangles their hands, bringing them back to at least a sense of normality.
She cuts a slice of brie and puts it on a cracker. Takes a mouthful of wine. Nibbles the cracker. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Kim nods once, jerkily. “Me too.”
They graze on cheese. They drink wine. Then they eat frittata and quinoa. Italian cookies and coffee.
And they talk.
They mostly talk about their kids. Life with Chris is…not glossed over, but not delved into either, by mutual understanding. What Danika’s life with Chris differed from what Kim had with him. There will come a time when it gets dragged out, examined, and that will be difficult for both of them, but for now, it’s about them. About getting to know each other…and their daughters.
Danika brings out photos. She curates them—the early photos in albums, the later ones only on her phone. Cami as a baby, a video of her toddling along the hallway and crashing into a table, which collapses. Holding up her first soccer boots.
Kim laughs at that one and shows Danika a photo of Bella in an almost identical pose. They put the photos together, and there’s no doubting the girls are sisters.
Kim shows more photos of Bella: camping in the Alpine National Park, when early snowfall blanketed their tent. On the pier at St Kilda, fish and chips in her hands, and the blur of a seagull diving in to steal a chip. Kim says Bella screamed and dropped the lot, and then it was game on for every seagull within one hundred metres.
There are photos, too, of Chris and Kim. The same camping trip, snuggled together with Bella in their too-thin sleeping bags. Behind the wheel of his car—the Audi he was driving when he was killed. At a dinner with friends. Mainly her friends, Kim says. It was as if Chris had come without a history, no friends,no family. In hindsight, she says, her mouth curling, she knows why.
And Danika shows some of their holiday to New Zealand. There’s Cami—a round blob in a snowsuit navigating the bunny slope. The three of them eating burgers at a café. And one of Chris pecking Danika on the cheek while she looked deliberately horrified for the camera. The top of Danika’s head is cut off, and the picture is skewed, but Cami was so proud she managed to take it.
The level in the bottle of wine descends, then empties, and they both switch to water. They’ve spent four hours together.
With a start, Danika wonders at how quickly, how smoothly, the time has passed. But they still need to talk about what they tell their daughters. How they tell them.
“When will you tell Bella?” she asks.
Kim pushes her thick plait over her shoulder. “It’s more thehowI have to figure out. Like how Chris deceived us—and you. Like how he didn’t just vanish—he died. Bella’s grief will intensify again. And I have to tell her she has a sister. I hope that will be a positive thing. How will you tell Cami?”
“I’ll start with the positive,” Danika says. “I’ll say that it’s great she really likes Bella. That they even look alike. And that I have something to tell her about that. I hope the excitement that she has a sister will override the fact that her father had a double life.”
“I also have to tell Bella that I’ve known all this for some time.” Kim bites her lip. “That I’ve kept from her the knowledge that her father is dead. About you and Cami.”
“Do you have to tell her now?” Danika asks. “All at once?”
“No. But equally, I’ll have to tell her soon. Or she’ll find out. She’s only eight, and she’s lost so much already. I don’t want her to lose her trust in me as well.”
Danika rises to refill their water glasses from the bottle in the fridge. “And us.” She directs her words into the fridge, so she won’t have to see Kim’s face as she answers. “How do you see us going forward?”
The silence seems long and maybe terrible.
