Going Home

The pale orange brick glows in the golden hour light. Sunlight glints off the metal plate, the address inscribed on its face. Sophie helped her parents drill it into the brick 20 years ago. 

‘So, this is our house now?’ Lucy asks from the backseat.

‘Mama’s not sure yet, Luce.’ Nyla pulls up the handbrake. ‘Soph? You good?’

Sophie tears her gaze from the house to her wife’s brown eyes, full of concern. She nods, afraid to open her mouth, lest she throw up.

‘You don’t have to do this.’

She swallows thickly. ‘Yeah, I do.’

The mulch is a fresh dark brown, its moist scent tickling Sophie’s nose. The front door, a familiar forest green, is open. Nyla gives her hand a squeeze, giving Sophie the courage to cross the threshold.

The smell, the one her nose grew accustomed to over her childhood, is new now. Foreign. A low murmur of voices emanates from the end of the corridor. Black clad figures flit behind the arched doorway.

Another squeeze of her left hand. Nyla’s eyebrows are raised. You sure? Sophie nods, and together, they enter the living room.

Whispers cascade through the room, every pair of eyes on Sophie and her family. A woman with Sophie’s sharp nose meets her gaze. She holds a flute of champagne in each hand, frozen in mid-offering to an older couple. Clara’s cheeks turn crimson as her eyes flick once to Sophie’s left, once to her right.

Sophie’s older sister weaves toward them. The hush over the room is shattered by muttered comments.

‘The cheek of her to show up here.’

‘And with them no less.’

‘Apparently, poor Julie left the house to her.’

‘She must have twisted her arm.’

Clara reaches them, leaning forward and kissing the air an inch from Sophie’s cheek.

‘You brought them?’ she whispers into her ear before pulling back, her smile a kilometre short of reaching her eyes.

‘Your family’s here too.’ Sophie looks at a man and two teens huddled in a corner. ‘Why wouldn’t I bring mine?’

Clara’s gaze hardens. She turns to Nyla. ‘So glad you could come.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Before Nyla’s hand reaches Clara’s shoulder, Sophie’s sister jerks back.

Anger coils a fist in Sophie’s stomach.

‘If you’ll excuse me, those crackers aren’t going to refill themselves.’

‘I’m so sorry about her,’ Sophie says the moment Clara disappears into the kitchen.

Nyla shakes her head. ‘Don’t be. We knew this would happen. Don’t let it get to you.’

Clara was always the favourite. Which is why Sophie cannot understand why their mother left the childhood home to her instead. Even now, neither parent around, Clara is the picture of the grieving daughter, in her black frock and blonde curls, starkly contrasting Sophie’s black pantsuit and pixie cut. She emerges from the kitchen, two platters of cheese and biscuits teetering on her palms. She places them on the dining table, picks up a bottle of champagne, and floats between guests, refilling glasses, making small talk, dabbing her eyes. Sophie glances again at Clara’s nuclear family. The kids fiddle with their phones while her husband lounges on the sofa, sipping from a freshly refilled glass.

The anger in Sophie’s stomach rears its head, surprising her. The image of Clara jerking away from Nyla flashes behind her eyes, and half of her is tempted to stay put and watch her sister do all the work.

A shattering of glass. A quiet gasp. Clara, on her hands and knees, mops up golden liquid and shards of glass with a tissue from her pocket.

Sophie sighs. ‘I’m just gonna—’

‘Go,’ says Nyla, and Sophie starts toward the kitchen, where she’ll find a roll of paper towel beside the microwave and a dustpan under the sink. ‘Soph?’ Sophie turns. ‘If you need backup—’

‘I know,’ she says. She turns back around and trips over a small woman, peering up at her from behind rectangular glasses. ‘Oh. Hello.’

‘You must be Sophie. The younger daughter.’

‘I am. Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘Harriet. I’m—I was—a friend of your mother’s, ever since I moved into Moondara Rise.’ The nursing home down the street.

‘Nice to meet you.’ Sophie extends her right hand. Harriet ignores it. Sophie glances upward. Clara has barricaded the broken glass with kitchen stools. ‘If you’ll excuse me—’

‘That’s your… friend?’

Sophie follows Harriet’s gaze to Nyla. ‘My wife, yes.’

Harriet twitches at the word. ‘It’s a shame. If you’d put in a little more effort, instead of being so uptight about your lifestyle… Your mother missed you. Poor thing always wished you’d come back to her.’ She tuts quietly. ‘I guess it’s too late for that.’

Sophie’s stomach drops. Harriet shuffles away without another word.

Was that why her mother left her the house? A last-ditch effort to reconcile?

Clara has nearly finished cleaning up the mess. Sophie kneels next to her, tearing a square of paper towel and mopping up the furthest droplets of champagne.

‘I don’t need your help,’ Clara hisses, but she doesn’t stop Sophie from dropping a stray shard of glass onto the dustpan. ‘Why you?’ her sister whispers. ‘Why you and not me?’

‘I wish I knew.’

‘Did you say something to her?’

‘How could I? You were there. She wouldn’t see me.’ Each time the hospice nurses told her mother that her younger daughter was outside, Sophie watched her shake her head.

If you’d put in a little more effort…

Sophie invited her parents to the wedding, called them over to celebrate Lucy’s adoption. At her father’s funeral, Sophie tried to introduce Lucy to her grandmother, Nyla to her mother-in-law, but when they reached the front row, Sophie’s mother turned away.

Clara picks up the dustpan and the soaked paper towels, leaving Sophie kneeling alone. She looks up at the guests. Clara knows them all. Sophie knows one or two at best, recognises the faces behind the new wrinkles. Her mother’s friends, family, community. The people who were there when Sophie was not.

She gets to her feet and wanders out of the living room.

Sophie always found this house beautiful. As a teen, she wished everyone else would move out and it would be hers.

She never expected that wish to come true.

The setting sun drenches the walls in orange. Sophie watches it through the window in the TV room. The View, she called it. Three hibiscus trees in the forefront, bushy pink flowers amongst lush green leaves. Native shrubbery behind them. The large tree across the street, new leaves growing at the tips of its branches, its middle bare, the sunset peeking through the gaps.

She turns, keeps wandering. Her parents’ bedroom is the same, except with only one pillow at the head of the king bed. Up the corridor is Clara’s bedroom, exactly as she left it when she moved out to marry Scott. Minimalist and tidy, the only evidence of its resident the huge graduation photo above the bed. Across the corridor is Sophie’s own room, once plastered with photos and posters, now used for storage, bare white walls, cardboard boxes stacked high.

She passes through the sliding door into the garden. The kids are outside, Lucy among them. She waves as she runs past, another girl in a black dress hot on her heels. Several mothers sit at the glass table. Their chatter dies away the moment they spot Sophie. They call their children, shepherding them inside.

‘Wow,’ Lucy says. ‘Rude.’

‘Sorry, hon.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

Lucy looks out to The View, squinting at the red sun.

‘Are we moving here?’

Sophie watches the last drop of red disappear into the Indian Ocean. ‘Do you like it here?’

Her daughter shrugs. ‘View’s nice. But inside is… I dunno. Weird. Cold.’

She’s not talking about the temperature. And suddenly, it’s clear what Sophie needs to do. ‘I’m going to talk to Aunt Clara. Do you want to come inside?’

Lucy shakes her head, her gaze lingering on the orange clouds.

‘I don't want it,’ Sophie tells her sister in the kitchen.

‘Want what?’

‘The house. You can have it.’

Clara stares at her. ‘Is this a joke?’

‘No.’

‘Mum gives you this house out of the kindness of her heart and you don’t want it?’ She scoffs. ‘You always were so ungrateful. You had to be so… different. Embarrass the whole family.’

A hundred responses take shape in Sophie’s mind, from witty to bitter to outright cruel. She draws a breath. ‘Do you want the house or not?’

Clara pales. ‘Yes—but—’

‘I’ll have the lawyers draft up the paperwork. Goodbye, Clara.’

Sophie fetches Lucy from the garden, then spots Nyla, already watching her. She tilts her head toward the front door, and Nyla leads them outside.

‘You okay?’ she asks when they reach the car.

‘Yeah,’ Sophie says, and means it. She gets into the passenger’s seat. ‘Let’s go home.’