4338.209 · July 28, 2018 AD
Not Exactly, Sweetheart
Mum's car is already packed when she arrives — duffel bags, backpacks, Rose's pink suitcase with its faded unicorn sticker. Too much luggage for a simple rescue. They're going to Brisbane, she says. Aunty Amelia's. Just for a bit. Dad will bring Charlie in a few days. The words are bright and practised and not quite true, and Mack can see every seam. As the building shrinks in the rear window, Rose understands something she cannot yet name: home is no longer a place anyone can drive towards.
Claire's arrival is wrapped in false cheerfulness — the too-bright voice, the practised reassurances, the smile that does not quite reach her eyes. The car tells a different story from the one she is offering. It sits low and heavy, packed with bags and supplies that speak of planning rather than spontaneity, of a departure rather than a rescue. Rose's own suitcase is there, the unicorn sticker scratched and peeling, looking absurdly small against the red dust coating everything.
The explanation comes in careful pieces. Brisbane. Aunty Amelia. Cousins. A change of scene. Dad will follow with the dog in a few days. Each sentence is shaped to comfort, and each one lands slightly wrong. Mack registers every gap between what Claire says and what her body betrays — the hands gripping the steering wheel too tightly, the eyes scanning the scrub behind them, the whispered words she does not intend anyone to hear. He does not challenge her. He simply watches with an expression that has aged him past his years.
Rose occupies the space between wanting to believe and knowing she cannot. Brisbane sounds impossibly green, impossibly far — a word from a different life. She asks about Charlie the dog, and Claire's answer flickers at the edges. The building recedes in the rear window, shrinking from something dangerous into something tired and old, a ruin the landscape is slowly reclaiming. But it does not disappear. What they witnessed there — the man, the girl, the impossible doorway — has become part of them, one more secret absorbed into the outback's ancient silence. Rose leans against the warm glass and watches the horizon shimmer with false water, understanding in some wordless way that none of them are heading towards the same version of safety.
