‘How dare she keep them all this time? How dare she? I’ve been going mad looking for them,’ Rae said, but she didn’t touch the box. ‘Have you looked at them? Read them?’
‘No. I don’t think I have any right.’
‘Do I?’ Rae said and began to sob. Antonello extended his arms and she pressed into him. He couldn’t remember ever hugging his daughter-in-law. They kissed on the cheek occasionally, but it was a habitual greeting, not a demonstration of affection. Antonello liked Rae — she was a loving wife to his son, an excellent mother to his granddaughters, a caring daughter-in-law. She was thoughtful, polite, and warm, but even though they’d known each other for more than twenty years, seen each other several times a week, loved the same people, this was the first time there had been any intimacy between them. He continued holding her until he heard her breathing returning to normal. Then he pulled the chair out so she could sit down.
‘You don’t need to read them now. Maybe later. Maybe never. But they’re yours. They belong to you and Alex.’
They stayed silent for a while, and Antonello sat down next to Rae.
‘I used to be able to deal with anything.’
‘You’re the strongest person I know,’ Antonello said. ‘This is the hardest thing, the worst thing, that could ever have happened to you. But, Rae, you have to decide to live and to continue, to love Jane, and Alex, and the kids at your school, and your life. Otherwise everything will die.’
‘I don’t know if I can do that. I’m scared I can’t. I’m scared if I do that, Ashleigh will disappear, and it’ll be as if she was never here.’
‘Ashleigh will not disappear. Never. Rae, you and Alex and Nicki and everyone, you think I’m hard and detached —’ Rae looked like she might protest, but he continued, ‘We both know it’s true. When the West Gate collapsed, when my friends died, I wanted to kill myself. If it hadn’t been for Paolina, I would’ve done it. And then we had the kids, and suddenly I was a father. I loved them, but I couldn’t get too close. I was so angry and sad and bitter about everything, about Bob and Slav, about all the men who died. I worried about the kids dying, about Paolina dying, about my dying and leaving them alone and fatherless. It wasn’t rational. And what a waste, Rae, what a waste. It didn’t make Bob or Slav’s deaths any easier to deal with, it made it harder, and I made it hard for everyone, harder than it needed to be. You have to find that strength. It’s there, Rae, somewhere. You have to find it, and use it so that you can save your family.’
‘The family is broken. Ashleigh is my first-born. Before her we were a couple, but she made us into a family. It’ll never be the same. Never. She’ll always be missing.’
‘Yes. Every day. There is a permanent gap. There’ll always be sadness and grief. But there can be other things too.’ Antonello stood up. ‘What about a coffee? I’ll make it.’
At this, Rae smiled. ‘Really? Can you make coffee? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at the stove.’
‘Italian men have a reputation to maintain,’ he said, smiling back at her. ‘My mother used to say it brought shame on the woman if the man was seen doing anything domestic. My zia, my mother’s sister — you didn’t meet her but you would’ve liked her, she was a strong woman with a sense of humour — she insisted once that my father make her coffee, but it was so awful she spat it out. I make good coffee, and since Paolina has been sick, I’ve learnt to cook too.’
‘Of course,’ Rae said. ‘Coffee, yes. But I can make it…’
‘No, please, let me,’ Antonello said. He knew his way around Rae’s kitchen, having babysat his granddaughters throughout their childhood.
Rae pulled the box of journals towards her, but didn’t open it. ‘Ashleigh wrote in her journal every day. I’d ask her sometimes: what are you writing? When she was younger, she’d tell me, even read bits out to me. They’d be about what she did at school or pony club. As she got older, she’d tell me to mind my own business. It used to make me so mad. I was her mother. I knew her best, and suddenly she had secrets from me. I was so stupid to get angry about it. I’m a teacher, I know all teenagers have secrets from their parents. We had so many stupid fights.’
When the coffee had finished hissing and gurgling, Antonello poured it into the small antique espresso cups that had belonged to his mother, Emilia. They were dainty and fine, with gold rims. Alex had claimed them when his grandmother died — each of the grandchildren came to claim a memento before the house was cleared and sold. Alex said that whenever he thought of his Nonna Emilia, he pictured her drinking coffee out of one of those cups. Rae had laughed when Alex brought them home, but twenty years later they continued to drink espresso from them.
Antonello passed Rae her coffee and sat down. ‘I can’t imagine what a young girl would find to write about — boys and boring grandparents,’ he said, and Rae laughed. But the box remained unopened between them.
‘I’m afraid… I’m going to leave them,’ Rae said, ‘until Alex gets back. And then we can decide together.’
When Antonello arrived home, he found Paolina asleep in front of the television. She looked serene, and he tiptoed around her. It was amazing, he thought, how hard she found it to sleep at night and how easily she slept in the daytime. She was in her gardening clothes, old jeans and a frayed t-shirt. Her gardening shoes, a worn-out pair of runners, were outside the door. She’d been up early, before him, weeding and pruning in the garden — small jobs she had the strength to do. The breakfast dishes were in the sink, so he washed those and made sandwiches for lunch from the leftover meatloaf in the refrigerator. The meatloaf had been a little dry, but he was learning. Meatloaf and relish — not homemade relish, not anymore, no one seemed to do that anymore. He poured two glasses of water and took everything out to the table in the backyard. When he returned, Paolina was stirring. He sat beside her and put his hand on her cheek.
‘You decided to come home.’ Paolina smiled.
‘Tu sei la mia casa,’ he said as he kissed her gently. ‘And I have made you some lunch.’
‘Handsome, and you can cook. I guess I’ll keep you, Nello.’
Chapter 26
Some days are sprints: time races, and the day seems to end before it has begun. Other days drift, time stretching and expanding, with no end in sight. Mandy’s days were long. Monotonous and repetitive. She longed for change, but the only change on the horizon was Jo’s sentencing, and it would come soon enough.
Jo had spent the afternoon with Sarah, working on her statement for the court case. She could hear them working. When they finished, it was short, a brief apology. A public recognition that the accident was Jo’s fault. A declaration of grief and guilt, of how much Jo missed Ashleigh.
Sarah had left, and Mandy and Jo were sitting on the edge of the back deck, looking across the bush garden, with its native flowers and plants, to the old ghost gum. ‘That tree should be chopped down. One day, one of those branches is going to fall on me when I’m in the backyard, and it’ll kill me,’ Rod, their neighbour, said to Mandy whenever he had the chance.
‘I’m not cutting that tree down,’ she told him, after years of trying to placate him, of trying to convince him the tree was safe.
‘You’re a cruel and careless woman,’ he had said, the last time they spoke about it. This was after the accident, and she understood his reference to it. He was furious, and she’d expected he might finally take legal action, but for months he hadn’t said a word.