Abigail

Taking advantage of the light, early afternoon traffic, the bus driver hammered the accelerator. The Harbour Bridge's granite pylons slipped by and the grey trusses of the bridge's arch became little more than a blur. It was better this way, Abigail decided. At this speed, the tourists couldn't see the peeling paint and rusting steel.

Not that it mattered. The bridge and that prima donna of an opera house just to the east of it might be instantly recognisable to people around the world, but they would always play second fiddle to the harbour itself. On days such as this one — crisp and cloudless, the water shimmered in invitation. Yachts and ferries jostled for space out on the water. Gleaming, multi-million dollar houses watched over them all from the harbour's uncountable sheltered coves and green foreshores.

It was nothing Abigail's family could afford, hence the dull journey before her. Sydney's northern suburbs had their own charm, of course. And views. And millionaires. But they were so bloody far north.

Squinting in the glare of the light streaming through the bus windows, Abigail pressed the power button on her phone only to remember that her phone battery had conked out halfway through her morning Macroeconomics lecture. She had nothing to distract her from the readings she had vowed she would go through during the dead time on the bus. Abigail sighed. Options, Futures and Other Derivatives — the title alone was mind-numbing. She dug the textbook out of her bag and thumbed through the monstrosity until she found the assigned chapter.

Three paragraphs in, Abigail rubbed her eyes. Too many acronyms and too many long words. By the time the bus reached the Spit Bridge she had made it through another two paragraphs, but her eyes refused to stay open any longer.

She woke up half a dozen suburbs later at the last turn before her bus stop. Abigail had made an art out of these naps since she started university.

As she got off the bus, she glanced towards the beach, which was just visible from the stop. It was a good swell; the waves frothed with foam. Now that it was autumn, the beach was quieter and there were no bluebottles around. She was tempted to sneak in an hour in the surf before dinner. It was definitely a day for surfing, not studying (although, arguably, it was never otherwise).

For now, however, Abigail headed in the opposite direction. Home was a ten-minute walk from the bus stop. McMansions, each with two SUVs, three children and a yelping dog in the yard, rose on either side of the street. Abigail's own home was older and smaller, a relic from a different generation. The car in the driveway was a third-hand Honda and the family dog, Rufus, had died two years ago. No one had the heart to suggest a replacement puppy.

Abigail cut through a small park to reach her street and did a double-take. A police car stood double-parked on the other side of the road and a little further down, no more than twenty metres from Abigail's front door, were three more. About a dozen people from the block stood huddled on the porch of number 146. John, the retired electrician from number 151, blanched when he spotted Abigail.

Shit. Abigail's heart thumped, as a dozen ugly memories and years of unspoken fears tumbled through her thoughts all at once. She broke into a sprint and stopped only to shove the front gate aside, then took the front steps two at a time. A young policewoman stood in the doorway. She put herself between Abigail and the entrance.

"Ma'am?" the policewoman said.

"Abigail?" Elias, her older brother, pushed himself past the policewoman and drew Abigail into a hug. "Where've you been? I've been trying to get a hold of you for hours."

"I forgot to recharge my phone. Why are the police here? What happened?"

Elias took Abigail's hand as if she were four years old again and guided her around the side of the house to the backyard. She would have raised a fuss about his behaviour, if not for the dark expression on Elias' face. They sat down at the rickety picnic table the previous owners had left behind. Elias said nothing.

"Why don't you have the cops explain everything?" she said. "It might be easier."

"No, no, give me a moment," Elias sighed. "There is — Fuck... um, mum and dad are dead."

"What?"

"I-I stopped by around midday. Nobody answered the door, so I... let myself in. They were in their bedroom..."

A wave of nausea nearly consumed Abigail. Mum and dad. Both. After Max, Elias and Abigail's older brother, killed himself, she had spent plenty of nights imagining how it would feel were she to lose another member of her family. Her parents had always had their problems, so she figured it was a possibility. But somehow her sordid thoughts never featured both of them dead in one day.

"So," she managed to mumble. "Ok, right. Bloody hell. Why were you... What happened?"

Elias stared at Abigail for what seemed like an hour before he replied. "The police are here to investigate that."

His gaze flicked to something behind Abigail. She spun around. Two policemen were at the kitchen window, watching the siblings talk.

"They'll have questions for you, I expect. I already told them what I could."

"Can I see —"

"Mum and dad? What good would that do?"

Abigail swallowed the bile in her throat. He was right of course; Abigail had no idea what prompted her to even ask that.

Elias ran his fingers through the pale, somewhat oily strands of his hair, then rose from his seat. He motioned for the policemen in the kitchen to come over. Hinges creaked as the back door fly-screen swung open. The policemen introduced themselves. A detective and a lieutenant, or something of the kind; neither their faces nor their names registered with Abigail. Elias had been correct, they wanted to talk to her.

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"How did they..." Abigail said. "You know, what is..."

Elias rested his hand on her shoulder. She supposed it was intended as a supportive gesture, except he then clenched his hand so hard his nails dug through Abigail's shirt and into her skin.

"Your father was found with multiple stab wounds on his body. Our preliminary assessment is that he died as a result of blood loss due to these wounds," one of the policemen replied, his words tumbling over each other. He was young, Abigail guessed he was no older than Elias. "Your mother was found with deep lacerations on her wrists. We are piecing together what has occurred. Your testimony —"

The rush of blood to Abigail's head drowned out the rest of the man's words. She reached for Elias' hand and pulled it off her shoulder, then sunk her head into her hands.

You come from bad blood, child, never forget that. The whole family ought to have been put out of their misery. Drunks, addicts, maniacs. Abigail's grandmother had whispered many unpleasant truths into her ear, as she slid her fingers through Abigail's tangled hair. We are the dregs of the world. Your brother was wise before his time. They had buried Grandma Maurice three months after Max. She had been coming back from the bottle shop when she lost control of her car. Emergency workers had found a half-empty bottle of whisky in the glove box.

"Sounds like mum's pills didn't do their job," Abigail said. "You'd be better off talking to her psychiatrist."

"As I promised, officer, I'll get the contact details for you." Elias sighed. "Look, we are pretty messed up at the moment. I'd like to take my sister to my apartment. Can the statement wait until tomorrow?"

"Just a couple of questions, if it's at all possible, Miss Fitzpatrick?"

Abigail looked up at Elias and shrugged. It was better to do this now, delaying the inevitable would only make it worse. She didn't want to spend the next twenty-four hours obsessing about what questions the police would ask and what she would have to tell them. It was all too much already.

Thankfully, Elias seemed to understand what she wanted.

"I'll go grab some of your clothes and such, Abby. You can stay at my place tonight," he said. "Don't talk to them if you're not comfortable with any of their questions."

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Elias shook off the policemen's repeated offers to take Elias and Abigail to Elias' apartment. Abigail would have preferred someone else to drive. She was a whirl of emotion, her knees weak and hands shaking no matter how much she willed herself to pull it together. For all his bravado, Abigail knew her brother was as upset as she was. But this wasn't the time for them to get into an argument and she had questions of her own to ask.

Abigail stifled her curiosity only long enough for Elias to pull his weather-beaten Corolla out of the driveway. "What were you doing here today? You don't just stop by. Why did you tell the police that?"

"What should I've told them?"

"You can't just lie to the police! They said they'll investigate. So they'll talk to people — neighbours and God only knows who else. Don't you think they'll find out exactly how often you come home? Then they'll start asking why you chose to visit on this particular day and why the hell you lied about it."

"I had a bad feeling about today," Elias jerked the car around a corner and sped up. At the sight of a red light he swore and slammed on the brakes so sharply, Abigail half-expected the airbags to activate. "Sorry, didn't mean to do that," he mumbled. "I didn't want to go over there, that's why I called you. But you weren't answering and no one was picking up the home phone either. What was I supposed to do? I hoped perhaps if I could get there quickly enough I could stop her."

Abigail bit her lip, finally catching on. I had a bad feeling about today. The world would've been a simpler place if people said what they meant, instead of relying on banal euphemisms.

Elias kept his own company. Whether it was Christmas or a birthday, he always arrived late to family parties and he was always the first to leave. He called it self-preservation — the shorter the interaction between him and their parents, the better the odds they could avoid a fight. So what cause would he have to visit the family home on an ordinary Wednesday like today?

A bad feeling was a gross understatement. He saw things. Mostly things occurring elsewhere at that moment, but occasionally also things that were yet to happen. Yes, the Fitzpatricks were a whole special kind of messed up. It was no wonder then Elias had been less than honest with the police. "I had a vision of my parents' death so I rushed over to their house to see whether they'd done the deed yet" would have raised more than a few eyebrows. Especially, once the police checked the medical records and found the long and rich history of mental illness in the Fitzpatrick family.

"Wait, her? It was definitely mum then?"

"Abby, I don't want to talk about —" He cut himself off when his voice started to break.

Abigail turned to face her brother. He kept his eyes on the road, but she could tell he was fighting back tears. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean... I don't want a play by play account. And I'm sorry, I should've realised what you were doing at home a hell of a lot earlier."

"You have nothing to apologise for."

Sure she did. She was the one daft enough to leave the house with her phone half dead. She should have been the one to go and pack her clothes — they were her things after all. Instead, she had sat outside like a coward while Elias stumbled about the house where their parents' bodies lay. And really, if she was honest with herself, Abigail was the one who still lived at home. Their mother's mental instability had been a part of her life for as long as she remembered, so how could she have just run off to university unaware of what was about to happen? There had to have been signs.

Elias played with the car radio for a few moments, but after flicking from one advert to another, turned the radio off. "I'm going to call Sarah tomorrow. We can get some time off from uni too."

"Sarah as in Sarah from dad's support group? Why?" said Abigail. "How do you even know her?"

"Dad introduced us a while back. She seems like the kind of person who'd know how to arrange a funeral."

Abigail winced. Funerals, taking time off from their degrees, all the other practicalities that would come up in the coming weeks. She had no idea where to begin with that and Elias had no more reason to know than she did.

This was a moment where a responsible adult would be an asset. Unfortunately, all their grandparents were dead. Their mother's sister rolled her car into a ravine five years' ago, taking herself and her two children with her. What extended family remained from their mother's side was back in Sicily; neither of the Fitzpatricks spoke much Italian nor did they have the contact details. Their father's older sister was still alive. She was probably still in Newcastle, coddling her eighth child while swatting away her third grandchild. As far as Abigail knew, her father hadn't spoken to his sister in years, but from what she remembered of the woman, Charlie Fitzpatrick was as likely to steal cash out of their wallets as she was to help them.

"Are we orphans now?" she asked. "Can you still be an orphan if you're over eighteen?"

Elias shrugged as he pulled onto Turner Road; they were now only a few blocks away from Elias' place. "I'm sure there is a term for it. The Centrelink people would know, they'd deal with situations like this all the time. I'll speak with my housemate, you'll crash with me until we sort out all of this. Later, we can find a place together if you like."

"And the house?"

For the first time since they had climbed into the car, Elias glanced at his sister. "Do you want to go back there? I certainly don't."