The Sea Sisters (14 page)

‘I remember Mia had an accident. I remember you were looking after her.’

He patted his hands against the pockets of his trousers, looking for something – a cigarette, she guessed – and seemed agitated when he couldn’t find it. He moved to the glass dining table at the edge of the kitchen and pulled out a chair and sat heavily. He interlocked his hands and rested them on the table. When he spoke, he focused on the space between his arms, which made his head hang – a man already defeated. ‘You need to know what happened that night? How I could have left? How I could have stayed away all these years? I’ll tell you – it’s right that you should know. But first, you need to understand that it’s never as simple as one event, one person, one decision.’

She waited.

‘I never wanted to be a father.’ He looked up to gauge her reaction, but she gave none, so he continued. ‘I enjoyed my life too much to give it all up. When Grace fell pregnant with you, I think she believed she could change me. Maybe I hoped she could, too.’ He glanced beyond the French doors at the sound of a lawnmower firing up.

‘The night of the accident, your mother and I had argued over Mia. I’d been away a lot – you know I was in music?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sometimes I used my work as an excuse to get away. I didn’t spend enough time with you or Mia.’ He scratched the back of his neck. ‘Particularly, Mia.’

It seemed an odd remark, but Katie linked her hands together and let him continue.

‘Your mother had arranged for me to look after Mia – the two of you were off on a trip somewhere.’

‘Ballet,’ she said. ‘We went to the ballet.’

‘That’s right. Your mother and I fought before she left, and Mia – God, she always seemed so sensitive to anything like that – screamed from the moment the front door closed. Maybe you’ll think me ridiculous, but it was as if she knew, just knew, that I didn’t want to be there.’ He picked up his glass and took a drink.

‘What happened?’

‘I couldn’t stop her crying. I tried holding her, giving her a bottle, reading to her. Nothing worked. I thought I’d leave her for a few minutes, see if she’d settle herself. So I got a whisky and took it down to the bottom of the garden. It was the only place I could hear myself think.’

She watched as he found a forgotten cigarette in his shirt pocket and lit it hastily, a tremor noticeable in his fingers. He drew in a breath and then moved to the French doors, opening them and exhaling outside.

‘I will never know how she managed it – God, she was only two! – but Mia somehow got herself out of that cot. I hadn’t closed the back door and she found her way into the garden. I’m ashamed to admit, one glass of whisky had turned into more. I didn’t even notice her.’ He shook his head. ‘At the old house, you might remember, you could walk alongside it out onto the street.’

Katie nodded.

‘That’s what Mia did. I’ve no idea why. Maybe she was trying to follow the direction of your mother’s car. Who knows?’

Katie hadn’t heard any of this before. Her palms felt damp. She couldn’t shake her sisterly concern for Mia’s safety – even though the worst had already happened. She unlocked her hands and pressed them against her thighs.

‘There was a motorcyclist, a guy who turned out to be the husband of your mother’s dentist – something like that. The police said he was going fast. He wouldn’t have seen her until the last moment. He swerved. Came off his bike. As the bike spun free it glanced off Mia.’

She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering her sister in the hospital bed, white gauze taped across the gash in her temple, which would later scar into a silver crescent.

‘The police came to the house.’ He put out the cigarette on the door frame and flicked the stub onto the deck, pushing it between a gap in two boards with his heel. ‘It was very sobering. I felt … well, it’s difficult to describe how you feel when you know that you’ve put a child’s life at risk. The guilt is immense.’

The smell of the cooked bacon had lost the fullness of flavour and gone sour, greasy. Katie’s stomach turned.

‘The police took me to the hospital, but I couldn’t face going into Mia’s room. I watched from the corridor when you and your mother arrived.’ He closed his eyes, as if drifting back to the memory. ‘You both pinned yourselves to Mia’s side, squeezing onto her bed. You held her hand the whole time.’

Katie remembered that now. There was a tiny needle going into the fine skin on the back of Mia’s hand. She’d had to hold her fingers very carefully so as not to knock it.

‘When your mother came into the corridor to speak to me – even before she’d said a word – I knew it was over.’ He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘She had been a generous wife to me; she’d forgiven so much in the past. I think, in time, she might even have forgiven the accident. What she couldn’t forgive, though, was that I didn’t go to Mia’s bedside. She said, and I will always remember this, “If it had been Katie in that hospital bed, you would have been with her.”’

From the doorway, Mick looked directly at her. ‘She was right.’

Katie brought a hand to her mouth, astonished. He had voiced a suspicion of favouritism that she’d harboured even as a child, sensing a lack of love in the blurred memories of how he had treated Mia. She remembered that he would let Katie sit with him to watch cricket, while Mia was always kept at a distance. He would occasionally laugh with Katie if she judged his mood right, but Mia’s gurgles and smiles couldn’t draw any warmth. She recalled her mother, so protective of Mia, threading her arms around her and telling her how loved she was, as if there was some doubt.

‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’

He ran the back of his hand along his forehead, wiping away the moisture. ‘Perhaps a better man would have overcome his jealousies. I was desperate to love you both equally, I truly was,’ he implored. ‘But I could never get past the fact that Mia wasn’t mine.’

Her world slowed down to contain only his last words:
Mia wasn’t mine.

*

The blood drained from Katie’s face and her legs felt weak. She gripped the edges of the sink behind her. ‘I don’t under—’ but she did understand. She saw it all clearly now. ‘You are not Mia’s father.’

The surprise was his, too. ‘I thought you knew?’

She shook her head.

‘But you … you said Mia had told you about her visit?’

‘I read it. Her journal. She wrote that she came here – you sent her away.’

His eyes widened. ‘She came back – it was a few days later.’ He put both hands behind his neck. ‘Jesus! I can’t believe you didn’t know.’ He paced onto the deck, then turned back towards the doorway as if unsure where to anchor himself. ‘When Mia came here the second time she was angry. She wanted answers. I either had to shut the door on her again, or give them to her.’

A wave of nausea swirled in Katie’s stomach. She spun to face the sink and took slow breaths through her nose. Somewhere within the house the shrill ringing of a phone began. Neither of them moved. When the phone stopped she turned to face him. ‘Am I your daughter?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘You are.’

The truth tasted bitter. She imagined Mia learning this, the discovery shattering the foundations of her family. Katie despised Mick suddenly – couldn’t bear to be near him. Her chest felt tight. She needed space to think.

‘I am sorry for all of this,’ he offered, and she could see that he was.

She left the kitchen and moved along the hallway, eager to leave.

‘Katie—’

She paused, but didn’t turn.

His voice was tentative as he asked, ‘Will I see you again?’

She turned then and looked at him. He was no longer the exuberant but aloof presence from her childhood memories; he was a man approaching sixty who had been absent for most of her life. Katie had done her growing up with a mother and sister she adored. He was too late. She shook her head.

Mick sucked in his lips, nodding.

All that mattered to her now was understanding how Mia had felt. She pushed through the front door and, by the time she reached the driveway, she was running.

She ran as swiftly as she could in the direction of the hostel. She passed a woman walking two grey dogs on bright red leads, a surf shop where boards stood in a rack waiting to be hired, a tourist speaking into a payphone in a language she didn’t recognize. The heat engulfed her as she ran, turning her feet damp in her sandals and making her dress cling against her thighs. Eventually she reached the hostel and burst into her dorm, ignoring a young man talking into a headset on his laptop.

She yanked Mia’s journal from the backpack and set it on her bunk. She flicked to the page she’d read up to this morning and pushed aside the ripped photo – Mia, with Katie no longer in the same frame. She kept turning the pages, skimming over a dinner Mia had with Finn, and past a visit to the airport when they couldn’t afford to change their tickets, and then onto a small sentence that had been circled: ‘
I need to see him again
.’

Katie turned the page slowly, her heart in her mouth. This could change everything. This truth Mia was about to learn would rock even the strongest person. But if that person was already vulnerable, had already lost her mother, and felt things so deeply you could read her heart on her face, would this be enough to trigger a downwards spiral that took her so low, it seemed there was no way out?

M
ia felt as if the room were filled with water and she was sinking, breathless. Her vision darkened. She tried to suck in air but all she swallowed were Mick’s words:
You are not my daughter.

Half an hour earlier she had been eating French toast at a breakfast bar with Finn and talking about their plans for Australia. Mid-sentence, Mia stopped short. Across the street she had seen Mick. He was carrying a box of groceries and had paused to talk to a man with a thinning ponytail. Mick said something, the other man laughed, and then they walked on separately. She watched him cross the road and return in the direction of his house.

Finn, who had followed her gaze, asked, ‘Is that him?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should speak to him.’ She was surprised by the firmness in his tone and when she turned, she saw his jaw was set.

‘I can’t.’

‘I will, then,’ he said, standing.

‘What are you doing?’

‘The guy is an arsehole, Mia. You’ve travelled all this way.’

‘Finn, don’t,’ she said, her hand on his arm.

He looked at her for a long moment. Then his face softened. ‘Sorry, it’s not my place. I just hate seeing you upset.’

After visiting Mick four days ago, Mia kept catching herself in imagined conversations, airing all the things she wished she’d said. She owed it to herself to stop imagining and act. ‘You’re right. I do need to talk to him.’

Leaving her knife and fork splayed on her plate, she said, ‘I’ll meet you back at the hostel.’

She jogged lightly to Mick’s house with the sun prickling at the back of her neck. When she arrived, she ignored the bell and rapped three times on the front door. A moment later, Mick answered, holding a punnet of tomatoes.

‘Mia.’ He didn’t look surprised to see her, more resigned as if he was about to undertake a task he’d hoped to avoid. ‘I think we need to talk.’

They had moved through to the kitchen where the box of groceries waited on the counter beside a packet of pasta and two courgettes. Mick put down the tomatoes and faced her.

This time, Mia did not lose her voice. It was strong and level as she said, ‘I want you to know that I haven’t come to Maui to ask you to be a father to me – I’ve come here to understand why you left. I deserve that, at least.’

‘You do.’ He looked at her closely. ‘I’m only afraid you won’t like the answer.’

She waited.

‘Perhaps we should sit down.’

‘What is it?’ she said, not moving an inch.

Mick squeezed the bridge of his nose. ‘I am sorry, Mia, but you are not my daughter.’

And that was how it came out.

‘Here,’ Mick said, taking her by the elbow, ‘you need air.’ He led her onto the decking and helped her into a chair. She bent forwards, putting her head between her knees. Mick opened the parasol in the centre of the table, casting her into shade.

He fetched a glass of water and placed it in front of her. She sat up slowly and lifted it to her lips.

Mick pulled out a chair opposite.

‘Katie?’ Her voice was small. She had lost the thunder and conviction of earlier.

He nodded. ‘She’s mine.’

Katie was his. She wasn’t.
Mick stood between them like an impossible divide.

‘I had always thought your mother would have told you.’

Of course her mother had known. How could she have kept this from her?

‘When you came here a few days ago,’ Mick said, shaking his head, ‘I was staggered you thought I was your father.’

She remembered his shock when she announced, ‘I’m Mia. Your daughter.’

‘I feel terrible for asking you to leave. I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t my place to tell you the truth when Grace hadn’t. Pathetic, I know.’