Pictures of You

Chapter 53

the PRESENT

53

Evie

I wake before dawn in a house my parents have made their own, without me. I feel like a visitor rather than a daughter. Dad is snoring down the hall, a familiar drone that I could have sworn I heard only last week. The spare room looks like it’s been entirely furnished by Kmart’s home décor section—dusty pink glass vases and pointless little ornaments, and a muted pastel print of a flower on the wall. Staring at it from bed, all I can think is how much more striking one of Drew’s photographs would be hanging here.

Beside me on the dressing table are framed family photos. Once again, I have this sense that my lost memories are just beyond a veil. So close. They’ll push through soon, rushing in and swamping me. The anticipation is torture.

I get out of bed in the dark, creep down the hall, and open the sliding door onto the back veranda. It’s been one of those long summer nights that never really cools off. There’s a big swing seat out here with overstuffed yellow cushions, and I ease into it, one foot still on the deck, rocking gently.

A soft light flicks on in the kitchen and I look up to see Drew through the window as he tries to figure out the coffee machine. He doesn’t know I’m out here, and I watch as he potters around, looking for the ground coffee, opening and closing doors quietly, searching for a mug.

Even first thing in the morning, with bed hair and several days’ dark stubble, he looks good. I’m suddenly aware of having crawled out of bed after a bad night’s sleep, my own hair a total mess, skin drawn, bags under my eyes … just the total opposite of how put together he looks even in gray pajama pants and a T-shirt. I don’t believe him when he said there was never a spark between us. That might be true for him, but teenage me must have had a crush, surely?

As he waits for the coffee to percolate, he peers out the window and notices me. His face shifts in an instant, softening, before he can catch himself. Looking at him, I’m suddenly overcome by an unspecific sense of sadness from our past. No, it’s even worse than that. I feel bereft. Not about him. For him. What am I remembering?

The first fuzzy images sift to the surface. A younger Drew, standing at a kitchen bench like this, looking at me. Torn right open. Completely vulnerable. Right now, I feel the same emotions as I must have back then—heart-wrenching pain for him, coupled with a terrifying sense of not knowing what to do.

What has he been through? What happened to make my heart remember hurting this much for him? I want to console him right now, except obviously he’s not distraught right this second. But, oh, he was .

It’s grief. It has to be. This futile desperation. I ache for him. And I hope with everything I’ve got that a younger version of me stepped up to the plate and didn’t run away from this anguish. Because that would have been my instinct, I’m sure.

Suddenly, his focus is drawn. Inside the house, another light flicks on, and his face breaks into a dazzling smile. He’s talking to someone I can’t see in the front doorway. It can’t be one of my parents—this is not the smile you bestow on someone you just met. It’s got years of backstory behind it.

And then she comes into view. All I can make out from here is her short-cropped platinum-blond hair and the build of someone who has just stepped off a catwalk in Milan. That, and the fact that she is throwing herself into Drew’s arms.

Is this Chloe? The woman he insists isn’t his girlfriend, but whom he’s spoken to or messaged several times in the last two days? It has to be. They’re obviously together—look at the body language! They’re still hugging. And now the brokenhearted compassion I felt for him seconds ago has been replaced by something entirely unfamiliar, unwanted, and unwarranted: outright jealousy.

What the hell is wrong with me?!

He puts this woman down and stands back at arm’s length, admiring her hair, more smiling, then they hug again . Ugh!

But as they drag themselves apart at last, he pulls her over to the window and nods in my direction, as if to say, Sorry, I’ve got a green-eyed monster outside, excuse the hair and pajamas, she’s not in her right mind …

He slides the door open and I run my hand through my curls in a flustered and ultimately hopeless attempt to smooth the frizz. As he walks out onto the deck, he pulls her by the hand through the doorway, face triumphant, eyes alight like they’re a royal couple emerging onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

It’s only in the soft light of sunrise, outside, that I can make out her features. The unusual, feline shape of her eyes. The jet-black roots under the platinum blond. The sophistication crumbling on sight, falling away to reveal the twelve-year-old I first knew. The one who rescued me for that group assignment and helped me through every assignment since, and who is here, at last, to help me through the biggest assignment I’ve ever faced.

She falls into the swing seat with me, hugging me so hard and so long, not saying a word, that I know instantly, just from this one, desperate embrace, just how much trouble I must really be in.