What Raven left behind

Willow Hayes knew what sort of night it was going to be by the way her father closed the front door. She had learned to recognise the different sounds years ago, although she couldn't remember exactly when she had first started paying attention. Perhaps it had been when she was seven or eight, when she realised that knowing Dean's mood before he entered a room gave her enough time to decide whether she should stay downstairs or quietly disappear into her bedroom.

A quiet click meant Dean Hayes had come home in a reasonable mood. On those nights, Willow could sit downstairs without feeling as though she were occupying space that belonged to somebody else. She could make herself a drink, finish her homework at the kitchen table and perhaps even answer when Vanessa asked how school had been. But when the door slammed hard enough to rattle the photograph frames along the hallway, Willow knew exactly what she was supposed to do. She went upstairs, closed her bedroom door and made herself as invisible as possible until morning.

Tonight, the photographs rattled. Willow looked up from the mathematics book spread across her bed and listened as Dean dropped his keys onto the kitchen bench. Seconds later came the heavy thud of Tyler running down the hallway, followed by an excited shout of, "Dad!" Willow waited, although she already knew what would come next. Dean laughed and called back, "There's my boy!" and something inside Willow tightened in the familiar way it always did whenever she heard those words.

The story Willow had always been told was that Tyler wasn't Dean's biological son. According to Dean and Vanessa, Tyler was Vanessa's child from an earlier relationship, and Dean had adopted him six years earlier when Tyler was eight. Willow had never been given any reason to question that version of his childhood. She remembered the celebration afterwards: balloons tied to the dining chairs, food covering the kitchen bench and a large cake with The Hayes Family written across the top in blue icing. Someone had taken dozens of photographs that day, and in almost every one Dean stood proudly beside Tyler with his arm around his new son's shoulders. Willow had been six, too young to understand why everyone was celebrating but old enough to remember wondering why becoming Tyler's father seemed more important to Dean than already being hers.

Years later, Willow had found one of those photographs tucked inside an album in the hallway cupboard. Dean stood in the centre with Vanessa on one side and Tyler on the other, all three smiling directly at the camera. Willow was there too, but only just. She stood slightly behind Vanessa with half her face hidden by her stepmother's shoulder. Nobody looking quickly at the photograph would have noticed her, and somehow that seemed to capture exactly what it felt like to live in their house. Willow was always there, always technically part of the family, yet somehow she remained at the edge of everything that mattered.

She tried not to blame Tyler. He had never asked Dean to love him more, and most of the time he seemed completely unaware of the difference between them. Dean attended every football match Tyler played, knew the names of his friends and remembered which teachers he liked. When Tyler wanted new football boots, Dean complained about the price before buying them anyway. When Tyler brought home a good school report, it went straight onto the refrigerator where everyone could admire it. Willow's latest report , with three A grades and a handwritten note from her English teacher saying she had a gift for writing, was still folded inside the bottom of her school bag.

Three months earlier, Dean had forgotten Willow's twelfth birthday. She had woken that morning expecting nothing extravagant, perhaps just pancakes or a card waiting beside her breakfast, but nobody mentioned it. By lunchtime she had stopped hoping for cake, and by dinner she had convinced herself that twelve wasn't an important birthday anyway. Then Vanessa had suddenly stopped eating and looked across the table. "Oh God, Dean. It's Willow's birthday." Her father had stared at Willow for several seconds, and that expression had hurt more than being forgotten. He looked as though he genuinely needed a moment todecide whether Vanessa was right.

The following morning, Dean placed twenty dollars beside Willow's cereal bowl and told her to buy herself something. Willow had thanked him because thanking people was what you were supposed to dowhen they gave you money, then folded the note carefully and carried it upstairs. She had never spent it. The twenty-dollar note remained inside an old jewellery box beneath her bed, tucked underneath several birthday cards from primary school and the one possession Dean had tried more than once to make her throw away.

Willow reached beneath the collar of her shirt and pulled out the silver chain. The pendant hanging from it was old and unusually heavy, its surface scratched and dulled by time. A raven stretched its wings across what appeared to be a motorcycle wheel, while beneath it sat a tiny crescent moon worn smooth around the edges. Willow rubbed her thumb across the moon without thinking. She always did that when she was worried. She didn't know why. It was simply something she had done for as long as she could remember.