Pictures of You

Chapter 47

the PRESENT

47

Evie

“Let’s go to bed tonight and tackle this fresh in the morning,” Dad says firmly, once we’ve brought in our bags and he’s made us each a cup of tea. This is a level of leadership he usually reserves for Mum, and their change of guard unnerves me. “We’ve got the couch, and the spare room …”

“Thanks, Dad.”

I feel like one of those people who returns home after a fire engulfed it to sift through the remains, hoping to find something salvageable. I don’t find what I’m looking for in Mum’s expression, her eyes downcast as she fidgets nervously with her sapphire engagement ring and the understated eternity band Dad presented at their tenth anniversary. She looks a lot more than thirteen years older—worry lines carved on her forehead, hair gray, light gone from eyes that were always sparkling. Is this my fault?

“Thank you for letting us in,” I add softly. There’s a politeness in my tone that belongs to acquaintances. Not family. I hadn’t thought it would be this hard. I lean across the kitchen table and grasp Mum’s hand, hoping to breathe life back into our relationship somehow, desperate to revive it.

She gives me a tight smile, but it’s as if the unconditional love she’s always shown is trapped behind a wall of self-preservation. She curls her fingers around mine, then slowly lets my hand fall—our bond now weak—and heads off to bed with Dad.

An hour later, Drew is exhausted beside me on my parents’ couch. We’ve been drinking some herbal concoction designed to help anxious people sleep, even though I didn’t know either of my parents ever had a problem in that department.

His eyes shut and he dozes. Sleep hasn’t wiped the frown, and I take the opportunity to really look at him, hoping to provoke my memory. I’ve still had only that one glimmer from our past on the beach. Maybe if I study him up close, something will trip in my brain and the rest of our friendship will come rushing back.

His long legs stretch out in front of him, ankles crossed. Even weary and stressed, his face is kind. Like me, he’s showing the earliest signs of creasing at the corners of his eyes, fine lines etching across his forehead, like he’s spent time looking into glaring views. All that landscape photography, probably. Or worrying. I examine the dark hair along his jawline and imagine him clean-shaven. Then shaving. After a shower …

“Are you staring at me?” he mumbles without even opening his eyes.

I sit back. “I was just trying to remember you,” I admit. I leave out the imagining him in nothing but a towel bit. I am a widow . Surely I should have eyes only for my husband, even if he is dead and completely absent in my memory. I wonder when the world will let me notice someone else.

I move to get off the couch, but Drew grabs my wrist and pulls me back down beside him. He pivots us so we’re square on. Then he looks straight into my eyes, takes my face in his hands, and says, “Remember me now?”

I think he wants me to remember him as much as I want it myself. The clock in the corner ticks as the breeze brushes the sheer curtains against the frame from the open window. The faint soundtrack from the TV is an undercurrent, and, for a few moments, it doesn’t feel like it’s only the past that I’m reaching for. It’s whatever comes next.

“You made me feel safe,” I tell him. The words fall out of my mouth as if disconnected from my conscious mind, and I wonder what deeply held truth they’re reflecting.

He drops his hands from my face and edges back. “So ironic,” he murmurs. “You made me feel wildly unsafe.”

I don’t want to touch the delicate ecosystem from which he has finally shared something real. I can’t speak or move in case I disrupt the environment that has caused him to open up.

“We met in Photography Club after school, as I said.”

I nod.

“I needed to flesh out my CV. My marks had dropped. My mum had been sick …” He falters, just briefly, and I notice the slightest catch in his voice. “You were in the classroom. Front row. Notebook on your desk. Making up all sorts of weird fantasies about me …”

“What?”

He laughs. “You told me later; you’d imagine all these girls I’d been friends with, and you’d been jealous.”

I scoff. “ Jealous? Of imaginary girls?”

He smiles like he’s pretending to be God’s gift and shrugs. “I’m just reporting it like you told it, Eves.”

Eves . His use of the nickname seems to shift us closer.

“Anyway, I had to lead this club for the semester. I was just going to phone it in, and then you showed up and complicated everything. The exhibition we planned. You were always reaching for the stars, and you dragged me with you at a time when …” There’s that pained look on his face again. “I didn’t think I could be dragged.”

I’ve been so preoccupied with my own situation these last couple of days, I didn’t stop to wonder about his.

“You pulled me back into life. Maybe that’s why I’m here. Because it’s you who needs to be pulled back into your life now, and I owe you.”

I don’t want him thinking that. I want him here because he wants to be. Not in this mess, exactly, but in my life …

“What was unsafe about me?” I ask.

“That’s easy. Once you’d dragged me out of the shadows, I worked out what I’d been missing. I worried you’d leave me stranded there.”

I did leave, though. He said we went years without seeing each other. And I need to know why, but he moves the conversation to my parents instead.

“It might take a while before you gain their trust. I know you want more information, but I’ve been looking this up. I think we need to remember the good stuff first. Go gently into this memory-retrieval exercise.” Unexpectedly, he places a hand on my arm.

Something flutters in my chest, and I feel sixteen and completely inexperienced again. A gesture like this could have had me replaying it for weeks—analyzing what it means. I don’t have weeks now. I need my memories back. “Drew, were you and I ever …” I want this information so badly.

He looks surprised. “No. It wasn’t like that.”

He says the words, but why can’t I shake the feeling that there’s something else between us here on my parents’ couch—and in this cavernous white space in my mind?

“Never?” I whisper.