Page 66 of Their Broken Legend

“Most things worth feeling do.”

A tapat the door causes me to bury my face in the pillow. Then, a voice hesitantly sails in, “Kaya, sweetheart, can I come in, please?”

I’m surprised when I say, “Yes,” but mentally trump it up to exhaustion and the fatigue of my heart. I twist my face just enough to see the door open; my cheek still mashed into my pillow.

“I have your laundry.” Mum walks inside, a woven basket held in front of her with my shirts, jeans, and dresses ironed and folded in pristine colour-coded stacks.

I don’t move as I watch her fluff around the room, her back to me. “Heaven knows I wasn’t going to use these laundry machines on yourHenry LeF’oshirts, so I had them cleaned properly.”

Unsmiling, I say, “Cool.”

“I also have this”—she approaches me slowly and places a picture frame down on the bedside table, directly against my tear-blurred gaze— “I thought you might want it.”

She lingers as I push up to one arm and stare at the picture. A moment in time captured. My dad and a nine-year-old me in the woods with bandanas on, searching for critters.

She continues gently, “I thought this would make you smile. Make you feel like he’s not so far away.” She pauses, her silence becoming an exhale. “You both look so dirty, but I know you don’t care.”

This is an olive branch.

I purse my lips, squinting at the image, remembering that holiday for all the wrong reasons. But I somehow forgot or didn’t quite understand at the time, not enough to carry the memory into adulthood, to reanalyse it with a mature perspective.

My dad came home early on a Thursday and told us all he missed us and that we should go on a vacation.

It was one of the best holidays we ever had as a family. Better than Hawaii. Better than Bora Bora. The Australian outback and us. We toasted marshmallows. I had a two-prong stick so I could cook multiple mallows at once.

Mum even ate them, though not directly off the wood. My dad was fawning after her the entire time.

She was smiling a lot.

But the day we got back,she—mistress number one—was waiting on our marble steps with a swollen stomach. I didn’t understand anything then.

“I saw.” My mum’s voice slides into the memory, clearing the hazy vision and awakening something. I didn’t see it before. That he wasn’t a great dad. Not really.

She presses her hand to her chest—her signature gesture—her fingers tangled in her necklace. I always found that conceited, like she was checking the valuable item was still there. Today, though, it looks coy and hesitant. “Well, I didn’t see, but Mary St Clair’s cousin’s sister showed her the reel or whatever it is called of you and the boxer…” She pauses, and I inhale fast. Waiting for a lecture on decorum, appropriate behaviour, and tossed over a boy’s shoulder on camera is not ideal press, but it doesn’t come. “The boy who is now in the hospital. Am I right?”

I stare at the cracking plaster.

“I’m sorry, Kaya.” She touches my hair, comforting, and I want to press back, take more warmth, but she retracts her hand, forgetting that we don’t do that. I forgot, too. “That’s the same boy who was fixing chains to our doors earlier this week. Wasn’t it? Do you want to talk about him?”

I do. I don’t. I bite back a sob. “No.”

Her voice is soft and thick, like cream, and it’s so familiar, yet, not how I remember it. “Have you been told how he is?”

My voice wobbles as I admit, “No.”

“Do you love this boy?”

Yes. I clench my jaw, teeth locking the details within, while my heart is under duress, wanting to cling to my mum and wail about my heartache.

“Okay,” she says softly and stands from the edge of the mattress, smoothing down her dress at her thighs.

“Don’t.Go,”I mumble sadly, my words strained from honesty and hesitation, our history taunting me.‘You’ll regret talking to her.’

She sits back down, resting her fingers on her lap. She doesn’t take up much space in life, ever. I only just realise this. And by obtaining perfection, by ordering and organising, sitting quietly, and… She just tries to shrink her presence with faultlessness. Today, this doesn’t annoy me; it saddens me.

“They won’t tell me.” I look up at her, finding her face genuinely pained, a mirror image of mine. “They won’t even call me, Mum. I don’t know if he’s asleep or…dead.Oh God.” My voice fucking cracks open. “They don’t know me! I’m notsomeoneyet”—My voice shakes with the effort to not wail— “tothem.”

“What do you mean—”

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