Prologue
Elise
Easter Sunday in the suburbs. The air was already thick with that coastal humidity that sticks your shirt to your spine long before midday. It’s the kind of heat a shower can't fix. Out the back, the bees were heavy, buzzing away in golden formations in the bottlebrush, and next door’s kelpie was at the fence again, losing its mind at the tiniest shift of the wind.
My daughter tore across the patchy lawn, those tiny legs of hers moving faster than I could keep track of. She was in a pair of mismatched pyjamas, her hair a wild tangle that nothing but a brush and a long soak would fix. She’d already gone through five chocolate eggs that were melting in the sun. Every time she spotted a new piece of foil in the grass, she shrieked as loud as the ravens sitting on the powerlines. She was so happy and alive it made my chest tight.
I sat on the back step with my bare feet in the dirt. Sunlight pooled between my shoulder blades, stinging in the only way the Western Australian sun does. The house behind me was a small weatherboard, the kind of place that creaked and groaned as the beams shrunk in the winter and then baked us alive in the summer. Thank God for the aircon. It wasn’t much, but it was mine, and most days it was still hard to believe.
She darted past me again, arms full of silver foil, her laughter rising like the wind in the veranda. A smile caught me before I could stop myself. Joy was easy with her.
Still, in the quiet moments, the thoughts find a way in. They move like the sunlight does in this house, crawling across the floor until they find every shadow you’ve tried to hide in.
Him.
My thoughts always circled back to him. Our meeting wasn’t planned, and it definitely wasn’t something I was looking for. He was just there, a personality so much bigger than the room that you couldn't shy away from it if you tried. He made me laugh when I’d forgotten the sound of my own voice. He pulled me out of places I never thought I’d be able to escape.
We were only young. Everything was new and it was exciting. My love for him grew so fast it was hard to keep up with. I really thought we had all the time in the world.
We didn’t.
I’ve loved people since, but nothing compares to the one you get first and the one that leaves you too quickly. When you lose it like that, it never really goes away. It’s there in every quiet moment. You hear it in the way the gum leaves rustle when the Fremantle Doctor finally comes in. You see it in that gold light that always finds us at Easter.
My daughter skidded to a stop in front of me, sugar bright on her mouth and her eyes that same sharp blue as mine. She pressed a half-eaten egg into my palm, already laughing at something I’d missed. The chocolate was a brown smudge against the foil, melting into the lines of my hand.
I wiped her chin with the hem of my shirt and let her pull me back into the game.
The ache was still there, settled deep in my chest. It wasn't going anywhere.
