Page 124 of Playing for Keeps

She came in, her shoes padding quietly on the floor. She approached the bed, her face white as she stared down at Char sleeping.

“How’s Theo?” I asked in a hushed voice.

“He was still pretty upset this morning, but he calmed down when Ethan turned up. Ethan’s taken him back to his house.”

“Yeah, he said that’s what he was planning to do.”

My mother’s mouth pinched into a line.

“Ethan told me this happened before, when Theo was a baby,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” I tried to keep my voice low so I didn’t wake Char, but it trembled with anger.

“We didn’t tell you because we didn’t want you to be distracted from your rugby.”

“What the hell? Our family is so fucked up. Nobody talks! You didn’t think I deserved to know about it?” I hissed.

“We can do without the blame game right now, thank you, Luke.” My mother’s voice was cool.

I exhaled shakily. She was right. I didn’t want to start examining who was to blame. I really didn’t want to start a conversation about what I’d been doing in a hotel room with the father of Char’s child at the same time she was being rushed to hospital after overdosing.

Fuck. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between Char’s sterile hospital room and that cozy hotel room in Sydney. How could that have been only fourteen hours ago?

Mum leaned over to tuck a strand of hair behind Char’s ear.

“Now’s not the time for blame,” she repeated. “We just need to focus on getting her better.”

Chapter31

Ethan

Theo had never hugged me harder than he did when I picked him up. I closed my eyes as I hugged him back, feeling his small arms wrapped around me, inhaling the clean scent of his hair.

Alison gave her grandson a hug goodbye, but she could barely look at me.

I loaded Theo, who was clutching his yellow blanket, into my car and tried to act as normal as I could. When we arrived home, I found a LEGO spaceship set I’d been saving for his birthday and opened it so that we had something new to focus on.

It was mid-morning when Luke called.

I left Theo playing with his LEGO and stepped out of the room. “What’s going on?”

“Dad’s found a private facility and pulled some strings to get her a room immediately. It’s a place that deals with mental health and addiction. She’s being transferred today.”

“Do you think I should bring Theo in to see her?”

“We talked about it, but Mum and Dad think it’ll upset her too much. She was devastated when she found out he was the one who discovered her.”

Yeah, that was one of the things that gutted me the most. That my six-year-old had found his mother unconscious in a pool of vomit. I knew all about sights you couldn’t un-see. I’d had enough of them myself growing up. And the fact I hadn’t managed to protect Theo from seeing something that no doubt would give him nightmares cut at me.

I made two-minute noodles for lunch because I didn’t have any fresh bread or milk in the house. As I watched him eat, I tried to phrase what I needed to say in six-year-old speak. “Mummy had a sore tummy, but now she’s got a sore head. And she’s going to stay for a while in a place where the doctors will help fix her head.”

Theo nodded. He twisted his fork in the noodles, winding them tight.

“Was it because I was naughty? I didn’t clean up my puzzles and she yelled at me.” I almost didn’t hear him, his voice was so quiet.

Oh god.