Chapter 2
Nix’s butter chicken curry was rapidly cooling on everyone’s plates around the dining table. No one was eating, not even Noah. Instead, her sisters and their partners were opening beers like they were working the bar at a New Year’s Eve party and repeating the same phrases over and over.
“I can’t believe that bitch came here,” Sam said for the millionth time.
“We can sort this whole thing out,” Scott offered in a voice that was clearly meant to be soothing but just sounded annoying in his posho accent.
“How long has she been in Melbourne?” Nix asked no one.
Noah wasn’t saying anything, but he was glowering at the plates of garlic naan like they’d kicked his dog, and he kept cracking his knuckles until all Tabby’s teeth were on edge.
She was also saying nothing. Wasn’t thinking much of anything, either. She supposed it was shock, this blank disinterest in everything. But it didn’t feel dramatic enough to be called ‘shock.’ She hadn’t been in a car accident or a plane crash; she’d just met her mum. And she’d already met her mum—she’d grown inside her body like an extra organ. Plus, she’d been three when Jo—Deborah—whoever—bailed. Just because she didn’t have any actual memories of her didn’t mean she got to act like some refugee from a war-torn nation…
“I can’t,” Sam said through clenched teeth, “believe that bitch came here. To our studio. To Dad’s studio.”
But she did, Tabby thought. And I tattooed her.
One of the dogs brushed against her leg, and she bent to pick it up. Delilah licked her chin happily, and Tabby hugged her. Usually, Sam would have given her shit about having dogs at the dinner table, but her big sister was now opening a bottle of Shiraz and staring into nowhere.
Now she knew who Jo was, she felt stupid for not putting the pieces together sooner. She was the spitting image of Sam and Nix. Or they were the spitting image of her, but Tabby didn’t want to reduce the twins to Jo’s progeny, even in her head. Their mum didn’t deserve it. She’d bailed when they were little, just packed up her shit and dipped without so much as a ‘Thinking Of You’ postcard.
People were always shocked when Tabby told them her mum ditched her. When someone’s dad wasn’t in the picture, everyone assumed divorce, but when it came to mums, ‘dead’ was the default.
She knew why: Mums were supposed to love their kids more than themselves. Have a bond with them men could never understand. Die rather than leave. And sure, that was sexist and a denial of female humanity, but what was she supposed to do? Throw Jo a feminism parade for bailing on her kids like some shitty dude? Equality was supposed to mean everyone stepping up, not carte blanche to be a feckless cunt.
Maybe it would have been better if Jo had died?
Wanting to feel something, she pictured Toby making out with his two blondes, replaying the scene slowly, grasping at the gory details. But it was like a horror movie she’d seen a dozen times; it couldn’t shock her anymore. No pain, no jealousy, just more numbness. Someone could have stuck a meat fork in her, and she wouldn’t have felt a thing.
“Are you certain it was your mother?” Scott asked Sam for the dozenth time. “Not to be awful, my love, but it’s been years and?—”
“It was her,” Sam said stubbornly. “I’d know her anywhere.”
Tabby looked at Nix. Her eyes were wet, and her left hand was pressed to her still-flat belly. Tabby had been honest about the tattooing session, which meant admitting Jo knew Nix was pregnant. She’d told her mum she was about to be a grandma without knowing it.
God, if she’d known her mother was in Melbourne and wanted to meet her, Tabby would have just sent Jo a fart compilation and called it a day. But now she’d talked to her, seen her face, heard her laugh…
She downed the last of her beer and gestured for Sam’s wine. Scott handed her the bottle, and she drank straight from the neck. She’d had five pale ales, but she didn’t feel drunk; she felt hungover, her chest tight, her heart pounding. Maybe she was dying?
“I could reach out,” Scott said, taking another stab at problem-solving. “I could find her and clarify that you don’t want to hear from her. Otherwise, she might come back unannounced.”
Sam pounded her fist on the table so hard her wineglass jumped. “She takes one step toward this place, I’ll fly-kick her in the fuckin’ head.”
Delilah whined, scrambling to get out of Tabby’s lap. She let the dog go, still staring at her oldest sister. Sam’s eyes were narrowed, and her jaw jutted. It was almost nostalgic to see her this angry, as though she’d become fifteen again.
“We can’t contact her,” Nix whispered. “We don’t know what she’s calling herself. She can’t still be ‘DaSilva.’”
“She’s not,” Sam snarled. “I’ve been Googling the bitch for years.”
Nix looked horrified. “You wanted to find her?”
“I wanted to take her to court for what she owes Dad. If she’s earned a dollar in the last three decades, he’ll get his twenty cents, or my name isn’t fuckin’ Samantha DaSilva.”
That was something Tabby had never considered. Deadbeat Dad was so ordinary; it even had a cute little nickname. But whoever had heard of a Deadbeat Mum? Squeezing cash out of Jo didn’t make much sense. They’d been broke back in the day, but no one needed child support now—at least not enough to put up with the court system. But clearly, that didn’t matter to Sam. She wanted revenge of the old-school, fire-and-brimstone variety.
The twins were eight when their mum left. Old enough to remember. Old enough to have felt that betrayal like a knife.
“I can get in touch with people,” Noah growled. “Track her down. Get her details.”
Tabby bit the insides of her cheeks. Before her dad gave Noah a legitimate tattooing job, he’d been an enforcer for a massive, shit-cunt biker gang. How would Jo feel if some ex-biker heavyweights showed up at her door, asking to see her driver’s licence?
What does it matter? She deserves it.
Still, it was hard to imagine Jo, terrified in her own home.
“Do it,” Sam said. “Call your goons.”
“Don’t,” Tabby blurted out. “I can find her.”
Everyone stared at her.
“How?” Sam demanded. “She gave you a fake name and paid in cash.”
Tabby hadn’t been withholding the information, at least not consciously, but she knew how they could find Jo. “She told me she’s doing oil commissions for Candour House. They’ll probably have her on the website. We can call if they don’t. Or go there.”
Icy tension ran through the room. Scott drummed his fingers on the tabletop, and Noah wrapped an arm around Nicole.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Sam said quietly.
“I… forgot?”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Tabitha.”
Tabby flinched, jerking backward in her chair and almost dropping the wine bottle.
“Sam!” Nix, Scott and Noah barked in unison.
Her oldest sister’s face crumpled. “Fuck, sorry.”
“S’fine,” she said, rubbing her chest. “S’allgood. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sam leaned across the table with her hand out like God reaching out to Michelangelo’s David. “It’s not okay for me to talk to you like that. None of this is your fault. Seriously, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, that’s completely out of order,” Nix sniffed. “It isn’t your fault, Tabby.”
She frowned. Her family weren’t Matilda’s parents, but they weren’t super touchy-feely either. She and her sisters mostly talked to each other like equals, which neither was doing now. “Why are you both acting like this?” she asked. “I know this situation is all sorts of fucked, but why are you being strange?”
Sam and Nix exchanged looks.
“Maybe now isn’t the time,” Scott said gently.
Tabby shot to her feet. “Fuck that. The hell’s going on?”
“Tell her,” Noah muttered. “She deserves to know.”
Sam flashed Nix a ‘you do it’ glance, and her twin drew a deep breath. “You don’t remember, obviously, but after Mum left, things were… hard for you.”
“Weren’t they hard for all of us?”
“It was worse for you. You weren’t old enough to understand where Mum went. You stopped talking, you wanted us to carry you all the time, you started…”
“What?”
“Wetting yourself,” Nix said, a flush rising on her cheeks. “Sorry.”
“I don’t care about that! I wanna piss my pants right now! That doesn’t explain why you’re being so weird.” Tabby looked from Nix to Sam, and to her surprise, they both started crying. Actually crying with tears and sobs and stuff. She looked at Scott and Noah for an explanation and found them blank-faced and miserable.
“Seriously, what the fuck? Talk.”
Sam brushed a tattooed wrist across her face. “We didn’t think… it shouldn’t have been a problem because Deborah fucked off to Nowheresville… but now the bitch is back…” Sam turned away, her shoulders shaking so hard, her black hair rippled, and Nix buried her face in Noah’s shoulder.
“Sam,” Scott said, touching her arm. “Should I go on? If you and Nicole don’t want to…?”
“Yes,” Sam gasped. “Tell her.”
Scott straightened, assuming what Tabby considered his ‘bank manager’ position. But she couldn’t make fun of him; the determined calm in his dark brown eyes was too chilling.
“Tabby, maybe you should sit down?”
“Just spit it out,” she said, but she dropped her ass back into her chair as instructed.
Scott inhaled just like Nicole had done. “When your mother left, she tried to take you with her.”
A sensation like freezing water rushed through Tabby’s ears, into her mouth, and down her throat. “Huh?”
“When your mother left, she tried to take you with her,” Scott repeated with that same tight composure as Nix and Sam sobbed in earnest.
“But I didn’t…” Tabby began. “I couldn’t have…”
“From how I understand it, for weeks after your mother was gone, you were very confused and wouldn’t talk. And when you did, you made up stories about things your mother said or where she went. Edgar thought it was a normal part of the grieving process, and Samantha and Nicole took their cues from him, but as you began to relax, Sam noticed you were telling one story repeatedly. Your mother told you many times that if she ever ‘went away,’ you would have to dress yourself and wait by the back gate as soon as you woke up the next day.”
Something tugged at Tabby’s memory, rising like a monster from primordial ooze.
… Put on your gummy boots and come right away…
…don’t tell the twins, Babby…
The dirty, ice-cold water flooded her veins, throat, and heart. She heard herself speak as though she was a stranger. “She… she called me ‘Babby.’”
Sam let out a noise between a gasp and a howl and even Scott’s stoic expression flickered.
“Babby-Tabby,” Nix whispered, sounding ten days into a nasty bout of pneumonia. “You remember her talking to you?”
“I…” A pair of big blue eyes swam before Tabby, but no sooner did she comprehend them than the memory sank back into the brownish mud. “Dunno. It doesn’t matter. So, Mum tried to abduct me, huh?”
No one smiled.
I need to get out of here.
The thought came as clearly as if her mind had been repeating it for days.
“Samantha wasn’t sure how serious you were,” Scott said, resuming the story. “She talked to Edgar, and he agreed it was troubling. So, your father took you to see a child psychologist…”
…White and silver tables. Big smiles. Coloured blocks...
“And the psychologist established that your mother had coached you to come looking for her if she ever ‘went away.’ And she seemed to have confided a lot of her worries in you as well…”
… so hard to be here, Babby…
“… the psychologist also asked Edgar to look for your pink and blue backpack…”
Tabby saw a burst of brown beak. Small flappy wings. “It had an owl on it.”
Nix and Sam jolted like they’d been electrocuted.
“Yes,” Sam whispered. “We couldn’t find it after she left, and we thought…”
“… she took it with her,” Nix said through her fingers. “But she didn’t. It was under the side bit of the porch with your clothes and a drink bottle and colouring books in it.”
The ground beneath Tabby was rising and flipping over as though she was on a roller coaster. She thought telling people to sit down when they got bad news was a cliché, but she understood it now. Unsure what else to do, she raised the wine to her lips and drank. Everyone was watching, but no one stopped her.
Life was already so terrible, she thought, swallowing thick, tannin-y wine. Why this? Why now?
“Edgar, Samantha and Nicole were devastated,” Scott said from somewhere outside the Milky Way. “Your distress after Deborah left wasn’t just because you’d lost your mother. You thought you’d betrayed her by forgetting her plan. You were... tormented by the idea that you’d let her down.”
Scott’s voice broke slightly on the word ‘down,’ and Tabby felt a pang of pity for him. For Sam and Nix and even Noah. They all looked so upset. All she felt was numb and dizzy.
“So… why me?” she asked the twins. “Why not you guys?”
Too late, Tabby realised she sounded like a brat, but neither Sam nor Nix looked offended.
“The psychologist thought it was because you were the youngest,” Sam said. “Easier to move around and lie to. But me and Nix thought…”
“… we were daddy’s girls,” Nix said, her voice thick with phlegm. “She always saw you as ‘hers.’”
Sam and Nix were finishing each other’s sentences, a habit they’d broken in high school. But she guessed old pain brought back old instincts. One was surely rising in her—the need to run. To get out of here before the real trouble started. She’d left school as soon as exams were over, booking a one-way flight to the hot centre of Australia and not coming home for three years.
Run. Fucking run.
“Well… she didn’t try super hard to kidnap me,” Tabby said, trying to bring some lightness to the iron-heavy atmosphere. “Telling a three-year-old to put her own shoes on and then what? Just wait outside the back gate once? Seriously sloppy shit.”
Again, no one smiled.
“We wouldn’t let you out of our sight after we found the backpack,” Sam said, scratching a nail across the table. “We were sure that cunt would show up and snatch you if you were alone for too long…”
“… And no one would notice her taking you because she was a woman,” Nix whispered.
“We carried you everywhere. Barely let you walk…”
“You started crawling again, we carried you so much,” Nix said. “Eventually, Dad took us all back to the child psychologist…”
“Who was a snotty fucking cow,” Sam said. “Charged a bomb, then glared at Dad’s tats like he was a fuckin’ serial killer. But eventually, me and Nix got better at letting you play by yourself…”
“…and by then, you were starting pre-school, which helped. We knew she couldn’t take you away from there. The playground was fenced in, and only Dad had permission to collect you.”
Looking at her sisters, hearing their voices sharpened with childish panic, Tabby finally felt something. The sensation pulsed beneath her urge to run—a sharp, painful feeling. A striving to fixsomething. But it wasn’t new, it was old. Older than recall and always there. Like the whisper inside a seashell.
Mum trusted me, and I forgot.
“I need to run,” she whispered. “I need to get out of here.”
“What’s that?” Noah said, and the low growl of his voice made everyone jump.
Tabby shook her head, drawing all her focus onto her brother-in-law’s face. “Nothing. I just… this is a lot.”
Noah’s gaze remained locked on hers, and Tabby’s icy blood began to heat. She needed a subject change, stat.
“Why…” She looked from sister to sister. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
An awkward silence fell over the room.
“Samantha and Nicole felt,” Scott began, but Sam held up a hand.
“Babe, I should probably…”
“Of course,” Scott said softly.
“After you’d been seeing the psych for a few months, you stopped having nightmares and pissing yourself. You stopped talking about Deborah. You never even seemed to think about her anymore. It was like you forgot she even existed. You were so happy.”
“So happy you decided I didn’t need to know someone tried to Shanghai me in the dead of night?”
“It was the early morning, and no,” Sam snapped. “You know Dad’s policy. He would have told you anything you wanted to hear about Deborah.”
“If I asked?”
“Sorry, Tab,” Nix murmured. “Maybe we should have said something, but Mum was gone, and we didn’t…”
“Think I needed to know? That right, Sam?”
“Stop it, Tabby.” Nix’s voice took on the brisk tone it always did when she defended Sam. “I know it’s easy to get mad at us, but we were kids when she left, too. We thought you forgetting Mum meant you had a chance to start over without the bad memories.”
Tabby felt a hot lick of shame down her neck. “Sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Nix said, visibly softening. “But Sam and I were only eight, and we didn’t understand what was happening either. We just wanted our baby sister to be okay.”
“Right…”
Tabby knew she should be crying, tearing up like Sam, Nicole, and Scott, but she mainly felt blank—blank and all too aware of Noah’s focused attention.
I need to get out of here. “Thanks for telling me,” she said loudly. “As long as you didn’t tell me because you thought I’d recover a bunch of repressed memories and go nuts.”
“Of course we didn’t,” Nix said, but Sam and Scott glanced at each other.
Tabby chose to ignore it. She stood, desperately wanting to leave. “If that’s everything, I might go… have a shower.”
“What about tracking down Mum?” Sam demanded.
The word sounded so unfamiliar coming from her oldest sister’s mouth that Tabby stared.
Sam slapped her palm to her lips like she’d sworn in a room full of kids. “Bitch. Stupid fucking…”
Scott took Sam’s hand away from her mouth. “It’s okay, Sammy. We don’t have to do anything more tonight. Everything’s very raw.”
“I want to find her,” Sam burst out. “Can’t we just Google Candour House and see if she’s on there?”
Tabby’s heart jolted. “I want to Google her too. I think it would make me feel better. Closure and what have you.”
It was a lie, but only Noah seemed to have reservations, glaring suspiciously at her as Sam and Scott agreed it was good to have closure, and Nix started hunting for her tablet.
“Candour House has a guest artist page,” Nix said, tapping the screen. “I’ll bring it up.”
Tabby dropped back into her seat again, her heart hammering. She knew before Nix said anything that Jo would be on the website in some form or another. Felt it, just as she felt that Jo had told her about her guest spot hoping she—not Sam or Nix—would Google Candour House and come and find her.
Mum trusted me, and I forgot.
“Jo Spencer,” Nix whispered. “There’s a headshot. A phone number as well…”
Tabby didn’t remember moving, but there she was, crowding around Nicole’s shoulders with Sam, Noah, and Scott. She saw Jo’s sleek black and white headshot. A small bio that said she was from Queensland, worked in pottery, prints, and oils, and was a qualified art therapist.
“Art therapist?” Sam hissed. “Where did you get the money to get that qualification, Debbie?”
“Her art’s got a separate page,” Nicole said, clicking another link.
“Bitch,” Sam muttered as the new page started to load. “Talentless, useless, selfish cu?—”
“Oh my God…” Nicole sighed. It sounded like the last of her breath running out.
“What?” Sam and Scott demanded, but Tabby already knew. Some of the paintings their mother had contributed to Candour House were visible: bright, splashy depictions of horned animals, naked women, cursed-looking waterfalls, and demonic suns. If they had been on the skin instead of canvases, they might have been hers. The colours, the lines, and the vibes were so like her style that, for a crazy second, she wondered if Jo had hacked her.
But that was mad. Half the stuff on the screen she’d never even sketched. It was like peering into another universe where an alternate version of herself had gone to art school and made a name in prints.
Her artistic style bore semblances to Sam’s and Dad’s—but that made sense. She’d grown up around them, learned to tattoo from them. But how had she developed the same creative instincts as a woman she couldn’t remember?
“Fucking hell,” Sam whispered. “Scott?”
“I can see.” Scott’s hand closed around Sam’s shoulder. “Has she always...? Did you know…?”
“I’d forgotten,” Nix said. “It’s been so long...”
“Me too,” Sam added. “Plus, she mostly did jewellery when we were kids.”
Tabby took a step backward, and everyone turned to stare again.
“This isn’t my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know art was genetic. And mine’s better anyway.”
“You’re right,” Scott said with a forced smile. “Good attitude, Tabby.”
Yeah, I’m totally not saying what I think you want to hear so I can leave…
Sam shook her head. “Where the fuck’s Dad? We need Dad.”
“We don’t know,” Nix said hopelessly. “But this is why he left. To get us to take responsibility for whatever’s happening in our lives.”
“That was ages ago! Maybe he’s fucked off forever too!”
“Sam, don’t say that!”
Sam clutched her head, pulling hard at her black hair. “Sorry. I know Dad would never do that. I need him right now. I want him to be here.”
Her older sister began sobbing again, and Tabby realised this was the most she’d seen Sam cry since that brutal three-day desert festival when someone stole her shoes. And back then, she was mostly crying out of anger.
Scott pulled Sam into his arms. “It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling, give it to me. Let me hold it.”
Sam resisted for a second, then softened into his chest. “I will. I’ll try. I love you, Galahad.”
“I love you too, darling.”
Watching Sam and Scott embrace, Tabby felt something new shift among her ocean of guilt and shock—loneliness. All the DaSilva sisters had a missing dad and a stalker mum, but Sam had Scott, Nix had Noah, and all she had were debts with the Australian Tax Office.
Stupidly, she thought of Toby, and almost died of internal embarrassment. Wasn’t it bad enough that she was in this situation without thinking about that pile of human excrement?
Nix put down her tablet. “Enough for one day. Wherever dad is, he loves us, and even if we wanted his advice, we can’t get it. We’ll have to trust and support each other.”
She stood, winding her arms around Noah’s neck as Sam and Scott murmured their agreement. And as much as Tabby would have liked to take comfort in Nix’s statement, she was looking right at Noah’s face—a face marked by what could only be described as guilt. She studied his heavy features, wondering what the fuck he was guilty of. Noah was loyal as the day was long, and he adored Nix. Positively worshipped the ground she walked on. He wouldn’t keep secrets from her unless...
Unless he had a prior loyalty to someone. Someone important. Someone who pre-dated his and Nix’s relationship. Tabby squinted at her brother-in-law and was suddenly sure why he looked shiftier than an undercover cop at a rave.
Noah had always been her dad’s project, his best friend and confidant. They’d spent a billion hours together back when Nix was still living in Adelaide with her shitty ex-fiancé. Noah Newcomb, ex-biker and current husband, must know where her father was.