15
It’s as though I’ve been sleepwalking since Francesca went missing. Day slipping into night with a mere blink of an eye, the edges of everything softened in a surreal mist of sorrow. Time feels liquid.
Beyond our small homestead, the forest chitters with wildlife. Yet inside, nothing stirs. Mother sleeping in her quarters at the end of the hall, Isa still sheltered behind her firmly closed door.
But my feet are restless.
Since my father died all those years ago, there’s a sadness that clings to the walls.
Reminders of him at every turn. His books still on the shelves, his favourite record collecting dust on the turntable, his photos still lining the living room wall.
Sometimes I struggle to recall his face.
I can’t seem to remember the way his nose curved or the colour of his eyes.
The house smells of Christmas, remnants of Mother’s days spent in preparation for the community celebration – roasting pecans and drying pinecones in the hearth.
The advent candle alight, counting down the days until the celebration of Christ.
The holidays are the time when our sadness plummets into dark sorrow, with father gone.
This is the sixth season without him. The sixth time we’ve had to bless the earth for her abundance, thank God for his generosity – all while battling with the confusion of why he would be taken.
If God truly loved us, why would he tear fathers from their children’s arms without a trace of mercy?
Why would young girls be swallowed by the thicket of the pines, their cries lost among the branches?
Why would he condemn love, when he himself died in its name?
And why must I bear the sound of my sister’s unrelenting sobs, seeping through the thin wood of her door, night after night, with no end in sight?
But mostly, why would he have allowed sweet Francesca to have her life taken in the way she did, when she was nothing but a guiding light to me while I navigated my own life?
It doesn’t make any sense.
At least, that’s where my thoughts linger as I trail my fingers against the evergreen garland that hangs above the back door.
The living room is deathly quiet; all sound lost to the blanket of night as I pace through the small space.
It’s a time capsule of our childhood, artworks from Sunday school still pinned to the windows, our handprints pressed into the concrete lintel at the door.
Photos are hung with no order, fitted in places where they make no sense.
I approach one with a flutter of nerves, weary of the memories it might draw forth.
A photo I know by heart, I can recall with ease usually.
But now, the image blurs in my mind, our faces smeared like ruined oil paintings.
This happens when I try to recall father’s face sometimes, as though a protective part of me has started to bleed him out.
But even with the knot of emotions in my stomach, I long to see him again.
Love is complicated in that way; it grows steadfast even when it shouldn’t.
Even when you know it’s of no benefit, no value – just something familiar and comfortable, something you’ve settled into knowing – it endures.
My fingers slip beneath the edge of the frame and lift it carefully from the wall, bringing it closer to the advent candle burning low upon the mantle, its small flame wavering just enough to send the light trembling softly across the glass.
This photo is one I know well – summer afternoon in the yard, gum trees behind us, branches heavy with leaves.
Mother stands rigid at the centre as she always does, her posture straight and proper even in the heat, while Isa leans lazily against her side, squinting into the sun with the carefree grin she used to wear before the world began pressing its weight upon us.
For a moment, something inside my chest loosens at the sight of father. His sleeves rolled to the elbows, his arm tense around Mother’s waist, and the faint curve of a reluctant smile ghosting his mouth.
Beside him, my small palm wrapped in his fingers, the photo changes – where I once stood, someone else smiles and leans against my father, dark hair falling over her shoulders, dark eyes squinting through the overhead sunlight.
Francesca. Not me at all.
I stare at the photograph for long, drawn-out moments, confusion skirting my tense muscles, my jaw tight as I study the image. Waiting for it to change if I blink hard enough. But it doesn’t, it remains, Mother, Father, Isa, her.
A chilling unease begins to tighten within my chest as I replace the frame and reach for another, my fingers moving with a nervous urgency I can’t quite explain.
This one is from winter, the yard buried beneath a thin blanket of frost, Father crouched slightly so Isa can cling triumphantly to his shoulders while Mother smiles tightly beside them, her skirts billowing in the breeze.
But where I should have been, my dress caught in the long grass, a smile stitched to my small face, is Francesca.
My breath catches in my throat, chest rasping with shallow inhales as I take another photograph from the wall, and then another, and another – each one offering the same harrowing impossibility.
Mother’s face remains unchanged – sharp and unkind. Father’s too, looking out from the photograph with a steady, familiar sternness. And Isa, her warmth radiating as she stands beside them through every season.
But where I should be, Francesca smiles back instead, occupying space as though it had always been hers, as though the years themselves have rearranged our memories, slotting her into where I once belonged.
A slow, creeping dread begins to settle beneath my ribs as I stare at the wall of photographs, each one bearing the same strange revision of the past.
Perhaps this is what grief does to a person I think distantly, recalling the hushed voices of elderly women after community funerals – the quiet warnings about how sorrow can begin to unravel the mind when it is left too long unattended.
Yet, I can’t look away.
The girl in the photographs doesn’t fade or shift beneath my gaze, the edges of her illuminated as if the ghost of her has forced its way into every frame.
“Isabel, you must breathe out as you release the arrow. You’re too tense.’
Francesca gripped Isabel’s elbows, guiding her hand back to the bow string with gentle pressure.
She had been practicing her aim for days, shooting at old stuffed toys we had stolen from the attic, tying them to trees in the belly of the forest where mother wouldn’t see them.
“I’m trying, Frannie,” Isabel sulked, stamping her foot. “It’s more difficult than it looks.”
“You’ll get it, keep trying,” Francesca soothed, patting her back as she stepped away.
Isabel righted the bow once more, her hands wavering as she drew the arrow back, pressing a fist into her shoulder as she exhaled. With one eye squinted, determination furrowing her brow, she released the arrow with a squeal.
“Shit, you missed the tree,” Francesca sighed, crossing the scrubby earth in search for the arrow. She rounded the old gum, swiping low branches from her path, stilling suddenly in the shadows.
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“What’s wrong?” I called after her, recognising the way her teeth pressed into her lower lip, her forehead creasing with nerves.
“Nothing, Isabel stay there,” she called, holding a palm to the air as she crouched down into the weeds.
“Oh my gosh, what did I hit?” Isabel cried, hands cradling her cheeks.
I approached Francesca, nerves skittering through my blood. She glanced at me with a grimace, shaking her head. I faltered for a second, unsure whether to tell Isabel the truth of it, or shield her, protect her from what she’d done.
But before I could muster any words, Francesca scooped up the small creature, holding it up by its hind legs for Isabel to see.
“It’s a rabbit,’ she said, expressionless.