He glanced at her. ‘I’m getting used to it.’
‘Hmm,’ she murmured thoughtfully. ‘I’m sorry, Joseph, I have to say this. I just can’t forget the conversation we had in Boston before you flew home.’
‘Which conversation was that?’
‘The one where you were relieved things had come to a head and it was over with Sarah.’
He shrugged. ‘What can I say? I spoke too soon.’
‘What about the woman you mentioned in your emails? Her name was Jo, wasn’t it? I thought it was kind of sweet, you having the same name.’
That made him smile.
‘I’m not quite sure of the chronology,’ she went on, ‘did that end before the baby, or after?’
‘Well, the baby came first, but I didn’t know about it. So then the thing with Jo had to end.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Joseph, are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’ Hilary asked.
He shook his head with a half laugh. ‘That’s the only thing I am sure of,’ he said. ‘It might not be what I want, but it is the right thing.’
She reached across and squeezed his arm. ‘You’re a good guy, Joseph, that’s your tragic flaw, you know. Good guys always come last.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that, Hil.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I don’t think I’m such a good guy,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t paying attention towards the end, with me and Sarah. I switched off. She had a completely different idea about where our relationship was at – she thought we were going to settle down together, I thought we were coming to an end.’
‘So are you saying she got pregnant because she thought that’s what you wanted?’
‘No, no, it wasn’t planned,’ he said. ‘It’s just, if I’d spoken up sooner, if I’d said something, maybe we would have settled things earlier, and the pregnancy wouldn’t have happened. But I just cruised along, avoiding confrontation, till I thought we were done. I didn’t have the balls to be honest with her, and now I’m paying the price.’
‘That’s a pretty huge price to pay, Joseph.’
‘But I have no one to blame but myself. It’s not Sarah’s fault and she shouldn’t be left holding the baby – literally.’ He glanced across at his sister. ‘I need you guys to understand that, to accept her, if I’m going to make this work. It’s hard enough as it is.’
Hilary frowned, watching him. ‘Were you in love with the other woman?’
‘She wasn’t the other woman,’ Joe said quietly. ‘And yeah, I was. I still am.’ Even though they barely had anything to do with each other any more, he was still deeply, inconsolably in love with Jo. True to her word, she avoided him at work, and true to his word, he respected that. So he didn’t go to editorial meetings, though he would have done anything just to sit in the same room with her. And he never approached her; he even tried not to look at her across the news floor. But sometimes he couldn’t help himself.
‘If you’re in love with someone else,’ Hilary was asking, ‘how can you do this, Joseph?’
‘I have to try, Hil,’ said Joe. ‘Sarah followed me across the world, she left everything for me. And she’s having my baby. There’s enough there to build on. It’s what Mum did for Dad, Hil.’
‘But Joseph, he loved her, he adored her, and he would have gone anywhere for her as well.’
‘Yeah, but in the end he left her to fend for herself with five kids a lot of the time.’
Hilary frowned. ‘What’s your point?’
‘I’m just saying, things don’t always turn out the way you plan, but people manage with the circumstances thrust upon them, if they’re doing it for the right reasons.’
‘Yes, they do,’ she agreed. ‘But I think it helps if they feel loved and supported.’
‘You think Mum did?’
‘I’m quite sure she did. Look, I realise Dad was difficult –’
‘I never saw that, you know.’
‘Because you idolised him,’ said Hilary. ‘So did Mum. They just wanted different things. She was happy to settle down and have kids, but it was hard for him. He was a bachelor at thirty, which was getting on in those days. He was a bit of a loner before he met Mum. That’s where you two are different, you’re like Dad intellectually, but you’re a lot more like Mum emotionally. He didn’t need people; he liked the isolation of being a correspondent, the life on the road, no ties. It suited him.’
‘I always thought he was happy when we were all around.’
‘Of course he was, Joseph, he loved us, he’s our dad. But he could only take us in small doses. Mum understood that. That’s why they worked ultimately.’
‘Do you think she was happy?’
‘I don’t think she was unhappy. I don’t know that she was always fulfilled, she was constantly in my ear about having a career, not giving it up for anything.’
‘So she had regrets?’
‘You know, I don’t think she did,’ said Hilary. ‘She fell in love with Dad, so she accepted everything that went with that. And she loved her children, and she wanted to be with us. She was no more conflicted than any woman of her time.’ She paused. ‘Come to think of it, times haven’t changed all that much.’
‘Well, Sarah says she loves me,’ said Joe. ‘And she’s having my baby, so the least I can do is to stand by her.’
‘I just think you’re really up against it if you’re not sure how you feel about her, and worse, if you’re in love with someone else.’
Joe sighed, rubbing his forehead. ‘You’ve made your point, Hil.’
‘I’m sorry Joseph, I’ll support whatever you do, you know that.’
‘Thanks. I appreciate it.’
‘So when am I going to meet her?’ asked Hilary. ‘I thought she’d be with you today?’
‘No, she wanted to give us all time together first, given the circumstances,’ added Joe. ‘She’ll come for Christmas.’
Hilary nodded. ‘So, how’s Dad? You’d better prepare me.’
So he did. The pattern had continued, of good days and bad, though the good were fewer and the bad more frequent and more intense. Joe had wanted to spend more time with him, but Sarah was strangely reluctant. She hadn’t visited once, and she complained if Joe wanted to go up on the weekends in the little time they had together, as she put it. So he went during the week, just staying a few hours and coming back the same day.
‘The doctor said the most serious threat at this point is infection, namely pneumonia, due to respiratory weakness,’ Joe explained. ‘He’s on non-invasive ventilatory support for extended periods, but we may have to consider invasive options.’
‘Why are you talking to me like a doctor, Joseph?’ asked Hilary.
‘Sorry,’ he shook his head. Somehow it was easier to say when he made it less personal. ‘If Dad goes onto a permanent ventilator when his lungs get too weak to function on their own, he won’t be able to speak, or eat or drink. He’ll lose any quality of life. He could have a tracheostomy, where they put a tube directly into his throat, but that’s a surgical procedure, and it takes quite a bit of getting used to, to adjust to eating and drinking, so really it would be a bit much on him at that stage.’
Hilary was thoughtful. ‘How does Dad feel about going on a ventilator?’
‘He’s not going to like it,’ said Joe.
‘You haven’t spoken to him?’
He shook his head. ‘The medical staff have. I wanted to wait till we were all here before we ask him what he wants to do.’
‘Am I right in assuming that the ventilator would basically become life support as he deteriorates?’
Joe nodded.
‘So then we have to decide when to turn it off?’ she said quietly.
‘That’s right. But if there’s no intervention, he’ll die slowly, struggling for breath, like a drowning man. Except it could take days. Or longer. We can’t let him go through that.�
�
When they eventually pulled up at the house, Corinne and Alex were in the drive, unloading bags from the boot. Corinne looked up, beaming, and virtually ran to meet them as Joe cut the engine. She grabbed at the passenger door before Hilary could even get out, and they were hugging as Joe walked around the car to join them.
‘Joe,’ Corinne cried, lurching at him. ‘Well, you only get more handsome with the years,’ she said, throwing her arms around him.
Hilary caught his eye across Corinne’s shoulder. ‘What did I tell you?’ she said with a grin.
Corinne had completed an honours degree in comparative literature and begun her career as an editorial assistant in a large publishing house. But her natural effervescence was constrained by the hours she was forced to spend alone poring over manuscripts, and it was soon decided she was better suited to publicity, where she excelled. She had risen to the rank of head publicist for nonfiction before she left to have her babies and, like her mother, she’d have happily stayed at home if not for the publisher luring her back with an attractive offer to work part-time on projects of her own choosing.
Alex walked up to shake Joe’s hand. ‘Good to see you, Joe,’ he smiled. ‘It’s been too long.’
‘Yeah, it has.’
Alex had been a foreign correspondent, like Joe and their dad, when he became one of Corinne’s early charges; she was the publicist assigned to his book which recounted his experiences reporting on the massacre in Rwanda. He was a quiet, self-effacing man, and everyone was well aware Corinne had married a version of their father. But unlike their father, he quit roaming once the children arrived, and now split his time between teaching and writing.
‘Where are the kids?’ Joe asked.
‘They’re inside with Pop,’ said Corinne, a shadow passing across her eyes though she continued to smile bravely. ‘He couldn’t wait to see them.’
‘Neither can I,’ said Hilary.
There was a moment’s pause, weighted by the underlying sadness that no one was prepared to express just yet.
‘Well,’ said Corinne brightly. ‘Let’s go inside and get this shindig underway. I just know this is going to be the best Christmas ever.’
Three days before Christmas
‘I’m determined to make this the best Christmas ever,’ Belle announced, waving a gaudy piece of red and green tinsel like it was a cheerleader’s pompom.
‘Why are you setting yourself up for failure?’ Jo said dryly.
Belle had called to suggest meeting in the city for lunch, which was something she never did. Jo assumed it was a thinly disguised ruse to visit Charlene, who had probably been in her ear, making her feel guilty for abandoning her. But it turned out to be a ruse of a different kind. No sooner had they met on the corner of Market and Elizabeth than Belle was dragging her by the arm inside David Jones to search out the Christmas-trim shop.
‘This is a chance to put this horrible year behind us and focus on the good things,’ Belle persisted cheerfully.
‘You sound like a bad greeting card.’
‘And you sound like Scrooge!’
‘Guilty as charged. I don’t even like Christmas, Belle.’
‘Of course you like Christmas.’
Jo was often amused by Belle’s myopic insistence about the way things were, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. But it was hard to be amused by anything much at the moment. The overwhelming, glittering juggernaut of Christmas was getting Jo down like never before. No other season made you so intensely aware of your loneliness. And despite the presence of her mother in the apartment, Jo had never felt so alone.
She missed Joe with such a painful longing, she wondered if it was ever going to get easier. Time passing certainly hadn’t helped. She avoided him at work; the odd glimpses of him across the news floor hit her like a direct blow to the chest. She tried not to think about him, but he was there, in her head, in her heart, all the time. Especially as she toiled away on her investigation. As the trail got murkier, and the implications more and more serious, Jo sometimes had the feeling she was in over her head. She didn’t want to admit that to Leo, and she couldn’t talk to Lachlan any more, not that she’d want to. But she would have loved to sound out Joe, get his feedback, his calm, solid reassurance, his support. But that was no longer possible. And what was worse, a picture kept forming in her head, of him and Sarah in the flat Jo had never even stepped foot in, decorating a tree, setting up things for the baby. Babies and Christmas, it was all so unbearably perfect.
‘You always made Christmas wonderful,’ Belle was prattling on, picking her way through a buffet of sparkly paraphernalia. ‘I knew it wasn’t Mum, and I wasn’t all that old when I knew it wasn’t Santa either. It was you, Jo.’
Christmas had always required a major covert operation. Jo had to build up funds for months so that Charlene wouldn’t notice. And then she’d usually pick a fight with her daughters just before Christmas, berating them for the state of the house, their rooms, their clothes, whatever she could seize upon. Then she would inevitably make the pronouncement that there would be no Christmas that year, because they were selfish girls who didn’t deserve it. Poor Belle would always get so despondent – she was such a Christmas tragic. She watched every Christmas movie that aired on TV, and actually enjoyed listening to Christmas music, and she spent the weekends and afternoons after school leading up to the big day making elaborate decorations for the tree and the house. Jo realised it was the fantasy Belle was embracing, the chance to dress up the house and pretend they were like everyone else. ‘Don’t worry, we will have Christmas,’ Jo would always assure her. ‘Mum’s just . . . going through a hard time, she doesn’t mean it.’ Usually Charlene managed to pull together a few cheap trinkets and they would be sitting forlornly under the tree when Jo crept out in the early hours of the morning with her more substantial stash. She often wondered if her mother actually did believe in Santa; she never spoke to Jo about the gifts, never asked where they came from.
‘I only did it for you, Belle,’ Jo was saying.
‘So I want to do this for you.’
Jo sighed. ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to come.’
Belle was genuinely shocked by the idea. ‘What are you talking about? You have to come for Christmas!’ Her voice increased in pitch with each exclamation. ‘What are you going to do, spend it in that stark little flat on your own?’
Charlene was staying with Belle over Christmas, so having the place to herself for a couple of days actually sounded appealing to Jo. She could hide out, pretend it wasn’t even Christmas maybe, wait till it was over.
‘Well, I won’t hear of it,’ Belle was saying. ‘I know you’ve had a hard time of it, Jo. You don’t talk about him, and I don’t ask. But I understand, I do. And I just think, if you let it, Christmas could be a time to bring some joy into your heart, put all this unhappiness behind you, and look on the new year as a fresh start.’
She sounded like a character in one of those syrupy movies she used to watch, all about Christmas miracles. Jo wasn’t expecting a miracle, and she wasn’t going to get a miracle, she just wanted to get through it. She looked at Belle; her sister’s eyes were almost pleading. She’d do it for her. She’d show up, put on a brave face, get through it.
‘Of course I’m coming,’ she dismissed. ‘But what on earth are we doing here, Belle?’ she added, looking around. ‘Your house already looks like a Christmas-trim shop.’
Belle smiled widely. ‘You can never have too much Christmas bling.’
The next day
Joe was driving back from the mountains. He’d spent two idyllic days with his family, with Sarah’s blessing. When he phoned her yesterday she encouraged him to stay another night; she was fine, she assured him. He didn’t argue. He relished being with all his sisters and Will for the first time in years. Even his dad had rallied with everyone around him, though he could only cope with short bursts of their company. He was growing weaker by the day, but the mood rem
ained resolutely positive. No one wanted to talk about what was going to happen. Not yet. They could pretend for now that they were just another family preparing for Christmas together, not facing imminent loss.
It would be different once Sarah joined them, and Joe knew that would largely be his fault. He was still uncomfortable around her, still reticent. The last two days had only made it worse. He found himself dwelling on how things might have been had he been introducing them to Jo, and he knew in his heart she would have fitted in perfectly. She and Hilary had the same spunky intelligence, and Corinne got on with everyone, she would have loved Jo. They would have been so happy for him, because they would have seen how happy he was. He wasn’t going to be able to pull that off so convincingly with Sarah.
So he had been in no particular hurry to leave today. But Hilary had eventually suggested he should get going so he’d get back all the sooner. Will had walked him out to the car.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked tentatively.
Joe shrugged. ‘Inevitably.’
Will cocked an eyebrow. ‘Cryptic.’
Joe smiled faintly.
‘Do you see Jo at all?’ Will asked.
‘A little, at work.’
He nodded. ‘It sucks the big one, brother.’
‘I’m not going to argue with you.’
It was nearly two o’clock when Joe turned into the driveway of his block and pulled the car into one of the visitor’s spaces. He wouldn’t be here long; as Hil said, he wanted to get back to them all as soon as possible. He climbed the three flights of stairs to his flat, two steps at a time, so he was a little breathless when he got to the door. He was about to knock, but that seemed a weird thing to do at his own front door. He put the key in the lock and turned it, calling out ‘Hi’ as he pushed the door open.
Sarah was on the couch and there was a man sitting beside her, a man who looked vaguely familiar. She struggled to get up as he came through the door. She couldn’t move so quickly these days.
‘Joe,’ she said, slightly ruffled, or maybe he was imagining that. ‘I thought you’d ring to let me know when you were coming.’
Crossing Paths Page 42
