Chapter 33
We just want him home.
I swipe at my eyes and try to swallow through the lump in my throat. We’ve been driving for hours, wordless and silent, eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead. But all I can think about are Chris’s mum’s words.
We just want him home.
My throat closes and I grip the wheel tighter. Chris isn’t coming home. He’s never coming home.
“Let me drive, Min,” Heath urges from the passenger seat. “Please.”
I shake my head, swiping at tears with my sleeve. “No,” I say, the first word I’ve spoken in hours. I need to do something. Isn’t that what Chris said on that crazy morning we spent digging for Donny Granger?
I need to do something with my hands.
God, Chris. All he wanted was to make his name. To be loved and forgiven. To be enough.
I stare out the windshield, thinking. Isn’t that what any of us want? To be more than our sins. I swipe at my eyes again, my attention drawn to the cheerful sapphire-blue sign. A humpback whale breaches above the words Welcome to Newcastle.
Heath stares intently out his passenger-side window and Jessie pokes her head out the cracked back window, golden ears flapping in the breeze.
I found her in the garage, tied up, her eyes wide with panic.
But as I untied her and led her into the house, she began to settle.
I gave her something to drink, spoke gently.
Little by little, the fear in her eyes started to fade.
Luke didn’t hurt her, just tied her up to lure me out. The bastard. The fucking dead bastard.
When I got home, it was early morning, and Heath was still asleep. I had a steaming shower, pulled Jessie into my lap, and sat with her on the couch, oddly calm. We stayed there for hours, watched the sun rise.
When Heath woke up, he found us still sitting there, saw the bruises on my cheek, the dried blood on my mouth, and his face went white.
I told him everything. About what Luke did to Hannah Striker and Chris. Rachel.
What Dad did to Mum.
And what I did to Luke.
By the time I’d finished, Heath’s head was in his hands. I thought of the years between us. All those times he was strong for me so I could break. And now here he was, breaking, finally. Falling apart after a lifetime of holding everything together.
It started with a breath that didn’t quite land, like his lungs were folding in on themselves. His shoulders, always pulled back like armor, dropped. It was like he was being crushed under the weight of everything he never let himself feel.
He tried to cover it up. A hand over his face and a rough swipe of his sleeve.
But he wasn’t fine. He was breaking, piece by piece.
Because it turns out, you can only carry something until you just can’t anymore.
One day, all those things you survived by the scrape of your teeth will demand to be paid in full.
I stepped forward, arms open, and slowly, he folded. His weight shifted into me, hesitant at first, and then all at once, like he was exhausted from holding himself up for too long.
His breathing came in stutters. Not sobs yet, only sharp, shaky inhales. And I simply held on. Arms around his back, no words. Just that weight shifting from him to me.
But I felt strong enough to carry it. To carry us both.
“I’m going to the police,” I said, gripping his shoulders and meeting his eyes. “You need to leave for a while. I’ll pack your things. Let’s go.”
—
Newcastle is postcard beautiful. Water so clear you see every pebble on the bottom.
I pull into the beach parking lot and shut the engine off.
I watch the water lapping softly on the shore, watch the seagulls creep over to a family spread out on a beach towel, picking through a box of hot chips.
The mother throws a fistful of chips high into the air and the seagulls cry in excitement, soaring up and snatching them in their beaks before they hit the ground.
Heath squeezes my left hand tight. He shifts in his seat, sighing.
Sometime later, a car pulls into the lot. Tara’s grip is tight on the steering wheel as her eyes scan the row of cars. And then she sees Heath, and her whole body seems to relax as if she had been holding her breath the entire drive.
She parks quickly and rushes toward him, stopping a few feet away.
She looks like she’s ready to say something, but her words seem to catch in her throat.
Maybe she notices the way Heath’s slumped in the seat like he’s smaller somehow.
The way his hands are wrapped tight around the edge of his jacket like he’s trying to hold on to something, anything.
He finally looks up, face softening when he sees her standing there, unsure whether to close the distance or wait for her to come to him.
She closes the space between them as he opens the passenger door, falling into his embrace like the world outside doesn’t matter anymore. She still loves him, I realize.
He pulls back just enough to look at her, eyes soft but guarded, like there’s something he wanted to say for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, his voice low, rough.
She shakes her head like she’s not sure what to say yet.
Heath admitted that Tara knew about the abalone ring, the illegal shark fishing.
She’d wanted him to stop, but he refused.
He crossed lines and told himself it was temporary.
Just until the bills stopped piling up, just until he could fix up the house.
He told himself he was doing it for them. For their future.
But I don’t think so.
He’s not a blood man. Never will be. He doesn’t lose his temper or lash out, but sometimes, I wonder if he feels a pull. A tug like a fishing line to let the controlled part of him slip away and become something else, if only for a little while.
Is that what the shark fishing does for him? Does his pulse surge, a strange, electric thrill rising in him as he pulls the fishing line back? Can he taste the violence on the tip of his tongue as the great whites thrash, magnetic and bloody in that great black sea?
Maybe.
But if he does, the violence stays there where it belongs. He doesn’t bring it home. Which is more than I can say about Dad, Luke, the blood men in town.
And me.
Wordlessly, I grab his bags and pile them into the other car while he climbs in. I give Tara a quick hug and open the back door, where Jonah’s fast asleep. I kiss him on the cheek and quietly shut his door.
Then I kneel at Heath’s side and squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. We look ahead to the powdery sand and the water, sparkling in the sun while wispy clouds drift by. The horizon stretches endlessly, the sea meeting the sky forever. I crouch there, feeling like the whole world is over.
Or it’s just beginning.
I open my mouth and wonder what the hell I can possibly say.
Heath beats me to it, straightening his back, attempting a smile. “Eel be back.”
I laugh. “Any fin is possible.”
I stand up, biting my lip when Tara starts the engine. I shut Heath’s door and tuck my hands in my pockets, stepping back. But he winds the window down, smiling now. “Tanks for the ride.”
“Best fishes!”
As the car pulls away, I raise my hand in a small, hesitant wave.
There’s a lump in my throat, a quiet ache in my stomach.
My hand is heavy as I wave goodbye, wishing I could stop time.
The space between us widens, and it feels like the world has quietened.
I watch my brother roll down the road, getting farther and farther away.
I lower my hand, fingers flat against my sides as if the last of our connection has been lost.
But he calls one final time: “Hey!”
I raise my chin, wait.
He smiles from the car window, yells out for the whole world to hear, “I’ll love you for a krill-ion years!”
I laugh, raising my hand again to wave goodbye. This time, it doesn’t feel heavy and final. It just feels right.
The engine fades first, the car growing smaller and smaller, merging with the horizon where the sea meets the sky.
I lean against my car, watching him until he’s a speck in the distance. Time stretches for a moment, and then his car vanishes completely as if swallowed by the brilliant sea.