by Fiona Lowe
I want to know more about you.
He sighed, the sound resigned and tinged with sorrow. “It was my grandparents’ golden wedding anniversary, Dad’s parents,” he qualified, “and everyone came home to the farm for it, including my younger sister, who was studying in Perth. Charlie drove the hundred K in from Jilagong, and we had the week planned, including me trying out his new wave board. On the Tuesday after the party, we went into Murrinwindi with Dad because he wanted to walk down the main street and show us off to the town.”
“Proud parents?”
“Always.” He glanced at her for a moment, as if he wanted her to understand. “In a lot of ways, Murrinwindi’s similar to Bear Paw. There’s no dashing in and out of a store, especially when a heap of cockies”—he immediately translated—“farmers are at the farm supplies store talking about the weather, when to sow the wheat and which harvester to use.”
“Farmers around the world sound pretty much the same.”
“Yeah.” His gaze returned to the mountains. “After Charlie and I had shaken hands with half the town, and I’d answered the obligatory questions about life on the east coast and been told I was a fool to have left the west, Charlie suggested we wait outside. That was code for I’ve got something I want to tell you.
He kept tapping the pebble hard against another one, creating white marks on the rock. “Sometimes Charlie and I had the same thought at the same moment, but I wasn’t remotely prepared for what he said next. He told me he’d met someone. Miranda, an aboriginal health worker, and they’d been together for three months. He wanted me to drive out to Jilagong the next day and meet her.”
Millie’s heart lurched, although she wasn’t sure if it was for Will or for the unknown Charlie or Miranda or for all of them.
Will’s volume dropped into a deeper register. “Charlie lived large and he loved women, but he’d never once asked me specifically to meet a woman. I knew this was big, plus whenever he mentioned Miranda, he got this dopey look on his face. It was the first time in our lives that I didn’t recognize him.”
Because you’ve never been in love? But now wasn’t the time to ask that.
Will kept talking. “The bugger had gone and fallen in love, and I had no clue how I felt about it. As it turned out, it didn’t matter what I thought, because two seconds later it was all moot.” His tapping hand stilled, the sound of the rock on rock faded to nothing and his voice dropped to almost a whisper. “A meth addict driving a car lost control of it as he came around the corner we were standing on.”
And killed Charlie.
She bit her lip at the rush of feeling that hit her. Charlie had been standing with Will, talking about love and planning for the future when he’d died. It was devastatingly awful, made even worse by the total randomness of the event. Everything started to fall into place—Will’s reaction last week at the accident scene and his devastation at Lily’s death. It was all too eerily similar to Charlie’s death. And surely he’d been hurt in the accident, too? She’d often wondered about how he’d gotten the jagged scar on his chin.
“And your injuries?”
His entire body tensed as if a whip had just slashed him. “None,” he said vehemently, his voice quavering with emotion. “I didn’t even get a scratch. I was standing next to him with not even a meter between us, and he took the full impact.” A tear rolled down his tan cheek. “I did everything I could, and the flying doctors evacuated him to Perth, but he was declared brain-dead soon after arrival. They kept him ventilated until we could all say good-bye, and then according to his wishes, they harvested his organs for donation.
His throat worked up and down fast. “Life teaches you that sick people die, not healthy ones. Charlie’s dead and I’m still here. How unfair is that?”
She grieved for him, wishing more than anything she could do something—anything—to make this better, but she was impotent. She knew about the combination of random events and the distinct lack of fairness that was involved—she was the only person in the history of her extended family with an insidious and pervasive condition courtesy of her malfunctioning pancreas.
“There’s no fair in random events, Will,” she said, hugging him. “Sometimes life just sucks.”
“You got that right.” He shuddered against her. “Charlie loved life and embraced every new experience. I look in the mirror every day and see him staring back at me, reminding me that I’m still here living and breathing and he’s not.”
Survivor guilt was a very real thing, and everything inside of her filled with wretchedness for him. From what she knew of Will, he embraced life, too, and she didn’t want him thinking he had any less of a right to be the twin that was alive. “There’s no logic to random, either, and you’ll make yourself crazy thinking like that. Maybe stop looking in mirrors?”
He made a strangled sort of a sound that had the hint of a laugh buried in it. “I’d have to grow a beard.”
“That wouldn’t be all bad.” She stroked his cheek, thinking about the significance of the day and wondering how she could help. “What would you have done today if you’d been in Australia?”
“Gone surfing.”
“Oh.” She remembered the photo on his phone of Charlie in his wet suit, and she swallowed a sigh. “We’re eight hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean. Do you want to take a hike, ride a bike, canoe? How can I help you honor Charlie today?”
He gave her a long look with eyes that hid more than they revealed. “Skip stones with me.”
“Really?” It seemed such a tame activity compared with his usual pursuits and with the things he and Charlie had done together.
Charlie was the adventurous one. It was an odd thing for Will to have said, given he had a T-shirt for just about every extreme sport event on Montana’s summer calendar.
“Really.” He’d risen to his feet, and, with his hand extended, he was smiling down at her the way she loved. “Come on. I’ll teach you how to do it.”
She let him pull her to her feet, relieved he seemed a bit more together. “You do realize that a girl raised surrounded by glacial scree and with a competitive father and brother knows how to skip stones.”
His eyes twinkled. “Challenge accepted. My record’s seventeen.”
“What was Charlie’s?”
“He maintains it was eighteen, but as I wasn’t there at the time, it doesn’t count.” He chose a pebble with the prerequisite flat surface and pressed it to his lips. “This one’s for you, bro.” He flicked it out, sending it flying across the water, counting as it went.
As it sank into the water on the sixth bounce, Millie sent hers skipping out over the water. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven!” She jumped up and down, punching the air before glancing up into the sky. “I beat him by one for you, Charlie.”
“Hey.” Will spun around laughing and grabbed her by the waist, tugging her in close. “You’re supposed to be on my team.”
Do you want me to be?
She gazed up into his familiar face, recognizing the smile lines that bracketed his mouth and now understanding the origin of the deep lines around his eyes. She knew his body intimately—what made him ticklish, what made him hard, what made him make those little guttural sounds in the back of his throat before he came. At work she knew how he liked the ER organized, that he was calm in a crisis and that he was an excellent teacher.
But out of the bedroom and away from work, what could she really say about him? That he preferred to drink tea to coffee? That he craved fresh seafood and he liked his beef medium rare? That he called his parents once a week? That was a good sign, right? He was close to his family?
Even she knew she was grasping at straws. The only reason he’d told her about Charlie was because it was the anniversary of his death and he’d been hurting. There was still so much she didn’t know about him, still so many conversations they hadn’t had—conversations couples shared when they were committed to getting to know each other. Yet despite the logic telli
ng her that she should know a lot more about him, despite the fact neither of them had promised the other anything, despite the fact they were only in Bear Paw for the summer, she stood on the brink—treacherously close to tumbling over the edge and loving him.
She stroked his cheek. “I am on your team.”
“Good,” he said emphatically, the word sounding distinctly proprietary.
He held her tight and lowered his head to hers, capturing her lips with his and kissing her. It wasn’t hot, fast and furious, like it had occasionally been, nor was it playful, coaxing and seductive, which it often was—no, it was gentle. Kind. Caring. Grateful, almost.
She swayed on that unstable brink as his tenderness wove through her—all giving, no taking—and the soft edge crumbled like loose soil on a cliff top. She lost her footing completely. Closing her mind to all rational thought, she threw herself into the moment, tumbling headlong over the edge, down, down, down so deep.
For better or for worse, she loved him.
WILL’S parents’ faces filled his computer screen. With the HD retinal display, the picture was incredibly clear and, sadly, despite their smiles, he could see the ravages of grief that had carved deep and indelible lines onto their faces. Hell, they could probably see the same on his. He guessed it was especially obvious today, given Charlie’s anniversary had just passed and it was always an emotionally torrid day.
“How are things?” his mother asked.
He grinned at the sound of her accent, which he’d never considered broad before, but after a year and a bit away from home, it sounded very Australian. “Not bad.”
She leaned forward as if it brought her closer to him. “What did you do on Thursday?”
Unwisely, he hadn’t replied to the text she’d sent very early Thursday morning, and this was clearly the follow-up call to check he was still in one piece. He had no intention of telling his parents that he’d fallen apart, because they’d only worry, so he glossed over the finer details. “I spent it on an Indian reservation with Millie. It reminded me a bit of Jilagong.”
His mother shot a surprised but hopeful look at his dad, which made his skin prickle. You just named Millie. He never once mentioned a specific woman to his parents—there was no point. Chances of him still dating her the following month were slim to none.
“Who’s Millie?” she immediately asked.
“She’s someone . . . I work with.” An image of Millie sprawled naked across the bed, head thrown back and panting with her fingernails digging into his thighs, hit him hard, mocking his words.
“A doctor? Nurse?” his father chimed in, as his mother seemed to have gone unusually silent.
“Bit of both, really,” he said, working on being offhand and casual. “She’s a qualified nurse who’s studying medicine.”
“And today will be the Fourth of July over there if I’ve got the time change right. That’s the Yanks’ national day, isn’t it? You got a holiday? Are you going white water rafting?”
He immediately relaxed. Good old dad—he was always a general conversationalist. “It’s a holiday right up until someone drinks too much and does something stupid and I get called in. We’re staying closer to town and going to the family fun day. I’m on a first responders’ float in the parade.”
“You and Millie?” his mother said, regaining her speech.
“Yes,” he said, kicking himself. What the hell had he not been thinking mentioning her once, let alone twice?
“So you’re seeing a bit of each other, then?”
“Little bit.” This time his mind conjured up Millie listening to him talk about Charlie and then skipping stones with him. He had to hand it to her—she’d helped him through a really tough day.
She got you through last week, too.
He didn’t want to think about last week. The week before Charlie’s anniversary was always difficult, and this time it had been exacerbated by the accident on the rez, but now it was over. Thankfully and blessedly over.
“We saw Miranda on Thursday,” his mother continued. “She brought a group of kids down from Jilagong for the surfing day. She says hi.”
He didn’t really know Miranda. Sure, he’d met her at Charlie’s funeral, but she hadn’t been anything like the woman he’d been expecting. In fact, she was nothing like the women they’d always dated, which had struck him as very odd, but his parents had embraced her as if she was part of the family. If he was honest with himself, he’d never been able to reconcile the idea of her and Charlie together, let alone being happy far into the future.
He asked the question that always niggled at him when Miranda was mentioned, as if he had to test her love for Charlie and check it was real. “Is she with someone?”
“No.” Her mother sighed. “I wish she was.”
Shock ripped along his veins. “How can you say that? It’s only been two years since he died.”
His mother’s lips pursed. “I know exactly how long it’s been, Will. I know you think you have a monopoly on grief for Charlie, but you don’t. I lost a son and Miranda lost the man she loved.”
His mother hadn’t reprimanded him like that in years, and her censure crossed the thousands of miles that lay between them. What the hell is wrong with you? You know what she’s been through. What they’d all been through. “Sorry.”
She gave him a brisk nod, but her voice softened. “It’s been an awful two years, and life will never be the same for us again, but the two of you seem to be putting your lives on hold and that isn’t the answer. Miranda deserves to be happy again. So do you. Isn’t it time you came home?”
A simmer of panic bubbled under his skin. “You’re not suggesting that Miranda and I might get together, are you?”
She shrugged as if the answer was simple. “You both loved Charlie.”
“Mum . . .” He gripped his temples with his thumbs. “I don’t even know her.”
“You need someone, and Charlie loved her,” she said as if that was enough of a reason.
He didn’t need anyone. “I’m not Charlie.”
She muttered words that sounded something like Charlie got it before she said clearly, “What about Millie? You obviously like her.”
“We’re just friends,” he said, trying hard not to let his rising irritation infiltrate his voice. What was wrong with his mother? She usually stayed out of his personal life, and she’d never tried matchmaking before. It suddenly occurred to him she was sixty-five now. Was her grandmother clock stuck in alarm mode?
He smiled into the camera, thinking about his sister, who’d been married for a year. “If you want a grandchild, tell Lauren and Alex to get a wriggle on.”
She sighed. “This has nothing to do with your father and me wanting to be grandparents.”
“What’s it got to do with, then? You’ve never waded into my personal life before, so why start now? Where’s all this coming from?”
“It’s coming from you.”
“Me?” He was fast becoming bewildered by the conversation and yet at the same time extremely wary.
She gave him an exasperated look very similar to the one she used to give him when he was a boy and he’d done something stupid. “Before Charlie died you’d never spent any real time alone. He was always with you either in person or on the other end of the phone, a text message or a video link. We can see how lonely you’ve been these last two years, and it’s breaking our hearts.”
She gripped his father’s hand. “Life is better when you share it with someone, Will. You need to let someone in to share it with you.”
“You mean like I used to share with Charlie?” Anger stirred at her total lack of understanding of the depth of connectedness he and Charlie shared. A connectedness severed by his death. No one could ever come close to having that sort of bond with him. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
His father leaned forward. “We’re worried about you, son.”
“You don’t have to be, Dad,” he said tightly. “I’m fine.
I have to go or I’ll be late for the parade. Love you both. Bye.”
He clicked his mouse and killed the connection.
“RALSTON!”
Tara’s radio crackled with the not-so-dulcet tones of Mitch Hagen’s gravelly voice. It was the Fourth of July, and the family fun day was in full swing. She’d been up before dawn putting the roadblocks in place for the fun run and the parade, and now both were over.
As she pulled her radio close to her mouth, the boom-boom-boom of the marching band was deafening. “Reading you loud and clear, Sheriff.”
“You done dismantling the roadblocks?”
“Yes. I’ve just arrived at the park and I’m doing a foot patrol.”
“I need you at the police tent with the police vehicle at noon for the Breaking Good show.”
“The what?” she asked with a sigh. She’d thought it was too good to be true that her boss would just let her do traffic and crowd control.
“It’s a first responder event. Kids get to see a police vehicle, ambulance, the medical evacuation chopper and get their photo taken with us. Make sure you’ve got your hat. Kids love putting on the hat.”
“Next you’ll be telling me there’s coloring books and stickers.”
“You got it,” Mitch said, missing her sarcasm. “We’ve got a bunch of CSI for Kids booklets to give out. Don’t be late.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Oh, and, Ralston, nice job on the bacon offenders.”
She smiled at the unexpected praise. The fun run first thing this morning had been uneventful out on the road but not so at the free breakfast. A minor altercation had broken out between two hungry runners and one last remaining piece of bacon.
“You want bacon?” she’d said, separating the two men who were old enough to know better. “Then you’ll get bacon.”
She’d instructed them to get into the backseat of her patrol car and had driven them to McDonalds, which was on the outskirts of town. She’d dumped them there without their phones or wallets, leaving them with plenty of time to think about their behavior on the one-mile walk back into town.
