Phase (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #1) (6 page)

It was obvious that he was banking on her to be his get-out-of-jail-free card. That way he could agree and play the good cop, so that when Mum said no, she’d be the bad guy and I would take it out on her. He didn’t know that I had a trump card for getting my way with her, something I didn’t use often but would drag out if I needed to in this situation. Guilt.

Well, guilt and her desire for me to have a normal life despite the challenges I’d faced long before I was aware they were challenges.

With that agreed, he left the room so that I could get organised to shower and change. When I finished getting ready, I found him deep in conversation with Morgan about the changes they were facing with Eden’s uncle retiring and passing over the reins of Sinclair Racing to Eden.

We stayed in Sydney for another day before flying home together. As I boarded the plane, I smiled and thought that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be the last one I’d be on for a while.

AFTER WE LANDED, Dad arranged for a truck to come and grab my bike from the airport parking garage, refusing to let me ride it home. Instead, I ended up in his Commodore. When we got home, the house was in typical full swing. Mum was in the kitchen getting dinner ready, or at least doing the best she could with Nikki balanced on one hip. Brock and Beth were at the table with their homework books open in front of them, but they were trying to out annoy one another rather than study.

Parker was sitting on the couch, deeply engrossed in a car racing game. Either he’d already finished his homework, didn’t have any, or had convinced Mum to let him have a break somehow.

“Here, let me take Nikki,” I said, reaching for my baby sister after kissing Mum’s cheek to say hello. When I had Nikki secure in my hands, I lifted her into the air and spun her around.

“Careful, you don’t want—”

“Relax, Mum, I’ve got her,” I said, cutting her off before she could launch into a rant about not overexciting Nikki and not letting her get hurt. It was ridiculous. I knew the rules, and I wasn’t going to do anything that would endanger her, but I wouldn’t stand by and watch Mum and Dad surround her with a bubble of safety either. I knew firsthand just how frustrating that could be. My earliest memories were of being wrapped in cotton wool, at least by Mum.

Just as she’d started to let go and understand I was okay despite the rocky start to my life, Dad’s protectiveness had kicked up three notches. He never had a problem with me climbing behind the wheel—he understood those cars were built for safety—but started trying to gain control over other aspects of my life.

Leaving Mum and her worries behind me, I balanced Nikki on my hip and headed to see the rest of my siblings. Dad passed me on his way into the kitchen to greet Mum. It was always the same with them—whether they’d been apart for a day or a few weeks. The first few minutes were always spent sucking face. It was almost sweet how in love they still were, but that didn’t mean I wanted to stand around and watch it either.

As I walked past Brock and Beth, I flicked each of them on their left ear to stop them from kicking each other under the table.

“Hey!” they both exclaimed, one after the other as I struck.

“Homework,” I said pointedly as I nodded at the table. “Before dinner or you don’t get dessert.”

“Yes, Mum,” Brock said with an eye-roll.

“You need to go easy on Mum; she’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”

“Yeah, because you ran away. Again,” Brock retorted.

“I didn’t run away,” I lied. “I just went to visit Aunt Edie.”

Brock perked up at that. “Did you see Max too?”

I tried to keep my face neutral as I told him I had. The information I’d discovered didn’t have anything to do with Brock, after all.

“No fair. I wanna go see Max.”

“Well, maybe you can ask Mum to convince Edie to bring Max with her when they come up to Queensland Raceway in a few weeks.”

“You think she’ll let him stay here?”

“I’m sure she’ll be far more likely to say yes if you’ve done all of your homework.” I rubbed my hand over his short, shaven hair. He’d demanded Mum give him a buzz cut after the kids at school started teasing him for being a ranga. She’d tried to explain that Dad had the same problem when he was younger and that it had become almost a trademark trait, but Brock refused to listen. In the end, they’d relented because Mum and Dad had learned a long time ago that with as many kids as they had, it was better to pick their battles, and a hairstyle wasn’t worth the fight.

“Yeah! He can stay in my room.”

“Yay,” I said the word under my breath. I’d be happy if I didn’t see Max again for a while. A year or two might suffice. At least then, I might have a place of my own.

“Phoebe, did you really go on a plane all by yourself?” Beth asked. Sweet little Beth. She was the spitting image of Mum. I was too, almost. It was only my inheritance of Dad’s eyes that set us apart. Beth, however, had lucked out genetically and had Mum’s honey-brown ones. It made it so much easier for her to blend into the background.

“Sure did.”

“Can I go on a plane by myself?”

“Don’t you go giving her any ideas,” Dad said, coming back out from the kitchen with a goofy smile on his face. At least the time alone with Mum had put him in a good mood.

“Not until you’re an adult,” I said to Beth, making sure Dad knew I wasn’t filling her head with dangerous thoughts.

“You’re not an adult.”

“I’m not a kid either.” I winked at her. “I’m almost eighteen.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dad frown. Great. I’d just reminded him of my upcoming birthday, and the fact that he was so certain he was going to lose me after that. The way he talked about it, anyone would have thought I had my bags packed and waiting by the door for that magic birthday. It was pointless trying to tell him that legally I could have moved out almost two years ago. I think my upcoming birthday reminded him that he’d already been living his dream alone in Sydney by my age—and that Mum had me before she’d hit the magic one-eight mark.

I met Dad’s gaze and went to reassure him I wasn’t planning on either moving or kids just yet. Before I got a word out, Nikki grabbed at the pink streak in my hair and tugged it toward her mouth. I gave a small cry of surprise before lifting my hand to prise her fingers away from my hair. “Let’s go get you settled for a bit, shall we?” I asked as I swung her onto my other hip.

I walked to the living room. For a moment, I watched Parker tackling the race onscreen. His brow furrowed and his tongue poked out the corner of his mouth as he focused his entire concentration on the car. Glancing at the TV, it was clear he was a long way behind the leader and even with the rubber-banding the game did, it didn’t seem likely he’d get up into any decent placing.

“You need to hit the racing line better,” I said, sitting beside him and swinging Nikki onto my lap. “That way you can brake and accelerate more efficiently.”

He huffed out a breath.

“See, there,” I said as he took a corner with too much speed and oversteered his way out of it. “You carried too much speed through that corner. If you’d slowed down a little to hit the apex, you would have actually gone through faster.”

“I just don’t get it!” Parker cried, passing the controller to me and leaving his car stalled in the middle of the track while the computer AI competitors raced past to lap him. I wrapped my arms around Nikki to make sure she didn’t run off and then held the controller tight as I set about making up the lost ground.

For the first few laps, I just got into the groove until I’d gained back the lap and was catching back up to the other cars.

“You wanna hit the corner in the way that best maximises your speed while minimising the time you’re turning,” I said to Parker as I demonstrated on the screen.

“But how do you know where that is?”

“You read the track. See, this one is a sweeping bend, so I don’t have to brake much at all. I want to start on the outside, and then drift around the curve carrying as much speed as I can.”

He looked between the screen and the controller in my hand as if some magic secret would reveal itself in the motions I made. “I just don’t see it.”

Dad appeared then and plucked Nikki off my lap. I glanced away from the TV to watch him, wondering why he’d come to help me out. I was doing okay. In fact, I was enjoying being with my brothers and sisters again. Even though I’d only been gone a couple of days, I’d missed them. I hated to think how bad it would be if I was away from them longer. Like going overseas to the US for a decent holiday. My mouth curled downward.

“It’s bath time,” Dad said in explanation after seeing the expression on my face.

It seemed pointless to tell him my frown had nothing to do with him grabbing Nikki and everything to do with worrying about going overseas because he’d be inclined to tell me not to go.

I nodded and then turned my full focus back to the track. By the time the race ended, I’d fought back from being down a lap to coming third in a pack of twelve cars.

“I still don’t get it,” Parker complained. To emphasise his point, he crossed his arms over his chest and pouted.

“Climb over here,” I said, moving my hands so he could sit on my lap. He was barely seven, so was still rather light and compact.

I held the controller out to him. Once he’d grabbed it, I wrapped my hands around his. For the next fifteen minutes, I guided him through the different turns on the track, telling him the best track position to be in for each one, and showing him the right amount of brake and accelerator.

“Make sense?” I asked when our combined effort got us to first place.

“Not re—”

“You’ll never explain it to him. He’s a thickhead!” Brock said, interrupting him.

“Brock Curtis Reede, you do not say things like that about people,” I admonished. “Especially not about your brother. Family is important. Without them, you have nothing.”

I looked away from him to see Mum smiling at me with her nostalgic face on. I wondered if she was reliving the past, a time before she thought she’d ever have more kids. For a long time, she’d expected me to be an only child. It was only during my most selfish moments, when I felt like the whole world was against me, that I ever regretted that I wasn’t. Despite the fact my siblings could drive me crazy in a way no one else could, I loved them all.

“Listen to your sister, Brockie,” Mum said. “That sort of advice will keep you out of trouble.”

“Don’t call me Brockie, Mum, it’s a baby name.”

The statement was so similar to Max’s that a shudder ran through me. Was Brock . . . I decided I didn’t want to know and pushed it far out of my mind.

“Well, you’re my baby,” Mum said.

“Nah-uh, Nikki is your baby.”

“She’s my
baby
baby. But all of you kids are my babies. You always will be.”

“Even Pheebs?” Beth asked.

Mum met my gaze. “Especially Pheebs.”

While Brock went off on some tangent, Beth slid in beside me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I missed you, sissy.”

“Me too, baby girl, me too.” As I rested my cheek on the top of her head, a queasy sensation grew in me. Could I really leave this, my family, behind and go overseas?

Could I not?

After all, just two days earlier it had gotten to the point where the arguments, shouting, and constant noise of my siblings had driven me out of my mind. If I ever wanted to work out what I wanted from life, I needed to be away from it all, from every expectation and appointment, to try to figure it out. If I didn’t, if I never worked out who I was and wanted to be, how could I ever be happy?

We made it through dinner, baths, and bedtime stories. Eventually, between Mum, Dad, and me, we’d wrestled the youngest three into bed. Only Brock was still awake, but he’d disappeared into his room. After the encounter with Max, I didn’t want to know whether he was in there playing with his iPad or something else.

Mum offered me a mug of warm Milo and led me to the dining table. I sat down at the head of the table, and she and Dad sat side by side along one edge.

“So Dad says you want to go to the States?”

Nothing like getting straight into it. “Yeah. Well, maybe. I don’t know. I just want to get away for a while, you know? Find some space and find me.”

“And you thought disappearing on a bike you’ve been banned from riding to fly to Sydney with a stolen plane ticket was the best way to get us to listen to your request?”

Dad sat behind her with a smile fixed on his face and one eyebrow raised. Probably happy that he wasn’t the one on the receiving end of Mum’s redressing for once. Over the years, she’d developed a way of quietly asking questions to guilt the other person into confessing everything.

“No, of course not. I just needed to get away for a bit. It’s suffocating having to be
on
all the time.”

Mum leant forward and placed her hand over mine. “I probably understand that more than you think, honey. When your dad first came back into our lives, I saw pretty quickly what life was going to be like at his side. I mean, the very first family outing he took us on, he was mobbed by fans wanting autographs.”