Migrations(49)

A pile of photos slips free and spills all over the carpet. I gasp at the faces staring up at me, a rush of heat filling my cheeks. It’s him, I know it is, because there’s Edith as a younger woman holding a baby, or walking on the beach with a little boy, or chopping vegetables at the kitchen bench with a teenager, or sitting around a campfire with a young man. He has long blond hippie hair in a few, in others it’s been cut very short. His face is handsome and dark-eyed, his mouth wide as though made only to smile.

And there he is with my very pregnant mother. He has his arm around her and she’s laughing at him, and they look so happy, and there is the front paddock behind them, the one I walk through every day to catch the school bus. I don’t realize I’m crying until my parents are wet. On the back in messy handwriting are their names. Dom and Iris, Xmas.

Dom.

I put the precious photo under my pillow and then keep going through the rest of the box. It’s right down the bottom, what I’m looking for, I guess. The explanation, or at least a chunk of it.

Dominic Stewart, twenty-five years old at the age of incarceration.

I stop and stare at the word.

There are other words smattered over the legal documents. My frantic eyes catch and transfer them to my echoing mind, my scattered mind. Long Bay Correctional Complex, Sydney. Life sentence. Standard non-parole period of twenty years. Plea of guilty. Intent to kill. Convicted of murder.

Crack!

I lurch upright. The papers fall from my hands and I scramble to refill the box. That was a gunshot. It doesn’t mean she’ll be back any time soon but I am done with this, with the contents of this box that I should never have opened. I want nothing to do with it, I’ve wasted so much time on it— “Franny!” Edith shouts and then she has opened my bedroom door and is staring down at the mess I’ve made. We are both silent a few beats, and her eyes are the coldest I’ve ever seen them, the most frightening and the most frightened, I think, and then she says, “I’ve shot Finnegan.”

It takes too long for me to process that. “What?”

“Damn beast was chasing away the fox and I didn’t see him in the dark.”

“What? No.”

I peel past her and run outside into the dark. The lambs and their mothers are in the closest paddock, the one between us and the sea. I sprint to the fence post and then stop, breathing heavily. I can’t see much except a dark shape in the distance.

“Thought you might like to be with him when I put him out,” Edith says.

“He’s still alive?”

“Not for long. Bullet went straight through his neck.”

“Can’t we call the vet? Or we could take him there now! Let’s get him in the truck, quickly!”

“There’s nothing to be done, Franny. Come with me or not, up to you.”

“He’s mine, though!” I plead. I’m the one who leads him round and feeds him apples and clips his hoofs and scratches inside his ears even though it makes my hands all black. I’m the one who loves him.

“That’s why I’ve called for you,” she says, and she is so calm and so cold and she doesn’t care about what she’s done, she doesn’t give a shit that she’s just murdered our beautiful old donkey who does nothing but bravely try to protect the little ones in the night.

“You’re a bitch,” I say clearly, and it shocks us both, for I’ve never uttered a bad word to anyone in my life, let alone my terrifying grandmother. “You’re a fucking bitch,” I go on, fueled by rage and grief and impotence. “You did this on purpose. Just like you never told me about Dominic.”

Edith goes through the metal gate, leaving it open for me. She has the rifle in her hand. “Do you want to be with him or not?” she asks as she walks across the grass and down toward the still-breathing body.

But I can’t, I can’t go near him, I’m too frightened of what he will be when he’s gone, what he will look like, what will be left.

“Shut the gate, then,” Edith says.

And I do, and she shoots Finnegan in the head, and it’s so loud, so horrible, that I turn and go to the truck, taking the key from the dash and turning on the engine. I am getting the hell out of here. I’ve driven this truck for the last few years; Edith made me learn, and it doesn’t matter that I don’t have a license or any money or belongings, it doesn’t matter that the photo is still beneath my pillow: I hope it stays there forever, fading and curling and turning to dust before anyone ever sees it again.

A strong hand snakes through the window and snatches the key from the ignition, killing the engine. “Hey!” I snarl. But Edith is already walking back to the house.

I run after her and try to get the key from her hand, panicked and urgent and doesn’t she understand that I have to get out of here, I don’t belong here, I’m suffocating here.

“You want to leave, that’s just fine,” she says, “but you don’t get to take my truck.”

I let out a gasp of frustration, tears flooding my throat. “Please.”

“Things don’t always take the shape you want them to, kid, and we gotta learn to endure that with a bit of grace.”

It humiliates me. I hate her.

She goes inside and I sit on the front porch, sobbing. For my Finnegan, my only friend, and for wishing my mother was here. Edith doesn’t care about me. I think the day I got sent here ruined her life. At least I know now why she hates me so much: I’m a reminder of her rotten son.