Journey’s End

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Kim picked up the fruit bowl and tipped the oranges into the overflowing ice box. One of them slipped from her grasp and rolled away. She cursed softly under her breath, then crawled under the table to fetch it. A grubby pair of jeans walked past, and she heard the fridge door open.

‘Jake, for the last time – go get your stuff.’

‘Where’s all the food gone?’

She stood up. Her son was wearing his sulky face. It seemed like he was always wearing his sulky face. Twelve going on fifteen. For the millionth time she was struck by how much he looked like Connor. The same chiselled lips, presently set in a stubborn line. The same high forehead and square chin. The same dazzling blue eyes. Sometimes the resemblance was unbearable. Jake’s fair hair curled about the collar of his polo shirt. When had she last taken him to have it cut? She couldn’t remember.

‘I’m not going,’ said Jake. ‘I can stay with Stu.’

‘Stuart and Grace have gone to their grandparents for the holidays.’

‘Why couldn’t I go with them?’

Kim added the wayward orange to the ice box. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not your family.’

‘I’ll be bored stupid,’ he said. ‘I bet there’s not even any internet.’

‘You can live without your iPad for a few days.’

‘No,’ said Jake. ‘I can’t. I’m not going.’ He slammed the fridge door and slouched from the room.

Should she go after him? What was the use? He wouldn’t listen. She started hauling bags out to the car.

Since his father’s death, Jake had grown defiant, sullen and quick to anger. The school counsellor said he was still grieving, still missing his dad, as if that was some brilliant insight. Kim rubbed her eyes. Of course he missed his father. But how to help him when she was half-frozen herself? The school had suggested putting Jake on medication, but she’d resisted. It seemed like an admission of defeat. Maybe this trip was what they needed. Laying Scout’s ashes to rest, painful as it would be, could provide the closure that neither of them had been able to find.

Kim took a deep breath and resorted to her last-ditch, fail-safe way to budge Jake from his room. She unplugged the modem and swiftly hid it in the tea-towel drawer. An angry shout came down the hall. ‘Mum, I know that’s you.’

Abbey came in with an armload of soft toys. Seven years old now. A shy girl with golden curls, upturned nose, freckled cheeks – and some mysterious quality that hinted at secret understandings. Sometimes it was hard to believe she’d given birth to this baffling child. Kim braced against the familiar ache that thought always brought, the pain of Connor not knowing his daughter.

Abbey dumped the toys on the floor and tried to stuff them into an open suitcase.

Kim picked up Percy the poodle and stroked his threadbare wool. Abbey prised him from her mother’s hands. Kim picked up Raggedy Ann instead. ‘How about just taking this one?’

Abbey’s eyes widened, and she snatched the ragdoll back. ‘Mum, I can’t choose.’ She went back to cramming toys into bags.

Kim assessed how much room the mountain of stuffed animals would take up in a car that was already packed full. ‘Okay, but they’ll have to sit in the back with you.’

‘You said I could start out in the front, and then swap with Jake halfway. You promised.’

Kim couldn’t remember. Since losing Scout, she lived each day in a kind of fog.

Jake marched in, carrying his bag. That, at least, was something. ‘You said I could start in the front.’ He pulled a face at Abbey. ‘Mum, tell her . . . ’

Kim waved her hands like startled birds. ‘I don’t know.’ For all she knew they were both right. Too often she simply agreed without thinking. Wanting to avoid arguments. Parenting through guilt, Pam, her psychologist, called it. She was right about that. Kim did feel guilty that her children would grow up without their father. No amount of talk could change that.

Kim had stopped attending the weekly consultations organised by the Defence Force. They were too painful, and they didn’t help. Pam couldn’t understand. She hadn’t lost her husband. ‘I thought time was supposed to heal all wounds,’ Kim had said during that last session. ‘I’m more lost now than ever.’

Pam had fixed her with a long, thoughtful look. ‘It’s not time that heals wounds, Kim, it’s what you do with that time. You can’t move on unless you want to.’

‘Moving on feels like forgetting Connor,’ she’d said. ‘And I’m not going to do that.’

The kids began a yelling match. ‘I’m not sitting in the back with all those stupid toys.’ Jake shouldered his bag and headed for the car.

‘Mum,’ said Abbey, ‘stop him.’

Kim ventured out to the driveway, shielding her eyes from the blinding sun. It was unusually hot for an October morning. Haze shimmered over the concrete and baking bitumen beyond. The doors of their old blue station wagon were open, with Jake already in the front seat. He was chewing gum and listening to his iPod though headphones. Time to go before he changed his mind or cooked in the heat.

Kim went into the lounge room, where a small urn stood on the mantelpiece. It had a smooth silver lid with a paw-print design. All that was left of Scout. How could that be? She still didn’t understand how a dog or a person could simply be gone. Here one moment, and a pile of ash the next.

At least she knew what had happened to Scout, the details of his death. It was different with Connor. He’d died so far way, in a land unimaginably strange, unimaginably hostile. She had only the sketchiest details – an ambush along some remote track. Kim held the little urn to her heart and closed her eyes. Connor would want Scout to return to Journey’s End. It felt good that she could do something for him again.