The Map Is Not the Manifest

“Silence can be shared like a blanket or worn like a blindfold. Today, it’s both.”

We continued our way along the back road, the journey cloaked in a silence so heavy it pressed against my temples. It wasn’t the companionable kind, either. It was thick, oppressive—a silence with shape and weight. It wrapped itself around us like a funeral pall, each turn of the tyres drawing us further into a world we no longer recognised.

The only break came when Gladys muttered something garbled and clawed at the door handle.

I pulled over. She barely made it to the ditch.

I stayed behind the wheel, eyes fixed forward as the sound of her retching cut through the hush like a blade. Sharp, wet, pitiful. I didn’t need to look. The sounds alone were enough to churn my stomach. Still, I found myself glancing anyway.

She was hunched over like a broken scarecrow, all elbows and misery. Vulnerable in a way that made something shift in my chest.

A strange twist of sympathy flickered through me—quick, unwelcome. I wasn't used to seeing her fragile. Gladys, for all her infuriating chaos, usually held together with glitter and grit. But this? This was too raw to mock.

The road had taken its toll on both of us, and we hadn’t even reached our first stop.

When she climbed back in, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, eyes downcast. I said nothing. Neither did she. Just silence again—resigned, hollow. The kind you settle into like an old coat, itchy and damp.

We drove on.

The road narrowed, curled between squat trees and half-forgotten farmland. It looked the same as it always had, but nothing felt the same.

"Welcome to New Norfolk," Gladys announced, her voice light but laced with something bitter, like she was quoting a joke she no longer found funny.

I didn’t reply.

Instead, I swallowed. Hard. The muscles in my throat refused to cooperate. A burning spread through my arms, up to my shoulders—a scatter of tingles, nerves on fire. I gripped the wheel tighter, trying to anchor myself to something solid.

I hated this place.

Not for what it was—but for what it used to be.

Every corner held a memory I didn’t want to look at too closely. Every street reminded me of the shop, of the risk I’d taken and the bitter aftertaste of failure that still coated my tongue. Once, this town had been possibility. Now, it was a cautionary tale.

Even the welcome sign felt cruel, smug. Like it knew.

Watching Gladys’s fingers grow more agitated by the second—pinching off infinitesimal corners of the manifest and flicking them to the floor like confetti—only intensified the gnawing unease in my gut. Each tiny tear felt like a countdown, like she was dismantling our composure one scrap at a time. It was maddening.

"What's the address?" I managed, though the steadiness in my voice felt like borrowed confidence. My knuckles whitened against the steering wheel.

"Oh… um…" Her eyes stayed glued to the crumpled sheet. She tried to smooth it against her thigh, as if that could erase the creases, the stains—both literal and metaphorical—that now marked it. The way she handled the manifest, like a fragile relic instead of a delivery schedule, tested every last ounce of my restraint.

"Gladys!" I barked. The word cracked through the cabin like a slap. My jaw tensed as my mouth twisted into a tight pout I couldn’t bother hiding. It wasn’t just her—though God knows she was trying me. It was the whole bloody town. This entire spiral. The pressure in my chest had been building since we passed the welcome sign, and now it pressed against my ribs with cruel insistence.

"27 Bettong Road," she blurted, startled by her own answer.

"Shit!" It shot out of me before I could think to contain it.

Gladys’s intake of breath was sharp and theatrical. "Isn’t that Uncle Lance’s house?" she asked, her tone hovering somewhere between disbelief and horror.

"Yeah." The confirmation dragged itself from my throat, bitter and dry. "It is."

I could see the house in my mind already—yellowed brick, sagging porch, the cluttered yard forever in a state of half-tidied disarray. Uncle Lance. Just the name brought with it a complex cocktail of nostalgia, irritation, and something deeper… unresolved.

Mum’s older brother had always loomed like a shadow in the family lore. Tall, opinionated, fiercely loyal when it suited him—but God help you when it didn’t. The last time I saw him was that Christmas before last. Eighteen months ago and still too fresh.

I could practically hear the raised voices in the lounge room, taste the sour wine, feel the tension twisting the festive decorations into something far more sinister. The shouting match between Lance, Aunt Amy, and Mum had been biblical. The kind of argument that leaves behind an echo in your bones. No one won. We just stopped talking. Left things raw.

And now here we were. About to rock up on his doorstep, manifest in hand, blood on our clothes and secrets in the back of our minds.

Of course.

Gladys and I had tried to remain neutral during the fallout, a Switzerland-sized effort in diplomacy that didn’t count for much once the dust settled. When Uncle Lance and Aunt Amy stormed out that night—slamming the front door so hard the wreath fell off—Mum’s ruling came swiftly and without room for negotiation: we were to sever ties. Cut them off. Like a gangrenous limb. No phone calls. No birthday cards. Not even a passive-aggressive Facebook like.

And me? Like the dutiful daughter I was back then, I complied. No questions, no protests. Just silence. The kind that thickens over time, until it coats everything.

Now, as I stared ahead at the familiar street sign and the looming inevitability of Bettong Road, it struck me how time was both cruel and cloying—dragging us backward into a past we’d done our damnedest to shelve. What were the odds? Of all the places in New Norfolk, the bloody manifest had decided to play god and drag us to the very doorstep I’d sworn never to darken again. Family ties, it seemed, were like a rubber band. Stretch them all you want—eventually, they snap back.

Gladys shifted beside me, her hands twisting in her lap, the mangled manifest now resembling a chewed-up napkin. When she glanced at me, her eyes were almost pleading—hope and desperation dancing an awkward waltz in her expression.

"Maybe we can leave their package in the letter box?" she ventured, her tone light, too light. A fragile balloon drifting into a field of landmines.

"I don't think so, Gladys," I replied, keeping my voice even, though my grip on the wheel tightened. The practicality of her plan was paper-thin. "I don't remember seeing any packages small enough to fit in a letterbox."

It was the truth. These weren’t neat little bundles. They were bulky things—unmistakably meant for doorstep delivery. There was no elegant way around it.

Gladys let out a theatrical sigh, one that fogged up the passenger-side window with its weight. "We'll just sneak up and leave it on the front doorstep then," she said, the words drenched in reluctant bravery. I could already picture her, tiptoeing like a cartoon burglar, as if that would soften the emotional explosives that lay ahead.

"We?" I shot back, the single word curled with sarcasm. A smirk tugged at the edge of my mouth as I turned to face her. "I think you mean you."

It was meant to be teasing, but there was an edge beneath the humour. I’d driven us here, sure—but I wasn’t about to be the one knocking on the lion’s den. This was a family she still worshipped from a cautious distance. I’d already picked my side. And it wasn’t on their welcome mat.

"What!" Her shriek filled the cab, ricocheting off the dashboard like a startled bird. Her face twisted in outrage and disbelief, a portrait of theatrical betrayal. It was almost enough to make me laugh—if we weren’t about to deliver a package to the epicentre of our family’s cold war.

Almost.

---

As we neared our destination, I tried to ease the truck into a subtle, inconspicuous stop—but finesse clearly wasn't in my repertoire today. The front wheels jumped the kerb with an embarrassing thud, jolting the cabin hard enough to send my stomach lurching. The truck swayed awkwardly, a slow side-to-side rock like it had been slapped by an invisible hand. The whole vehicle shuddered with indignation, and I winced as the shock ran through my spine.

"What are you doing? I'm sure his house is further down the road," said Gladys, brow furrowed as she grabbed the dashboard for stability. Her confusion was unmistakable, and I didn’t blame her—on the surface, it looked like I’d forgotten how to drive in a straight line.

"It is," I replied simply, my tone even as I finally cut the engine. The hum of the motor faded, leaving a weighted silence that made Gladys’s confusion grow sharper.

"Then what?" she demanded, twisting in her seat to face me fully now, voice climbing in pitch.

I let out a long breath through my nose, gripping the steering wheel a little tighter before releasing it. "Well, if we're trying to cover up a murder, I'm not going to pull a truck up outside the front of their house. That's way too obvious."

The words hung in the air like smoke—undeniable and inescapable. Gladys's eyes darkened, her features pulling into a glare that cut sharp. I could see the storm of emotions flaring behind them—frustration, fear, and the dawning understanding of just how deep we were in. This wasn't just a quick delivery anymore. This was subterfuge, an act of calculated deception, and every choice we made from this point forward would be coloured by that reality.

I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. She needed a steady hand, not someone to spiral with.

With a firm nudge, I gestured towards the passenger side. "Just do it, Gladys," I said, each syllable clipped, not out of malice, but necessity. My voice had hardened, not from coldness, but because it had to. This wasn’t a time for softness or reassurance. This was survival.

Her body moved reluctantly, slowly, as though her limbs had turned to sandbags. With a metallic creak, she opened the passenger door, hesitating as the wind caught the edge and flapped it once before she stepped out. Her boots crunched on the gravel verge, the sound far too loud in the stillness of the street. As she stood there, facing the daunting stretch to Uncle Lance’s front door, she turned back.

"What kind of parcel is it?" she asked, her voice small—smaller than I’d heard it in a long while. In that moment, she wasn’t my infuriatingly stubborn sister. She was just a woman caught in something too big, too tangled.

"I don’t know," I said, the honesty in my voice raw. "Read the labels."

That was all I had to offer her.

With a huff—not quite surrender, not quite defiance—Gladys turned on her heel and began to walk. Her figure receded, framed by the soft shadow of the truck and the morning light that felt too gentle for what we were doing. Her back was straight, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the stiffness in her gait. Each step she took carried the weight of the unspoken, the uncomfortable, and the utterly surreal.

And then she was gone behind the truck.

I was left alone in the cab, staring straight ahead. The silence was total now, pressing in from all sides. And yet, it wasn’t empty. It was filled with every question I didn’t want to ask, every consequence I wasn’t ready to face.

My gaze drifted across the cab, out through the still open passenger door—an unwitting portal to the world outside that seemed both close and infinitely distant. The street beyond was unnervingly still, houses crouched behind trimmed hedges and drawn curtains, blissfully ignorant of the moral chaos parked in their midst. It was a postcard of suburban calm, yet I felt like a stain upon it.

The metal door of the truck's back groaned as Gladys pulled it open, the harsh screech slicing through the quiet like a knife dragged over a porcelain plate. That sound, raw and jarring, was our symphony now—an accompaniment to our clandestine errand. I imagined her back there, struggling with the package, hesitating with every movement. My gut twisted.

I waited.

Each second felt inflated, distorted—bloated with the weight of implication. Time itself had grown thick and syrupy, dragging at my nerves. Eventually, my gaze returned to the front. The quiet hum of the cabin, the faint creak of the cooling engine, the distant rumble of tyres on asphalt far away—it all blurred as my attention locked on my phone, perched upright in its cradle like an idle sentinel.

Its screen was dark, but my mind lit up with possibilities. A single swipe and I could pull Leigh into all of this. Should I message him?

The question wasn’t just idle pondering—it came with claws. It scratched at the edge of my restraint, tempting me with the illusion of relief. Of comfort. Of clarity. He was smart, calm. He knew things—understood this new world, this Clivilius, in a way I barely did. Maybe he could help.

But was that fair?

Is it wise for me to tell him what had happened?

The thought hung there, trembling between rationality and desperation. To say nothing meant staying in control, maintaining the illusion that we could handle this ourselves. To tell him, even just a piece, was to risk shattering that illusion. To widen the blast radius.

I stared at the phone like it might answer for me.

The weight of the decision lay heavy on my shoulders, and it wasn’t just mine. It belonged to Gladys too. To Luke. To Joel, even in death. Leigh deserved the truth—but not at the cost of implicating him in something that could unravel us all. And yet... the silence in that cabin felt like a vacuum, sucking me deeper into the vortex of my own second-guessing.

I shifted slightly in my seat, resisting the urge to reach for the device, to tap out the first word of a confession I wasn’t sure I had the right to make.

Outside, the air was still. But inside, the pressure was rising.

The passenger side door closed with a resounding bang, jolting me from my reverie like a gunshot echoing in an empty hallway. The suddenness of the noise rattled through my ribs, a stark reminder of just how on edge I truly was. I cringed, instinctively ducking my head, as though the sound alone might draw a hundred unwanted eyes to the truck and expose the quiet catastrophe we were trying so hard to bury.

My heart skipped a beat as I looked up, just in time to catch sight of Gladys’s clumsy misstep over the gutter and onto the footpath. Her foot caught awkwardly, sending her lurching forward in a graceless stagger. She righted herself quickly enough, but it was like watching a giraffe on roller skates try to pass for subtle. I sank lower in my seat, my body exhaling a deep, defeated sigh as despair coiled tight around my chest.

Of course. Of course it had to be this way.

She was barely a few steps in and already drawing attention to herself—and by extension, to me. To us. To what we’d done. There was no way Gladys was going to be able to make this delivery without cocking it up somehow. Every twitch of her limbs was a liability, every uncertain footfall a potential unravelling of the tightrope we were barely balancing on. My throat tightened as I realised I couldn’t let her carry on like this.

Leaning across the cab, I reached for the passenger side window, winding it down with the urgency of someone trying to avert disaster. My fingers fumbled with the stiff handle, the mechanical resistance grinding beneath my grip like the universe itself was mocking my attempt at control.

"Hey, Gladys," I called out, pitching my voice just loud enough to carry without inviting the attention of the entire street. She turned mid-step, her face lighting up with a mix of confusion and anticipation, like she was waiting to be praised for remembering to breathe.

"You can't be seen. You're supposed to be a man, remember?" The words tumbled from my mouth, half-laced with sarcasm, but their gravity was no joke. My tone might’ve been dry, but the stakes were soaking wet with dread. The ruse—delivering Joel’s packages to make it appear that his day hadn’t been abruptly cut short—wasn’t enough on its own. From a distance and with dim lighting, maybe she passed for someone less conspicuous. But under the unforgiving clarity of the midday sun? Not a chance.

Our entire charade depended on people thinking Joel had delivered these parcels. Not us. Not two women—one looking guilty as sin, the other flailing like a frightened duck in a rainstorm. If anyone took a closer look, if anyone remembered faces, voices, silhouettes—if anyone talked—we were finished. The police would connect the dots faster than we could deny they existed. I felt the cold press of that possibility creep up the back of my neck like an icy hand.

Gladys blinked at me, the weight of my words still catching up with her. And I knew, in that moment, we were running out of time.

As Gladys resumed her cautious trek down the street, her gait stiff with apprehension, my foot began tapping an erratic rhythm against the brake pedal—an involuntary staccato, desperate to bleed off the nervous energy coiled in my muscles. The steady thud echoed faintly through the cabin, matching the pounding in my chest. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, knuckles blanching white, as my gaze slid once again to the phone resting quietly in its cradle. It looked so harmless there, dark and still. A slab of silence. A pocket of temptation.

Should I message him? The question fluttered to life once more, insistent and sharp, circling my thoughts like a hawk eyeing a rabbit. What would I even say? Leigh, sorry to disturb you, but I may have accidentally gotten tangled in a murder cover-up. Also, how’s your day going? My lips pressed into a thin line as my fingers twitched, inching closer to the device, compelled by the desperate need for an anchor in this freefall.

And then, as if summoned by the intensity of my indecision, the phone’s screen exploded into light, jolting violently against the plastic console as it buzzed with urgency. The sudden noise felt like a thunderclap in the suffocating quiet of the cabin. My breath hitched. I flinched as though struck. For a split second, I was certain the entire universe had caught us red-handed.

Leigh. His name illuminated the screen in sharp, glaring text, stark and unforgiving.

My pulse thumped loudly in my ears. I flicked my eyes up to the windscreen—no sign of Gladys yet, her figure swallowed by fences and hedges and the winding curve of the road. The coast, for now, remained clear.

I reached for the phone with a trembling hand, fingertips brushing the screen like it might burn me. My thumb hovered over the notification, the hesitation stretching out like a taut wire. I pressed it.

The message snapped into view like a spotlight switching on in a pitch-black room.

Leigh: We need to meet up. Urgently.

A gasp clawed its way out of my throat, unbidden. The air felt thinner, suddenly. My heart rate shot up as if it had been spooked, a stampede of panic tearing through me.

Does he know about Joel?

Does he know what we are doing right now?

Am I in danger?

The questions came fast and unrelenting, hammering against the walls of my skull. Each possibility felt like a trap door, ready to swing open beneath me. I clutched the phone tightly, as if I could somehow will it to offer more—more context, more detail, more time. But there was only silence, and the bright, blinking cursor of a conversation I wasn’t sure I was ready to continue.

Taking a deep breath, I held it, my lungs straining against the pressure, as if somehow controlling my breath might grant me control over the moment. My fingers hovered uncertainly over the keyboard, suspended above the glowing screen while my mind raced to outpace my fear. I needed to reply—calmly, neutrally—without revealing even a hint of the chaos swirling beneath my skin.

Beatrix: Sure. What's up?

The words blinked back at me from the screen, innocuous in their simplicity. Too casual? The question needled me instantly. My stomach churned as I scrutinised the message, every syllable now feeling like a potential liability. Was I being too vague? Or too keen? Should I have asked if everything was okay? The longer I stared at the words, the less they made sense. Every option seemed too risky, each possible reply teetering on the edge of exposure.

The possibility that Leigh’s message had nothing to do with Joel—that it was about something entirely unrelated—flashed across my thoughts like a cruel trick of the light. But I couldn’t afford to underestimate the situation. The stakes were far too high. And yet, I also couldn't afford to give anything away. A single misplaced word could unravel us. Could unravel me.

With a blend of caution, resignation, and a dash of reckless defiance, I pressed send.

I inhaled again, slower this time, trying to calm the fluttering in my chest. The air felt thick, the atmosphere inside the truck suddenly suffocating, charged with electricity as I waited for his reply. My eyes remained glued to the screen, willing it to light up again.

Leigh: Usual @ 2

I exhaled sharply—almost a gasp, more sound than breath—as tension fled my chest in a whoosh. But the relief I had hoped for didn’t come. If anything, Leigh’s reply made it worse. The vagueness of it. The way it said both everything and nothing. Usual at two. Two o'clock. Not long from now.

No hint of context. No clarification. Just an instruction.

What did he mean? Was this a trap? A warning? A routine check-in masked with ominous undertones?

My fingers hesitated over the keyboard again, an anxious rhythm building in the tips. I typed out:

Danger?

But the word blinked at me like an accusation—too stark, too revealing. I backspaced furiously, erasing the question before it had the chance to exist outside my mind. I couldn’t tip my hand. Not yet. Not when I didn’t even know which game we were playing.

Beatrix: Okay

I settled for a single, measured word. A placeholder. A shield. A promise to show up—whatever that would mean.

And as the message sent, my reflection stared back at me in the dark screen—tense jaw, wide eyes, the outline of a woman inching deeper into the shadows of her own making.

The sudden swing of the passenger door broke the tense silence like a clap of thunder, shattering my fragile concentration. I jumped, the involuntary jolt surging through my spine. My hands, already jittery from the weight of the day's chaos, flailed clumsily in a desperate bid to catch my phone. It slipped from my grasp like a bar of soap and thudded against the floor mat—a small, yet piercing calamity amidst the storm that churned around us.

"Let's get out of here," Gladys panted, collapsing into the passenger seat with a flush of exertion. Her voice was tight and breathless, steeped in a sense of immediacy that set my nerves on edge. The door slammed behind her with a reverberating finality, as if sealing in all the consequences we had left strewn behind her on the footpath.

I hastily bent down to retrieve my phone, my fingers fumbling across the rubber matting until I found it. Without looking at the screen, I wedged it between my thighs, anchoring it like a relic too dangerous to lose again. My pulse thundered in my ears as I shoved the key into the ignition, the truck lurching forward with a groan of protest, a reluctant accomplice to our flight from familiarity.

"No," Gladys barked, her tone sharp and commanding, a sudden steel beneath her usual waver. "Turn us around and go the other way."

I hesitated, foot hovering over the brake, a flash of confusion rising like a tide in my chest. Her voice had been too sure, too immediate. Something about her tone lodged under my skin, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.

Her urgency unsettled me more than her words. The demand, so specific and abrupt, felt like more than a preference—it felt like fear. Has Gladys done something that will compromise us? The question flared in my mind like a warning light on the dashboard. Her insistence, her refusal to let us drive past the house she had just fled, whispered of unfinished business. Or worse—mismanaged consequences.

"Safer not to drive past their house," she offered, eyes fixed dead ahead, her words clipped and tight. There was no glance in my direction, no invitation for questions. Just the thin veil of justification, papering over something I couldn’t quite see.

Her vagueness only added weight to my unease. The silence that followed was thick, stretching between us like wire pulled taut. I could feel it, vibrating with things unsaid, stories she wasn’t willing to tell.

I stared down the road for a beat longer, the indicator clicking softly in a rhythm that felt accusatory. Then, slowly, I turned the wheel, guiding the truck around in a wide arc that sent the tyres grumbling against the kerb. I won’t ask. Not now. The truth might have teeth, and we had too far to go, too much still at stake.

Besides, Gladys—fractious, fumbling, fragile Gladys—was my only ally in this. And if I pushed her now, I risked losing more than just answers. I'd better not send her over the edge completely, I reasoned, gripping the steering wheel tighter. The road behind us faded into the mirror, and we pressed on, chasing a future we hadn't yet earned the right to imagine.