Watery Graves (13 page)

Emmy placed the memory box at her feet.

“I don’t want any of it Emmy,” Ingrid snapped.

“I do.”

“What is inside the house has nothing to do with you.”

Emmy reached in for the photo of her father. “I want this.”

Ingrid kicked the box, and strode off up the road.

“Mum!” Emmy shouted, running after her a few steps and stopping.

Kristian ran around the side of the house, shirtless but with gardening gloves on his hands. “What’s going on?”

“Mum’s lost it.”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” he said.

Sebastian came up behind him, a younger image of his father. His shirt was off. He looked between Kristian and Emmy for an explanation.

Kristian jumped the fence and broke out into a jog after her.

“I can’t follow,” Emmy muttered.

“What happened?”

“Mum lost it.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No, in a weird way this time. She was kind of crying but laughing and curled up on the floor, then she just hated everything. It was like a tantrum.”

“She shouldn’t be down here. It’s too soon after Maya.”

“Everyone just wants to be busy and not think about things. It doesn’t work.”

Emmy paced the footpath heading further past the house each time. She dared herself to go as far as the corner.

Sebastian leant on a fence post watching.

Emmy walked back to him
. “You can drive the van. There’s a park down there. Can you take me to it?”

“It’s not just a park. It’s Mercy River,” he said.

Emmy paused a moment. “Take me please.” She climbed into the passenger seat.

“I can’t drive in town. I just drive up and down the dirt track at home. I don’t have licen
ce.”

“Sebastian
,” she pleaded.

“I’ll walk with you Emmy.”

She climbed out of the van, and strode up the street, braver now that Sebastian was following.

“I wish you’d put on a shirt,” Emmy said, scanning the surrounding houses for any prying eyes.

“It’s hot.”

“Yeah well, sunburn’s a killer.”

They rounded the corner. Emmy couldn’t hold back. She broke into a jog. There was comfort in hearing Sebastian following.

It could have been her imagination but she sensed the shift in curtains in some of the houses. There was a high chance they were being watched. She did all she could to keep her face blank.

The footpath stopped at the park’s edge. Her mother was there on a tree stump. Kristian held her. He let her cry.

He saw Emmy and Sebastian and pulled back only for an instant.

“Sebastian, go get the van.”

“
I told you,” Emmy muttered.

“I can’t
!” Sebastian called to his father.

“It’s just around the corner. You won’t get caught. I’ll cover for you if we do.”

Sebastian shook his head.

Emmy’s feet were planted.

“You coming with me?” he called to her.

She stood firm, shaking her head slowly, unable to look away from the way Kristian held Ingrid, stroking her hair and whispering in her ear.

“Your choice,” Sebastian said. “It’d be better than standing here watching them.”

Chapter Twenty Three

Outside the wind had picked up. It hummed and moaned through the pine groves. With the glass doors pulled tight, the walls had closed off the outside world in a way that felt cosy. It was rare that Emmy had time with her mother anymore. Going into that old house in Mercy Falls was too much for Ingrid. But it had pushed them together again.

Emmy plopped two marshmallows in each of the hot chocolate. She helped Ingrid sit up, placing a steaming cup in her hand. Her mother’s eyes were puffy and tired, even after a sleep. Emmy settled back into her arm chair nursing her drink, enjoying the warmth.

One sip of the hot drink and her mother smiled at her weakly.

“Good, huh?” Emmy said.

“Nice,” Ingrid said, but her breath shuddered,
as if that one little word was too much.

“You know you don’t have to go back down there ever again. Kristian will fix up the house. He’s doing anything he can to not miss Maya right now.”

Her mother looked at her. The unspoken accusations hung in the air between them. And Emmy regretted it instantly. It wasn’t the time.

“I want it sold,” Ingrid said, eventually.

“I think it’s time,” Emmy said. She wondered who would buy a house the whole town thought was cursed. It would have to be an outsider, someone who didn’t know the history of the owners. Or someone who was willing to knock the house down and start again. It would go for a song.

They drank the hot chocolates in silence. Emmy tucked the blanket around Ingrid again. She knelt beside her.

“Tell me what to do Mum. I miss Maya too. I miss her so much. I get that her death has opened up everything for you again. What can I do?”

Her mother took her time in answering. Emmy gave up waiting. She sat back in the armchair.

“I want you to find something in town you like to do. Anything.”

“Mum – No way. I meant what can I do to help you.”

Ingrid shook her head. “Go sit in the library and read. Go to a movie. Wander around the markets just to look. Go sit by the river.”

“The river? You want me to sit by the river?”

“Just see what it’s like to be around people. Have casual encounters, if you can’t have a friendship.”

Emmy felt a lump forming in her throat.

“I don’t want you to end up like me,” Ingrid added.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Emmy said, knowing it was a lie to the biggest extreme. Her mother had a point. Emmy did not want to struggle like her mother was.

Ingrid shook her head. “Maya was right. She saw things I couldn’t see. But I see it now.”

A part of Emmy was still tempted to argue. The sadness was wrapping itself through her again
. “I miss Maya, Mum.”

Her mother gave a tight
-lipped nod.

“Sometimes I don’t want to get out of bed because she’s not in the kitchen ready to have breakfast with us,” Emmy continued. “But we all feel it and we all get up. Every day. I want to talk about her more.”

Ingrid leant back and closed her eyes.

“Talk to me Mum.”

“I’m tired Emmy.”

Emmy stood up and took the stairs. She flopped into the bed and lay still. Branches tapped at the walls just outside, caught in the wind. She willed her mother to climb the stairs and join her, but she didn’t.

A while later, the van rumbled through the gate to stop outside their cabin. Emmy lay silently in the loft. Kristian and Sebastian clomped onto the porch, kicking off muddy work boots, and stepping into the room.

“Hey,” she heard Kristian murmur.

“How’s it look?” Ingrid said.

“It’ll be another day or so on the garden. I’ve sorted out the furniture though. It’ll be picked up tomorrow. Some of it has to be thrown out.”

“We ordered a skip bin,” Sebastian piped up.

Emmy wondered if the silence meant her mother was crying again or whether no one knew what else to say.

Finally, she heard the rustling of the blanket. “Come to bed,” Kristian said.

Emmy’s stomach twisted. She heard the shuffling towards the front door and it closed. The cabin was empty. And she was alone in that emptiness.

The world outside the walls felt incredibly huge, and with all the wind it seemed wild and untamed. For the longest time, she lay and listened to it.

The door opened and someone came inside. She could tell who it was by the way they walked up the stairs.

Sebastian didn’t say a word. He was freshly showered in boxers and a shirt. He climbed into bed beside her. They lay side by side, not touching, but Emmy felt his warmth. She wanted to reach for his hand. The only thing that stopped her was that he would get a sense of how weak she was feeling.

“Thanks for putting a shirt on,” she said, eventually.

“Well, you know sunburn’s a killer,” he replied.

Chapter Twenty Four

As Emmy stepped into the water, it rushed around her ankles, splashing up her legs. Her feet s
ank into the mud. She tried to free one foot and take a bold step forward, but fell face first, the other foot captured. With a sharp intake of breath she choked, coughed up the water and sat up panting. Remnants of milky vomit scattered away from her, downstream.

But Emmy laughed. The river hadn’t got her. It couldn’t unless she allowed it. The water was fresh and clean, surging with new life. She lay back in it, gripping onto the rocks, allowing it to flow over her. All she needed was time with it.

It wasn’t as though she was the kind of girl that dive-bombed off bridges or went deep cave diving. And there was a deep knowing that she was never alone in the water. Not only were the ghosts with her but she felt Maya right there.

“Whatever is, is
.” She muttered Maya’s wisdom to herself.

She backed up higher onto the rocks, resting in the sun and dipping her feet. She had a strange sense that she was being watched. She spun around. Nobody was there. She chuckled to herself and leaned back on her hands. That’s when her gaze caught on a black figure sitting high on the opposite bank, half concealed by shrubs.

Emmy squatted and backed away. When the figure didn’t move, she wondered if it was her imagination. Conscience was known for its tricks.

*

As they worked at hoeing the new vegetable patch, Emmy became aware that Sebastian had stopped. He stood back checking her over, then leant forward and picked up a lock of her damp hair, tugging on it.

She looked into his eyes and they shared a smirk.

“You’ve been in the river?”

“Don’t tell,” she said.

“Let me just say you’re an idiot.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t worry. No one really notices anything around here anymore,” he quipped, just as Kristian and Ingrid chugged in through the upper gates in the van.

“You noticed,” Emmy snapped, throwing her hoe down and running for the bedroom she used to share with her mother. In the bathroom, she flipped her hair upside down and rubbed at it with a towel.

Through the window, she watched her family unload boxes of seedlings from the van. She ran a comb through her hair. It was still showing signs of dampness, so she twirled it up inside her straw hat and ran out to join them.

*

The dinner dishes had been cleared, washed and put away. At the kitchen table, Emmy was distracted by the way Kristian fiddled with some design ideas for a new wine label. Beside her, resting his head on his pile of text books, Sebastian also watched his father.

All of Kristian’s scratching out and grunting made it hard for Emmy to concentrate on her geography report. She was supposed to have written it weeks ago. All she had was a bunch of notes and a bland title,
Mountains
. She crossed it out and sighed.

“What’s wrong?” her mother asked from the window seat, dropping the newspaper to the floor beside her and reaching for her cup of vegetable soup.

“Who, me?” Emmy asked, but noticing that Sebastian and Kristian were also looking at her.

“If it’s too soon for you to start on your schoolwork, it’s okay to have a break for a month or so. More if you need it,” Ingrid said.

Emmy flicked at the pages of her notebook, considering the offer. Sebastian pushed his books away.

“Not forever,” Kristian interjected.

“I didn’t say forever, Kristian. Just for now,” Ingrid replied.

Emmy shrugged, looking down at the blank paper and piles of scribbled notes. It looked like too much effort. With care, she stapled the respective piles together and slipped them inside her notebook.

Sebastian poured a drink from the open bottle of wine into his coffee cup.

Emmy glared at him.

He shrugged and drank from it.

“Kristian
, you know Maya wanted the label with the wine glass,” Ingrid said.

“It doesn’t look right.”

“Well, what can we do to make it right? I want the wine glass.”

Bored with the wine label talk, Emmy glanced at the newspaper lying on the floor beside her mother’s dangling leg. She stood up and filled a glass with water at the sink. She picked the newspaper off the floor and took it back to the table as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

She flicked through the pages, shifting it so that Sebastian could scan the headlines too. It took everything Emmy had to keep her face bored and unaffected as she skimmed through the pages and read the articles.

Internet Craze: Teens Videoing Violent Attacks…World Fears Pandemic Bird Flu Virus…Terrorist threat: plans greater than 9/11…Man Shot Dead on Doorstep… Two officers Attacked by Drunk Teenagers…Antibiotics: useful or useless?

When she finished she folded it up and pushed it away. Her mother was still locked in wine talks with Kristian. Sebastian stood up. On his way out he shoved the paper into the recycling bin. The door clipped his heel as he left.

*

Later that night, Emmy clumped up the stairs to her bedroom loft. Sebastian was curled around a pillow. She paused. 

“Sebastian?”

“Hmph.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I’m sick.”

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“I’m sick.”

Emmy sat on the bed beside him, pressing her palm to his forehead. “You look a bit white but you don’t feel hot.”
             

Sebastian pulled the pillow over his head
. “Just let me sleep.”

“I can’t find anyone.”

“Kristian and Ingrid are
napping
.”

Emmy shook the image out of her head. She smoothed his hair down
, watching the curls spring back.

“I sure hope Mum isn’t watching us, like you think she is. She wouldn’t be happy,” he said.

“Maya would understand.”

“I don’t.”

“I want to.”

“He wants to wipe Mum out of his life. She wants to have reminders of her everywhere, yet she goes and sleeps with her husband. The grave
’s not even cold.”             

“There’s no grave this time.”

He looked at her.

“Is there?”

“No, Em. There’s no grave. But it’s sick. It’s as though we don’t even exist anymore.”

“Can I l
ie with you?” Emmy asked, feeling sadder.

He nodded
. “If you let me sleep.”

Emmy settled in beside him. His breath was toothpaste fresh. But the wine emanated from his skin.

“I’m having ice cream with Libby tomorrow.”

“I really need to sleep Em.”

She lay with her eyes open, studying the way the beams fitted together on the ceiling.

“Sorry,” Sebastian said. “Have a chocolate scoop for me.”