Borrowed Sorrow

"The most convincing lies are the ones you build around something real—you just have to know which memories to raid for spare parts."

Enough time had been wasted already.

With urgency pressing against my spine like a hand between shoulder blades, I pushed through the gate at the end of the driveway and made for Jamie's car. I'd been keeping it just inside the back garden, hidden from casual view—a precaution that had felt paranoid when I'd first started doing it and now felt like the only sensible choice I'd made all week.

The driver's seat was adjusted for Jamie's longer legs, forcing me to slide it forward before my feet could properly reach the pedals. Mirrors next—tilting the rear-view until I could see the empty street behind me, adjusting the side mirrors to eliminate the blind spots that always made me nervous. My hands moved through the familiar motions, but my mind was elsewhere, tangled in the conversation with Paul, the growing list of needs I was failing to meet, the breakfast I was now spectacularly late for.

I glanced into the rear-view mirror one final time, confirming the way was clear, and felt my heart stutter to a halt.

"Who the hell is that?" I whispered to myself, watching an unfamiliar white car pull into the driveway with the particular purpose of someone who knew exactly where they were going.

Not now. The thought arrived with the weight of impending disaster. Not when there was already so much at stake.

"Oh no," the words barely escaped my lips—a soft hiss of dread as the car door swung open and Louise stepped out.

Panic flooded my system with the particular intensity of an emergency my body recognised before my brain had finished processing. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat feeling like it might crack bone. What the hell am I going to tell her? The question ricocheted through my skull, finding no answer, bouncing off walls of mounting terror.

I'd been perilously close. Minutes. Maybe less. If she'd arrived before I'd moved that ute through the Portal, if Kain's vehicle had still been sitting there when his mother pulled up—

The potential for questions, for suspicion, for the entire fragile structure of lies I'd built to come crashing down—it loomed over me like something physical, something with weight and malice. I scrambled mentally for explanations, for any plausible story that could deflect her curiosity and protect the secrets I'd been accumulating like debts.

I forced myself out of the car, made my legs carry me toward her despite every instinct screaming for retreat.

"Hey, Louise," I greeted, manufacturing a semblance of ease that felt about as convincing as a paper umbrella in a cyclone. My voice emerged steadier than I'd expected, a small mercy in a morning that had been short on them.

Louise paused, her stance rigid as she faced me. The woman had never particularly liked me—that much had been clear since the first family gathering where I'd been introduced as Jamie's partner. There was something in the set of her jaw, the particular way she assessed me, that suggested she'd been waiting for confirmation that I wasn't good enough for her brother.

"Hi Luke," she responded, her tone flat, scraped clean of any warmth. "Is Jamie home?"

I hesitated for a fraction of a second—a fraction too long, probably, but I needed the moment to construct the lie. "Oh, not at the moment," I replied, hoping the casual delivery would mask everything lurking behind the words. Jamie wasn't at the moment. Jamie wasn't on this planet at the moment. Technically true in the worst possible way.

Her expression shifted into a frown that suggested my performance wasn't winning any awards. I could practically see the suspicion crystallising behind her eyes, trust eroding with each breath.

"Have you seen Kain the last day or so?" she inquired, eyes narrowing with the particular intensity of a mother whose child hadn't come home.

"No, I haven't," I responded, maintaining eye contact with the stubborn determination of someone who knew looking away would be confession. "Why?" I added, trying to redirect the conversation, to make her explain rather than continue her interrogation.

"He said he was coming by yesterday to visit Jamie. He didn't come home last night, and his phone goes straight to voicemail. I'm really worried that he might be in trouble," she confessed, and there it was—genuine concern threading through her voice, cracking the stern facade she'd been maintaining.

The words hit me somewhere unexpected. A mother, worried about her son. A son I'd pushed through a Portal without asking, whose pregnant fiancée was probably equally frantic, whose life I'd disrupted with the casual selfishness of someone who'd convinced himself the ends justified every means.

For a moment—just a moment—I almost felt sorry for her.

"Sorry, no, I haven't seen him at all," I reiterated, the lie feeling heavier with each repetition. It settled in my stomach like something indigestible, joining the accumulation of falsehoods that had become the foundation of my daily existence.

Inside, though, relief was winning the battle against guilt. Lucky I'd disposed of the ute when I did. The realisation washed through me with the particular gratitude of someone who'd narrowly avoided catastrophe. If that vehicle had still been in the driveway—if Louise had arrived fifteen minutes earlier—there's no way I could have talked my way out of that.

Standing there, facing Louise's mounting worry, I felt the weight of my secret life pressing down with renewed force. The lines I'd drawn between right and wrong, truth and deception, had smudged into something unrecognisable. I was lying to a worried mother about her missing son—a son I'd effectively kidnapped to another dimension. The greater purpose I kept invoking to justify my actions felt increasingly hollow the more I leaned on it.

Yet I couldn't tell her the truth. Couldn't explain that Kain was alive and well, hauling camping equipment across alien terrain, probably still laughing at my failed attempt to drive his manual ute. The truth would unravel everything.

"Have you got my number?" Louise's question snapped me back to the present, her eyes locked on mine with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

"Yeah, I do. Jamie gave it to me ages ago in case of emergency," I replied, my voice steady despite the tumult churning beneath. "I'll call you if Kain stops by," I added, the promise hollow even as it left my mouth. I knew exactly where Kain was. I knew he wouldn't be stopping by. My assurance was nothing more than a placating lie, one more thread in the web I was weaving around everyone who trusted me.

"Yeah, thanks," she responded, gratitude mingling with the persistent worry that had carved lines around her eyes.

I watched her retreat toward her car, allowing myself a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. The tension in my shoulders eased fractionally as she seemed to accept my answers, seemed ready to leave me to whatever business I'd been about to attend to.

But then she paused. Halted her descent into the driver's seat with a deliberateness that sent fresh anxiety spiking through my system.

"By the way, what's Jamie up to? I've been trying to call him the last few days, but he isn't responding," she stated, her tone casual in a way that didn't fool me for a second. There was suspicion there, sharp and probing, testing my defences for weak points.

The question twisted something in my gut. More questions. More scrutiny. More threats to the fragile façade I was struggling to maintain with increasingly tired hands.

Why can't Louise just fuck off already? The thought blazed through me with the particular intensity of desperation—a silent scream for respite from the constant vigilance this life demanded.

I needed a deflection. Something that would redirect her attention, make her uncomfortable enough to stop probing. My mind raced through options, discarding them as quickly as they arose—too weak, too suspicious, too easily verified.

My head drooped, a deliberate performance of dejection, buying time whilst I scrambled for the right weapon. Thoughts of Jamie and Ben surfaced unbidden—the anger, the suspicion, the particular pain of loving someone who might not love you back—but I pushed past them, searching for something else. Something that would sell the lie without requiring me to actually tap into the hurt I was keeping carefully sealed.

Then, from somewhere in the depths of memory, an image surfaced. Bobby. My childhood cat, ginger fur bright against the morning lawn, utterly still in a way that no living creature ever was. I'd been eight years old when I'd found her there, and the grief had been absolute—the first real loss I'd understood, the first death that had taught me what death meant.

I seized the memory with desperate gratitude, letting the genuine sorrow it evoked rise to the surface. Not enough to overwhelm me, but enough to make my eyes water, to lend authenticity to what I was about to say.

When I lifted my gaze to meet Louise's, my eyes were convincingly damp.

"Oh," I began, voice soft and laced with manufactured sorrow, "I was trying not to say anything, but we've been having a few issues lately, so Jamie has decided to go to Melbourne for a week or so. Think things through." The lie rolled off my tongue with the smoothness of long practice, a fabrication so complete that part of me almost believed it.

Louise's response was curt—a blunt acknowledgment that carried all the warmth of ice water. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'll keep trying to contact him myself then," she declared, before retreating to her car and driving away without another glance.

I watched the white car disappear around the corner, letting the performance fade from my features as she vanished from view.

"Finally, you insincere bitch," I muttered, the words a bitter farewell to her departing figure. The relief that flooded through me felt dirty—earned through deception, purchased with lies that would have consequences I couldn't yet see. I inhaled deeply, letting the cold Tasmanian air cleanse the lingering tension from my lungs. At least that should get Louise off my back for a while.

The lie about relationship problems would spread, of course. Louise would tell people. Rumours would circulate through whatever social networks connected Jamie's extended family. But that was a problem for another day—a consequence I'd deal with when it arrived, adding it to the growing list of fires I'd started and would eventually need to extinguish.

I lingered for a few more minutes, watching the street with the particular attention of someone who'd learned that problems often doubled back when you thought they were gone. Only when I was confident Louise wasn't making an unexpected return did I allow myself to move.

Jamie's car started on the first try—reliable in ways that Jamie himself hadn't been lately. I pulled out of the driveway, heading in the opposite direction from Louise's departure, putting distance between myself and the close call that had shaved years off my life.

Karen's not a particularly patient woman, I reminded myself, anxiety threading through the relief that still had hold of my nervous system. The clock on the dashboard confirmed what I already knew: I was spectacularly late for a breakfast I'd been counting on.

I'll be lucky if I even get duck scraps at this rate.

The thought carried dark humour I didn't quite feel, but I let it settle anyway. Humour was better than dwelling on the lies I'd told, the mother I'd deceived, the son I'd stolen to another dimension without asking.