to the kitchen. Searching the cupboards for something to drink, her hands slipped on a half-bottle of cheap bourbon. She poured herself three fingers. After the second cup, she did away with the glass and downed the bottle.
Eve tried to shove her mother away from her in the back of the car. Her father continued to shout from behind the wheel of the car. Eve’s anger spiked as the car came to a sudden halt, her father’s foot on the brake. There was something about the way he turned back, the distant pinpricks of light in his pupils, the rumbling of tyres against the road. She tried to yell at her father to move the car, but her mouth clamped shut. Eve lurched forward from the back seat just as the truck hit them side on, a look of terror on her mother’s face. Time slowed. Her scream caught in the fabric of memory. Her father’s head crashed through the window, his loose seatbelt growing taunt around his neck. She lifted her arm forwards, but her movements were too slow. From all directions, glass struck at her. The car rammed against a pole. A piece dislodged and cut through her father. He slumped, motionless. She looked down at her left leg. It twisted at the wrong angle. She gritted her teeth and tried to straighten the bloodied mess. Her mother’s glassy eyes caught her attention. She tried to scream, to call, to say her name. Nothing came out. Blood ran from her mother’s lips as she parted them for the last time. ‘You did this.’
Eve woke, blinded by the memory of her mother’s face. She stumbled to the bathroom, barely making it to the sink before she threw up the cheap bourbon. She wiped her mouth with a shaky hand and stared back into the mirror. Her eyes unsettled by something deep down within her. She lifted up the hem of her old T-shirt and touched the scars that tore across her body. Eve made her way back to her bed and collapsed, a heap of limbs and mumblings as sleep overtook her. A warm black sleep. Without mothers, without fathers, without sound.
Chapter 6: Execution
Eve dressed quickly. She grabbed for clean clothes as rays of morning sunlight cast strange shadows across her unmade bed. She stretched her hand into the light and tried to hold it. As her fingers warmed, she spread them wide and apart. A buzzing from her phone pulled her away from the window.
‘Hey kid. How are you?’
‘Same as always. Just heading to work now.’
‘What’s wrong? You don’t … you sound—’
Eve silently cursed her sister for knowing her too well. She was the only person who, since childhood, could see beyond her pallid exterior. It drove Eve crazy. Eve remembered when she had come home from school one day, upset and moody. Without needing to ask, Anna had taken her into her arms and told her that unkind children grew into unkind adults.
But it was different now, Eve thought, as Anna asked her again what was wrong.
‘Nothing. You’re just paranoid.’
‘Eve, I can hear everything in your voice.’
‘Well, this time, your powers of intuition have failed.’
‘I am not hanging up until you tell me,’ Anna persisted.
‘Then I’ll just hang up.’
‘You know I’ll just ring back. You may be stubborn, but I taught you how to be stubborn.’
‘I dreamed about them again,’ Eve blurted. She paused on the pavement.
‘Still?’ Anna asked.
‘That night … the night, it just …’ Eve shook her head. ‘Replayed.’
‘Maybe you should go back to talking to someone?’
Eve swallowed. ‘I can’t go through that again. I won’t.’
‘I just … I don’t want you to feel alone.’
‘I’m living in the city that never sleeps and I have you … I’m never alone,’ Eve lied, as she tried to lighten the mood. ‘I’ve gotta go. We’ll talk later.’
Eve left out what her what her mother had said to her, the weight of her words still ringing in her ears. She steadied herself against the cool brick of a store-front. ‘Pathetic,’ she muttered, as she swallowed back tears.
A flock of birds flew overhead. Eve closed her eyes and imagined the flight – the wind so high up, the taste of the clouds. Her breathing slowed to a calmness. Eve pushed the dream away with every step she took. With each push from a stranger into her side, she slid the memory away, causing it to sink lower than her footsteps.
‘And so it begins,’ Eve whispered to the empty store, as she breathed in the dust and scent of old vinyls.
Laura threaded her shoes. The knot stuck out at an odd angle. She bent to retie it, somehow thinking her encounter with Eve would be easier if she could control the aesthetic of her footwear.
‘I can’t believe you are seriously doing this for some girl,’ Deb said, an air of annoyance in her words.
Laura shrugged and straightened her blouse, smoothing out creases that weren’t there.
‘I’ve never seen you like this. Seriously, what has got into you?’
Laura shook her head, not quite knowing herself. ‘I don’t know why, just thinking about her is doing this to me.’
‘Two words, my dear. Mid-life crisis.’
Laura walked across her kitchen to the windows. She leaned her forehead against the glass. The solidity of it, the cool that spread down her forehead, fused a focused energy in her. She pictured Eve through closed eyes, the way her shirt had hung loose on her body the last time they talked, her eyes, her laugh. She didn’t know why, but she needed to be close to her, to see the same world she saw. Deb’s hand clasped her back, snapping her out of the daydream.
‘I think we had better go now.’
‘Yes,’ Laura agreed. ‘Let’s go.’
‘This is, by far, one of the strangest things I’ve ever done.’ Deb slung her handbag over her arm.
‘This was your idea.’
‘I know, but I didn’t think you would actually agree to it.’
Laura could feel the elevator sliding past each floor. She counted the clicks in her bones. The way the metal slotted downwards at the press of a button.
‘What if she recognises me? From the show?’ Deb asked.
‘She didn’t even know who I was. I doubt she’ll know who you are.’ Laura pretended not see Deb’s wounded stare as the elevator doors opened onto the foyer.
Eve slumped against her stool. The beginnings of a headache had begun to throb behind her eyes, somewhere between the fourth rude customer who had graced her presence today and the late shipment of records they now wouldn’t be getting until next week. Her eyes lingered on the doughnuts Al had attacked earlier in the morning, and her thoughts drifted to Laura, wondering if she would come in again today.
Eve found her mind replaying old memories, like the day she applied for the job in the store. She had escaped into the store as a cover for a sudden rain. Drenched
