Candy started to clear the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said again.
Candy nodded. ‘It’s no one’s fault, sweetpea. Everyone’s got their sad stories. Sure is the case here, always has been. It’s what our flowers grow from.’ She fidgeted with the cutlery. ‘June’s got so many stories tangled up inside her, I believe she doesn’t know where to start.’
Alice groaned. ‘With the simplest things? With, “Alice, this is how your parents met”, or “Alice, this is why your father left”, or “Alice, this is who your grandfather was”.’
‘I get that. But she probably thinks that if she tells one story, she’s got to tell ten that are connected. Pull one root up and the whole plant is at risk. The thought must terrify her. Can you imagine? Being faced with those odds, when you’re someone who loves control as much as June?’ Candy paused at the doorway with the bouquet of forks in one hand and a kerosene lantern in the other. ‘It must be awful carrying around the burden of wanting so much to tell someone something, something they should know, but that frightens the pants off you because you have to go somewhere inside you don’t want to go, to find that story you damn well know you can’t rewrite.’
‘But where does that leave me? The one person I have left in my family won’t tell me about our family. I’ve only got secondhand stories, and as much as I cherish anything you, or Twig, or even Oggi told me about this place and my parents, it’s not the same as hearing it from June. You don’t have the same stories she does.’
‘No, we don’t,’ Candy said. ‘But like I’ve always said to you, at least you have a story, sweetpea. At least you can know where you come from. Don’t overlook what a gift —’
‘I don’t,’ Alice interrupted, struggling to keep her voice steady. ‘I know you mean well, Candy, but I’m getting pretty sick of being palmed off with advice to be grateful for the story I have, as a way of avoiding the stories I don’t. Stories that June promised when I was a kid that she’d tell me. And never has.’
The room filled with the sound of heavy rain. After a while Candy cleared her throat.
‘I’m really sorry about Oggi.’
Alice didn’t respond.
As she walked out of the room, Candy took most of the light with her.
That night, Alice tossed and turned in a fiery sea of dreams. Over and over again, she tried to scream for her mother who’d left her clothes on shore. Over and over again, the sea of fire would not yield her. On the scorched beach a wolf and fox chased each other through the dunes, their tails on fire. In the shallows a boy sailed a paper boat, its edges charred and burning. After starting awake in a cold sweat, Alice got up. Her temples pounded from anxious exhaustion. She clicked on her torch and went downstairs to make a cup of tea.
In the hallway she came to a halt. Voices drifted from the kitchen and the air was thick with whisky. Alice inched closer.
‘You are this close to losing her, June,’ Twig hissed. ‘Is that what you want? You have to tell her the truth. You have to tell her.’
‘Shufth up, Twig,’ June slurred.
Alice crept along the wall.
‘You think you know iss all buts you don’t know shit. You’re juss another one who knows all the stories and think you know erryfink.’
‘I can’t talk to you like this. You need to go to bed.’
‘I see how much you love her, you think I don’t? You thinks I dunno she’s one of the chil’ren you couldn’t raise?’
‘Be careful, June.’
‘Oooooh, “be careful, June”.’ June hiccupped.
Alice stood at the doorway.
‘I saved that girl,’ June hissed, drawing herself together. ‘I saved her. Oggi would only have stolen her future, and broken her heart. We’ve seen it all before, Twig. Don’t say we haven’t. That day I called Immigration was the best thing I’ve ever done for her.’
The shock of June’s betrayal went through Alice as though she’d been physically struck. She would remember that night as if she had been watching through the windows rather than embodied in the moment. The way she flew into the kitchen, her eyes aflame and her hands shaking. The horror and regret in Twig’s eyes when she realised Alice had overheard them. June’s drunken smile as she tried to keep her composure. Alice’s shouting. Twig’s attempts to comfort her. June’s crying. The deep sorrow in Twig’s eyes as she told Alice the truth.
‘He was deported.’ Twig’s voice wavered. ‘He and Boryana were sent back to Bulgaria.’
Seething, Alice turned to look at June. ‘You reported them?’ she shrieked. June squared her chin, her eyes unable to focus.
‘What’s going on?’ Candy asked as she hurried into the kitchen, her face creased with sleep.
A surge of adrenalin jolted Alice into action. She fled from the kitchen, up the stairs and into her room. She lunged for her backpack and stuffed it with anything she laid eyes on that she cared about. Ran down the stairs, pushed past the women in the hallway and wrenched her keys and hat off their hooks. Alice threw open the front door and was knocked back by the force of the wind and rain. She stumbled to regain her balance. Twig and Candy pleaded with her not to leave. The next scene always played out in her mind the same way, slow and distorted: she turned to see their faces, so full of worry. Behind them, June swayed in the shadows.
Alice glowered at the three women. After a moment she turned and pushed herself into the storm, slamming the door behind her.
The windscreen wipers couldn’t keep up with the torrential rain. Alice gripped the steering wheel as her truck aquaplaned on the muddy, flooded road, her arms shaking from the strain. She kept her foot down on the accelerator, fearful that if she let up she might get stuck or, worse, lose her nerve and turn around.
She planned to go straight through town. Past the town limits sign and into the bushland, heading east. But only a few kilometres down the road she slammed her foot on the brake: in the beam of her headlights a low-lying dip in the highway was lost under rising floodwater. The river had burst. Alice hung her head. The flower fields would be destroyed; the seeds washed clean out of the beds.
She studied the blackness of her rearview mirror. What if she didn’t go east towards the coast, but went inland? Away from water. She revved the engine. Another moment passed. Alice wrenched on the steering wheel and sped back the way she’d come. At the turn-off to Thornfield her foot faltered on the accelerator. She pressed it to the floor, tightening her hold on the steering wheel, racing west into the darkness.
No matter how much Twig and Candy cried and begged, June refused to come back inside. She swayed on the spot, in the dark, lashed by the weather. Alice would come back. June kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, so she’d be right there the minute she saw Alice’s headlights. Alice would come back. And then June could explain.
The whisky in her blood was thinning; she was beginning to feel the needling cold. When the next gust hit, June fell to her knees. The front door swung open and Twig rushed out with a coat.
‘Get up, June,’ she yelled over the wind. ‘Get up and get your sorry arse inside.’ Twig threw the coat around her and helped her to her feet.
‘No. She’s coming back, and I’ll be right here when she does.’ June trembled. ‘Alice will come home, and then I’ll explain everything.’