Page 84 of Scapegoat

I hated the resignation in my voice. Kai didn’t have to settle. If she didn’t like her boss or her co-workers, she’d jump in Jamie’s truck and fuck off to the next town, find work there. But Kai was always just a facade, a persona I put on.

And now I had to take it off.

I looked around the playground, remembering all of it. In Stanthorpe I was Kaia. A history came with that variation with my name, along with obligations, expectations, myth and lore. Here I was Anna’s sister, Mum’s daughter and my father…

“I want to stop in and see Dad,” I said when I’d finished eating, licking my fingers clean of salt and oil.

“Are you sure?” Jay’s voice sounded so much less certain. It looked like it wasn’t just me being thrust back into childhood unwillingly.

“I want…” I let out a sigh and all the tension seemed to leach out of my body. “He was never the problem, just Mum and Anna. I want to make sure he’s OK, that he’s—”

“If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do,” Atlas replied.

I didn’t feel so certain as I walked up the driveway to my house. No, my parent’s house. It was never home, not really, for me. When we arrived, I just stood here for a moment, staring at the dark facade. My heart beat faster and I had to force myself to clench my fists, then walk forward.

It didn’t look the same and I took some solace in that. There was no way my mother would live in a place where the front yard was a little messy, the grass no longer meticulously kept short, the shrubs and flowers allowed to grow tall and straggly. But when I stepped up to the front door and pressed on the doorbell, it all came back.

My breathing stilled, went quiet, as if I could hear the muted sounds of screaming and shouting from behind the door. My lungs burned with the need to breathe, but I didn’t. That sensation, of tightness, of pressure in my chest made sense to me now, getting weightier and weightier until the door swung open.

Seeing Dad was a strange thing. He’d changed and that didn’t make sense in my heart, even if my heart knew it was inevitable.

“Kaia!”

He swept in and hugged me tight, but that didn’t stop me from seeing the new lines in his face, the thick stubble on his chin, now feel the small swell of a pot belly. But while he might’ve looked older, he also looked…

“You look happy,” I said in wonder.

“And you don’t, love.” Concern, real naked concern, was on his face, not the kind that he kept on the down low for fear of incurring my mother’s wrath. Where the hell was that…? His eyes scoured my face and those of my mates before he ushered us in. “Did you want a coffee or a tea?”

He led us into the house and the wolf whined inside me. She did not understand at all why we would come back here. Dad was weak, unable to protect us, so she pushed at the boundaries between us, ready to take fur and do the job he couldn’t. But as he drew us further into the house, I saw the other changes.

There were jumpers left on the back of the couch, a dirty plate on the coffee table, as well as a pile of old magazines. Mum would’ve had a fucking fit if she’d seen it, but I just smiled. Dad took us into the kitchen, and the sight of him bustling around to make us a cup of tea was the greatest of differences. Mum would’ve been frothing at the mouth if she saw that, something that had me stepping forward.

“You know where everything is,” I said, by way of a joke, but when he looked up at me, both of us smiled, but not because of that.

“I had to when you were gone.” He shook his head and then dared to look at me. “No, I was allowed to.” Dad settled back against the counter as he waited for the kettle to boil. “I can do what I bloody like in my own house now.”

Up until this point, coming back to Stanthorpe had been pretty bloody horrible, but this? Dad relaxed, Dad at ease. It was worth it to see that.

“I might not be able to cook as well as you, but I make do. We make do.”

And then it was back. That furtive expression, his eyes flicking up to the staircase, as if he could see up it.

“You and Anna?” I prompted. He nodded quickly. “We saw her at the milk bar.”

“Did you?” He busied himself with making the tea rather than face me, the confidence leaching from him by the second, but then he stopped himself. He let out a long sigh and then twisted his head to look at me. “Was she really bloody awful?”

I let out a harsh bark of laughter then, never having heard anyone say a word against my sister in this house. I straightened up, searching his face for some clues as to why now. The kettle whistled, ready to be turned off, but for a moment there was just this.

Anna was my sister, but I’d never really been able to feel much of a bond for her. When she was a tiny little baby she smelled like mine, pack, but the moment she got older that all faded. Mum gave her every one of my toys each time my sister reached for them and when I dared say anything about it, she told me off for being selfish.

At first my little brain had just assumed it was because she was the baby, but then Anna had become a toddler and a small child and none of that insistence that I share had stopped. Whatever Anna wanted was hers and I just needed to give way. Deep down it made me hate her just a little, the dislike growing each time Mum insisted I take Anna with me when I hung out with the guys, as she rhapsodised over how pretty my sister was, all the while wrinkling her nose at me. But while all of that was familiar to me, this wasn’t.

Anna wasn’t my father’s child.

He’d always tried to be painstakingly patient with both of us, being much fairer in his dealings with us than Mum ever was. But he did so with a daughter that wasn’t his own. Did he know? I couldn’t bring myself to ask, the kettle whistle growing louder and louder, right before Xavier stepped in to turn it off. I blinked, coming back to myself and then said what I could.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say anything critical here,” I said, and when it did, it felt like something cracked inside me, something icy. “Everyone was always—”

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