one who makes us laugh by refusing to laugh at any damned thing.’
‘You don’t get it.’ Though his words do something strange to me, pushing at my insides. ‘I feel like I’m missing this huge part of me. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I came from or why I ended up living with you. Everything about my life is either a mystery or a lie. I spend my days working in “our” business feeling like a fucking fraud because Hart Brothers Industries isn’t my birthright. Not like it is yours and Theo’s. I have no idea why Ryan raised me but I can’t keep acting like this is normal.’
‘Bullshit. Ryan loved you. He tried to adopt you—that’s the one thing we do know about this. And you want to talk about something being missing? What do you think Theo and I have felt like this last year or so? You’ve checked out, disappeared, and it’s like we’ve lost an arm or something. You barely know my wife, my baby, you’re never around and when you are you’re drunk and aggressive. You’re our brother. Did you even stop to think about what you’re taking away from us by simply disappearing?’
My chest hurts. I look at him, the earnestness in his face pulling at my senses so I have only grief and regret, and an abiding uncertainty.
‘I’m not saying this is easy. We’re all grappling with this, but Christ, man, let’s grapple with it together. Stop running from us, and let us help you. Please. We love you. Grace and me, Asha and Theo—you’re part of our families. Stop disappearing and let us help you.’
None of this is new. Theo and Jagger have both said this to me a lot in the last eighteen months, and yet when I hear Jagger now it’s in light of Cora’s words.
‘I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m going home, to Sundown Creek. I’m packing up my dad’s house so I can finally move on with my life. That’s not running away; it’s confronting something I’ve been avoiding for years.’
I have been running, and they’ve been calling me on it for years, but it’s Cora’s voice I hear, Cora’s courage that forces me to stop and really listen, to understand. I’ve tried it my way. I’ve run and I’ve drunk and I’ve used every tool at my disposal to ignore what’s happening but now I need to try something different or I’m going to wind up like Cora’s dad, of that I have no doubt.
* * *
The plane will always remind me of Cora. I see her everywhere I look. I stare at the beer in front of me, open but not yet touched, and reach for my phone instead. I didn’t save the photo of her—the one photo I have of Cora, that she sent me via text. I load it up out of our message conversation now, making it the size of the screen.
My heart feels like it’s going to tear out of my chest.
I zoom in on her eyes; my gut clenches. I drop my head back against the armchair’s headrest, closing my eyes. Her eyes are still there, smiling, teasing. Then hurt, accusing, as I told her we were just sleeping together.
‘You want to push away the people who love you? Well, congratulations...you succeeded.’
The meaning of her words was obvious at the time but it’s only now, ten hours out of Sydney, closer to the States than I am to Cora, that I feel the importance of what she said, the beauty of the gift she offered, and I feel the fierceness of my rejection.
‘Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t think about me. Don’t even remember me.’
As if I could ever forget her. I blink my eyes open and stare at the photo once more, pinching out to full size so I can see her whole face, and the airline pyjamas she was wearing that night.
If I’d been punched hard in the stomach it wouldn’t have hurt more.
I’ll never forget Cora, but will she forget me? Will she look at someone else like this, make them smile, offer them her beautiful, sweet heart? God, for her sake, I hope so. Cora deserves the best, and that’s very far from what I am right now.
* * *
For someone like me, who exists partially through the medium of photography, I find it impossible to believe I didn’t take a single photo of Holden. There are a heap of him