803 I love yous later
I PAD down the hallway towards Bronson’s room, shaking my head through a sigh. This happens more often than I can count. I still when I see Clara with her front paws up on the windowsill. I wander to stand beside her, placing my hand on her fluffy brown shoulder as we peer through the glass together. When she rears up on her back paws like this, she is at my height. I had her DNA tested last year. She is part Bernese Mountain Dog and part German Shepherd – both big dogs. Clara is a lot of things. Playful. Loyal. Powerful.
Timid is not one of them.
She is just like Max.
I let him in. . .
I had to work hard to enjoy the thought of him, the memory. At the beginning it was impossible to love him from afar. With that affection came so much pain, so much loneliness. I was terrified for him and what he might have been reduced to. A magnificent lion in a cage, his natural instincts crushed, his every moment at the will of far less impressive beings. I was overwhelmed by sadness.
‘WHILE I’M IN, I need you to be the bravest you have ever been. Don’t disappear in here. Be you. Bubbly. A silly little girl. Soften my brothers’ lives.’
I’M TRYING, Max. I’m trying.
Looking back on that first five months, I suppose I had succumbed to a kind of depression. Every happy event was shadowed by his absence. Seeped into my bones, into marrow, it festered there. I was low. So low I could barely move.
‘I HAD no idea how good it would feel to make you smile. Fuck me, I’d do just about anything to make you smile.’
I WORKED HARD at smiling for him; the sad smile that now accompanies his memories, but a smile, nonetheless.
When Clara acts like Max – broody and protective – I like to imagine him kneeling down and giving her a pep talk about what he expects of her while he is gone. Her floppy puppy ears flipping to the side as she tilts her head, listening intently to her master. I imagine him telling her to cuddle me every night. To lick all my tears away. To growl whenever a stranger approaches me. To bite any male who touches me.
I imagine this a lot.
With my sad smile.
Max is never to be disobeyed; he’d be very proud of her.
Pulled from my thoughts by her wagging tail, I catch the taillights of a car as it pulls away from the house. I scruff her crown, tighten the drawstring around my waist, and finish making my way to Bronson’s room. Without knocking, I push the door open.
‘No mommies,’ I hear her say through a giggle, her voice coming at me from under a canopy of sheets – a blanket forte. The multicoloured fabric hangs like shade sails through the centre of the bedroom with one pegged at the front to create a wall. I press my lips together to stop my grin because I shouldn’t love this so much. I should be firm and consistent with her. I want us to keep to a routine – I really do. All the ladies in my mother’s group say that it is all about a steady routine so that our children feel safe and understand what is expected.
Ugh!
Those ladies don’t have a completely love-struck Nànnu and four Butcher boys constantly stealing their child away – they aren’t that lucky.
We could leave, begin a life of normality. Of structure. Our new house in Brussman is finished, has been for a month now, but I don’t want to be there without him. So having the boys a few metres away, a constant interruption, a constant distraction, is a great comfort to me. Even if it means no rules, chaos, and a lack of schedules.
I run my fingers down my face, still waking up. ‘It’s six. You should be in bed, Kelly. We spoke about this. We don’t leave the room until the sun comes up. Remember the light? Bright out the window?’
Her high-pitched plea meets me again. ‘Uncle Bonson pay.’
I let out a long sigh and try to address the other ‘adult’ in the room. ‘Bronson?’
‘Tell her that I’m a troll,’ Bronson whispers.
She giggles. ‘I. A. Toll.’
‘No, I am a troll,’ he mutters with feigned secrecy. ‘Not you, Outlaw.’
‘Am. A. Toll.’ She tries again.
‘Yeah, he’s a troll alright. Trolling my schedule,’ I murmur through a chuckle. ‘Okay, I’m going to have a shower. Have you at least changed her nappy?’
‘Tell her trolls eat nappies.’ I hear a nom nom nom sound and Kelly burst into a fit of laughter, her broken giggle contagious. He must be pretending to eat her belly or something; I’d recognise that overexcited sound anywhere. Shaking my head with a huge smile etched in my cheeks, I leave them to act like toddlers together.
I nod to myself; at least her nappy is clean.
Or ingested.
After a shower, I get dressed in a pair of black leggings and a dusty-blue shirt and begin my morning ritual. As I sit down on the mattress and pull the bedside drawer out, I can hear Kelly and Bronson wandering down the hallway. She screeches with excitement about something. I dig into the drawer in search of Max’s letter, riffling around to no avail. My chest aches as if a fist has broken into the cavity and is squeezing my lungs. I yank the entire drawer out, dislodging it from its track. I slide onto the floor with it in front of me. Where is it? Why can’t I find it?
I need to cross it off.
Frick, what if Kelly took it? I jolt up and rush through the bedroom door as flashes of Max’s letter in tiny pieces or covered in crayon nearly brings me to my knees. Clara follows me with meaning; she reads me and is on high alert. As I hurry down the staircase, I twist my wedding rings with my thumb, rotating the bands around my finger. A habit that has soothed me since-
‘Daddy!’
I jerk to a stop, my feet and lungs motionless.
Warmth spreads through me and only one person has that effect on me. In my peripherals I can see him, but I don’t dare twist my head in case it’s a lie. A mirage. His face in a shadow. In a crowd. I was so often crippled by hallucinations of him.
Gripping the railing for dear life, I try to stay upright, but my legs lose form and structure and buckle. I don’t look down. Don’t look at him. I hear Clara growl with uncertainty. Her response to the shift in energy, the quickening of my pulse, the gathering of my pieces, all the pieces that have been missing for so long.
Unable to walk or even stand, I just sink down onto the jarrah step. Staring straight ahead, I take a few moments to come to terms with what is happening.
Eight hundred and three?
Is that the last one?
Is he here?
Is it a trick of my eye? I can’t let the fight go.
Slowly, I lower my uncertain gaze and see Max squatting at the bottom of the staircase. I clasp my hands over my mouth, sobbing relentlessly into them.
It’s him; it’s really him.
I know this because he’s. . . different, beautifully so. A lion in the wild – the king of the fricking jungle. He’s wearing jeans and a white shirt, the sleeves bunched up around his biceps ’cause that’s his style. His physique is strong and defined, perhaps slightly leaner than when he left, and that cool smile, oh my God. With those deep-set grey eyes and expressive dark brows set into that masculine face. . . he’s sheer perfection.
Watching him intently, I wonder if he feels my eyes on him like a tangible caress. I wonder if butterflies are dancing in his belly. They are pirouetting in mine.
Kelly has stopped just a few metres away from him. Her wispy golden-blonde hair is in a pile on top of her head. I show her pictures of him every night, saying ‘Goodnight, Daddy. We love you.’ I have told her stories and made him seem almost magical. He’s Santa, The Easter Bunny, and The Tooth Fairy combined – he’s legendary.
She blinks at him, awestruck by his presence. They stare at each other with matching grey-blue eyes. His mouth moves, saying something to her that isn’t audible from where I’m perched. Kelly shuffles slowly over to him, stopping within an arm’s length. They are talking now. She swings her hips nervously from side to side, like she isn’t sure how to act or respond.
I shake my head into my palms, watching the exchange.
Please don’t be asleep.
Fearful I’m in an amazing dream again, I pinch the skin on my forearm, wincing as I do. But my baby girl and my man are still there. . . chatting. She is a talkative little thing when she gets started, reeling off words she learned that day, connecting them in nonsensical ways. He nods as if he understands. When she moves into him and wraps her chubby arms around his neck, he envelops her tightly against him, lovingly, dipping his head into the crook of her neck.
He squeezes his eyes shut, holding them like that for several long beats of my heart. His shoulders move as he tries to control his breaths in and out. The butterflies in my belly are getting dizzy; they really should slow the frick down.
When they release each other, Kelly bands Max’s finger with her little hand, ready to show him the house or the yard or her new trampoline, ready to take him on an adventure. But Max. . . he looks emotionally exhausted by the moment. He grips his forehead before briefly dragging his hand down his face and then across his eyes.
No, wait. . .
Is he crying?
Clara moves to sit beside me and the staircase creaks, the sound steeling my spine, knowing it was loud enough for-
Max drops his hand to his side.
I suck a sharp breath in.
Turning towards the sound, he lifts his gaze up to meet me and I. . . I can’t. His eyes mist over further when they connect with mine. I jump up and run away from him, back down the hall and into our room. I rush into the bathroom, move into the shower, and desperately turn the faucet on. Sitting down on the tiles in my yoga pants and shirt, I let the water create a kind of white noise, soothing me, buying me time.
I wasn’t always brave, Max.
The door opens and I cuddle my knees in tight. Just like the unapologetic menace he is, he walks straight into the shower, clothes and all, and sits down opposite me. His gaze moves like a magnifying glass over me, scorching a trail that feels tangible – traceable. When I finally look up, finding his gaze too hot and distracting to ignore, he’s staring at me with such intensity I am surprised that he hasn’t scarred me.
Swallowing hard, I try to consider what to say. What to- ‘You’re here.’ Well, that was stupid and obvious. . . Well done, Cassidy Butcher. . . ‘You have your clothes on.’
Ugh. Just. . . stop it.
‘So do you,’ he says over the noise of the cascading water. My lip trembles in response to his voice – deep and confident with a hint of gravel and danger. The same voice I hear in my dreams. ‘Look what you made me while I was gone. . . She is fucking incredible. Thank you, little one.’
The water rushes off my head, soaking every inch of me, mingling with my tears. ‘I wasn’t always brave, Max.’
His brows draw a line above his serious gaze. ‘Neither was I.’
I sob desperately a few times, so very thankful to hear he’s still soft, still vulnerable, with me. That was my biggest fear, waiting all this time for him and losing him to the dark anyway. But I haven’t. I see My Max sitting across from me. Our eyes dive into one another, gazes drawn together like magnets. He shakes his head as if the sight of me is so mystifying, so unfathomable, I can’t possibly be real.
The feeling is mutual.
‘You’re so fucking beautiful, Cassidy,’ he says, the break in his raspy voice choking my heart with vicarious agony. I glance down to watch his throat roll, then up again to catch a single tear as it drops from his eye. ‘I’m sorry, little one. I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t here for you.’
Max Butcher.
I leap from my position on the tiles and crawl onto his lap, my hands finding his cheeks, my lips finding his lips, my heart pressing against his heart. His big warm palms massage up my back, gripping me with such need, I whimper, overwhelmed, not having had anyone touch me in such a way for over two years. My body responds to him as if we were once one entity now split in two.
My Max.
The one with all the contradictory pieces that match mine, slotting together like a puzzle of souls. My light into his dark. My nervous into his confidence. My softness into his fierce.
With our chests pressed together, our hearts beating at a collective tempo, we say all the things that are held captive in our emotionally overcome bodies.
We say I missed you, it is over now, are you still soft, are you still fierce, are you still mine, you better still be mine! We say we will never be apart again.
We say never again.
We say all of this with our kiss.
With our needy hands.
With our actions.
THE END
‘TU, sì a chiù bedda carusa ca ancuntrài nda me vita.’
‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.’
