Ask Me for Tomorrow (14 page)

‘Why didn’t Nina and Rowan come?’

‘They’re in bed. Ethan went over to keep an eye on them.’

‘They’re so lucky. They have so many people around all the time.’

Dean glanced at Ben, then back at the road. ‘Would you like me to be around more?’

‘Yeah. Lots more.’

‘I’m going to ask your mum if she’d like that too. That okay?’

‘Yeah.’

Well, there you go. One big gesture, coming up.

Dean was wondering what to say next when a brief flash of white distracted him. It was gone before he’d fully realised it was there. He looked in his rear-view mirror beyond the faint red hue of his rear lights, but saw nothing. The car slowed as he lifted his foot from the accelerator.

Dean put on his left indicator and contemplated the twisting road ahead. Instinct told him to turn around. His headlights had reflected off something that hadn’t been a trick of the night or a hopeful imagination. Something was on the roadside, among the trees.

He checked for non-existent traffic then carefully executed a three-point turn. Now that the headlights were burning in the right direction, he could see a car. A white Holden Commodore, just like the one that had driven off with his Friday night plans earlier.

Ben lunged forward in his seat so fast his seatbelt seized. ‘Is that Mum’s car?’

Dean couldn’t decide whether he hoped it was or wasn’t. He eased off the verge and into the grass, turned his hazard lights on and killed the engine. ‘Ben, listen to me.’ He waited until Ben prised his gaze from the car and looked over at him. ‘Stay in this car.’

‘But —’

‘I mean it. Stay here.’ He kept a stern stare on Ben until he was out of the car, then shut the driver’s door and carefully approached the Commodore.

There were deep tyre tracks leading from the road. The driver had missed the bend at full speed then turned sharply, just in time to avoid colliding with a tree. Dean knew it was Alice’s car when he saw the indent on the left rear bumper – he’d noticed it weeks ago and wondered what had caused it. His pace quickened. Careful not to slip in the mud, he rounded the boot and gaped at the hand’s-width distance between the car and the trunk of the enormous gum tree.

She wasn’t in the driver’s seat, nor were the airbags deployed. Had she seriously walked off into the night?

Dean could feel the frenetic drumming of his heart all over his body – everything seemed to pulse with anxiety.

The slick ground had near swallowed the tyres. The car had embedded itself in thick, viscous mud and would need to be towed, and the woman whom Dean was in love with – the very same woman he’d decided life was too short to live without – was nowhere to be seen. This fact darkened an already inky night.

‘Mum?’ There was a sucking, squelching sound as Ben’s shoes sunk into the mud. ‘Mum?’ His voice was changed by fear.

Dean stepped away from the abandoned car and went to Ben. He was surprised the kid had stayed in the car at all, and he couldn’t find it in himself to be cross, not when they were both desperate and frightened, not when Alice could have been here, hurt or worse. ‘She’s not here, buddy. She missed the tree and the airbag’s still in, so she didn’t crash.’ Dean squeezed Ben’s shoulder and considered the scene. ‘Just came off the road, by the looks of it.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Could be walking for help.’

‘Is she hurt?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dean said, not wanting to guess, ‘but there wasn’t any blood or anything like that, okay? I reckon she gave herself a nasty fright, couldn’t get the car started and maybe waved someone down or something. She didn’t have her phone, remember.’

‘What do we do now?’

He was so pale, Dean thought. ‘We keep looking.’

‘Where?’

‘We’re closer to her work than we are to your house, so she’d walk back to the function centre, don’t you think?’

Ben nodded. ‘Yeah.’

Dean moved to squeeze Ben’s arm, but Ben misunderstood and took his hand. It was a young thing for a boy Ben’s age to do, but Dean understood Ben’s need to hold onto something. A moment passed, the two of them standing in the night, soaked in the headlights of Dean’s car, hands linked and expressions sombre. Dean waited for the swirling, hot sensation in his chest to subside.

They walked back to the car, climbed in and buckled up without speaking.

When Dean had turned the car around and they were back on the road, he searched his mind for something comforting to say. Something that was true. He didn’t want to make promises or baseless assumptions; truthfully, he didn’t want to say anything at all, but this expectant, dread-filled silence needed to be conquered. It had to be a good thing Alice hadn’t been in the car. Wherever she was, she was well enough to move herself or be moved.

Wanting to eliminate some possibilities, Dean said, ‘Have any of your grandparents had any problems with their hearts?’

Ben looked up at him, eyes wide and dazed. ‘I dunno.’

‘Okay.’ Crap. Maybe interrogating the kid on the Jaye’s medical history wasn’t the way to go. ‘Never mind.’

Dean eased the car around a gentle bend in the road and flexed his hands on the steering wheel. His own heart couldn’t take much more of this.

The headlights touched on a distant shape. The soft illumination sharpened as the car moved closer, adding definition and shadow, but before Dean could get too excited, he was let down. A kangaroo stood in the middle of the opposite lane, as tall and broad as a person, startled by the approaching noise and lights. It lowered its head, preparing to flee.

Dean slowed, wary that it might leap in front of them. Ben strained against his seatbelt to better see as they drove past, and Dean lifted his gaze to the rear-view mirror when the creature was behind them.

‘Mum!’

Ben was looking forward, eyes fixed on something Dean had yet to see.

There was another shape, half black, half white, a short distance up the road, just within reach of the high beams Dean had turned back on the moment he’d passed the kangaroo. The shape was moving. The shape was a woman, one arm across her face to protect her eyes from the light, the other over her head, waving furiously.

Dean turned the beams down and pulled off the road for a second breathless time. The car was still rolling when Ben threw open the passenger door, unclipped his seatbelt and vaulted into the night.

‘Mum!’ he shouted again, and the woman coming towards them screamed.

‘Ben? Ben!’

They’d collided with each other by the time Dean had stopped the car and stepped out to join them. He ran towards them, eyes only for Alice. He wouldn’t believe she was okay until she was in his arms.

She was shaking and gasping. Her hair had fallen forward, curtaining part of her face, and there was a pair of filthy heels clutched in one of the hands she was pressing into Ben’s back.

Alice unfolded herself from his embrace, her chest heaving, and looked at Dean. He’d never seen her look the way she did now, and he hardly recognised the expression. Context told him it was a combination of relief, stress and exhaustion, but there was another element he couldn’t name.

‘I was . . .’ She interrupted herself, panting. She pointed over her shoulder at the vast expanse of nothingness. ‘Going back . . . for help. I looked back and saw . . . I ran.’

Dean couldn’t move, couldn’t react. His own relief had filled his body to its capacity. It was she who crossed to him, who folded her arms around him and held on. When he finally managed to raise his arms and wrap them around her, she sighed, her breathy shaky and heavy.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured against his shoulder.

He drew her closer, then made room for the smaller body that pressed against their sides.

The three of them didn’t dare let go for a very long time.

The drive back to the Jayes’ place was a quiet one. Dean was saving all his questions for when Ben was in his room, and Ben, who had not too long ago been wide-eyed and rambling, was now asleep in the back, leaning against Alice, his arm around her. She held him tightly, kissing his head often.

When they reached the house, Dean carried Ben to his room. It was a typical boy’s room, full of colour and toys and posters of superheroes and cars. The chair by the window said everything about the boy’s earlier fears, but now that they were vanquished, now that his mum was safely home, he slept soundly. Dean tucked Ben in, gazed at the boy he’d come to love like his own, then eased quietly out of the room.

He heard Alice in the bathroom when he walked down the hallway. He crossed to the small table in the kitchen and retrieved the note he and Ben had left her. He used a pizza delivery magnet to secure it to the front of the fridge. She needed to see what this night had done to the men in her life.

Dean dragged a chair away from the table and angled it at the hallway before he dropped onto it and waited. Alice walked in minutes later wearing plush blue slippers.

‘What happened?’ He wanted the facts before he gave a few of his own opinions.

‘I fell asleep at the wheel,’ she said quietly. She leaned against the door and rubbed her face. ‘I saw the tree just in time but got the car bogged.’

‘And then?’

‘I’d left my phone here. I couldn’t call anyone. I waited over half an hour but only one car came past and they didn’t see me. So I started to walk back to work.’

‘And then?’

‘About fifteen minutes later I saw your headlights. I started running back, intending to flag you down. Not knowing it was you, of course. You know the rest.’

He nodded. He felt faintly sick – nauseated and drained, as if the adrenaline had sucked him dry when it had left his body. There was no point lecturing her about leaving the car. She’d been in a shitty situation with only bad options, and she’d been anxious and stranded. He might have walked too – it was hard to say.

He said, ‘Why weren’t your hazards on?’

‘They were until I left the car.’

He pushed his hands through his hair and sighed. There was only one thing left to talk about now: how this would never happen again. ‘Alice, the second job’s got to go.’

Alice’s expression hardened. She narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms over her body.

‘If you chuck in the garage, then you chuck in the garage.’ He rubbed his eyes and balanced his elbows on his knees. ‘Or quit the function centre, but you’ve been a ticking time bomb for weeks and you can’t let this happen again. You know, I’m shocked, but I’m not
surprised
. You don’t get enough sleep.’ He dropped his forehand onto his hands and spoke to the floor. ‘I’ll give you a raise.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said quietly. ‘I haven’t earned one.’

‘Then damn your pride, I’ll lend you money.’ Dean looked up. ‘You can’t do this to Ben again. You have no idea what he went through, what he was thinking as he waited for you to come home. He waits for you every night, you know. He doesn’t go to bed until you’re in the house.’

Alice swallowed and looked away.

‘If I were you—’ He got no further. When Alice interrupted him, her tone had become low and dangerous.

‘You’re not me. You have no idea what it’s like to be me.’

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Gone was the heady relief of a recent rescue. Dean was now in the middle of a building emotional storm.

‘I never said I did,’ he began, standing. ‘I doubt anyone could claim that.’

‘Meaning what?’

Her temper fuelled his. ‘Meaning you keep people at arm’s length! Everything I know about you I’ve had to wrench over the walls you’ve put around yourself!’ He checked himself, lowering his voice so as to not wake Ben. ‘Don’t stand there and get pissy about what I don’t know about you. I’m in the dark because you’ve put me here.’

How, he wondered, had this conversation got so off track? Moments ago he’d been trying to talk her off the ledge, away from a path that was clearly unsustainable. She’d fallen asleep behind the wheel of her car, for Christ’s sake. Clearly, balance was a thing of the past. Something – anything – needed to change. Couldn’t she see that?

Alice had closed her eyes. After a deep, steadying breath, she opened them – they were cool and unfriendly now. ‘Well, allow me to shed some light on the situation. I don’t have time for this. I don’t need your advice or judgement. I don’t need your opinions. I work very hard, I’m a good mother and a good worker —’

‘I never said —’

‘Thank you so much for your help. Please don’t let my tone make you think I’m not grateful, I really am. But I don’t need any more help tonight.’

The dismissal settled in the space between them and stretched. The air was teeming with tension, thick with all things said and unsaid. Dean took a step back, nodding at the floor as he retreated towards the door.

‘Fine,’ he said to his feet. ‘Your life is your business. Ben made it my business tonight when he called me’ – 
frightened, lost, confused
–’ but now I’m out again, I get it. You’ll do what you need to do, what you think’s right for you and Ben.’

She said nothing when he opened the front door to the night. A cool breeze rolled around his ankles and began to fill the room.

Stop me, he thought. Say something, anything so I’ll stay, so that we can work this out. But she didn’t. Alice let him walk outside, and she didn’t follow.

When he was standing just outside the small circle cast by the porch light, he turned, hands in pockets. He couldn’t think of the words that would fix everything, couldn’t even be sure where everything had gone so wrong. An hour ago he’d wanted this woman enough to comb the night for her, yet now he was cast out into it alone.

Couldn’t she see how much he loved her? Didn’t it make any difference?

Silhouetted in the door, she crossed her arms over herself in a feeble attempt to keep the cold at bay. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘thank you.’

He nodded.

It was hard to see the finer details of her face in this light, so he chose to believe what he wanted – that her expression was pained, full of unspoken wishes similar to his own. It was the only comfort he could afford himself, beyond finding her safe tonight.

When he’d walked the distance to his car and curled his fingers around the door handle, he looked over his shoulder and spoke loud enough for his voice to carry. If he couldn’t speak for himself, he’d speak for Ben.