I’d left early the next morning, still feeling the aftershocks of our thorough consummation during our very brief honeymoon. The chirp of my phone had woken me in the early hours. It was Rafferty, my brother, who said dad had taken ill. He didn’t give me much more detail than that as he hadn’t been on the property when dad had been helicoptered to a Sydney hospital. I was worried. Fuck, I was terrified. But I hadn’t shared that with Kennedy. It didn’t seem right. She was so warm and sleep mussed. And naked. I’d longed to climb back in bed with her, to ignore what was waiting for me on the other side of the world. But I couldn’t. I also couldn’t take her back with me. I didn’t have time to sort out visas and all that shit, so I did the best that I could at the time. I’d given her all my details, basically everything but my blood type. Phone number, email—the works. I’d even given her Rafferty’s number. She’d had a piece of shit phone, and the battery was flat, but she’d recited her number to me anyway. I’d asked for her address, and she’d given it but said she was moving out of the dorms with April. So I had her number, and she had mine, and I promised I’d call her as soon as I’d landed.
When I said we weren’t saying goodbye, I’d meant it. Yet as the door to my hotel room clicked closed behind me, a feeling of dread had sunk into my bones. I told myself it was because of what lay ahead. Now I see it as a premonition.
I got to Sydney, and Tee was waiting for me at the airport. One look at him, and I knew. Dad was dead. A blood clot had caused my mountain of a dad to suffer a massive heart attack. He’d died as Wilder had been conceived, and that’s just a little too head fucky to deal with right now.
Gathering the photos in one hand, I scrub the other down my face. I need to make a couple of phone calls and put off the meeting I’m supposed to be on this side of the country for. Not that I haven’t visited Oregon before. My almost annual pilgrimage, I consider with a snort. Maybe it should’ve been crazy to think I’d be able to sense her someplace. That I’d find her. Yet, in my heart, I always believed I would. I didn’t know how or when or even what that reunion would look like, yet the part of my brain that allowed me to examine such things could only come up with nightmares. The worst of these would be that I’d find her only to discover she’d fallen in love with someone else. In some screwed-up way, this seemed like a fair and just punishment for not trying harder. Harder to find her. Harder to discover what was holding me back. And then, when I’d decided it was futile, that I’d never find her, there she was. In a fucking coffee shop.
The universe has a warped sense of humour.
“Betty, you stop that right now!” I’m pulled from my head as a strident voice carries over the nearby hedge. “Elizabeth Maria!” The second time, I think to myself, that kid is in big trouble being full named and in such a frustrated tone. “Elzbieta Maija!”
Shit, Betty, you’re in for it now.
“You don’t have to bring out the big guns,” another voice calls back, and I realise this is not a mother and her kid because both of those voices belong to women. “Wait—I almost!”
Thwap! Thwap-thwap!
“Dagnabbit! I missed the little—wait!”
I’m just about to head back indoors when a third thwap sounds, and a small explosion goes off next to my bare foot against the pristinely oiled and seasoned timber deck. I look up into the cloudless sky, expecting to see a bird the size of an albatross—because it had to have been an albatross to have dropped a load like that—when I realise bird shit doesn’t generally come in blue.
“What the fuck,” I mutter, ducking a little to examine the splat of azure. “Paintball?”
It’s around that moment when a head pops over the hedge. An elderly grey head encompassed by a steel grey mane of tight curls. “Hey, you! Yeah, you. Did you see it? Did I get it?”
“What, my foot?” I yell back. “Nearly.”
“No, the crow, bobo!”
“Betty, you get down from that ladder. You’re just asking for a broken hip.” At this, another head pops above the hedge. Equally elderly, this one’s silver hair is pulled into some kind of blowsy bun.
“Ursula,” Betty, I’m guessing, growls. “If I get a broken hip, who’s gonna look after me if you’re up here askin’ for a broken hip, too?”