Page 1 of The Heiress
Chapter 1
Phoenix
There’s a reason accidentvictims don’t remember the actual incident. It’s to do with the surge of adrenaline, the brain stripping down to its most basic level—the fight-or-flight response. Concerned only about its ability to survive.
I go with it.
Though I’m not actually sure there was anything I could have done. Adrenaline or not, I was buckled into the passenger seat of my mother’s Range Rover, a tree or a pole rushing up to meet me. I don’t even know what. It’s not like in those few seconds when I realized the car was out of control that I could have done anything. Crouched, turned my head, my legs, diverted the steering wheel? I don’t think so.
I’d been scrolling on my phone, checking the draw of the Falls Creek Under 18 tournament. I’d already been through it earlier, but I was obsessed with these things. I can’t remember the name of who I was supposed to play in the first round now, but I would have known, and I would have looked up details of his last matches and everyone who was in my half of the draw.
Mom had been talking on the phone. The decision to drive me over had been last minute. My best friend Max, who I’d been planning to ride with, had rung me earlier to say he was running late. That in itself was unusual, but I didn’t ask why.
Thirty minutes, he said, he’d be there in thirty minutes.
I’d yelled out to Mom. Could she take me to Falls Creek? She wouldn’t have to stay. The Saunders could bring me home. I hadn’t played the courts at Central Club since they’d been resurfaced, so I wanted to have a decent warm up. If I waited thirty minutes, that wouldn’t happen. Plus, I needed to stop in at the tennis club to pick up my newly strung racket.
I told Max I’d meet him over there. It was no problem for Mom to drive me. She’d take the opportunity to check out a supplier in Falls Creek. Mom ran her own event planning company, weddings were her specialty, but she also did corporate stuff and fundraisers.
I do remember that Mom’s assistant, Sharlene, had called her, the conversation about the birthday luncheon they were co-ordinating, no doubt nitpicking about flowers or the color of napkins or the size of cake forks. It was probably a blessing that in times of trauma the flood of noradrenaline stops the brain from storing the memory.
So yeah, I remembered those things, but not the impact, not the crash, not the noise. Just the approaching post or pole or tree.
I never asked what it was.
And I still haven’t driven back along that highway yet.
I didn’t drive myself to my tennis events. One, because Mom always wanted to watch, or two, I went with the Saunders. I’d been doing the tennis circuit for years, since the Under 10s, but I still got incredibly nervous before matches and tournaments. I accepted that’s just how I was. Max was the one who bordered on OCD, checking his bag a hundred times, folding his towel a certain way, filling his drink bottles to a certain line. I wasn’t so pedantic, but I’d get the jitters—at least until I could hit a few balls and loosen up. Once the arm was hitting freely and I’d thrown down a few practice serves, the nerves dissipated. Though nerves, in my mind, weren’t a bad thing. It meant you were fired up, full of energy, in the zone.
And the tennis zone, the tennis court—that was my happy place.
––––––––
The first few weeksat school weren’t as bad as I had expected. Everyone was welcoming, the hallways parted as my walking frame and I demanded a wide berth. Yeah, I knew the smiles were strained and sympathetic, but the therapist had warned me about that. Kids would be awkward, kids who you thought were your friends would become shy and embarrassed and unable to express themselves around you. They would need to adjust to my new situation as much as I did.
I guess, in a kind way, she was telling me that it wasn’t all about me.
And at first, I had thought it wasall about me,until I learned that Max had given up tennis.
Yeah, Max was consumed with guilt, wanting to blame himself for my accident, abandoning the game we loved.
If only.
If only he hadn’t slept late. If only he’d heard his alarm ring. If only he hadn’t stayed up all night gaming. If only Bianca Holbrun hadn’t dumped him...
The list could have gone on for eternity, but I wouldn’t let my best friend take the fall, couldn’t let him languish in purgatory for sins that weren’t his.
No, Max Saunders wasn’t responsible for the car accident.
That was entirely and solely the fault of my mother.
