She looks at me and I can’t read her expression.
‘It was his fault. Not yours.’
Kelly stares at me for a long time and then exhales. She turns off the tap. ‘I think I’ll go lie down for a bit before I have to head out. Keep things quiet, won’t you?’
‘Alright.’
Kelly goes inside and I sit by the fishpond. I set my jaw, close my eyes and reach for my phone. I want to call Clem. I want him to tug my shirt and call me Price. Instead, I lie down next to the fishpond and watch the sky until my eyes start to water.
***
A couple of days later Kelly comes home from work, loaded with takeaway food containers and champagne. Sometimes I notice her staring at me, as though trying to puzzle out what she’s supposed to do with me; what I’m doing here, in her house. Whenever I try to talk with her, she brushes me off. I think of the letters she’s written – over so many years. I get the feeling I’m a disappointment. That she’d long imagined me into somebody else, the same way I’d imagined her.
‘We’re going over to Mary’s,’ she says, as though she hadn’t told me twice last night and three times over breakfast.
The drive to her sister’s is quiet. Kelly listens to an obscure radio station with people discussing things in very moderate, calm voices. She nods a lot. Her hands tighten on the steering wheel as we get closer.
‘You okay?’ I ask.
‘Fine, fine. Just – Mary ended up buying a street away from where we grew up. I don’t come back here very much. Normally she comes to Lockwood, but she wants me to see her kitchen renovation.’
Mary’s house is nestled next to the oval of a high school. It has a white paling fence and a little wooden seat next to the front door. Kelly takes a deep breath. ‘I went to that school,’ she says, her voice very flat.
‘Really?’ I crane my neck.
‘Let’s go in. The food’s going to get soggy.’
Mary’s waiting for us on the verandah. She kisses both my cheeks and my forehead and then holds me for a very long time. ‘Oh, you beautiful, beautiful girl,’ she says, until Kelly prises her off me, steers her into the kitchen and gives her a cold glass of champagne. ‘You’re so tall!’ Mary says.
I study Mary over dinner. She’s a real estate agent. She has long brown hair, very long eyelashes and startlingly red lipstick. She’s taller than Kelly but still much shorter than me. She has a wiriness about her that makes me think she must always be moving.
I can see myself in her much more than I see myself in Kelly. I pick over the sushi, thinking about how much Clem hates it. Mary talks about vinyl countertops and undermounted sinks, and I’m relieved when she finishes. It seems strange to me, that you’d spend so much time and money on something that doesn’t need fixing.
‘Oh, I just can’t believe it!’ Mary says for the tenth time.
‘Mary, you’re being ridiculous,’ Kelly mutters.
‘I’m not! This is a big deal. Do you know how much I’ve thought about you over the years?’ Mary leans across the table. ‘I knew you were a girl. Didn’t I tell you she was a girl, Kell?’
‘Yeah, you always said she was a girl,’ Kelly says, rolling her eyes. ‘Before you were born, Stell, she wouldn’t shut up about you being a girl.’
‘How’d you know?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I dreamed about you,’ Mary says. ‘I still remember the dreams. There were fairies everywhere.’
‘Stop talking, Mary.’
‘Sorry.’ Mary drums the table with her fingers. ‘I’ve always wondered about you, hoped you were well, that sort of thing. I used to imagine meeting you. I always figured we’d be best friends.’
I smile. It’s strange to think that there’s been this stranger wondering about me and imagining me for my whole life while I had no idea she even existed. It makes me feel weirdly guilty.
‘Did your mum tell you? About being adopted?’ Mary asks. I see Kelly tense up. We don’t mention the A-word. It’s just been easier to pretend we’re distant relatives or something. Thinking of Kelly as my mother just feels weird.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘From when I was really young. I always knew I was adopted, but I didn’t know about the letters.’
Mary glances at Kelly. ‘Letters?’
Kelly studies the wall. ‘Just some letters I wrote to her.’
‘You wrote Stella letters? Oh, that makes me so happy! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I never got a reply!’
Mary glances at me, looking almost embarrassed.
‘I was little, that’s all. My mum thought I couldn’t handle it. She didn’t tell me about them. I only worked it out late last year.’
‘It was a long time to wait,’ Kelly says so quietly that I’m not sure I’ve heard her right.
‘How?’ Mary asks. ‘How’d you work it out?’
‘Well, I was getting all my emergency documents out of my mum’s desk . . . I wanted to make copies and keep them a safe distance from the originals.’
Mary snorts. ‘My God – she really is yours, Kell.’
‘And then I saw my birth certificate, so I had Kelly’s name sort of on my brain. And then I got the letters out of the letterbox and I never get letters, so I wouldn’t have bothered checking them, but I saw Kelly’s name on the back of one of the envelopes. And it was fresh in my mind, so it caught my attention. Otherwise, I would’ve just dumped them all on the table for my parents without checking and I guess Mum would’ve put the letter with all the others.’
‘Fate,’ Mary says very contentedly. ‘That’s fate.’
‘There’s no such thing,’ Kelly says.
Mary ignores her and pours more champagne.
‘There’s not, Mary. It’s all coincidence. All of it.’
‘Right.’ Mary turns away from Kelly and settles back in her chair with her champagne. ‘So, tell me about your life. You’re in Sutherbend, right?’
‘Yeah. Sutherbend. There’s my mum and my dad and my sister, Taylor. We’ve just . . . downsized.’
Mary smiles at me. ‘What sort of place did you downsize to?’
‘Um . . .’
‘They moved to Fairyland,’ Kelly says flatly.
‘Fairyland? The place that had the meth lab blow-up?’
‘It’s really not like that,’ I say. ‘That guy was trying to get money for his sick brother.’
Mary and Kelly both look at me.
‘The people there are really great! This dog got bitten by a snake and there was a huge vet bill that everyone put in for. Even the guy who hates the dog because the dog digs up his potatoes.’
‘There are snakes there?’ Mary puts her glass down on the table.
‘Only in the long grass,’ I say impatiently. ‘Anyway. One lady lent me all these books – she was a lecturer at university, but got involved with the wrong guy. And there’s this other lady who has a motorcycle – her husband left her a few years ago.’
Kelly shakes her head.
‘Oh, here we go,’ Mary says, settling back in her chair.