The Serpent's Skin by Erina Reddan (top 5 books to read .txt) 📕

He held my gaze with indignation for a few beats and then his face collapsed. Shame and sorrow oozing from his eyes like rivers of pain. ‘Truth is, I’m down on my knees every day of my life asking for forgiveness. But it’ll never come. I’m a sinner.’

Tears blurred my eyes, too. All that rice digging into his knees as he knelt beside his bed every night. It had started back then.

‘Your mother was a saint.’ His voice broke. ‘I was the husband. My job was to protect her. Instead I cast her into hell. I as good as killed her.’

I was full of not knowing what to say. This new father of mine. Raw and broken.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I finally got to. ‘She died of natural causes. It was just her time. Remember Silver, the brumby? It was just her time. That was all. And the only bad thing was we weren’t there to be with Mum. But none of us could have saved her. Not one of us.’

And the truth of it was like water surging through me, gushing and raging, carrying everything before it.

‘You made one mistake,’ I continued. ‘You’re right. She would have cooled off, eventually. She just needed some time. She wouldn’t have left us.’

His eyes veiled with confusion—lost between the yes and the no of it. His hand dropped from the door handle, he stumbled away, out into the storm. I got the dustpan and broom and swept up all the broken bits of china.

THE SIZE OF TRUTH

Ipulled my hair away from my skull as I lay on my bed. I didn’t even know how I had got home from Dad’s last night. There was pelting rain and hectic, whining windscreen wipers. There was the vomiting pity of all those years wasted, chasing ghosts and shadows. What do you do when you come to the end of a thing? A full dead stop. A thing you thought would end up somewhere. And that somewhere would have made sense of the whole way leading up to it. But instead you were left with palms open, full of empty.

I traced the web of cracks crawling across my ceiling until I came to the end of the line. What did I do now? My hand went to my stomach. Then I let it drop. One thing I wouldn’t be doing was having a baby just to fill up the wasteland I’d created.

I remembered that science book I’d had before Mum died. Every cell in our body is supposed to be renewed every seven years. Maybe we were supposed to do that with our stories, too. I’d ossified mine shell hard around me. But this was the fourteenth year. Could I let it shed its skin this time round?

I filled up with the possibility of it, groaning to a sitting position, back against the wall.

I saw Dad hunched over between the trees that morning before we found out Mum died, I saw him standing in the kitchen in his trousers pulled up by twine, I saw the stubble across his chin, I heard him telling Mrs Nolan that he wouldn’t be letting Sarah down again, he’d be keeping the kids, every single one of them.

Mum’s Timeline on the wall pulsed at me. I’d been such an idiot. I got out of the bed, took it down and lay it along the ground, like I had that first night with Tye.

How had I stuffed up with Tye so badly? All I had to do was pick up the phone. Even to let him know I couldn’t talk about it, but I was alive. Would it have been so hard?

I unfolded the Map of Mum from my backpack and put it beside the Timeline.

And Maurice? Quitting. Did I really do that? I winced. I sat back and scratched my head like I was a mad thing, wondering when was the last time I’d even washed my hair.

I picked up the red texta and weighed it in the palm of my hand. Bloody facts. I finally had them. I knew what had to be known. I uncapped the texta and bent over the Timeline. I added the details of the fight the night before Mum left. Then I leaned further over to add to the Map. I hesitated over using opinion-blue or fact-red. Since it was the end, it had to be red.

I’d found out everything. It had been a run-of-the-mill argument the night before. Maybe worse. Enough for her to need a few days away. But then she found out about Peg and Jack. I could see why he hadn’t told her. Mistake? Yes. Gutless? Of course. Flawed? Definitely. But not a monster. He hadn’t admitted to knowing about the pregnancy and maybe he didn’t know since Peg lost the baby, anyway.

It all added up. Why he hated Peg. Why he chucked her out of the house even though he was as ‘loose’ as she’d been. Mrs Nolan’s revelation accounted for Mum being furious with Peg and only staying twenty-five-and-a-half minutes. She probably slept in some cheap room somewhere. We’d never find out where she’d been those last three days. And Philly was right. We didn’t have to.

The futility of it ripped through me. I slashed red across the Map, and slashed it back the other way. I zigzagged that texta back and back and back, again and again, until I couldn’t see through the blear in my eyes; until the paper tore and I was running red across the floor.

Suddenly Tye was there, his arms around me.

‘What? What?’ he asked over and over, gentling me as I sobbed out words that meant nothing. He held me, rocked me, murmured to me. Then I was back in our kitchen the day Mum left. Her rocking me in her muscle-hard arms. Me smelling the dirt of the tomatoes