Cara Colter - First Love, Second Chance

‘We’re such an insignificant part of an insignificant part of something so big, ‘ she murmured. ‘Why do we even worry about things that go wrong? Or things that go right. Our whole drama-filled lives are barely a blink of the universe’s eye. We make no difference.’

Marc stopped sloshing. ‘It makes a difference here and now. And life is not about how long it is. It’s about how full it is.’

‘Full?’

‘Full of love. Joy.’ He looked back at the whale. ‘Compassion.’

She lowered her face to look at him. ‘Even if it’s only a blink?’

‘I’d rather have a moment of utter beauty than a hundred years of blandness. Wouldn’t you?’

Her eyes blinked heavily. ‘You would have made a good astronaut, ‘ she mumbled.

Marc frowned.

‘Fourth grade. You wanted to be a space-man. You thought there was a space princess you were supposed to save.’ Her teeth chattered.

A numb smile dawned. ‘I haven’t thought about that for years. I can’t believe you remember it.’

She returned her focus to him. ‘I remember everything.’

She’d driven him crazy in the playground, insisting on being the astronaut and refusing to be the princess. Was that the beginning of her tomboy ways? An insane glow birthed deep inside him that she’d held on to those memories. It suggested she hadn’t stopped caring when she’d pulled the pin on their friendship. She’d just stopped being there.

His smile withered.

‘So tell me about your mum, ‘ she murmured.

His gut instantly tightened as she forced her eyes to focus on him.

‘What happened between the two of you?’

His heart started to thump. Hard. ‘Didn’t we already cover this?’

‘Nope. I asked, you hedged.’

‘Doesn’t that tell you anything?’

‘It tells me you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Bingo.’ He glared at her. ‘But I’m sure that’s no deterrent to you.’

The more defensive he got, the more interested she got. It seemed to slap her out of her growing stupor. ‘Not particularly.’

He threw his shoulders back and shot her his best glare. Subtlety was wasted on Beth. ‘If you give me a few minutes I’ll see if I can find a stick for you to poke around in that open wound.’

Her face was a wreck. Grey beneath the windburn, shadows beneath her eyes. But she still found energy to fight him on this. ‘I’m more interested in why you have an open wound in the first place.’

Because my mother is a nightmare.

‘Family stuff happens, Beth. I’m sure your relationship with your parents isn’t perfect.’

She got that haunted look from earlier. ‘Far from it. I’ve disappointed them in a hundred different ways. But I still see them. What happened with Janice?’

‘You don’t remember? How she could be?’

She tilted her head in that hard to resist way. He’d never felt less like indulging her. He didn’t discuss his mother. Period.

So why was he?

‘I always assumed it was because she lost your father,’ she said. ‘That it kind of. ruined her.’

He stared. ‘That’s actually a fairly apt description.’

Beth frowned, stopped sloshing. Her teeth chattered spasmodically between sentences. ‘I remember how hard she was on you. And on me. I remember how hard you worked at school and at the café to do well for her. But she barely noticed.’

His heart beat hard enough to feel through his wetsuit. He crossed his arms to help disguise it. ‘What do you remember about her personally? Physically?’

Beth’s frown intensified. ‘Um …’ She was tall, slim. Too slim, actually. Kind of …’ Her eyes widened and her words dried up momentarily. When she started again she had a tremor in her voice that seemed like a whole lot more than temperature-related. ‘Kind of hollow. I always felt she was a bit empty.’

Marc stared. She’d just nailed Janice. And those were still the early years.

‘I’m sorry, ‘ she whispered, as if finally realising she was stomping through his most fragile feelings.

‘Don’t be. That’s pretty astute. After we. went our separate ways, she got worse. Harder. Angrier. The more I tried to please her, the less pleased she seemed. She’d swing between explosions of emotion and this empty nothing. A vacant stare.’

Beth swallowed hard enough to see from clear across the whale. She’d completely stopped sloshing. Her pale skin was tinged with green.

‘She’d always been present-absent. Since my dad died. But it got worse. To the point she’d forget to eat, to lock the house up, to feed the cat. He moved in with the over-the-road neighbours.’

A tight shame curled itself into his throat.

‘It took me another two years before I discovered she was hooked on her depression medication,’ he said, swiping his towel in the ocean ferociously. ‘And that she had been since my dad died.’

The earth shifted violently under Beth’s feet and it had nothing to do with the lurching roll of the whale. A high-pitched whooshing sound started up in her ears.

‘Your mum was addicted to painkillers?’

‘Is. Present tense.’

Oh, God. The unveiled disgust on his face might as well have been for her. The description of Janice ten years ago might as well be her two years before. Beth’s voice shook and she forced herself to resume sloshing to cover it up. ‘And that’s why you don’t see her?’

‘I have no interest in seeing her.’ He dropped his stiff posture and almost sagged against the whale as he bent to soak his towel again. ‘Working on the trawlers was more than a financial godsend; it gave me space to breathe. Perspective. And an education. I watched some of those blokes popping all manner of pills to stay awake. Improve the haul. I saw what it did to them over a season. When I got back and saw through educated eyes how she was, I was horrified.’ Those eyes grew haunted. ‘She was my mum, you know?’

Beth nodded, her fear-frozen tongue incapable of speech.

‘All Dad’s insurance money, all the money I’d been sending home from up north. She blew most of it on pills. She was no further ahead financially than when I left.’

Beth wanted to empathise. She wanted to comfort. But it was so hard when he might as well have been describing her. Suddenly Janice’s desperate taloned grip on Beth’s forearm all those years ago made a sickening sense. ‘What did you do?’

His sad eyes shadowed further. ‘I tried for three years. I gave her money, she swallowed it. I signed her up to support groups and she left them. I hid her Xexal and she’d tear the house up looking for it. Or magically find some more. I threatened to leave … ‘ he shook his head ‘… and she threw my belongings into the street. One day I just didn’t take them back inside.’

‘You moved out.’

‘It was all I had left to fight back with. She was hellbent on self-destruction and I wasn’t going to watch that.’ He shuddered. ‘I thought losing me might have been enough.’

But it wasn’t.

‘Do you see her at all?’ Beth whispered.

‘Not for four years. The one useful thing I did do was buy out her mortgage. She can’t sell the house without me so I know she has somewhere to sleep, at least. And I get meals delivered to her now instead of sending her cash, so I know she has food. For the rest.’ His shrug was pure agony.

Compassion and misery filled Beth at once. For Marc, who loved his mother no matter how difficult she’d been. For Janice, who lost the love of her life when Bruce Duncannon had a cardiac arrest and who had never truly coped as a single parent. And for herself, whose path wouldn’t have been so very different if not for the blazing memory one Sunday morning of a young boy who’d always believed in her.