Will you let me know where you are?
Alice had nodded, staring out at the road. Her eyes were distant in a way Lulu hadn’t seen before.
Why have you stayed here? Alice asked. Why didn’t you leave? After what he did to you?
Lulu didn’t answer for a while. Because I told myself it was my fault, she said. That’s the only way I could make sense of it. She hunched her shoulders up to her ears as if she didn’t want to hear her own answers. And then, I met Aiden. Now we have a life here. And also, she said, because of the stars. Lulu had laughed sadly. What good was foresight if you stayed blind to yourself?
After she’d watched Alice drive away, Lulu went inside and picked up the phone before she talked herself out of it. Sarah offered her the first spot in her diary the next morning. Shaking, Lulu took a wine bottle and glass straight out onto the dunes, where she poured enough to quell her nerves while she waited for Aiden to come home.
His ute soon rattled into their driveway. Her glass empty, Lulu took a swig of wine from the bottle.
He came to the back door, kicked his boots off, and walked out to her. She was calmed by his loving smile. Her abuela’s voice rang in her ears. This is why we named you ‘Little Wolf’. Your instincts will always guide you, like the stars.
‘Hey, beautiful,’ Aiden said, settling beside her.
She kissed him and poured him some wine in her empty glass.
‘What a day,’ he sighed, as he took a sip. ‘How was Alice when she left?’
Lulu watched the glowing fairy lights outside Alice’s house. She shook her head.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
She took the glass off him, drank more wine. ‘I will be,’ she said, looking up at the stars.
Aiden held her hand and rubbed warm circles into her palm with his thumb. Lulu filled with love and gratefulness. Once she found the courage to tell him the poisonous story about Dylan that she’d kept hidden from him for so long, she knew he’d do whatever it took to support her. She had no doubt he’d agree to move on from desert life. She’d already started looking for jobs in Tasmania; Aiden was always talking about how much he’d love to live there.
Lulu waited until her voice was strong before she spoke.
‘I’ve got a meeting with Sarah in the morning. I need to tell her something, but first, I need to tell you.’
He looked at her, waiting.
In the distance Alice’s fairy lights trembled, each one a tiny, fluttering fire, burning into the night sky.
By the time Alice arrived in Agnes Bluff the sky was scattered with stars. She swung into the vet clinic and left the engine running when she got out. Stood at the door. Traced her fingertip over his name on the glass. Slipped her letter through the mail slot and watched it fall to the floor inside, the back of the envelope facing up, her forwarding address scrawled in her handwriting.
As she drove away she thought about the flowers she’d sketched for him. Billy buttons. She’d drawn one after the other, bright balls of yellow on skinny stems, over and over again, covering the paper, except for the far right corner where she’d written their meaning.
My gratitude.
28. Green birdflower
Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers …
… take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.
Meaning: My heart flees
Crotalaria cunninghamii | Mid to western states
Widespread on sandy soils in mulga communities and on sand dunes, this shrub bears soft hairs on thick and pithy branches. The flower resembles a bird attached by its beak to the central stalk of the flower head; yellow-green, streaked with fine purple lines. Blooms in winter and spring. Pollinated by large bees, and birds.
Three long days of driving later, the dusty and barren landscape became verdant and lush. At the end of her fourth day travelling, Alice turned off the highway and followed a thin road along the coast until she reached the small town she’d left when she was a child. She stood at the main intersection watching farmers’ trucks rumble by. New shops dotted Main Street: a tattoo parlour, a mobile phone store, a vintage clothing shop and a surfboard outlet.
Behind her the sugar cane stalks were as vividly green as she remembered. The cane seemed shorter, but the air was still sweet and humid. She envisaged herself at seven years old, running through the stalks to emerge into this new and exciting world beyond the boundaries of her home. She wrapped her arms around herself. As if to reassure her, Pip licked Alice’s leg.
‘Are you okay? Are you lost?’ a friendly voice asked. Alice turned to see a young woman carrying a toddler on her hip.
‘I’m fine. Thanks,’ Alice replied.
The woman smiled, while the toddler cooed at Pip. At the traffic lights she set the toddler down to push the pedestrian button.
‘Sorry,’ Alice called her, compelled by nerves to ask for an answer she already knew. ‘Is that still the library across the road?’
‘Yep, sure is.’ The woman and toddler waved as the light turned green.
Over the years, Sally Morgan had pictured so many ways it might happen, when the day came that she’d see Alice Hart again. She never expected it would happen so simply, on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.
School was finished, the library was full and Sally was crouched by the children’s shelves, putting books away. Seemingly for no reason, goosebumps prickled her spine.
She stood slowly. Remembered shabby little sandals poking out from under a tatty nightgown; tousled head bent poring over the library books; the dimple in her cheek; her fiery green eyes; her dark hair falling over the edge of the hospital bed; the click and whirr of the ventilator rising and falling as it helped her lungs to breathe; her cheekbones so sharp in her young, gaunt face; the tiny violet veins in her pale eyelids.
Sally moved cautiously between the shelves. There was nothing unusual that she could see. Nothing out of place. She was just tired, she reasoned with herself. When she was tired she was always more vulnerable to the past. Nevertheless, she couldn’t stop herself searching the library.
People browsing bookshelves. Parents with their children. High schoolers huddled together, giggling over their books.
There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing that wasn’t like any other day. Her pulse began to slow.
Chiding herself for her foolish hopes, Sally walked through the shelves towards her desk, gathering stray books. Her cheeks were hot with disappointment.
Late afternoon light poured through the stained-glass windows. As Sally headed for her desk, a flare of aquamarine light from the Little Mermaid’s tail fell straight into her eyes. She stepped sideways, shielding her face from the glare. And, when she looked up again, she saw the little girl she’d loved in the face of a bedraggled woman standing in front of her. The books Sally was carrying fell to the floor.