Wine, Towels, and Thin Threads

"With Gladys, even the evidence smells of shiraz."

Within a mere twenty minutes, the insistent voice of the GPS announced I was closing in on Gladys’s last known location. The pin on my phone had barely moved since she’d sent it—a stillness that wound tight in my chest. Mid-winter in Tasmania, and she’d just bolted through Myrtle Forest in a thunderstorm to shake the police. If she’d stopped, it wasn’t because she’d found somewhere warm.

The road ahead wound through dense bushland, the trees crowding close on either side, their dripping branches hanging low like tired sentries. The air was heavy with the damp, green scent of rain-soaked earth, and every so often the dark sheen of the bitumen fractured into slick pools reflecting the bruised grey of the sky.

I leaned forward over the wheel, eyes scanning the narrow strip of road. The storm had eased to a sullen drizzle, but the cold crept in through the seams of the car all the same. Then, up ahead, the shape of a vehicle emerged—pulled in tight to the verge, its presence jarringly out of place in the hushed, dripping forest.

I slowed, the details coming into focus. The car’s paintwork was plastered with the bold lettering Tassie Independent—hardly the ideal company for someone fresh out of a high-speed pursuit.

Beside it stood a young couple, their expressions knotted between concern and frustration. And between them—Gladys.

Even at this distance, she was unmistakable. Clothes plastered to her frame, hair matted in rain-heavy strands, shoulders hunched against the cold. Her skin was pale in the dim light, but her grip on the wine bottle was ironclad—as though she’d fought the forest itself to keep it.

Before I could think beyond that, she made a sudden lurch towards the man, swinging the bottle in an erratic, dangerous arc.

I sighed, the breath misting against the windscreen. Shock was already giving way to something heavier—familiar sibling responsibility.

“And taking swipes at a reporter, no less,” I murmured, the dryness in my tone my only defence against the absurdity. Of course she was at the centre of a roadside spectacle in the middle of the bush. Of course there was wine. And of course, I was the one pulling up to deal with it.

As I edged past the Tassie Independent car, I rolled down the passenger window. The rush of cold air poured in, damp and sharp, carrying with it the mingled scents of wet earth, rain-soaked eucalyptus, and the sour edge of wine fumes. Beneath that came the ragged sound of raised voices—half-argument, half-negotiation—the kind of brittle exchange that never ends well.

"Gladys! Get in the car!" My voice cut through the chill, pitched to that very specific register siblings reserve for each other: firm, threaded with irritation, but underpinned by something unspoken and unmovable.

I lifted a hand in a sharp beckon, signalling to my soaked, bedraggled sister that this was her exit—her one chance to step out of the wreckage before it collapsed entirely. In the space of that moment, I felt the shift: not just rescuer, but protector. Not because she deserved absolution, but because letting her fall wasn’t an option I could stomach.

Gladys’s approach was, predictably, far from subtle. She staggered forward in a zig-zag trajectory, colliding with the young man who, moments before, had clearly been trying to talk her down. Her shoulder clipped his arm with enough force to make him stumble, a muttered curse trailing after her.

Her eyes were glassy but defiant, her jaw set in that stubborn angle I’d known since we were children. She yanked the passenger door open with a kind of ragged triumph and dropped heavily into the seat, slamming it shut against the damp air. The empty wine bottle was clamped between her thighs like a prize hard-won, her fingers still wrapped around its neck in a white-knuckled grip.

She didn’t look at me. She didn’t need to. The smell of the wine did all the talking, and the way she clutched it told me the rest.

"Shit, Gladys," I exhaled, the words carrying a mix of frustration and reluctant concern. The sight of her up close was worse than I’d expected—mud streaked up her shins, hair plastered to her head in clumps, mascara smudged into tired half-moons beneath her eyes. The storm had left its fingerprints all over her, and so had the wine.

My gaze dropped to the bottle between her knees, its contents long vanished, the empty glass catching what little light filtered through the overcast sky. It sat there like a trophy for endurance under questionable circumstances.

"You really had to drink now?" My tone straddled incredulity and resignation, a question I already knew the answer to. Alcohol had always been her fallback—a portable fortress she could uncork when life cornered her. But today? After this? The timing was spectacularly bad, even by her standards.

Gladys’s response was instant, a defensive snap that carried more heat than volume. "You would have done the same," she shot back, the edge in her voice slicing through the damp air between us. The words weren’t entirely wrong, which made them sting all the more.

She turned her face to the passenger-side window, the landscape flashing past in muted greens and browns, each wet trunk and dripping branch a barrier she was throwing up between us. Conversation closed—at least on her terms.

I drew in a long breath, pressing my foot gently to the accelerator, steering us away from the mess we’d just peeled her out of. In the rear-view mirror, the reporters still loitered near their car, their postures loose but their eyes sharp. It didn’t take much imagination to picture them piecing together their version of events, one with just enough embellishment to make it worth printing.

They’d have no shortage of detail: a dishevelled woman stumbling from the forest, swinging an empty bottle, her hair plastered to her skull like a bird caught in oil. A roadside drama perfectly framed for a human-interest piece with a mean streak.

As the car rolled onto the road that would take us home, my mind raced through possible headlines—each more theatrical than the last. It was easy to imagine our family name threaded into the gossip, our private mess served up for public entertainment.

I could only hope that, for once, the press had been more interested in lending her a hand than immortalising her humiliation. But the seed of doubt was planted, and it rooted quickly, a dark weight pressing at the back of my mind.

As we made our escape, the uneasy quiet inside the car fractured with the low whine of the passenger window winding down. The blast of frigid, rain-heavy air hit me like a slap, stripping away the fragile warmth I’d managed to coax into the cabin. The scent of wet earth and eucalyptus surged in, along with the faint metallic tang of the road after rain.

I turned, my brows shooting up just in time to see Gladys lean casually out, arm extended with all the ceremony of a queen dispensing alms. The empty wine bottle slipped from her fingers and vanished into the thick undergrowth, swallowed instantly by the shadows of the forest.

Of course.

The act was so perfectly Gladys—thoughtless, theatrical, and stubbornly unconcerned—that my body reacted before my brain had even caught up. I stamped on the brake. The car jerked violently, tyres shrieking in protest, the sharp smell of burnt rubber curling into the cold air.

"Go and get it," I ordered, my voice low but edged with steel. My eyes stayed locked on her, holding the look just long enough to make the point: I was done being the audience to her chaos.

She didn’t flinch. Instead, she gave a small, dismissive huff, the kind that managed to sound both annoyed and bored. "We’re better off without it."

My jaw tightened. "Gladys," I exhaled, the single word heavy with the fatigue of years of skirmishes just like this. Why did every conversation with her feel like navigating a minefield armed only with sarcasm?

"It’s evidence now," I said, leaning into the weight of the logic, hoping it might pierce the fog she was moving through. "It has your DNA all over it."

The words hung between us, stark and cold, their meaning impossible to dress up as anything but trouble. And still, I could feel the tug-of-war winding up again—the inevitable battle of wills neither of us ever truly won.

Reluctantly, and with an exaggerated huff that could have earned her a standing ovation in the theatre of petty defiance, Gladys shoved the door open and slid out into the cold. I watched her trudge towards the undergrowth, shoulders hunched, muttering something inaudible as she began rummaging for her discarded mistake.

Meanwhile, I twisted in my seat, reaching into the back to retrieve the small overnight case I’d packed. It was muscle memory by now—an ingrained precaution born from years of knowing that when Gladys was involved, even the best-laid plans had a half-life measured in minutes.

The zipper rasped open, the sound oddly loud in the damp stillness. I pulled out a towel, giving it a sharp snap to shake out the folds, the fabric releasing the faint scent of laundry powder. Carefully, I spread it across the passenger seat, smoothing the edges into place with the precision of someone laying out evidence rather than terrycloth. Small measures, yes—but they were the sort of pre-emptive moves that kept chaos from leaving stains.

Settling back behind the wheel, I drummed my fingers lightly against the leather, eyes flicking to the mirror to catch her progress. “Lucky I’m going on a road trip,” I muttered under my breath. The words weren’t meant for her, just for the quiet acknowledgement that preparedness had become my default setting. With Gladys, normality was always a temporary visitor.

She reappeared a moment later, bottle in hand, the expression on her face a mix of irritation and reluctant compliance. Her gaze dropped to the towel and then up to me, a silent accusation in her eyes—as if I’d just placed a chalk outline where she was meant to sit.

“I don’t want you getting your wet shit all over the clean seats,” I said plainly, slicing through whatever retort she might have been weighing.

The eye-roll that followed could have powered a small generator. She flopped back into the seat with a force that made the springs protest, the slam of the door punctuating her mood.

I let out a slow, measured breath, comforted by the thin strip of towel between us—a small, tangible barrier between her disorder and my determination to maintain some semblance of order, if only within the confines of the car.

As we merged back onto the road, the wipers swept away the last few stubborn streaks of rain, revealing a landscape I knew too well—dripping gums, slick tarmac winding between the tight walls of forest, the sky a muted wash of winter grey. Gladys sat slouched in the passenger seat, the towel beneath her darkened where it had absorbed water from her clothes.

Her voice broke the quiet, hesitant but edged with something else—a faint crease of confusion, maybe even worry. “Where are we going?” she asked, glancing sideways at me, her eyes narrowing just enough to suggest she already suspected I wasn’t taking the most direct route home.

“I’m taking you to Luke’s house,” I said, keeping my gaze fixed on the road. My tone was even, but there was no mistaking the tightness running under it.

“Why not home?”

My jaw tightened, molars pressing together. Explaining plans to Gladys always felt like trying to keep a candle lit in a wind tunnel—inevitably, I’d end up relighting it. “The police know it was your car involved in the car chase, Gladys. They’ve already found where you left it at Myrtle Forest.” I let the words settle in the air, heavy and unavoidable. “You can’t go home now. Not ever.”

Her reply came quieter, the sharpness stripped away. “I want to go home, Beatrix. Snowflake still needs me.” The plea was soft, but it landed like a small, sharp hook in my chest. Whatever mess she’d made for herself, she still thought of that cat first—her last tether to anything resembling stability.

I exhaled hard, the breath misting the windows for a moment before the de-mister kicked in. The mention of Snowflake stirred up the ghost of another loss—Duke—and the ache that came with it. We’d already buried too much. Letting Snowflake go hungry was a line I wasn’t prepared to cross.

“I’ll park the car at Mum and Dad’s, and we can walk to your place from there,” I conceded, flicking on the indicator and making a sharper turn than was strictly necessary, angling us towards my home. Sometimes compromise was the only way to keep moving forward without setting the whole thing on fire.

Navigating the familiar streets, I approached our parents’ house—or rather, the house that had once been unequivocally mine too. Even the bends in the road felt muscle-deep in my memory, yet as each one passed beneath the tyres, an odd sense of displacement spread through me. Home had become a slippery concept—more a memory than a place I could stand in.

My hand drifted to my pocket without thinking, fingertips brushing over the solid, reassuring shape of the Portal Key. It was a strange kind of anchor—one that didn’t tether me to a fixed point, but to the possibility of movement. The overnight bag in the back seat was another reminder of that fact: I lived in a state of perpetual readiness now, always half in motion. The car, the road, and the fleeting in-between spaces felt more like home than any four walls ever could.

Pulling into the driveway snapped my thoughts back into focus. The house rose before us in the soft, grey light, its windows catching faint reflections of the street and sky. Each one seemed to hold a fragment of the past—birthday candles blown out in the dining room, whispered late-night arguments in the kitchen, and those small, quiet moments you only notice in hindsight. It was all still there, yet unreachable, sealed behind time and circumstance.

I turned to Gladys. She was beginning to pull herself together in fits and starts—straightening her damp hair with one hand, squaring her shoulders as though presentation might erase the last few hours.

“Probably best you don’t go inside,” I said, keeping my voice level but laced with caution. The thought of Mum or Dad seeing her like this—wet, wild-eyed, wine bottle not far from reach—was an entire conversation I had no interest in moderating.

I stepped out of the car, the cold air closing around me instantly. It had that damp, metallic edge unique to Tasmanian winter, the kind that made you want to hurry indoors. Instead, I stood for a moment, feet on familiar ground, staring at a place I’d once sought for comfort but now approached with the wary resolve of someone stepping into contested territory.

As I circled the car to join Gladys, I slowed, caught for a moment by the sight of her staring at her own reflection in the window. The faint ghost of her face stared back at her in the glass—pale, tired, and streaked with the day’s ordeal. Something in it pulled at me.

Her shoes were a disaster: soaked through, the leather cracked and scuffed, the soles rimmed with a crust of dried mud. Her trousers carried the tell-tale grass stains of someone who’d recently tested the ground in less-than-graceful fashion, the vivid green smeared across the damp fabric.

Up close, the full impact of her dishevelment was unavoidable. The storm hadn’t just battered her; it had claimed her. The scent of wet forest still clung to her clothes, earthy and sharp, as if she’d been steeped in it. A twig, along with a cluster of pine needles, had tangled themselves in her hair, and I reached out to pluck them free, the gesture half practical, half something else—an attempt to restore her just a fraction.

And the forest still clings to her, I thought, the words heavy, not just with the literal truth but with something metaphorical that I didn’t want to examine too closely.

Gladys didn’t seem to notice the bits of nature she’d carried out with her. She drew the towel tighter around herself, the fabric bunched in her fists like she could hold the whole world at bay with enough pressure.

“Let’s go,” she said. Her voice was rough, the day etched into every word, a blend of resignation and urgency. The set of her mouth, the tension around her eyes—it all seemed sharper now, like the weight of what she’d run from was catching up.

I gave a small, silent nod, abandoning my half-formed plan to momentarily step inside the house. Instead, I reached into the back seat and hauled out my bag, its worn strap and familiar heft a reminder of my itinerant life—never fully unpacked, never fully settled.

We moved off without another word, our steps muted on the damp pavement. Her street wasn’t far, but every turn carried the risk of eyes on us, and both of us knew it.

The thought of legal repercussions hovered like a storm cloud that refused to break, pressing down with each step. There’s only so much that Sergeant Charlie can do to protect us, I reminded myself. Maybe he could buy Gladys some time, maybe even divert attention long enough for us to regroup—but hope was thin, fragile stuff.

Even so, in the fragile economy of our lives right now, a thin thread was still a thread worth holding. We kept to the edges of the street, quiet, deliberate, the air between us dense with unspoken fears. It wasn’t the first time we’d walked the line between evasion and consequence, but it had never felt this narrow.