‘How old are the kids?’
‘Antonia’s the oldest; she’s ten.’
‘Same as my Celia.’
‘Olivia is eight and Cooper is six.’
Wow. No wonder the man seemed distracted so much of the time. He was carrying the weight of the world – three worlds, really. Three important, difficult, precious and excruciating worlds.
‘I never sleep any more,’ he said.
Despite herself, Gabby laughed. ‘That’s completely normal, I’m afraid.’
A tiny smile played at his lips. ‘So now you see why I need to work with coffee. I can’t live without it.’
‘Spoken like a true parent,’ she said, and squeezed his arm. His eyes went bright for a moment but he swallowed hard. ‘So, the other day when I was describing my visions, those crazy moments you mentioned you’d had … were they to do with your brother?’
He blinked and gazed at her intently, then folded his arms at his chest. ‘One day I was driving the car – Sergio and Lucy’s car, because it’s a family car and I only had a two-door – and I stopped at a set of traffic lights and looked over at the passenger seat and he was there, just sitting beside me, smiling. He had the chipped tooth from when he’d fallen off his bike as a teenager. He even smelled of garlic, because he loved the stuff but, geez, it didn’t agree with him.’ He shook his head, remembering. ‘He was only there a second and then he was gone. But it was real, you know?’
‘Yeah, I think I do.’
He scratched at his whiskers. ‘Anyway, there have been a few moments like that, living here in their house, everything still vibrating with their presence. Cooper, the youngest, I hear him talking to them at night, laughing even, sometimes. It really sounds like they must be there.’
‘I don’t think we can logically explain everything, especially anything to do with death – the greatest mystery on earth. You’d drive yourself mad,’ she said.
‘Yep, been there.’
‘Me too.’
They smiled at each other, tentative smiles, and Gabby’s thoughts again turned to the woman in the cafe, the woman she needed to find, the woman whose heart had been broken when she’d lost her husband. Gabby could help her, she just knew it.
Back out in her car, she checked her phone for Facebook messages and almost leapt out of her seat when she saw a new message, from a Krystal Arthur. That was her name! She replied quickly. Yes, today is great. I’ll be at the cafe in half an hour. I’ll wait for you, whenever you can get there. Gabby.
She let go of her plans to stock up on multicultural foods and instead drove too fast back towards The Tin Man, sweaty and jittery. Her heart, as if knowing it was going to meet up with Krystal, was jumping around too. She hoped Krystal got the message soon. She hoped she wouldn’t make Gabby wait a long time, or worse, back out entirely. But by the time she got to the cafe, Krystal had sent another message and confirmed she would be there soon.
It was happening.
She didn’t know what to do with herself. Ed was working at the coffee machine, Lin was alternating between plating up cheesy croissants and clearing dishes, customers were coming and going, but no one seemed to need Gabby. Should she claim a quiet corner of the cafe for her and Krystal to talk? Or should they go off site? What if another vision came and it was even worse than the others? She paced the floorboards, picking up an empty coffee cup here or there, folding throw rugs over the backs of the chairs, changing the water for the lilies, which were still going strong a week later. Her belly was flipping but she didn’t know if she should eat something to calm it down or if eating would make it worse.
Then Krystal was there, standing just inside the entrance, wearing flared trousers, boots and a snug black top, staring straight at Gabby. Her nose twitched, as though she was unsure if she should approach. Gabby reminded herself to breathe, then smiled reassuringly and moved towards her.
‘Krystal?’
Krystal nodded, seemingly unable to speak. Then her eyes dropped to the neckline of Gabby’s tropical dress and Gabby’s hand went there automatically, touching the top of her scar.
‘Sorry,’ Krystal said, her hand on her forehead, looking away at the ground.
‘No, it’s okay,’ Gabby said. ‘Please, come and sit down.’ She led Krystal to the brown leather wingback chairs in the corner closest to the courtyard, with a view of the fountain outside. They both sat stiffly, perched on the edges of the chairs, as if one of them might need to leave at any moment.
Gabby crossed her arms over her body, then released them again. What was she going to say to this woman that wouldn’t make her sound crazy? Her brain was unwilling to figure out how to approach this conversation. She was waiting to feel something, for another vision, or for a bolt of lightning to confirm what she suspected. But nothing came.
Damn you, she cursed him, the one who’d been haunting her, turning up in the middle of the night to terrify her but absent now when she was trying to solve a puzzle. Then she wondered if maybe that was the point. His absence might mean she was on the wrong track completely. Confusion and doubt began to spin. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing after all – not the visions, they were real enough, but their connection to this woman.
The silence between them stretched past awkward.
‘I’m sorry …’ Krystal began, at exactly the same moment as Gabriella spoke.
‘I know this will sound crazy …’
They both stopped.
‘You go first,’ Gabby said.
‘Okay,’ Krystal began. ‘Firstly, I just want to say sorry for the last time I was here. I upset you and your dog and, well, I’m just so embarrassed and I didn’t mean any harm …’
‘It’s fine, really. I think Sally, my dog, just sensed something unusual. Please, let’s start again. I saw you here a couple of weeks ago. You were sitting over there –’ she pointed to the green wall – ‘and you were wearing a pink shawl.’
Krystal looked over to the wall, then chewed her bottom lip.
‘I was going to introduce myself but you left before I got the chance.’
Krystal remained silent for a moment, and Jack Johnson’s mellow voice filled the cafe. Then she looked straight at Gabby, took a breath and said, ‘I think you have my husband’s heart.’
Gabby nodded. ‘I think I do too.’
16
This was the moment Krystal had been waiting for. Now it was here, she had no idea what to do. Gabby’s head was lowered and she was almost peeking at Krystal from below her ginger lashes. Krystal was vaguely aware of the group of Scandinavian-looking tourists who’d just burst into laughter at a nearby table. Vaguely aware of the grind of the coffee machine. Vaguely aware that someone was wearing too much perfume. And vaguely aware of her own heart beating in her chest.
Evan.
Gabby waited patiently for her to come to terms with this news. At last Krystal swallowed, needing to say something.
‘Why do you think you have his heart?’
Gabby interlocked her hands around her knees, then released them and leaned back, then switched which leg was crossed over the other. ‘That’s a really good question,’ she said, and laughed self-consciously. She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘It’s a long story, so maybe before I go into that, we should start at the beginning.’
‘Okay.’
‘What date did your husband pass?’
‘Evan died on the fourth of October 2017, just before midnight.’
Gabby flinched, waited a moment, then said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t even imagine.’
Krystal felt her nostrils flare with the effort of suppressing her emotion. ‘Thank you.’
‘My transplant date was October fifth, and the operation was early in the morning, so that fits. But you live here in Melbourne, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
Gabby frowned. ‘The thing is that I know my gifted heart came from interstate. I shouldn’t know that, but one of the nurses let it slip. I guess th
at rules out your husband.’
Krystal felt ill. ‘Evan was in Sydney when he died.’
Gabby uncrossed her legs and inched forward in her chair. ‘So, if it was a match, it wouldn’t have taken long for the retrieval team to get his heart to me. A flight from Sydney is only about an hour.’
Around Krystal, the world shrank down to nothing except the small space connecting her to Gabby. ‘Yes.’
‘But there’s no way we can possibly know for sure,’ Gabby said, knitting her hands together on her lap.
‘There is that,’ Krystal admitted. She rubbed at her forehead, an intense headache developing behind her eyes.
‘Unless …’ Gabby drummed her fingers over her mouth, eyeing Krystal, seemingly nervous, almost cringing.
‘What?’
‘What did Evan look like? If you don’t mind my asking, of course. I don’t want to upset you.’
‘It’s okay.’ Krystal pulled out her phone and selected a photo of Evan to show Gabby. She leaned forward and Gabby did the same until their heads were quite close, staring at the man on the screen.
Gabby drew in a sharp breath.
‘What?’ Krystal looked at her.
‘It’s him,’ Gabby whispered.
‘What do you mean? How can you tell?’ Krystal’s voice rose a notch.
Gabby retreated in her seat again.
‘What is it?’ Krystal asked.
‘There’s really no easy way to say this.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’ve been having … visions, I guess. Memories, perhaps.’ Gabby closed one eye to look at Krystal, almost apologetic. ‘Looking at him now … it’s like looking at me.’ She pointed to the phone in Krystal’s hand.
Krystal froze.
‘They’re kind of like flashbacks. The first day I saw you in the cafe, the day I tried to introduce myself, it was as though your being here triggered the first one. I’ve had weird dreams and, look, I know it sounds nuts, but I feel as if he’s trying to tell me something. I feel like he wanted us to meet.’
Krystal’s hands had begun to shake and she twisted them together. ‘What can you see?’
‘Mostly,’ Gabby said carefully, ‘I’m running in a cold street at night. I hear someone yell out, “Stop!” There’s a blinding white light.’ She paused. ‘And then pain and darkness.’
‘You can see that?’
Gabby nodded.
A single tear rolled down Krystal’s cheek. ‘Evan was hit by a car in a backstreet in Sydney. I imagine that blinding light you see is from the headlights just before he was hit.’
Gabby closed her eyes, as if only now truly believing that what she’d seen was real. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘How is it even possible that you are seeing this?’
‘There’s a theory about something called cellular memory. The people who believe in it say the cells of an organ carry the imprints of memories that an organ recipient might then be able to access.’
‘And you believe this?’
Gabby shrugged. ‘I don’t have any other way to explain it.’
It was a shocking notion. The idea that this total stranger might have access to her husband’s memories when Krystal herself didn’t was piercingly cruel. For a second, she wanted to flee. She stood up, took a few steps, spun in a circle, then sat down again.
‘What about the smoke?’ Gabby said. ‘The second time you came in, I was overwhelmed by the smell of smoke.’
Krystal shook her head. ‘I have no idea what that was.’
‘Oh. Well, I guess the memories could be from any time in his life, right? Even from before you met him.’
Before she met him? Krystal took a moment to digest this. Not only could Gabby see Evan’s memories from the time that Krystal knew him, but before that as well. It was insane. Except it wasn’t, because her description of him running in that street was all too real.
‘Have you had any other visions? Like, from his childhood maybe? Or anything about me or our boys? We have two sons.’ She was hungry now, desperate for as much as possible.
‘No. Sorry. I don’t know for sure what brings them on, other than that they seem to be connected to you.’
‘But there’s nothing now?’
Gabby shook her head.
Krystal’s mind was spinning. If Gabby could access those memories, of the car, and the smoke, then she might also be able to access the ones that Krystal needed the most. Finally, she might find out exactly what Evan was doing in Sydney that night.
‘Gabby, I need your help.’
‘And she agreed?’ Roxy asked, paying for the tickets for the enormous Twin Dragon at Luna Park. She was escorting their three eldest boys onto the ride.
‘She’s coming over on Tuesday when the boys are at school.’
‘What are you going to do?’
Krystal shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’
Roxy shepherded the boys to the ride’s entrance and waved goodbye to Krystal.
‘Me too, me too,’ Olly wailed, throwing himself at Krystal’s leg, grabbing at her jeans with his fists.
‘You’re not tall enough yet,’ she said, again. In truth, she was vastly relieved to have an excuse to sit this one out. She felt queasy just watching that ride. Even swings in the parks made her nauseous and dizzy. The enormous pendulum swing of this piece of ‘amusement’ would be sure to make her ill. She took Olly over to watch the pretty horses go up and down on the carousel instead.
Loud music pumped from nearby rides and screams pierced the air from the Scenic Railway, the world’s oldest continually operating roller-coaster. It thundered past, rattling the rails. Gaudy colours and lights shone from the tightly packed array of rides and experiences. Loudspeakers echoed, bells rang, seagulls squabbled over dropped chips, and the sound of the gulls took her back in time to the day of Wyatt’s sixty-fifth birthday.
Evan’s father had thrown himself a live jazz soiree in the pillared house down on the peninsula. Less than two hours in, Krystal had had quite enough of Cordelia-Aurora’s glares at Jasper running too close to the white walls and squealing with excitement. Still, it was Evan’s father’s birthday so she gritted her teeth, determined to stick it out. But when Krystal caught Evan sighing for the third time, his polished fake smile firmly in place while his toffee-coloured eyes dimmed with every tuxedoed waiter that passed bearing a silver tray, she’d scooped up Jasper and taken Evan’s arm and spirited them away and down to the water for something to eat that was sizeable enough to actually fill their bellies.
She whinged long and loud about her sister-in-law. ‘Why does she still insist on trying to get you to come back to the firm?’ she complained, shoving another chip into her mouth and flicking her foot at an overly aggressive seagull whose red-rimmed eye was firmly set on the potato scallop in Jasper’s hand. Grease slid down his chubby hands and chin.
‘Because my family values what someone does more than they value who they are as a person,’ Evan said resignedly, dipping a chip into tomato sauce.
‘Why do you let her get away with it?’
Evan leaned back on his hands, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the dark hair on his arms, something she had always fancied. ‘She knows where I stand,’ he said simply. ‘It eats her up that she’s lost this battle with me. She always had the killer instinct, much more than either Rupert or me, and that’s made her a valuable asset in the firm. She thinks she’s failed because she couldn’t convince me to go back again. I know I did the right thing, so I simply choose to let her have her tantrum while I can smugly be the bigger person.’
‘Doesn’t it get to you, though? Sometimes?’ Krystal had witnessed Evan having terse, hushed conversations with Cordelia-Aurora, though they were always too refined to air their grievances in public, and he often seemed unhappy and distant afterwards.
‘Sometimes, yes. But I think she’s sad,’ he said, his eyes meeting Krystal’s above the fish and chips. ‘Don’t get me wrong; she’s a horribly flawed person. But
still, sad.’
‘Sad?’ she asked, pulling her tone back to something akin to concern.
Evan’s dark chest hair peeked out above the starched white of his formal shirt, the two top buttons also now undone. She felt an astonishing rush of lust for him then. The man looked good in a suit. Not that she didn’t see him in a suit often. As a sommelier in a fine restaurant, he wore a suit to work every day. But not a tuxedo. No, this was another level of cool entirely. Like James Bond.
‘She’s all alone,’ he said, licking salt off his fingers. ‘Look what we’ve got.’
Jasper was wiping his greasy hands down his overalls with glee and wiggling his toes in the afternoon light. Krystal thought about lurching after him to stop him ruining his new outfit (purchased especially for today), but his utter joy at this spontaneous dinner by the water was too good to spoil. Just like that, she felt her forehead soften and she breathed in gentle, briny air as best she could over the bulge in her belly. Olly. He’d be with them in a couple of months’ time.
She supposed Evan might be right and Cordelia-Aurora could be sad and lonely. Still, Krystal thought her husband was a saint for putting up with her, even if she was family.
‘I love you,’ she said, reaching for his hand.
He smiled at her and took her hand, and they laughed at the discomfort of the salt and grease on their skin. ‘I love you too.’
Then Jasper was on his feet and running after a seagull and Evan pushed himself up to catch him before he got to the water. ‘Hold on, buddy!’
‘Dadda.’
Krystal blinked, returning her focus to the noisy bustle of kids and parents around her. She looked down at Olly. ‘What did you say?’
Olly looked up at her with his big brown eyes and long lashes. He was wearing dark, soft denim overalls today with a bright red shirt underneath, and his fair hair was brushed. He looked like he could be in a catalogue for children’s clothing, so adorable that she could swoon from the love he invoked in her.
‘Dadda,’ he said again.
Krystal froze. Had he been reading her thoughts? She’d heard people say that kids were more intuitive than adults. When both her boys were born she’d looked into their eyes and they’d seemed like the oldest souls, from another place entirely and not totally here on earth yet. How long did they hold onto that?
The Gift of Life Page 15