Twenty-Two
Annabeth
Dallas’s car chugs down the unfamiliar gravel road.
A country song faintly fills the cab as Billie hums along from the backseat.
Dallas’s hand rests lazily on my leg, the other firmly gripping the leather steering wheel.
His hazel eyes are glued to the winding road before us, never daring to glance anywhere but towards the horizon.
His fingers trace gentle circles across my slacks, the silky fabric feels soothing as it rolls across my skin beneath his touch. My body reacts instinctively to him, the fluttering swirls erupting through my stomach with every stroke.
“You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” I tell him.
It’s Billie who responds, almost instantly. “You’re gonna love it, Ms Harrington.”
“That tells me nothing, Billie,” I protest, looking back at her.
She’s swinging her legs happily, smiling away as she continues singing her song.
Stubborn. Just like her dad. I wonder if her boldness stems from her mother.
Dallas is really more of a stoic kind of stubborn.
Billie on the other hand is the kind of stubborn you’d expect to win debates and fight for justice.
She sticks to her guns, stands up for what she believes in, and isn’t backing down for anybody.
From what Dallas has told me, Samantha was much the same.
It might be weird, but I have often thought about Dallas’s life before we met.
The man I know has become who he is from years of hiding who he was and building up walls to keep his family safe after everything they went through.
I can’t imagine losing someone I love, not like that.
Sure, I’ve lost people, but nobody that mattered – except them.
After the accident, I tried to keep Dad going, tried to remind him that we could get through this, but it only took three years for him to spiral out of control.
By the time I was fifteen, I was carrying our family on my shoulders, desperately trying to piece together the broken pieces of my father while I finished high school.
Dad passed before I graduated, he never saw me finish high school.
I was barely eighteen, barely an adult, and completely alone.
No child should have to endure that. It’s why I started teaching.
I thought if I could make a difference to even one student on a tough day, maybe I could try to right some of the wrongs of my past. If I could bring joy to one person through music, I could do it again, and again, and again.
“Where did you run off to, Firefly?” Dallas asks, breaking me from my painful thoughts.
“Just having a nostalgic moment. I’m here.”
“You ready for some cake?”
Billie squeals from the backseat. “Yes, I’m starving.”
The three of us climb from the car, Billie humming a tune to herself as she dances her way around us and into the paddock.
I scan my surroundings, trying to familiarise myself with where we are.
My eyes wander to a small, tin shack a few metres away.
The roof is rusted, dented from years of weathering.
The door is hanging on by its last hinges, weeds cascade across the misshapen tin walls, and there’s a huge wattle tree behind it.
It’s the end of Spring, so the trees usual array of golden foliage is slowly fading, but what remains is still a sight to behold.
I turn back to face Dallas, who’s smiling with Billie as they set up a picnic rug on a small mound of dirt.
Billie’s flitting around, still humming away.
Dallas’s eyes find mine; the deep, hazel pools twinkling as he watches me.
He extends a hand in my direction, beckoning me to join them.
Billie squeals excitedly, running to pull me over to the rug.
Her lanky arms wrap around me, her blonde curls tickling my nose as I pull her in for a cuddle.
“I brought my guitar, do you wanna sing with me?” she asks. Her blue eyes gleam up at me as she smiles. A smile of my own tugs at my heart as I tell her, “Billie-Mae Northlane. I would love to.”
As if on cue, Dallas emerges from behind the ute, guitar in hand.
The three of us cosy up on the picnic blanket they laid out, before Billie stuffs a slice of cake into her mouth that’s half the size of her head.
Dallas just shakes his head and laughs. I tune the strings of the guitar, listening to Billie tell us more camp stories through mouthfuls of cake.
“Alright, what song are we singing?”
Billie pauses, contemplating the question.
Her brow furrows, her mind clearly racing through the rolodex of songs in her head.
She bites down into her bottom lip, her fingers toying with the hem of her sleeves.
Watching her try to think of the perfect song makes me smile.
My hands instinctively move across the fretboard, the smooth maple wood against my fingertips feels like coming home.
It’s smaller than I’m used to, being a child’s guitar, but it’ll do the job.
I position my hand into a G chord and strum the opening progression to Dads and Daughters by MaRynn Taylor.
Billie joins in the harmony on the first chorus, our voices ringing out through the clearing as we sing.
Before I realise my eyes have closed, they’re peeling open to find Dallas’s.
He’s sitting next to us, stroking Billie’s hair as she sings, his own eyes full of tears as we sing the final verse and the song comes to an end.
“Thank you.” His voice shakes as he speaks, his usual gruffness all but dissipated as he pulls his daughter into his arms.
I nod to him, allowing them to share this moment.
Seeing them together brings a pang of sorrow to my chest, wondering what it must have been like for the Northlane’s to go through the tragedy they’ve experienced.
The lyrics of the song reminds me so much of the bond Dallas and Billie have, right down to her having her mother’s blue eyes – a fact Dallas told me the day he told me about Samantha.
Billie’s head pops up from her father’s shoulder, her arm reaching to pull me in for the hug.
I’m all but catapulted into the embrace, and the three of us collapse onto the rug in fits of laughter.
We lay together, our eyes roaming the sky as we try to find shapes in the clouds.
Every now and then, I catch Dallas quietly watching us.
Billie’s in the middle, one hand above her head, the other grasped in mine. As the hours go by, and the sun disappears behind the hills, I realise that this right here, is happiness. This is love. This is home.