SHATTERED FALLS, page 1
SHATTERED FALLS
SHATTERED FALLS
Wayne Russell
Copyright © 2024 by Wayne Russell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Printing, 2024
26 Infinity Publishing
For Rachael
With Love Forever, and then some.
One
1
The next one hundred and fifty kilometres felt like the most important distance Karen would ever travel. She wanted only one thing. To be with her children. She had her husband beside her, driving faster at times than he should, but always coaxed back to a safe speed by her words or questioning look. She knew David was doing his best to not drive angry and other than her father, he was the safest driver she knew.
She had always felt safe with him. Safe and loved, but now after what had happened, she…they needed to know their whole family was safe. Jake was just shy of four years old, and she could envision him at this moment, chasing chickens through the backyard of her parents’ home. Rebecca, the independent nine-year-old would be sitting on the back porch with ‘Grandma’, watching and laughing as Grandad supervised Jake. Karen knew her kids were safe but knowing that, and having your arms wrapped around them were two different things.
David glanced away from the road for just a moment to study his wife’s face and echoed her thoughts.
“They’re ok babe, and we’ll be there soon. Just over the mountains, and we’ll hit Murrurundi, then it’s a clear shot to Kurri. Couple of hours.”
“I know. Just seems like an eternity…and that doesn’t mean you should drive faster.”
“I got it babe, and I’m sorry I was angry. It wasn’t at you, but I guess you know that. Fact is, I’m still angry but I know what we’re going to do about it.”
Karen smiled and reached over to squeeze her husband’s forearm. “I’m glad I’ve got you. I love you…but slow down just a little.” Karen turned her gaze up the hill, at the oncoming traffic. “This part of the road has always given me the chills.”
David nodded, lifted his foot off the accelerator and slid into the left lane.
“Thank you, baby.”
She drew in a deep breath of air from the partially lowered passenger window and closed her eyes.
‘Relax’, she thought to herself. She had never been an anxious person and even though she had seen the signs of anxiety in herself at times, she had always been able to manage them. Until yesterday.
Yesterday David had come home from the mill, whistling some unknown tune, and leaving a trail of sawdust, to find her curled up in the corner of the kitchen, sobbing and trembling. When he had calmed her enough to talk, she had seen the concern in his eyes turn to rage. She knew he had always held back his emotions, but this seemed to be his tipping point and it had taken the next half hour for her to calm him.
And then, they sat, both together on the kitchen floor. Karen told him everything, and he listened, biting his lip in bursts of renewed anger at times but always holding it in. Then they made a plan.
First, they would head down to Karen’s parent’s house, where their children were spending the last few days of the summer holidays. Then tomorrow they would visit a lawyer. The brother of Karen’s parents’ neighbour. The appointment had been made and even just making that first step had lifted a weight off her shoulders but the thought of being surrounded by David, Rebecca, Jake, her Mum and Dad was the real therapy she was looking for.
A semi-trailer, double length overtook them as they headed over the last rise of the Liverpool Range, the sound of its gears shifting bringing her head back from her window to look out David’s window. A line of vehicles behind the truck streamed past. She watched them, thinking how all those people likely had their problems, their own issues.
Her jaw dropped open as a battered white Commodore pulled alongside them.
“David.” Karen pointed toward the other vehicle.
She knew the face and as David turned his head to look, he knew it as well.
“What the…?” David squinted at the car. The familiar face was looking directly at him and then a hand was raised and beckoned for them to pull to the side of the road.
“David, what’s he doing?”
Before David had any chance to answer, Karen screamed as she looked once again at the car beside them. David looked as well and took only a moment to realise what was wrong with what he was seeing.
“You’ve got to be stuffing kidding?”
David pushed his foot down on the accelerator, and they lurched forward, the car beside them disappearing. The Commodore had more power and it gained on them again, pulling alongside.
The driver was now screaming at them, waving them to the side of the road but David refused the direction and focused on the road ahead.
And then the Commodore swerved. Metal ground against metal and in an instant Karen’s vision filled with silver guardrail, yellow reflectors, flashes of grass, trees, and rocks and finally a canopy of blue sky through shattered windshield. Pain stabbed at her everywhere.
And then nothing. Blackness washed over them both. Washing away their pain and all their hopes. Shattering the worlds of everyone they cared for.
Her last thought was of her children. Her last thought was of Jake and Rebecca.
Two
2
Fourteen Years Later.
The road ahead held a painful memory, something best slept through, but Rebecca knew that sleep would not come easy. The coach was warm enough, and the seats comfortable enough, but she had too much on her mind.
Outside icy rain occasionally spattered against the window and when it was quiet enough, she could hear the wind. Her Grandad called it a lazy wind, it only blew one way, straight through you.
It was mid-July, the dead of winter, late Wednesday evening and about a half hour north of Maitland. The coach trip would take just over four hours and would pull into Tamworth just after midnight. She had already booked herself into a hotel near the station. In the morning, she would wait for an old family friend to take her the final half hour of the trip and the start of a new life.
Right now, all she could do was sit and think, which was exactly what her Grandad had told her to do, although his words had been more like, ‘giving you a chance to get your shit straight’. He was a man that liked to tell it, how it was.
Two months ago, her father’s father, Pop had passed away. He had made it to eighty before his heart had finally given out. A heart attack one afternoon on the veranda of the local hotel and then two weeks in a hospital in Newcastle becoming less and less of the formidable man he had once been, before he finally decided he had had enough. His Will had left his house, small property, and a half share in the timber mill that he had started years ago to Rebecca and her brother. Jake was a few months short of eighteen, still in high school and in the care of Grandma and Grandad, her mum’s parents. He would come up in the next school holidays to visit but now Rebecca just needed an escape from the troubled life that had engulfed her.
Outside the coach, the rain had gotten heavier. They had just stopped at Muswellbrook to pick up and drop off passengers and the frigid air from outside had been driven inside by the increasing wind. Rebecca flipped the collar of her coat up and pulled a knitted grey woollen beanie down over her ears. All she could think was ‘God I miss summer’, but summer and her memories of it seemed a million miles away.
The best memory she had was of summer. She had been nine years old, and her dad had been dragging her around on a boogie board and catching waves in the big, protected rock pool at Tuncurry. Mum had ventured into the water, carrying Jake on her hip, jumping up to stop the waves from getting her hair wet. Jake had laughed hysterically every time his mum had sworn as the waves slapped against her chest and splashed up at her hair. It had been the best Christmas holiday she had ever had and the last one she would ever spend with her parents. From then on, her life had been one of rebellion and depression, all of which she knew in her heart were rooted in the loss of her parents fourteen years ago.
Fourteen years ago, on the same highway she was now on, a red sedan had been sideswiped and forced off the road. It had hit a guard rail and flipped, plummeting down an embankment and ending up a twisted wreck of metal at the foot of the Liverpool range just north of Murrurundi. Rebecca's mother had died on the scene, her father two days later in an intensive care unit in Sydney, and that spot, where all their lives had changed, now lay less than an hour ahead of her. Rebecca could fell her anxiety kicking in, clammy hands, short sharp breaths, and tense muscles.
“Focus on your breathing” she muttered to herself, “Focus.”
It took her a few minutes but after years of dealing with it through a dozen different types of pills, she had found her own way. A way that worked for her. Breathe. Deep controlled breaths that slowed her racing heart.
The anxiety eased and even though she knew that falling asleep would be a battle, she had to try again. She placed the small lavender scented travel pillow, that Grandma had insisted she take, up against the window and leant against it. Rebecca clenched her eyes shut and began trying all the tricks she had ever heard of to help her sleep. Counting sheep, clearing her mind, humming quietly but nothing worked. She opened her eyes and stared intently out the window at what little of the passing countryside she could see. It was not much, the distant rain-distorted light from a farmhouse, other cars and trucks going about their own seemingly untroubled lives and the never-ending flash from reflectors on the guardrail.
Rebecca turned and looked back around the coach. It looked like there was now less than ten passengers, but it was hard to tell as they all seemed huddled into their seats keeping warm and trying to sleep. Across from her sat an elderly woman, she had been on the coach before Rebecca had gotten on, and beside her, in the window seat sat a small boy. A boy who looked only about four years old, dressed in spiderman pyjamas, yellow rain boots and a red and white beanie. Apart from the driver and Rebecca he seemed to be the only other person awake on the coach, but unlike Rebecca he seemed intent on staying awake. Rebecca had heard the boy promise to the lady, who she assumed was his grandmother that he would sleep, but as Nana had drifted off, the boy pulled himself up to the window and stared out, amazed by every snatch of light that caught his eye.
Rebecca could not help but laugh quietly to herself.
‘Kids’, she thought, ‘if only things had worked out different. Someone like you might have been sitting next to me instead.’
Rebecca thought back, dropping out of high school, the string of bad boyfriends, the trouble the last one had gotten her into with the police, and then she had gotten pregnant. When she had told her boyfriend, he had laughed at her and walked out the door, leaving her with a handful of bills and two flatmates who wanted her gone. She turned to the two people she knew she could rely on, Grandma and Grandad. Grandad had been the hardest one to tell, not because she feared him but because she had always looked up to him and seeing his face, knowing she had let him down had been hard. But Grandad had turned out to be her greatest ally. He had walked into the flat, packed all her gear in a duffel bag he had brought and driven her back to the house. He had told her he loved her and kissed her as he carried her bag into her room. Then when she had lost the baby two weeks later, he had held her in his arms for the longest time. Rebecca had even felt his tears fall upon her neck. And now here she was, under Grandad’s instruction, trying to get her shit together.
Three
3
Rebecca woke with a sudden jolt. Somehow, she had fallen asleep. She sat upright and looked around the coach, getting her bearings. The little boy in the window seat across the aisle seemed to have fallen asleep as well, his head resting on his grandmother’s lap. It was still raining, and Rebecca had no idea where they were. Somewhere on the New England Highway but other than north of Muswellbrook it was a bit of a mystery. She stared out the window hoping to catch a glimpse of a sign, hopefully something that told her they were past Murrurundi and over the other side of the Liverpool range.
There seemed to be lights behind her, a town just passed, maybe that was Murrurundi, and the road would soon ascend the range and pass the site she wanted to avoid. She closed her eyes and whispered a quiet prayer that it was not. A truck passed, heading south, its brakes squealing as it slowed for the sixty zone of the town Rebecca had just passed through. She opened her eyes and in the light of the coaches’ high beam she saw a sign. ‘Quirindi Left, 2 Kilometres’. She was well past Murrurundi, past the scene of the accident and within about forty minutes of Tamworth. The lights behind her must have been Willow Tree.
She closed her eyes again and whispered a quiet thanks. When she opened them again, she found the little boy smiling at her from his seat across the aisle, almost as if saying ‘It’s okay.’
The next forty minutes passed quickly, the storm still raged outside and if anything, the wind had gotten worse. Luckily the hotel she had booked into was near the depot, but she doubted she would be dry by the time she managed to crawl into a bed.
The coach pulled to a stop beside the Train station. The little boy shook his grandmother, “Nanny we’re here. Look I can see Poppy’s car”, the excitement in his voice equal to the relief Rebecca felt as she stood and grabbed her carry bag.
The boy turned to Rebecca as he walked down the aisle “Bye lady” he hesitated a moment, “you talk lots in your sleep you know.”
Rebecca felt a wave of embarrassment wash over her, and was sure that she turned bright red.
The boy must have sensed something and said, “It’s alright I won’t tell.”
Rebecca smiled at him and waved “Bye matey.”
Outside the rain had slowed, but the wind was howling. The coach driver had on a heavy raincoat and offered a quick ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Goodnight’ to the passengers as he passed them their bags from beneath the coach. Half a dozen cars were waiting in the car park and in no time the passengers piled into them, the vehicles came to life, and they headed off, windscreen wipers madly swaying to keep the rain at bay.
Across the road Rebecca could see the Tamworth Hotel. She had picked it because it was close to the station and had no idea what to expect. Now it looked like a safe place out of the wind and rain, and that was all she needed. The driver looked up at her as he handed her the old duffle bag.
“You got someone picking you up.”
“In the morning. Just going across the road to the hotel for the night.”
“Okay. You keep warm and safe now.”
The driver climbed back aboard the coach and watched Rebecca from the step.
“Do you want a hand?” he yelled.
“No, I’ll be right. Thanks.”
Rebecca pulled a hood from her coat up over her beanie, slung her carry bag on one shoulder and hoisted Grandads old duffle bag onto the other. The traffic was light, and she had no problem crossing the road, ignoring the pedestrian crossing, and running directly across to the hotel. She had planned to get in late and after a quick but loud knock she was let in. Fifteen minutes later she was in a warm room above the hotel. She hung her coat and damp clothes above the old oil heater to air dry and climbed into the bed. This time she did not have to find a way to get herself to sleep. It came quickly and despite the strange surroundings she slept soundly and without a thought of the troubled life she had left behind only hours ago.
Four
4
A knock at the door roused Rebecca from her sleep. She looked groggily around the room for a moment before calling out.
“Who is it?”
“It’s your wakeup call Miss.”, a young male voice, “It’s eight AM. If you want some breakfast we’re serving until nine.”
“Ok thank you.”
“No worries. Also, had a phone message for you. Paul rang and said he probably won’t make it here until about midday. Problems with the road after that storm last night.”
“Ok. Thanks again”
“Don’t forget breakfast until nine.”
Rebecca heard footsteps head along the hall and down the stairs. She threw off the covers and immediately regretted it. Even though she could see bright sunshine peeking through the curtains, it was still mid-winter and the air felt icily cold. She quickly grabbed a set of clothes for the day, towel and her toiletries bag and headed off to the common shower that was at the end of the hall. Luckily for Rebecca the lady that saw her to her room last night had told her that there was no one else staying in the hotel overnight, so she had the showers to herself.
The water was hot, and steam soon filled the bathroom. The mirror clouded, and Rebecca just stood beneath the water and let the warmth wash over her, losing herself to the sound of running water. She lost track of how long she had been in there when suddenly the water pressure changed, and the temperature dropped.
“Bloody Hell.” Rebecca cursed loud enough to be heard and quickly jumped out of the shower, her feet slipping. She grabbed at the clothes she had hung on a wall hook and managed to steady herself, but the clothes fell to the floor and into a puddle of water.
“You have to be kidding.”
On the floor lay both sets of clothes. Jeans, shirt, and pyjamas all soaked from water that had sprayed out from under the shower curtain and pooled on the floor. The only thing still hanging on the wall was her towel.
