Текст книги "On the Jellicoe Road "

Автор книги: Melina Marchetta

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Chapter 21

One day Tate was there, a ghost of Tate, sitting by the river where Webb had planned to build a house—a dead look in her eye, a thin grimace to her lips, a sick pallor to her skin that spoke of despair. The next day she was gone—bags packed, no note. And for Narnie, hours without them went by, and then days, and then weeks. And in between those seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks was the most acute sense of loneliness she’d ever experienced. Sometimes she knew that Fitz was watching her and she would call out, “Fitzee. Please! Don’t leave me!”

But no one came back.

Except Jude.

As predicted, the Club House is profitable and after three nights we split the money between the three factions and then we split it again between the Houses. The leaders have a meeting about what their Houses are going to do with the funds and I nod with great approval as everyone is united in their maturity and pragmatism.

Richard has made plans for a maths computer tutor for his house while Ben buys a guitar for his. Trini organises a year’s subscription with Greenpeace and I mumble about some books and DVDs for our library or maybe some software for the computer.

“Let’s get something we can have the bestest fun we’ve ever had with,” Jessa begs one night when we’re on washing-up duty.

“We’re not here to have fun,” I say.

“Who said?” one of the year tens asks me. I think about it for a moment and then shrug.

“I actually don’t know. It’s not that effective when you don’t know, is it?”

So we get a karaoke machine.

On the first night, the year tens stage a competition, insisting that every member of the House has to be involved, so we clear the year-seven and-eight dorms and wait for our turn. Raffy is on second and does an impressive job of “I Can’t Live, If Living Means Without You” but then one of the seniors points out to her that she’s chosen a dependency song and Raffy spends the whole night neuroticising about it.

“I just worked out that I don’t have ambition,” she says while one of the year eights sings tearfully, “Am I Not Pretty Enough?” I start compiling a list of all the kids I should be recommending to the school counsellor, based on their song choices.

“I think she’s reading a little too much into it, Raf.”

“No she isn’t. Because do you know what my second and third choices were? ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ and ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself.’”

“Mary Grace chose ‘Brown-eyed Girl’ and she’s got blue eyes and Serina sang ‘It’s Raining Men’ and she’s a lesbian. You’re taking this way too seriously. Let it go.”

“What have you chosen?”

“I’m doing something with Jessa. Apparently her father was a Lenny Rogers fan.”

“Kenny,” she corrects. “‘Coward of the County’?”

I look at her suspiciously. “Why that one? Are you implying I’m a coward?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just one of his well-known ones.”

“Why didn’t you say ‘The Gambler’? That’s pretty well known, according to Jessa. I’d rather be a gambler than a coward.”

“It’s just a song,” she insists. But I’m not convinced.

I get up and sing “Islands in the Stream” with Jessa. As usual, she takes it all very seriously and she does these hands expressions as if she’s clutching her heart and then giving it out to the audience. I refuse to follow but I do enjoy it. We have knockout rounds throughout the week after dinner and it’s during this time that I truly get to know my House. Their choices make me laugh so much at times that I have tears running down my face and other times they are so poignant that they make me love them so much without even trying.

Raffy and I spend every other night in the Prayer Tree with Santangelo and Griggs. Each time we set out an agenda, which lists the Club House and the territory boundaries as items for discussion, but it never quite happens. We just end up talking about stuff, like the meaning of life or the importance of karaoke choices.

“Do you think they define you?” Raffy asks them.

“Hope not. I always end up singing some Michael Jackson song,” Santangelo says.

“What did you pick?” Griggs asks me.

“Kenny Rogers.”

“‘Coward of the County’?”

I sit back and don’t say a word. I am wounded. Griggs looks at me and then at Raffy. “I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?” he asks.

She doesn’t say anything out loud, but I know she’s mouthing something to him because next minute he says, “I meant ‘The Gambler.’”

I still don’t say anything.

“At the end he saves Becky.” Santangelo tries to help. “Remember? Everyone considered him the coward of the county but he actually wasn’t one.”

“It’s frightening that you’ve put so much analysis into it,” Griggs says.

“It’s not me,” Santangelo says. “You know what fathers with bad taste in music are like.”

Except Griggs doesn’t, and I can tell Santangelo feels like shit for saying it.

“My mum’s boyfriend listens to Cold Chisel,” Griggs says, trying to make Santangelo feel better. “He’s taught my brother all the words to ‘Khe San.’ They sing it all the time.”

Santangelo doesn’t say anything and I can tell he’s angry with himself.

For a while there is silence. Outside, the first cicadas of the season are humming and it’s like there’s no one else in the world but the four of us. It’s Griggs who breaks the silence.

“I loved him, you know,” he says quietly. The admission doesn’t surprise me as much as the fact that he’s speaking about it. “That would probably shock people. But I did. I look exactly like him. Same build, same face. I know every part of my personality that I got from my father. He was a prick, except even pricks don’t deserve to be smashed over the head with a cricket bat.”

“That’s debatable,” Raffy says.

“Do you want to know the worst part?” he asks. I can tell this is so hard for him because he won’t look at us. “Sometimes I forget just how bad he was, so all I can remember is that he’s dead because of me. It’s unnatural, what I did. Sometimes I’m thinking about it in the middle of class and I’ll walk out and ring my mum and say, ‘I remember that he took us to the circus, and that we were laughing, so why did I do what I did?’ She always has an answer. ‘And that night he smashed my head against the glass cabinet, Jonah. Do you remember that? And when he burnt your brother with the cigarettes, Jonah?’

“Other times I’ll wake her in the middle of the night and say, ‘He told me that no one loved us as much as he did.’ And she’ll say, ‘And then he walked around the house holding a gun, threatening to kill us all, because he wanted us to be together forever.’”

Griggs looks up at us. “What happens when she’s not my memory anymore? What happens when she’s not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother’s face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who’ll be my memory?”

Santangelo doesn’t miss a beat. “I will. Ring me.”

“Same,” Raffy says.

I look at him. I can’t even speak because if I do I know I’ll cry but I smile and he knows what I’m thinking.

“So, getting back to the karaoke thing,” says Griggs, not wanting to deal with too much emotion. “I’d have to go with…” He thinks for a moment. “Guns n’ Roses, ‘Paradise City.’”

“Oh, please,” I say. “I’d rather be the coward of the county.”

“Guns n’ Roses have such skanky hos in their film clips,” Raffy says.

“And the problem being?” Santangelo asks.

It’s after midnight when Griggs takes something out of his pocket and puts it in front of me.

“You dropped them in the Brigadier’s tent.”

I stare at the photos in front of me. I’m not ready for more photos. Not after we’ve been talking about Jonah’s father and unprofound lyrics and skanky hos.

“You can take them home with you,” he says, “and look at them there.”

I still don’t say anything. I want to but I can’t. I want to explain everything that’s going on in my head but I can’t find the words.

“Who are they of?” Raffy asks quietly.

“Just a bunch of kids our age,” Jonah says.

I reach over with a shaking hand and put the pictures face up on the ground between us. So I can introduce them to the original five.

They are everything I imagined and more.

“Hannah,” I say, pointing to one. She’s much younger but I’d know her anywhere. “This is the Cadet,” I say to them. “He helped them plant their poppies at the spot where their families died.”

“Is that Fitz?” Raffy asks, pointing to the tallest of them.

I nod, swallowing hard. “Who came by on the stolen bike and saved their lives.” My voice cracks, just a bit.

I look at Fitz for a long time. He is as wild as I knew he would be but so cheeky-looking. I almost expect him to leap out of the photograph and tap me on the face.

“I feel like I know him and I don’t know why,” Raffy says.

“He was a Townie,” I say.

Santangelo looks at the photo and then at me, slightly puzzled. “Is he…”

I nod.

“Who?” Raffy asks.

Santangelo holds the photo in his hand and I see a blurry tear that he, embarrassed, quickly dashes away.

“The Hermit,” I say, and I hear a sound come from Raffy but before I react, I see something else. Standing next to him in the picture, with an arm around his neck, is Webb. A smile from ear to ear, a look in his eyes so joyous that a second wave of grief comes over me. To be that boy, I think. To feel whatever he was feeling. It makes me feel sick and overwhelmed at the same time.

“Webb,” I say. “He began the territory wars,” I tell them. “But it was a joke. I mean, his best friends were Cadets and Townies and the only reason the boundaries came about was because they were bored and just wanted to hang out with each other.”

“Who’s that?” Griggs says, pointing.

It’s like my heart stops beating. All because of the person standing at the edge. Tate. Looking up at Webb with a mixture of love and exasperation, as if they are the only two in the world. She is so beautiful that it makes me ache and I can hardly breathe. The others look at me questioningly because there are tears in my eyes and I’m just shaking my head.

“She’s so beautiful,” I whisper.

I look up at them. “See how beautiful she was.”

“Was? Who is she?” Griggs asked, confused by my reaction.

I pick up the photo and study it closely. But her eyes refuse to meet mine because, for her, there was never anyone but Webb.

“Her name’s Tate,” I tell them. “She’s my mother.”

I lie in my bed, still clutching the photos. It’s one in the morning and I know what I have to do. All this time I thought the answers were here. But now I know that Tate took those answers with her and that somehow Hannah’s caught up in it. If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate’s beautiful lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were and how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect and fear and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go but this time without being chased by a Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breathe for the rest of my life.

When I get to the end of the clearing that leads to the Jellicoe Road, a part of me is not surprised to see Griggs standing there. Even though it’s two in the morning and pitch black, I know it’s Griggs. We stand looking at each other, not able to see much in the darkness, but I can feel his presence.

I ask the inevitable. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you?”

“I asked first.”

“Does it matter who asked first?”

I begin to walk away. “Don’t follow me, Jonah.”

“I’ve got a car,” he calls out after me. “And you’ve got somewhere to go.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I have this amazing ability to read your mind, that’s why.”

I stop for a moment. “Do you want me to remind you what happened last time? I don’t ever want to be that angry with you again, Jonah. I just want to get past Yass this time and find her.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

“Oh, so you were reading her mind back then, too, were you? Is that why you called your school?”

“No, but just say I was reading yours and it was kind of saying, ‘Whatever I find out there is going to kill me a bit inside.’ And I know what you’re thinking now. That if you can find Hannah, you can find your mother.”

“You’re wrong,” I say, but I walk back to him and we take the track that leads to the garage.

And he is wrong. Because I was thinking the exact opposite. If I find my mother, it will lead me to Hannah.

Once we get off the Jellicoe Road, we stop at Santangelo’s and text him to meet us outside. He comes out, barefoot and bleary-eyed, holding something in his hands, and Griggs gets out of the car to greet him. They talk for a while but I don’t want to join in. I’m scared that everyone’s going to try to talk me out of this. Santangelo comes to my window and pokes his head in.

“Soon as I got home I burnt you a CD,” he says, handing it to me.

I nod.

“Take this,” he says, putting some notes in my hand. “It’s the Club House share. GI Joe won’t take it.”

“No.”

“Yes. Pay me back later. The petrol alone will cost you a fortune and I can’t promise this car will last.”

Griggs opens the car door. “We’ve got to go.”

Santangelo leans through the window and hugs me. “Raffy will kill me,” he whispers.

He goes around to Griggs’s side and they do that awkward thing where they can’t acknowledge that they actually have a friendship. After standing around for a moment or two, they shake hands.

“You know shit’s going to hit the fan, all in your direction,” Griggs says to him as he gets into the car.

“I’ll deal with the sergeant. But I’ll tell you this. I’m giving you three days. If you aren’t back in three days, I’m going to tell them exactly where you are.”

“Fair enough,” Griggs says, and I nod.

Chapter 22

Somewhere on the highway to Sydney I begin to cry and it’s like I can’t stop. Griggs reaches over and touches my face, then reaches down and takes hold of my hand. We stay like that for a while in silence. Like that time on the train, I feel whole and again it surprises me that I can feel so together when I am revisiting the most fragmented time of my life.

We listen to the CD that Santangelo burnt for us. A bit of Guns n’ Roses and Kenny Rogers and the Waterboys and at least three or four of the most tragically dependent love songs of all times. I see a smile on Griggs’s face and I am smiling myself.

We don’t have much of a plan. An easy option would be to stay at his house but he knows his mother will call the Brigadier as soon as we arrive and he has promised me three days without voices of reason or authority. So the next seventy-two hours are in my territory with my rules. But remembering is difficult. Living with my mother meant we moved at least eight times, because she was obsessed with the idea that someone was after us. Once, I remember falling asleep in a squat in Melbourne and next morning I woke up in Adelaide. Another time I stayed with a foster family. I’m not sure how old I was but I remember kindness. I remember another time, waking up in a police station when I was about seven years old. I don’t know how I got there, except that the trip back to my mother seemed a long way and now, when I think of it, I realise that police station was the one in Jellicoe.

My first clear memory of time and place was being in a hospital when I was four because of my asthma. The walls were painted with animals and trees and as I stared at one of the trees, I could swear there was a boy hiding in the branches. I didn’t see that boy again until I got to Hannah’s. Except I was never frightened of him or thought it strange, because I thought all people lived the way we did. Then my mother taught me to read during one of her more lucid times and I realised that there was something a bit dysfunctional about our existence. When I think back to it now, it amazes me that even when my mother left me at the 7-Eleven off the Jellicoe Road she was only about twenty-eight years old. Stranger still, that Hannah was even younger.

I sleep, one of those crazy sleeps where you think you’re awake but it ends up being like you’re in a time machine and you look at the clock and it’s three hours later. The morning sun is blinding and there’s a foul taste in my mouth.

“You were dribbling,” Griggs says. He looks tired, but content.

“Thanks for mentioning it.”

“Anson Choi dribbled on my shoulder the whole way down,” he says. He looks at me for a moment and I know he wants to say something.

“What?” I ask.

“We passed Yass about half an hour ago.”

I smile. Three years on and we’ve moved forward, past the town where the Brigadier found us.

“If you weren’t driving, I’d kiss you senseless,” I tell him.

He swerves to the side of the road and stops the car abruptly. “Not driving any more.”

All I remember about the Sydney of my past is the last place we lived in near the Cross. At one stage we’re on a road with four lanes of traffic on each side, in the middle of morning peak-hour traffic. I see a Coca-Cola sign in the distance and I’m amazed at what comes flooding back.

“We lived somewhere around here, to the left. Once we lived just behind that sign.”

I’m impressed with Griggs’s ability to drive in the city. I feel claustrophobic and caged in. Drivers beep their horns impatiently and there are so many signs and arrows. We drive around for ages, trying to work out where to park the car. Everywhere we go there are parking meters. Griggs decides that we need to park the car in a quieter street just outside the city.

“Do you know where?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t want to be seen too close to home. Everyone knows everyone.”

“Where’s home?”

“Waterloo. About five minutes from here.”

“Waterloo. Is it a tough place?”

“No, but some people have tough lives. I’ll take you there one day.”

“Turn left,” I tell him. “There have to be some streets down here without parking meters.”

The car isn’t doing so well and I feel bad for Santangelo because he probably knew that a seven-hour trip would wipe it out but he let us have it all the same. Just thinking of him makes me think of Raffy and of how they would all be getting ready for school at the moment. I wonder what they’re thinking. I left a note saying that I’d be back in a couple of days and for a moment I miss them all: Raffy and Jessa and Ben, and even Mr. Palmer and poor Chloe P., and the other seniors of the House and the year tens, whose energy I love. I even miss Richard.

After we finally find a car park, Griggs is pragmatic and goes into sergeant-major mode. I can tell that he’s already wound up tight. This is a world he can’t control the way he does the territory wars or the guys at his school.

“We begin with people you remember, places you remember. Houses you lived in, corner shops. Restaurants.”

But I have no idea where to start because I recognise nothing. Even when we come across a playground that looks familiar, I see that the units and terraces around it have been renovated. They look expensive and trendy and I feel as if there is no way that we could ever have lived here and it begins to confuse me. The redevelopment around here is mind-blowing. Restaurants and cafes and a massive international hotel.

“Where did the other people go?” I ask Griggs. “The people with nothing but their plastic bags and shopping trolleys filled with everything they own? What did people say to them? ‘You can’t afford to be homeless here?’”

“Let’s get something to eat. You haven’t had anything since last night.”

I don’t answer and I realise that this was all a big mistake. He takes my hand but I pull away. I’m beginning to feel an anxiety attack coming on and it makes me irritable and narky.

“Did you ever eat at a regular restaurant around here?” he asks.

“Jonah, who eats at restaurants?” I snap. “I’ve never eaten in a restaurant in my life. So stop asking such stupid questions.”

“I’m only asking because maybe someone might recognise you and be able to help,” he says patiently.

All of a sudden, everything about him annoys me. His pragmatism, his patience, his Levis, and his navy long-sleeved T-shirt. I want him back in his fatigues. I know how to deal with that Jonah Griggs. Out of uniform he’s not playing a role anymore and the real Jonah Griggs is scarier than the Cadet leader. His emotions are a thousand times more real.

I stare at him and he has that look on his face that asks, What?

“Wherever we go or whoever we meet, promise me you won’t judge my mother.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“Promise.”

“I can’t,” he says, not only irritated but dismissive. “Don’t ask me to do that.”

“That’s cold.”

“Fine. Call it cold. But you’ve told me too many things that I’ll never forgive her for.”

“Then I wish I hadn’t told you,” I snap.

“But you did,” he snaps back, “so find someone else who will love and forgive her, because it won’t be me.”

“Then why are you here?” I’m shouting now and I don’t know why, because the last thing I want to do is fight with him in the middle of a Sydney street.

He stops and looks at me. “I’m here because of you. You’re my priority. Your happiness, in some fucked way, is tuned in to mine. Get that through your thick skull. Would I like it any other way? Hell, yes, but I don’t think that will be happening in my lifetime.”

“Wow,” I say sarcastically. “That’s way too much romance for me today.”

“If you want romance, go be with Ben Cassidy. Maybe he’ll fawn all over you or play a beautiful piece of violin music. I never promised you romance. And stop finding a reason to be angry with me. I didn’t redevelop this place. I just asked if you ate at restaurants.”

For a while we walk in silence, and it’s uncomfortable and angry. We come across a café on a corner where business people are waiting in line to order coffee and two cheerful guys behind the counter are fast and efficient. Sometimes they look up at one of the customers and say, “Flat white and ham-and-cheese croissant?” before the person has even opened their mouth, and I wish they’d do the same with me. Just look up and recognise me and know exactly what I order every day.

But they don’t, because this is a whole other world to the one I lived in seven years ago. Griggs orders coffee and bacon and eggs for himself then looks at me. I shrug.

“White toast and marmalade and a hot chocolate,” he says, and it doesn’t surprise me just how much he’s taken in about me.

We eat in silence and then he buys some fruit and puts it in my backpack and we set off towards Kings Cross.

“Do you eat at restaurants?” I ask him quietly, wondering if he regrets coming with me.

“Yeah. With my mum and Daniel, my brother. Or sometimes with Jack, my mum’s boyfriend. At least once a week.”

“Do you like Jack?”

“He’s a great guy. He’s fantastic with Daniel and he takes care of my mum without trying to take over.”

“Your brother sounds like he’s your friend.”

“My brother is my god,” he says. “I can’t begin to tell you how decent that kid is.”

“I can’t imagine him being more decent than his brother.”

He looks at me and I can see his body relax a bit. He puts his arm around me and kisses the top of my head as we walk.

“Jonah,” I say quietly, never wanting him to let go. “Just say I didn’t exist?”

It’s the longest day of my life. The lack of familiarity gets worse. The main drag of Kings Cross gives me snippets of memory but not enough. I feel like it’s a foreign land. It’s cleaner and the people look different: better dressed, better looking, comfortable. It’s not as if there is something wrong about an area being cleaned up and gentrified, especially when it was famous for prostitution and drugs and corruption, but it has wiped out my history. Everything smells different and everyone walks at a different pace.

“When we lived here her name was Annie,” I tell Griggs. “She used to change it all the time. She said that people were after us and she’d say, ‘Your name is Tessa today.’ But I’d lie in bed at night and I’d say to myself over and over again, ‘My name is Taylor Markham.’ I never wanted to be anyone else. She used to say that I named myself. Like she didn’t care enough to name me.”

“It’s probably a better reason than that. Did you hang out with any kids around here?”

“Not really. There was one kid, Simon. His father was a transvestite and he’d let us wear his clothes. We’d go to video arcades and games rooms. He was addicted to all the games. Sometimes we’d just hang out in the parks. It’s how I learnt to play chess, you know.”

“We can start there,” Griggs says.

“I don’t think I’d remember what he looked like,” I say. “And I doubt he’d still be around.”

“Where else would he go aside from the park?”

We go to a Time Zone. It’s the closest reminder of my former life so far. A couple of kids are off their faces and someone has spewed right near the entrance. Some are in uniform and I can imagine them having left that morning pretending they were going to school. But the ones who leave the biggest impression are those in casual clothes. They don’t have to answer to anyone. I ask the guy at the register if he knows Simon and he shrugs and carries on reading his magazine. “It’s a common name,” is all he says when I bug him again.

“If he comes in, can you tell him that Taylor Markham is looking for him? That I’ll be at McDonald’s across the road at six thirty tonight?”

It’s like talking to a brick wall, actually even worse because at least I could lean on a brick wall. I talk to a few other people around and I give them the same information but by the time I walk out, I accept that Simon is not an option.

We go to one of the homeless hostels in East Sydney. One minute we’re walking down a street that Griggs reckons has million-dollar properties and the next we’re turning into a lane where old men lie on the road on filthy mattresses, garbage everywhere. When I look at them closely, though, I realise they aren’t so old. The hostel caters only to men and after we ask around, we’re directed to another one on the other side of the main road. For the first time in what feels like ages, I find myself thinking of the Hermit. In my memory he was old, but now I realise that he wasn’t at all. He was like these men, who dirt and grime and neglect have made seem a thousand years older than they are.

When we get to the top of the queue at the second soup kitchen, I take out the photo of the five and show the girl serving. “Do you recognise this person?” I ask, pointing to Tate. “It’s very dated but she may look familiar.”

“Sorry, love,” she says, shaking her head.

“I really need to find her,” I say. “Could you ask the other people in there?”

What are the odds of anyone recognising my mother? What are the odds that these people have actually looked in the faces of the people who walk into this place? I glance at Griggs, who is looking around the room at everyone. I can tell he’s a bit shell-shocked. He tries to muster up a smile but there’s not really enough to keep it there.

When we’re not asking people questions or roaming the streets for any type of recognition, we sit in McDonald’s because it’s the only place where they don’t bug you to order or leave. By late afternoon I’m tired and I want to go back to my room at school and just lie down. I can sense that Griggs is exhausted, especially after driving all night. We make plans to book into one of the youth hostels in the street behind the main drag, careful of how we spend the money. We find out where the food vans are, in case I recognise someone there who might know my mother or even Simon, but my mind is a blank and I feel like there’s no way I’ll ever know anyone. Each time I check my watch I think of what Raffy and everyone else are doing back home. I have been away for not even twenty-four hours and I am homesick beyond comprehension.

At night the place begins to look a bit more like I remember it, and Griggs suggests that we stick around because this could be the time when people I might recognise come out of hibernation.

We stand by the fountain on Darlinghurst Road and for a moment I get a glimpse of who I was back then. Tagging along behind my mother on these streets, our feet dirty, but our dresses so pretty. I wore a white one, once, someone’s old communion dress that we had found in an op-shop and I thought I was a princess. Suddenly, for one incredible moment, I remember something. That my mother smiled at me in wonder that day and said, “Look at my beautiful girl.”

He had been away from the Jellicoe Road for a year and, when he finished his final exams, he came back because he had promised Narnie he would. Along the way he saw their ghosts—planting the poppies, waiting for him at the general store, planning their tunnel, grieving for their dead. But living in the heart of Narnie was the only home he had ever had. Deep down he knew he wasn’t enough to keep Narnie alive for the rest of her life. But he could try.

“Promise me…” he said to her at her door, his heart aching when he saw Webb’s soul in her eyes. But then he stopped himself. No promises about death or keeping alive. That had been Tate’s job when Narnie seemed so fragile over the years. It sounded weak coming from him.

“Promise me that you’ll never go looking for Tate. Whatever you do, don’t go looking for Tate.”

“Promise me that you’ll never ask me that again,” she’d replied, her voice strong and clear.

He shook his head. “She’s not Tate anymore, Narnie. She’s someone else and that baby…”

“Promise me that one day we’ll bring them back here, Jude.”

He could tell her now what she’d find, because he had gone looking himself. In the city, the Tate they knew was gone. Lost to them. Lost to herself. But Narnie stared deep inside him and he remembered what brought him to this place now. This girl, standing on the side of the Jellicoe Road like an apparition, promising him a richer life than he ever dreamed of. And he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t hold it back until they were in her room, tugging at each other’s clothing, breathing each other’s breath, tasting each other’s grief.