Curtin Springs was in the undiluted middle of nowhere. It was a cluster of buildings on the Lasseter Highway, with nothing for hours and hours around it. Samantha pulled the car onto Petermann Road, a dirt road that genuinely went nowhere - it pulled off Lasseter Highway and looped back around to the same highway, with no buildings or anything all along it. Samantha couldn't think what the point of the road was, but Harold had told them to drive a kilometre down there, and meet him, so that's what they did. As Samantha pulled off the road at the designated spot, the sun was starting to smudge the horizon. It was nearly five in the morning. Elaine was asleep, curled up on the backseat. They had crossed thirty hours of red dirt, of the kind of landscape that really only exists in Australia. The car rolled to a stop, and Samantha sat quietly, staring at the vast, empty expanse of the land around them. The yawning enormousness of the space can't be understood by anyone who hasn't seen it, and Samantha had never really seen it before. She stared, forgetting why she was there, until she heard Elaine sit up in the seat behind her.
"Are we here?"
She didn't look sleepy at all. Her eyes were sharp, and bright. Samantha nodded.
"We're here. Harold should be here any minute."
"Ok."
There wasn't anything left to say. Elaine climbed over the centre console to the front passenger seat, and they together in silence. Elaine finally broke it.
"I'm sorry. I never should have asked you to help me. I think I just didn't want to be in it alone. I didn't want to create another secret that would just be a wedge between us."
Samantha sighed.
"It's ok. I'm glad you didn't go through it all alone. You'll need to look after my lizard."
Elaine's laughter came out like a bark.
"I will."
Harold's four wheel drive had appeared on the road, and seemed to take an impossibly long time to cross the distance between them. Finally he pulled up next to them. There was a woman sitting in the passenger seat, but she didn't leave the car. Harold climbed down from the high driver's seat, and his feet kicked up dust on the dirt road in the early morning sunlight as he walked towards them.
"Good morning girls."
Samantha nodded, Elaine murmured hello. The reality of the end had settled onto their shoulders, the weight of the world wrapped up in the knowledge of forthcoming grief. Samantha knew she wasn't going to die, but she felt uneasy that no one would know if she did. No one she loved would ever know when she eventually did die. It was over, and in that moment, the worst and ugliest realisation was that she was never going to see her little brother again.
"Samantha, we need to get going. I'm sorry to rush you, but the people we're going to see do not make themselves available often and I had to stretch a few friendships to get this opening."
Samantha nodded, her head going up and down dumbly, an odd calmness overtaking her robotic body as she left the car.
"Can't I come with you? Just to say goodbye?"
Samantha looked down at her little sister. Elaine was in track pants and a shirt, no make up at all, which was so casual and so different from how she normally looked that Samantha couldn't banish from her mind the image of the tiny, pregnant girl she'd had lunch with at Grace Brothers, a million years a go. The woman looking at her now from the passenger seat of the car was just that child with a few more scars. And there was still nothing Samantha could do to keep her safe.
"No," said Harold firmly. "This is it. We need to go, and you need to say goodbye."
His voice was harsher than Samantha had heard it before, and she realised immediately that he wasn't playing around with this. She walked around the car to Elaine's door, and opened it.
"I'm sorry, Lainey, I have to go. There's nothing more that we can do for each other now, but say goodbye,"
Elaine climbed slowly out of the car. Samantha could see her whole body was shaking, just ever so slightly.
She wrapped her little sister up in a hug, trying to funnel all of the love she had for her into Elaine's body, trying to get everything she didn't know how to say to transfer somehow from her arms.
And then it was over, and Harold was hurrying her towards the four wheel drive. He gave Samantha a gentle push towards the car and she kept walking, while Harold turned and walked back towards Elaine.
"I need the Kingswood keys."
"Wait, how am I supposed to get home? I need to get home."
"No, we need the car. Someone is coming to pick you up, right at this spot. Go with him. Don't ask him any questions, because he won't say anything anyway. I'll call you once I've gotten Samantha where she's going."
Elaine quietly handed over the keys, and watched Harold walked back towards the four wheel drive. She didn't ask how long she would be waiting for. She didn't have the energy. She watched the four wheel drive turn around in the road, and it picked up speed slowly as it disappeared.
