Last Bridge Before Home by Lily Malone

Author:Lily Malone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mira
Published: 2019-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

15

‘It’s okay,’ Jaydah said, stepping through the spreading puddle at her mum’s feet. ‘It’s okay. It’s just water, Mum.’

Her mum’s hands flapped. Her mouth opened and closed but no words came out.

‘You are so dead, Charlie,’ Sam breathed, eyes overflowing with the single thought of how much trouble they were in.

‘No you’re not, Charlotte,’ Brix said. ‘You didn’t mean to. It’s Christmas. What’s Christmas without a water-pistol fight?’

Jaydah tried to think if she’d ever had a water-pistol fight at Christmas? At all?

‘Should I go after Jaz?’ Brix asked, but his voice felt all far away.

Who needed water pistols for fighting when one had kali sticks on the wall?

‘JT? Do you want me to go after Jaz?’ Brix said again, and she forced herself to concentrate.

‘Maybe see if you can see her from the steps? I think she’ll run back to see the pony. I think she’ll stop there. I’ll go after her in just a minute.’

Brix turned and ran down the steps and Jaydah took her mum’s arm and moved her out of the puddle, feeling her mum’s fright because Rosalie couldn’t stop shaking, and all the while her brain stuck on water pistols and Christmas and how Christmas for her was just like any other day. Her and Jaz’s birthday was just any other day. She always practised kali with her father first. Even today, Christmas and her wedding day, she’d already practised first.

Just once, it would have been nice to fight a fake water-pistol fight with Jaz rather than a full-blown sparring session with deadly weapons where she wished she could kill a monster.

The laugh slipped from her mouth before she could catch it. It started grim and gravelly, a serious thing, but then Sam shoved his now wet and sagging green paper hat back up above his eye, and Charlotte sputtered as she watched Sam, and Jaydah’s laugh turned from grey to gleeful, and that set all three of them off.

She had to hold her belly and even then she couldn’t stop, which probably meant she was hysterical. It had been that sort of a morning.

‘What’s going on now, you two?’ a voice called from around the corner and two seconds later, Ella appeared. She wore a red fluffy Christmas hat with a white pompom on the top, and a dress with a flowing skirt covered in green and blue swirls all the way to her ankles.

‘Oh!’ Ella stopped at the sight of them: Jaydah in the white dress; Rosalie still trying to wring water from her shirt, the puddle spreading at her feet; the kids cackling.

‘Have you said sorry yet, Sam?’ Ella asked her son without missing a beat.

‘It wasn’t me. It was Charlotte.’

‘Yes, I said sorry,’ said Charlotte, trying and failing to suppress her giggles.

‘Sam, the nice thing to do now is for you to run inside, please, and find a towel.’

The kids took off, shoving each other and laughing, and from behind them Brix ran back up the stairs. ‘You were right, JT. She’s with the pony.

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