Red Dirt Heart 3 (27 page)

“You weren’t to know.”

“I should have asked him first instead of just jumpin’ right in and rattlin’ off everything I’d done.”

“He won’t think bad of you, love.”

“Maybe.” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t be surprised that he doesn’t want to talk to me, really. Because I keep thinkin’, Ma, that if it was reversed, if it was him having a great time and me suffering like that, well, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be talking to him either. Actually, I’d be a whole lotta hurt and pissed off.”

She smiled at me. “Yes, but we all know how you carry on, love.”

Her attempt at making me smile worked, even if just for a second. “Gee, thanks.”

“Was he okay when you said goodbye?”

I shrugged, a bit embarrassed. “Well, I dunno. He was really tired, so I just talked to him ’til he fell asleep.”

“Aww,” she said with a that’s-so-sweet look on her face. “I’m sure he appreciated that, love.”

“I dunno,” I said, shrugging again. “It’s not like I could do anything else.”

I guess he did appreciate it, because when I woke up the next day, there was an email from him.

Thank you for last night. Sorry I fell asleep. I needed you and you were there for me, even on the other side of the world. Hearing your voice was everything.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a few days. We’re busy with funeral arrangements. Will talk when I can. You’re never far from my thoughts.

I didn’t hear from him for a few days, just like he said, but then I didn’t hear from him for a few days more after that.

Then it was a week.

I kept refreshing my inbox, thinking maybe something was wrong with it, and then I checked my Skype settings a few times to see if something wasn’t wrong with that too.

There was nothing wrong with them at all.

I still had work to do, a station to run, a business. I still had other people who depended on me, and I had to put one foot in front of the other, not for me, but for them.

It didn’t stop the hollow ache in my chest; it didn’t stop the God-awful-missing-him that kept me awake at night. When I did sleep, my dreams were filled with snippets of blue eyes and bright, blinding smiles, slow Texan drawls that whispered words of sex and promise.

And every morning I woke up alone, and the emptiness that somehow felt like lead sat heavy in my chest.

It was simply a case of inhale, exhale, repeat. As much as it hurt to breathe, the numbing daily routine that I once cursed was my saving grace. It had been three weeks since he’d left. Three long-as-hell, heart-aching weeks.

Everyone kinda kept their distance, giving me what they thought I wanted. How wrong they were. The old version of me would have wanted solitude, but this version of me—the Travis’ed version of me—wanted company.

I actually think bein’ alone would just about kill me.

On the Friday, I woke to an email in my inbox and I just about had a heart attack trying to open it, followed by a weight of disappointment.

Funeral was yesterday. Miss you more than words can say.

That was it. One line, two sentences. I’d waited all these heartbreakin’ days for that. It was everything, and it was nowhere near enough. I wasn’t sure what worse: getting no email or getting an email that didn’t mention coming home.

I didn’t reply. Not yet, anyway.

He was going through a family crisis, and he certainly didn’t need my hurt feelings to contend with. I guessed a spiteful is-that-all-I’m-worth-to-you ranty email wouldn’t have helped either.

So I closed my laptop and stared at the wall for a while instead. And that’s when the two boxes on top of the filing cabinet caught my eye. I hadn’t thought about them in a while and I found myself emptying both boxes of my childhood mementos onto my desk. I went through the newspaper cut outs from the scrapbook of Samuel’s things—my brother’s things—and read them one more time.

Maybe I wasn’t in the best frame of mind, maybe I was missing Travis too much, maybe I was hurting. Or maybe it
was
time and the right thing to do, but I riffled through the desk drawer until I found the scrap piece of paper I was looking for. Before I could change my mind, I picked up the phone and dialled the number written down. “Laura? It’s me, Charlie. I want to meet Sam.”

* * * *

Ma found me in the lounge room where I was folding laundry and telling Nugget not to undo my good work as he barrelled over every damn thing I’d just folded.

It had been two days since Travis’s two-sentence email. There’d been nothing else from him, and I hadn’t replied yet.

Ma sat down and eyed me cautiously. “You okay, hun?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”

She looked at the clothes I was folding. “You washed his shirts.”

“Had to do it sometime,” I said. “Anyways, they didn’t smell like him anymore. I wore ’em too much.”

Ma nodded sadly. “I wish I knew how to help you.”

I sighed and the shirt I was folding was now crumpled in my lap. “I guess it had to happen sometime, right?”

“You don’t know he’s not coming back.”

“I don’t know he is, either,” I said. Nugget tackled the laundry basket, and I almost even smiled.

“Have you checked your emails this afternoon?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I’m not up for the disappointment, to be honest.”

Ma frowned. “Oh, Charlie.”

“It’s okay, Ma,” I told her, starting to refold the shirt I was still holding. Although it wasn’t okay.
I
wasn’t okay. There was a gaping hole in my life. “Life goes on, right?” I said. “I mean, the world hasn’t stopped turning, people are still carryin’ on like nothing’s changed.”

“I guess so,” she said. I could tell she didn’t agree with me, that she just didn’t want to argue.

We both watched Nugget in silence as he managed to flip the washing basket on its side and then ran in and out of it half a dozen times.

“Can I tell you something?” Ma said. It wasn’t really a question, because I knew she was telling me whether I wanted to hear it or not. “Do you remember, not too long ago, when you said you couldn’t do any of this without Travis?”

I didn’t have to answer that. We both knew it was true.

“You were so sure you couldn’t do anything without him,” she went on to say. “You thought you could only get through your list of things to do if he was here. But you know what, Charlie? Despite how much your heart is hurting right now, you’ve more than proved you can do it all. You’re on the Board of Directors, you’ve got a contract with the supermarket buyer, you’ve finished your assessments for your degree—”

“Well, Travis finished those.”

“You’re meeting your brother,” she said.

“I really wanted Travis here for that,” I admitted quietly. “If there’s one thing I can’t get through without him, it might be that. I don’t know why I agreed to meet him this weekend…” Well, I did know why. Laura was heading back to Darwin next week, so it made sense that Sam come down to the Alice while she was still here. But still, I was gonna need Travis here for that.

And, well, that wasn’t going to happen.

“You’ll do just fine, Charlie.”

I didn’t speak for a little while. I didn’t trust my voice not to crack, and I didn’t want to cry. Because I wasn’t fine. I was alone. I should have never dared to hope that he would come back. When he was at the airport, I knew then he wasn’t coming home. I was foolish to hope. Finally, I took a breath and said, “I miss him, Ma. I can run this station, I can have bigger dreams and hopes for this farm, but I miss him.”

“I know you do, love.”

I shook my head. “It’s like having one lung removed. I can still live and breathe, but God, it’s not the same. My chest hurts and I have this hollow emptiness that weighs me down. And sometimes I think of him out of the blue and it stops me right where I stand, and I have to catch my breath.”

Ma’s eyes got watery. “I wish I knew what to say, Charlie.”

I went back to foldin’ laundry, and then the upturned washing basket ran into the door. The basket hit with such force, it kind of toppled to the side, leaving a very stunned, very sad-looking Nugget wondering what the hell just happened.

I barked out a laugh, then went over and picked him up. “You’re such a little dufus. What did you think was gonna happen if you ran into the door?”

“Underneath a washing basket?” Ma added. She was smiling now. “Is he okay?”

I ruffled Nugget’s forehead with my finger and tucked him into the crook of my arm. “He’s fine. Just needs a bit of a cuddle, don’t ya, mate?”

I could tell from the way Ma looked at me, she thought he wasn’t the only one. Before she left, she said, “Don’t leave his email unanswered, Charlie. If he taught you anything, it was to tell him how you were feeling. It don’t matter if you think he’s not doing the same. You keep up your end of the bargain—do everything you can do—and let the chips fall where they may.”

Later that night, with Ma’s words in my head, I did exactly that. I tried several times, typing out long-winded lines about time and distance, about feeling lost and how the pain of his absence kept me awake at night. But nothing I said seemed right. So in the end, I kept it short and simple and hit Send before I could change my mind.

Travis,

If this is your goodbye, please know that I am, and will always be, grateful for you.

This desert has not changed in ten thousand years, yet now it is not the same. Like me, I guess.

I washed your shirts today. They didn’t smell like you anymore.

I will wait for you.

I love you.

If this is your goodbye, don’t tell me.

I don’t want to know.

Numb is how I would describe the next three days. Travis didn’t reply in the first twenty-four hours after I sent my email, and I stopped checking after that.

And in all fairness, if he wasn’t coming back, I asked him not to tell me.

So I guessed that this was him not telling me.

Everyone was kinda good about it. I never said a word, but they weren’t blind or stupid. They gave me not-knowing-what-to-say looks and made a point of not saying his name. Billy stuck close to me, making sure I was busy and distracted, and when Billy wasn’t there, Ernie was, or Bacon or Trudy, and I realised they were taking shifts to babysit me.

I’m pretty sure just a year ago that would have pissed me off, but now it was kind of… nice.

Reassuring.

I wasn’t alone.

But there’s a mile-wide difference between bein’ alone and bein’ lonely.

Those three days were okay, but the nights damn near killed me. That was when bein’ lonely and bein’ alone seemed one and the same. That was when the missing-him was at its worst.

And I probably wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be meeting Sam, the guy who might or might not be my brother. I had no idea what to expect and no one to lean on.

Well, correction. I had no Travis to lean on.

And maybe the numbness in missing him helped tamp down any nerves I might have had in meeting Sam. Because when the car pulled up at the homestead and I was meeting him for the very first time, I wasn’t nervous at all.

If I had ever doubted that this guy who was raised in the city was any relation of mine, it was gone the second I saw him.

Because the guy who got out of the car along with Laura and another a blonde woman was a mirror image of me.

Well, he was all clean-clothes and fancy-shoes and I was all worn-boots and red-dirt, but we looked the same.

I walked down the veranda steps toward them. I said hello to Laura first and held out my hand to Sam. “I’m Charlie.”

He shook my hand and smiled. “Sam.” He introduced the woman with him. “And this is my girlfriend, Ainsley.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand as well.

Ainsley was thin, tall, blonde and pretty. She smiled warmly and looked at Laura. “You weren’t joking when you said they looked alike.”

Laura laughed, a mix of nervous and relieved, but she looked at me fondly. “Thanks for inviting us, Charlie.”

“You’re welcome,” I said just as George came over.

He looked at Sam, then at me, then back to Sam. “Well, holy shit.”

I laughed again and nodded toward the house. “Come on, let’s go inside. You guys might want to freshen up, since it’s a bit of a drive from town to here. Nara has morning tea ready if you’re hungry.”

We grabbed their bags from the car and took them inside. The plan was they’d stay a night or two if they wanted. This was new to all of us, but there would be no pressure. If it was awkward or uncomfortable or too much too soon, then they could leave at any time.

I gave a quick tour of the house, not that there was a great deal to see, and we sat at the dining table. Nara had served scones with some jams and cream, and pots of tea and coffee. She was pleased with herself, and I smiled at her. “Thanks. It looks great.”

Ma came in, still walking a little gingerly. “She did it all by herself too,” Ma said, patting Nara’s arm. Nara blushed and darted out of the room, just as Laura stood up to help Ma sit down.

Laura kissed her cheek. “Wow, you look so much better!” she said.

“She’s still supposed to be taking it easy,” I told her. “But she doesn’t listen.”

Ma got comfortable in the seat next to me—Travis’s seat—and smiled warmly at me. “Learned it from you, love.”

I introduced Ma around the table and then George, who came in just after. I had asked them both to be with me today, not knowin’ how it would go, and they both said they wouldn’t miss it.

This whole meeting was for me and Sam to meet and get to know each other, so I figured I’d better start the conversation. I was just about to ask Sam and Ainsley how their flight was when Laura asked, “Where’s Travis?”

“Oh,” I started. I wasn’t ready for that question, and hearing his name made my heart clench. “He’s, um, he’s gone home.”

Maybe it was the beat of silence, maybe it was how my eyes flicked to Ma just a fraction, but I think Laura got the gist of it. Or maybe not. “Oh. For how long?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

“Oh.” Now she got it.