Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Kim
Kim sits courtside, watching as Bella runs forward, putting her slight body between the opposing goal attack and the net. The taller girl shoots, and despite Bella’s jump—too shallow, too late—she scores. Fifteen to two. Bella’s team is getting slaughtered.
Again.
For a moment, she wishes for the wintry days beside a soccer pitch, warming her icy fingers on a cup of coffee.
But netball is Bella’s sport now, even though she is, quite honestly, crap at it.
Fluency with a ball at her feet does not translate to fluency with her hands.
Bella is fumble-fingered and seems unable to read the flow of the game.
Still, she’s playing a sport. She complains about netball a lot, but when Kim tentatively suggests she might want to return to soccer, rejoin the team Jorie still plays on, Bella emphatically shakes her head.
It’s been five months since Bella last played soccer.
Jorie returns with stories of tackles and goals, of running along the wing, the ball at her feet. Of penalties taken and scored or saved.
Bella listens, and there’s a wistfulness in her eyes she can’t quite hide, but when Jorie, too, urges her to return, Bella always shakes her head. “No.”
And that’s the end of it.
Danika kept her word, and there’s been no contact from her. Kim misses it, which is strange, because what they had never came close to what she’d call friendship. It was always that wary, prickly, holding-things-back thing. Never fully sharing.
But there had always been something. Some strings, some tie between them that went beyond having been married—or essentially so—to the same man. Beyond having daughters who were sisters.
Danika pulls on Kim’s mind, even now, and she doesn’t know why.
Mercifully, the final whistle blows. Bella turns, and with slumped shoulders and dragging feet, walks with her teammates over to the coach. This is the seventh match in a row they’ve lost.
What can the coach possibly say to them this time around that will be different? They’re still kids. Still only eight or nine years old. This isn’t serious.
Kim stands and waits for Bella to find her.
She slouches over, her kit bag dragging on the concrete.
Kim suppresses a sigh. The material will scuff and probably rip. “Good game, Hella-Bella.” She swoops in to hug her.
Bella shrugs her away. “It was horrible. And the goal attack trod on my foot, and it hurts.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it. I’ll look at it when we get home. Do you want to go for ice cream?” She injects sunshine into her voice. Maybe caramel-fudge ice cream will improve Bella’s mood.
“Yeah.” Bella manages a small smile.
“Come on, then.”
Once in the car and driving to Bella’s favourite ice cream shop, Bella’s mood improves, and she chatters about the game, about how she nearly stopped the other team’s goals, about whether she can have a chocolate flake in her ice cream.
Kim watches her in the rearview mirror. Bella’s quiet most of the time now. She has been since the night she learned the truth about her father, the truth about Cami.
That night, a spark went out in her daughter, and it hasn’t returned.
The grief counsellor—a different one to before—said to give her time. Kim will give her until the end of time if it means Bella will be happy again.
“Do you want to find out whether Jorie wants to come around when we get home?” she asks Bella’s reflection in the mirror.
“Yeah.” A bigger smile this time. “It’s her soccer final. I want to know if they won.”
“Do you know who they’re playing?” Kim hasn’t kept much track of Jorie’s matches, but she remembers, with a jolt, that leagues join for finals because there aren’t that many under-10 girls’ teams.
“Some team from Belgrave,” Bella says. She fiddles with the clasp of her seatbelt. “I think it’s Cami’s team.”
Play it cool. This is the first time Bella has mentioned Cami’s name to her since The Revelation, as she thinks of it now.
“That’s nice,” she says evenly. “Why don’t you take my phone from my bag and text Jorie to see how they did?”
“Can I?” More animation on Bella’s face now. Being allowed to use Kim’s phone is a special treat. Of course, Bella wants her own phone. She’s still too young, but Kim won’t be able to hold her off much longer. There are younger kids than her with phones.
“Sure. And see if Jorie wants to come around for tea.”
Bella leans forward and snags the phone from Kim’s bag. For a couple of minutes, there’s silence as her fingers work the keypad. She puts the phone down. “Sent.”
“Nice work.” Kim swings into the ice cream shop. “Now let’s get that caramel-fudge cone with two chocolate flakes.”
Jorie’s reply comes as Bella’s licking ice cream and nibbling on the flake.
She snatches up the phone, opens the text.
“They won! Six-five.” A genuine smile floods Bella’s face, then it disappears.
“But she can’t come to tea, as both teams are going out for pizza.
” She throws the phone onto the table. “She says Cami was there and scored two goals.”
Kim takes a nibble of her cone, then says in a deliberately casual voice, “Maybe we can have Jorie around tomorrow, instead.”
“Yeah.” Bella slumps in her seat, her ice cream forgotten. “I miss soccer. Netball’s boring, and I’m not very good at it. I drop the ball sometimes, and then Coach shouts at me.”
Coach shouts at everyone, but Kim doesn’t mention this. “You can always go back to soccer if you want. Jorie would be happy if you did.”
Ice cream drips from Bella’s neglected cone onto the table. “Maybe.” She drags a finger through the yellow-and-brown melted swirl. “I miss Cami, too.”
“Would you like me to call Danika and see if Cami would like to meet up?” Kim holds her breath.
Bella’s jaw moves left then right. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe rejoin the soccer team first,” Kim suggests. Baby steps. And after all, they’ve just had their finals, so there’ll be a break for a few weeks. The chances of running into Cami are low, living as she does on the other side of Melbourne.
“Yeah.” Bella’s face lights up. “My boots are too tight, though.”
So she’d tried them on recently. Kim just nods. “Sign up again, and then we’ll buy you new ones.”
“Ones like Mary Fowler’s?”
“Maybe. Or maybe yellow-and-green ones like Jorie. Then you’ll match.” She knows from Suze that the yellow-and-green ones are nearly half the price of the Mary Fowler endorsed ones.
Bella rejoins the soccer team, and for a couple of weeks she’s almost back to her pre-Revelation self.
She and Jorie spend hours in Jorie’s garden dribbling a soccer ball through a wonky row of bamboo canes and shooting (and mostly missing) at goal posts made of rope hanging from the Hills Hoist. There’s more laughter, and gradually Kim relaxes.
Bella may have rejected her sister, but Kim thinks she will be okay.
The days slide by in a mish-mash of school and soccer and sighs over homework. Of lunches with Jorie, and trips to the beach.
For Kim, it’s work decluttering people’s messy spaces and evenings with Suze and a glass of wine as they watch their kids play on the beach, in the park, or backyard soccer.
Kim hasn’t dated since Chris went missing.
Of course, she waited for him to return, and then when she learned he was never coming back, the weight of grief and the need to be there for Bella made the thought of dating impossible.
How could she date when her daughter still thought her father would return someday?
Impossible.
Then, after Revelation Day, it was similarly impossible. Bella was her priority. Dating was just not something she thought about.
But now, seeing the woman who’s just hired her to clean out her gran’s house as her gran has gone into aged care, the twist in her chest tells Kim that maybe she could at least consider dating again.
Oh, not Tinder. Not any hook-up site, or anything fast and furious. But if she met someone like her new client—Eliza—she might do it. Ask her out for coffee, get to know each other.
Maybe she’ll ask Eliza out after she’s sorted her gran’s house, picking the treasure from the trash, the heirlooms from the op shop load, the family memories from the absolute dumpster fire that is the spare room.
Danika’s face slides into her mind. Like Eliza’s, with the same big brown eyes in a pale face. When she last saw Danika five months ago, Danika was thin to the point of underweight. Her jeans hung loosely on her, as if she weren’t usually that skinny.
Maybe she’s back to her normal weight now. Maybe, if Kim saw her, Danika’s face would light up, and she’d smile and nudge Kim companionably with an elbow. “Missed you,” she might say.
Dream on.
If Danika thinks of Kim at all, it’s most likely with relief that Kim is out of her life.
Kim closes her mouth with a snap and looks around to check no one has been watching her stare into space. At least she wasn’t drooling. Surreptitiously, she wipes her chin with her fingers. No drool. She swallows. Here she is, thinking about dating, and yet the woman in her head is Danika.
Who doesn’t talk with her.
Who she’d told to stay away because of Bella.
Who is straight.
So not going to happen.