‘You’re not built for someone like him. Fuck, you just said yourself that you’re not really built for anyone. You’re so busy and overstrung. He’d be like a puppy at your feet, always in your way, always fighting for attention you don’t have time to give!’
Rae stumbled back, horrified by just how brutal Martha’s words were, even if there was no bite to them. That made it worse, somehow. She wasn’t saying this to hurt Rae. She was saying it because she truly believed it.
‘What if you think this is real because you’ve never had anything real,’ Martha continued, ‘when really, it’s just a moment of madness brought on by your career crisis?’
‘Don’t throw that back in my face! Struan has been there for me through all of it!’
‘And I haven’t?’ she retorted. ‘Just stop. Get it out of your system if you have to, and then go back to being my best friend.’
‘I can’t be hisandyours?’ Rae questioned.
Martha’s chin tilted stubbornly. ‘No, I don’t think you can.’
‘Even if Ilovehim?’ Rae hadn’t been prepared to say it, hadn’t been prepared to even think it, but it spilled out of her without permission. The unbridled, merciless truth. Her hand rose to her tight chest, the very centre of her anguish.
Martha worked her jaw, kicking the bottom slat of the fence with furious force. ‘You’re telling me you’re in love, now? I thought… Jesus,I thought that you were the one permanent thing in my life.’
‘I still am, Martha. Loving him doesn’t make me love you any less.’
‘But it changes everything.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. Rae tasted acid. ‘He’s mybrother. Why couldn’t you have picked someone else,anybodyelse?’
Because therewasno one else. There never had been.
But the same could be said for Martha. They’d survived secondary school, university, long distance. Rae had loved her for most of her life, and she had no intention of stopping. If she had to choose between them, it would be her. They had too much history. Martha was home in so many ways.
Even now, when it hurt, it was because Martha had never filtered herself with Rae. That honesty was cruel, but it was a blessing, the mark of two people who could be unapologetically themselves with each other.
Rae swallowed a sob, turning her face away from the low sun rays pouring over the field. Away from Martha.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’ve been selfish. We both knew it could only go so far.’
‘So it’s over with him?’
Rae’s heart shattered into a thousand glass shards. She already knew the answer, already heard the slam of a door closing, and felt that sound ricochet right into her bones. Her grip on the fence grew so tight that splinters dug into her palms.
She needed the sting to choke out her next words.
‘Yes. It’s over.’
35
Rae had never been as terrified as she was the day of her father’s surgery, muscles locked tight as she sat in the waiting room with Myra. She remembered doing this once before during his first bowel resection, when she’d been so young that Gran had led her down to the hospital cafeteria, treating her to a fudge chocolate brownie to take her mind off things. It hadn’t worked then, just as Myra’s forced small talk didn’t work now.
Her phone vibrated, cutting through Myra’s tales about Harper and Fraser’s honeymoon in Italy. She considered ignoring it until she saw the caller ID. Struan. She needed to hear his voice. Had needed it since the minute he’d left, but now more than ever.
She excused herself, heading around the corner into a wide hallway, where she could hide among the potted ferns.
‘Hi,’ was about as much as she could force out when she answered.
His voice was just as strained. ‘I know I’m not supposed to be calling, but a text didn’t feel like enough.’
‘It’s okay. I’m glad you did.’
‘Have you had any news yet?’
She shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see her. She wished he could. Wished she was locked away in the cupboard in his arms, where she’d felt safe. The knowledge that it would never happen again sliced through her. Her fifteen-minute crying rule was no longer being upheld at all on account of all the uncontrollable tears she’d shed recently, and she hated how fragile she felt now, unable to keep her emotions at bay when once they’d been tucked perfectly into a box labelledLater.
‘No, but he’s only been in for an hour. The surgeon was nice.’
