drawn a big smiley face on it with black felt-tip pen. We’d pushed the ball into a hole in the middle of our street, so only the top half stuck out, then we’d driven over it again and again, laughing and wobbling on our bicycles. We both knew one of us would fall. That was the whole point. The question was who would first. My brother probably had a bet on with the other kids it would be me. He was right.
The seventh time I drove over the ball that night it burst with a loud ka-boom. I jumped. The bike swayed, my hands hit the brakes too hard and I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground.
Tom laughed until he heard me crying and saw the blood on my knees. He jumped off his bike and ran over.
“Gross,” he said, looking at my leg.
I cried harder, big fat tears rolling over my cheeks.
“I can see a bone,” he said and I gasped, then howled. Tom laughed again. “Nah. It’s a pebble.”
“Not funny,” I wailed.
He grinned at me. “You’d better stop crying or Mum will cut your leg off.”
I wiped my runny nose with the back of my hand, leaving a wet streak from my knuckle to the middle of my arm. “Not crying. Help me up.”
Despite Tom being a year younger, he was already freakishly tall and strong, too. He put his hands around my waist and pulled me up. I tried to ignore the blood leaking out of my knees and running down my legs, staining my dusty socks.
“I’ll take your bike,” Tom said. “Okay?”
“S’fine,” I said and limped home. And that’s when we saw Dad coming out of the house with a suitcase in each hand. He looked up at us and stopped walking, then put the luggage down and held out his arms.
“Where are you going?” Tom said as he hugged Dad.
“Away for a while.”
“Can I come?”
“No, little fella.” Dad ruffled my brother’s hair. “You need to stay here. Look after your mum and your sister for me.”
I looked at my father, frowned when I noticed the tears in his eyes. “When are you coming back, Daddy?”
My father pulled both of us close and kissed the tops of our heads. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. Soon.” His eyes quickly traveled toward the front door. “I’d better go.”
He released us from his grip and stuffed the suitcases in the trunk of our old VW Beetle. Another hug, another smile. More promises he’d see us soon, and then he left, sticking his arm out of the rolled-down window, waving as he drove away.
It was only as he disappeared around the corner that I realized he hadn’t stopped to question the blood running down my leg, hadn’t asked if I was okay.
Tom and I raced inside to find Mum where we’d left her, sitting at the kitchen table, which had already been cleared and wiped down. When she looked up at us, her face void of expression and with what appeared to be a fresh coat of makeup, the only thing she told us was, “Time for bed.”
* * *
“I suppose Dad must have had his reasons for not contacting us,” Tom said quietly, snapping me out of the memory and back to the coffee shop.
I smiled at him. Tom, my baby brother who was exactly a year younger than me—to the day. He’d spent his first few weeks in an incubator because he’d arrived two months early. When he told people it was because he’d been in a rush to meet his big sister, it made me feel so proud.
I was about to reply when the elderly couple got up. The man pointed at the change he’d left on the table next to their used plates and cups, and they both waved at us as they walked out, leaving the shop empty except for me and Tom.
“Mum probably told him never to set foot on her doorstep again or she’d turn him into a toad or something.” I shrugged. “Or maybe he just didn’t care.”
“Do you think he’s still alive? People don’t disappear like that, do they?”
“Well, with the amount of money Mum said he owed... I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out one day.” I patted his arm. “In any case, she still lives in the same house, so it’s not like we’re difficult to find.”
The coffee shop door opened, and Liam stepped inside, his shirt speckled with rain droplets. As he walked toward us, my heart thumped against my rib cage like a beating drum.
“Ask him to move in with you, or I’m telling,” Tom hissed out of the corner of his mouth.
“Do that and you’ll go straight to hell,” I whispered back through clenched teeth.
“No worries, Shabby,” Tom said with a laugh. “I’ll see you down there.”
I laughed, too, as I hugged Liam, thinking there was no way Tom would ever go to hell.
But something inside me whispered that I probably would.
“HAVE YOU SEEN anyone from next door lately?” I asked Zac and Liam as we cleared up after dinner together, me putting leftovers in the fridge, Liam washing up and Zac—under usual duress—haphazardly drying the dishes. Neither of them responded at first so I asked the question again.
Zac shrugged. “I see Sarah at school sometimes.”
“Oh, do you?” I said in an attempt to be the fun mum, which backfired immediately.
“It’s not like that,” he said with a huff, puff and eye roll. “I mean I see her around. In the corridors and stuff.”
“You could walk to school together,” I said. “You might have something in common.”
As Zac turned and put the glass dish on the counter I saw him meet Liam’s eye. “We’re not five, Mum,” Zac said. “You’ll be trying to arrange playdates for me next.”
Liam chuckled quietly, and I clenched my teeth. Why couldn’t he be on my side? It hurt when he made me feel like the odd one out. As for Zac, I was almost used to his verbal jabs and remembered being the same with both my parents at his age, but I missed him being the cuddly little boy he’d once been, always willing to wrap his arms around me like Mr. Tickle, whether his friends were watching or not. Time had passed so quickly, and these days I was lucky to get a hug on Christmas morning. My son was growing up, pulling away from me—and rightly so—and yet the legitimate distance it created between us hurt like sandpaper on an open wound.
I smiled breezily and looked at Zac with my head tilted to one side. “Playdates, that’s a good one. No, I just meant that I think Sarah’s—”
“Nancy,” Liam said, and I thought he was about to ever so politely tell me to back off, but he did a one-eighty. “I thought I’d take you out for dinner over the weekend.”
“That would be lovely.” I smiled back, a bit
