Child-Shaped

"You can rehearse a reunion a thousand times in your head. None of them prepare you for the moment your child looks at you and you realise they've been rehearsing too."

The car hit a dip and bounced, tyres kicking up a fan of red powder. I barely noticed. My eyes were fixed on the building—the corrugated iron walls, the sagging roof, the dark rectangle of the doorway growing larger with every metre.

The track ended in a rough clearing. I stamped on the brake too hard and the car slewed sideways, tyres grabbing at the loose dirt with a sound like fabric tearing. Dust billowed around me, orange-grey, swallowing the windscreen for a moment before the breeze swept it away.

I killed the engine. It died with a stuttering cough, the mechanical sigh of something that had given everything it had.

Movement.

In the doorway. A shape—

I was out of the car before I knew I'd moved. The door shrieked as I flung it open, metal protesting, but I was already running—

Two figures emerging from the building. Stepping into the light. Small shapes, child-shaped, moving toward me across the red earth—

"Oh my God—oh my God—"

The words tore out of me, breathless, meaningless, my legs pumping, my arms reaching. My hair had come loose from its ponytail and streamed behind me, wild, catching in my mouth, but I didn't care, couldn't care, could only run.

Rose.

Mack.

Alive.

Rose saw me first. Her face changed—something crumbling behind her eyes, the careful blankness of survival giving way to something raw and desperate.

"Mum?" The word was barely a sound. A breath. A prayer.

Then louder: "Mum!"

I reached her first.

My arms wrapped around her too fast, too hard, lifting her off the ground before I could think. She weighed nothing—less than nothing—small and cold and here, pressed against my chest with her face tucked into the soft place below my jaw. I could feel her heart hammering through her thin jumper. Could feel the sharp ridge of her spine under my hands. Could smell dust and fear and unwashed child and it was the most beautiful smell in the world.

"You're alright—you're alright—you're alright—"

The words came out in a rhythm I couldn't stop. A chant. An incantation against everything that had almost happened, everything I'd imagined in the dark hours of searching.

My whole body was shaking. Fine tremors running through me like electricity, my hands clutching the back of Rose's cardigan, my face pressed against her hair. She was cold. So cold. Her clothes smelled like metal and old paper and the particular mustiness of a place that hadn't seen sunlight in decades.

But she was alive. She was here. She was in my arms.

Rose's hands came up around my neck. Small fingers, freezing, gripping with surprising strength. She didn't cry—not properly—but I felt her body shudder against mine, felt the breath catch in her chest like a sob that couldn't quite escape.

I pulled back just enough to see her face. Cupped it in both hands, my thumbs brushing over her cheeks, her forehead, the point of her chin. Checking. Cataloguing. Making sure each feature was exactly as I remembered, exactly as I'd been terrified I would never see again. Her skin was pale beneath the dust. Her lips were cracked. But her eyes—her eyes were Rose's eyes, looking up at me with that particular mix of trust and need that cut straight through to the centre of me.

Then I turned to Mack.

He was standing two metres away, watching. His face was shuttered—that expression I knew too well, the one he wore when he was holding something too big to show. But there was something different about it now. Something harder. The soft roundness of his features had sharpened somehow, his jaw set, his eyes carrying shadows that had no business on a nine-year-old's face.

He'd aged. In two days, he'd aged years.

I couldn't lift him—he was too tall now, all elbows and growing limbs and stubborn pride. Instead I stepped toward him and folded my arms around his shoulders and pulled him against me.

He was stiff at first. Rigid. His arms hung at his sides, hands curled into loose fists like he was still holding something—responsibility, maybe. Fear. The weight of keeping his sister alive in a place that had tried to swallow them both.

I held him anyway. Longer than I'd held Rose. Longer than I'd held anyone in years. I pressed my face against his shoulder and breathed in the smell of him—dust and sweat and something that reminded me of Greg's shed, of metal and old tools and places where men worked with their hands.

I'm sorry, I thought. I'm sorry I wasn't here. I'm sorry you had to carry this alone. I'm sorry for everything.

The words wouldn't come. But I held him, and hoped he could feel them anyway.

Slowly—so slowly I almost missed it—his arms came up. His hands pressed against my back. Not quite a hug. Not quite forgiveness. But something.

I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. A long, shaky exhale that left me hollow. When I pulled back, I wiped my face with the back of my hand and felt the grit of dirt smear across my cheek.

"You've been here this whole time?" My voice was steadier now, but something brittle lurked beneath it.

Mack nodded. A small, hard tilt of his chin.

"They said you'd gone missing." The words came out before I could stop them. "They said no one had seen you. I thought—"

I broke off. Swallowed the rest of the sentence because the rest of the sentence was too dark to say aloud. Too dark for their ears, for this moment, for the fragile relief that hung in the air between us.

"Never mind. Doesn't matter. You're alright."

But even as I said it, my eyes were moving. Scanning the clearing, the scrub, the building behind them. Looking for something. Someone.

The man who had left the map.

He'd known they were here. Had watched them, maybe. Had been close enough to draw this place, to lead me to it. Where was he now? In the scrub? In the shadows of the building? Watching this reunion with those empty eyes, that face that didn't move?

I pulled the children closer. One hand on Mack's shoulder, gripping too tight. One arm around Rose's waist, anchoring her against my side. We stood like that—a small circle of three in the middle of the red dirt clearing—and I felt something shift inside me.

Not just relief.

Something harder. Something colder.

The knowledge of what came next.

I rubbed my hands together without thinking—a nervous habit, the dry skin making a papery sound in the silence. Red dust had already worked its way into the creases of my knuckles, under my nails, staining me the colour of the land. As if I could touch this place without being claimed by it.

I turned on my heel and started walking toward the car. My old trainers—laces loose, soles worn thin—kicked up small clouds of powder with each step. The dust hung in the still air for a moment before drifting back down, too tired to stay aloft.

"Come on, let's get you out of here." My voice came out high. Falsely bright. The voice I used during dentist appointments and thunderstorms, when distraction was the only tool I had. "We've got a long drive ahead."

I heard the crunch of their footsteps behind me. Rose first, then Mack—slower, more reluctant. As though each step away from the building cost him something.

I didn't look back. Couldn't. If I looked at the building again, I might see him. The man. Standing in one of those broken windows, watching us leave. Watching me take the children he'd led me to.

The car sat where I'd left it, silver paint turned matte with red dust. It clung thick around the wheels and lower panels, the colour of dried blood. The vehicle looked different than it had when I'd packed it in Broken Hill—heavier somehow, weighted down not just by luggage but by intention. By the decision I'd made when I'd thrown bags into the boot and driven away from my life.

Rose's voice came from behind me, small and uncertain. "Does that mean we're going home?"

She was looking at the car. At the bags visible through the windows—the duffel bags and backpacks crammed into the back seat, her pink suitcase with the scratched unicorn sticker sitting on top, the horn half peeled off.

I stopped at the boot. Put my hand on the metal—cold, despite the morning sun.

Home.

The word landed with a heavy thud in my chest. Which home? Our house in Broken Hill, where Gertrude watched from her window and the studio sat empty and the life I'd built was crumbling around me? Or Dawn's house, where two bodies lay on a lounge room floor and my fingerprints were on a gun and my mother's blood was still drying on the carpet?

Neither. I could go back to neither.

The moment those bodies were found, everything would connect. Claire Smith, who'd visited the police station asking about her missing husband. Claire Smith, whose parents had just died under suspicious circumstances. Claire Smith, who'd vanished with her children the same week—children no one had seen since Monday.

I turned. Arranged my face into something I hoped looked reassuring.

"Not exactly, sweetheart."

I crouched in front of her, brushing her fringe back with fingers that had gone rough and cracked from wind and worry. My thumb left a dusty streak across her temple, painting her with the same ochre that coated everything.

"We're going on a little trip instead. Just us. To Brisbane."

The lie came out smooth. Practised. I'd been rehearsing it in my head since I'd packed the car.

"Brisbane?" Rose blinked against the dust.

"You remember your cousins? Aunty Amelia's kids? We're going to see them for a while."

Amelia, who told me not to come. Who said she couldn't take on my crisis. Who hung up on me—or I hung up on her—while I knelt in the dust covered in my mother's blood.

I pushed the thought down. Buried it with all the other thoughts I couldn't afford to have right now.

"Oh," Rose said. She looked at Mack.

He hadn't moved. His posture had gone rigid—not just tense but resistant. Shoulders hunched, arms stiff at his sides. Something in his face had closed off, that too-old wariness settling over his features like a mask.

"What?" he said. "Now? Why?"

I stood, brushing dust from my jeans. The movement sent a small cloud of red powder drifting from the fabric, catching the light before falling soundlessly back to earth.

"It's just for a bit, Mack." I kept my voice light. Casual. It didn't match my face—I could feel the tension in my jaw, the tightness around my eyes. "Things are... complicated right now. I thought it would be good for you both to have a change of scene. Some fresh air. Aunty Amelia has space, and Leif and Astrid will be happy to see you."

Amelia doesn't know we're coming. Amelia told me to stay away. Amelia is going to slam the door in my face when I show up on her doorstep with two children and a car full of everything I own.

But what choice did I have? Where else was there to go?

Mack's eyes narrowed. He didn't blink. The corners crinkled against the glare, but the expression beneath stayed hard. Carved. Older than nine.

"We're just leaving?" he said. "Just like that?"

His tone was flat but careful. Deliberate. The voice he used when he was trying not to shout. The voice Paul used when—

I cut the thought off before it could form.

"Yes." Too quick. I softened it, my fingers brushing instinctively at my collarbone, at the place where the pendant Paul had given me used to hang before I'd stopped wearing it months ago. "You've had a rough couple of days. I think a break will do us all good."

Rose's voice again, smaller: "But what about Charlie? She's not coming?"

Charlie. The dog. Still at the house, probably wondering where everyone had gone. I'd left food and water, enough for a few days. But I hadn't been able to bring her. Couldn't manage children and a dog and a desperate flight across state lines.

I bent to meet Rose's eyes.

"Your dad's going to bring Charlie," I said. Soft. Matter-of-fact. "He'll meet us there soon. Probably in a few days."

The lie was the worst one yet. Paul was missing—had been missing for days. Paul wasn't going to bring Charlie anywhere because Paul had vanished into whatever void had opened up in our lives, and I had no idea if he was alive or dead or simply gone.

But Rose didn't need to know that. Not yet. Not here, in this clearing, with the building watching us from its hollow windows.

Something flickered in my eyes—I felt it happen, felt the mask slip for just a fraction of a second. A curtain twitching. A light dimming.

Mack saw it.

His arms folded across his chest—not casually, but like armour. His jaw clenched. The muscle beneath his cheek pulsed rhythmically, something trying to get out.

He didn't call me out. Didn't ask another question. Just looked at me—long and slow—reading everything I hadn't said in the negative space between my words.

I turned away. Walked to the driver's door. Put my hand on the roof and stood there for a moment, gathering myself. The metal was warm beneath my palm. The sun was climbing higher, the shadows shrinking, the day pressing forward whether I was ready for it or not.

I opened the door. Slid in. Pulled it closed behind me.

The air inside was stale. Thick with dust and something sweet-sour—old juice, maybe, spilled and never properly cleaned.

Behind me, the children's doors opened and closed. The sounds of them settling in—seatbelts clicking, bodies shifting.

My hands hovered over the steering wheel. Uncertain. Like they didn't trust themselves.

Then I gripped it. Tight. So tight my knuckles went white, the tendons standing out like cables under my skin.

The keys were already in the ignition. I'd left them there when I'd scrambled out of the car—stupid, careless, the kind of mistake that could have stranded us all if someone had come along and driven off with our only escape route.

I turned them sharply.

The engine coughed. Once. Twice. Then caught, shuddering to life like something reluctantly waking from too-long sleep.

I reached up to adjust the rearview mirror.

And froze.

The building sat before me. Rusted walls, sagging roof, broken windows staring back at me like eyes. It looked smaller from here—diminished by distance, reduced to just another abandoned structure in a landscape full of them.

But I knew better.

Something had lived in that building. Something that walked at night and drew maps and led desperate mothers to their lost children for reasons I couldn't fathom.

My lips moved before I could stop them. A whisper. Not meant for anyone but myself.

"We just need to get out of here."

I shifted into reverse. The gearstick ground in protest, metal scraping metal.

The car rolled backward, tyres crunching over loose stones. Pebbles pinged against the undercarriage. Dust rose around us in pale clouds, swirling past the windows.

I tapped the brake too quickly.

We jerked forward, the seatbelts catching, and I heard Rose's small gasp from the back seat.

"Sorry," I muttered. "Sorry."

I shifted into drive. Eased forward. The car bumped over the uneven ground, jolting us like loose pieces in a shaken box, and then the track was beneath us and we were moving—away from the building, away from the clearing, away from the nightmare that had delivered my children back to me and asked for nothing in return.

I didn't look in the rearview mirror.

Didn't want to see the building shrinking behind us. Didn't want to wonder if he was standing in one of those windows, watching us go.

Ahead, the track wound through scrub and over the rise. The same route I'd driven in—following a scary man's map through country I didn't know, toward children I'd been terrified I'd never find.

Now I was driving out. Taking those children with me. Running from everything that lay behind us—the bodies, the blood, the story that would form around my absence.

Rose's voice drifted from the back seat, small and uncertain: "Mum? How long until we get there?"

I looked at her in the mirror. At her thin face, her wide eyes, the stuffed rabbit clutched against her chest like a talisman.

Brisbane is fifteen hundred kilometres away. Two days of driving, maybe three. Through country I don't know, toward a sister who told me not to come.

"A while, sweetheart," I said. "Try to rest."

The track gave way to gravel. The gravel would give way to road. The road would lead us east—through towns I'd never seen, past lives I'd never know, toward a future I couldn't predict.

Behind us, the outback kept its secrets. The building. The man. The things that moved through the darkness when ordinary people slept.

Ahead was nothing certain. Just distance. Just the desperate mathematics of escape—kilometres divided by hours divided by the dwindling contents of my wallet divided by the lies I would have to tell to keep us moving, keep us hidden, keep us alive.