Charade

Vic

I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white.

Anger pulsed through me, as thick and real as the blood in my veins. I thought about all that money, all the money I needed to save Lily, all of which was now gone. What if I couldn't get it back in time? What if Lily died before Benjamin returned it to me? What if I never found it? Without that money, my little girl was sure to die.

I clenched my jaw and hit the steering wheel, my rage and frustration exploding inside my chest. I glanced at the clock. Three p.m. I had twenty minutes before I had to pick Lily up from school – plenty of time to ransack the Hammond's apartment. I needed that money back, and I knew if I couldn't beat it out of Benjamin, I'd have to steal it from him.

I got to the apartment block and rode the elevator up. It had to be in the apartment somewhere – where else could it be? – but after forty minutes of tearing through drawers and closets and beds and couches and turning up a steaming pile of nothing, I gave up. By the time I looked at the clock again, it was nearing four o'clock.

I was twenty minutes late for picking up Lily.

I froze, standing in the middle of the Hammond's apartment, and frantically began putting things back where they were. I couldn't be late again – My ex-wife would kill me.

I leapt into the car, jamming the keys in the ignition and found the pedals instantly. By the time I reached her school, it was raining. Large, full drops of rainwater came pelting down all at once, turning my windscreen into a blurred splash of pale grey. My windscreen wipers ticked furiously, struggling to keep my vision clear, as I drifted round corners and dodged Holdens and Fords and Nissans.

When I finally slowed down outside her school, I spotted her standing out on the corner, huddled under her jacket, the rain drowning her in its heap. With her arms crossed and her lips in a perpetual frown, she looked miserable. I pulled up beside her.

"Lily, honey, I'm so sorry I'm late."

Lily was already inside the car by the end of my sentence. She slumped in the seat, belt half-heartedly done up, and remained silent. Her sad blue eyes, too big for her face, stared out the stormy window and watched the clouds roll in. I took off, driving down the cracked road, slick with rain, and wondered what to say.

Lily was about the height of my shoulder, skinny in stature, and pale-skinned. The rashes had ceased but there was the occasional flush of red across her arms, a side-effect of his illness. She wore her uniform – white button-up shirt, plaid skirt, black knee-high socks, and sensible shoes. She did, however, wear something that the other kids didn't – a purple bandana, wrapped around her bald scalp and flowing down over her left shoulder like a violet braid. She'd been devastated when the chemo caused her hair to fall out, but to me, hair or no hair, she was beautiful.

"How was school?"

A shrug of the shoulders was the only response I got.

"Learn much?" I tried again.

Lily shook her head and her bandana came loose. She promptly corrected it. Ever since her hair fell out, she'd been so conscious of that bandana. She would fix it at least twenty times a day, never tying it properly, and never letting me tie it for her. In actual fact, that bandana was the only thing that revealed that she was sick. I wondered if that's why she hated it so.

"How's Kendal?"

"Fine," she said, first word of the day.

I paused, pressing my lips together.

"So I was thinking we could do something special tomorrow night after school," I blurted out. "A new action movie's coming out. I thought it might be fun."

"I guess," she shrugged.

"I thought we could go for take away and sneak it into the cinema, like we used to when you were little. Remember the time we went to watch The Day I Lost My House and you laughed so hard Coke came out your nose and all over the lady in front of us? Remember how mad she was?" I smiled widely, trying to get her to do the same, but all I got was another shrug, another twitch of the mouth, and another blank stare out the window.

I sighed in defeat and turned left to the Women's and Children's Hospital. Lily had her weekly chemo shot today. I thought for a moment that perhaps Dr Evans would be about. I hadn't seen him since that night in the alley about a month before. Something about the thought made me flush red with anger, but then I blinked, glanced at my daughter in the rear view mirror, and shoved all that emotion down into my liver. This was about saving Lily, not feeling. How long would it take before I could understand that?

© A.G. Travers 2015