doesn’t care. But she has always known something that Jackson hasn’t – that until now they’ve been on borrowed time. She has made a commitment, and she will not back down.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ she had said to Jackson, when he had questioned her. But she had deliberately missed out one key word.
Yet.
30
Jackson
Jackson has resigned himself to a restless night, with Kate asleep only metres away from him. He can picture her slender form curled in her sleeping bag, her blonde hair fanned on her pillow. Perhaps he should go over there and tell her to come back. He should reassure her that, whatever is going on, he will support her. That’s what you were meant to do when the times got tough. You had to show a little faith. Why is the first hand he plays always the one where he pushes people away?
Before he knows it, he has cracked open a bottle of bourbon bought in duty-free, and is mixing it with some flat Coke. It tastes disgusting, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from pouring another. When he cannot determine a course of action, it seems he can’t help but invite drink to choose it for him. It usually does, by slowly blanking out the questions until they don’t matter.
He will go round to see Desi later tomorrow, once Kate has visited her. Then he can find out what Kate wanted. But by that time she’ll be gone, and he has no idea where she’s heading. He feels sick at the thought. If he lets her leave, he might never see her again. But can he bear the humiliation of begging her to stay?
His hand is shaking as he refills his glass, while his head is a slurry of indecision. A stream of discontented faces begins to swim through his mind. He can see Pete’s eyebrows inverting to a frown as he wondered why Jackson hadn’t taken more notice of Maya’s whereabouts. He can hear the hidden question as Desi asked ‘How are you?’, when what she actually meant was ‘I haven’t seen you in a long time. Why didn’t you visit me?’. He has no idea where Maya is, or how she’s doing, when he should have been busy supporting her these past few weeks. And Kate – who had recently become the guiding light on his horizon – has abruptly extinguished her presence in his life.
To top it all off, he’d caught sight of Charlie at his bedroom window, watching them all from a distance. He slugs back the last of his drink and begins to mix himself another while he thinks about his dad. He wishes he’d known his father in his prime, before he sold the boat and stopped crayfishing. Desi had always talked disparagingly of going out on the water with Charlie and Rick, but Jackson would have loved to experience it – their dad as skipper, and Rick hauling pots. Instead, he’d grown up listening to Rick’s boasting after he took over the boat, while his dad quietly massaged his painful hands each time Rick got up to collect another beer.
As a boy, Jackson had jumped every time Charlie paid him attention, mainly because those times were few and far between. If there was something practical to be conveyed, Charlie could teach Jackson how to build a fire, or fix a pipe, or gut a fish. But, other than that, his dad had little to say. Jackson has spent a lifetime trying to work him out, and has never succeeded. Desi gave up long ago. It had been Hester who bound the family together, but when she died those ties had dissolved. Jackson doesn’t even need to be a bridge between his father and sister. Where possible, they like to pretend that the other doesn’t exist.
He feels sorry for his dad, but he would never let it show. He is pretty sure Charlie would rather be reviled than pitied. But still, Charlie is the patriarch of the family, and none of them give him the time of day unless they need something. No wonder the old man is sulky and obtuse. Is that what sixty-odd years of hard graft got you? A dead wife and a fractured family.
Screw that! he thinks, slamming his drink down and collapsing on the bed, his head spinning. He is better off a free agent. He should be thanking Kate for letting him go.
He reaches over to find his phone and text Desi, to tell