A Single Breath

by Lucy Clarke

  Callie’s always had a way of asking the hardest questions in the most direct way. “I honestly don’t know. I love being with him, but . . .”

  “But what?” Callie says.

  Eva glances down at the water. “But there’s Jackson. There will always be Jackson.”

  Callie doesn’t say anything.

  “Do you think all this—Saul and me—that it’s a mistake?”

  Callie lifts her shoulders into a shrug.

  In her work Eva’s seen all sorts of irregular relationship dynamics. She’s helped deliver a baby with the woman’s husband and ex-husband in the room; she’s seen a surrogate who has fallen in love with the father; she’s seen a twenty-two-year-old woman give birth to her stepbrother’s child. She tries not to judge and instead treat the people as individuals, not situations. But it is harder with herself. When she thinks of Saul, she sees the flash of a headline: “He’s Jackson’s Brother.” She wishes they could extract themselves from their pasts and meet again—see how they feel without carrying the weight of everything that’s come before.

  “I can’t tell what I feel anymore.” She shakes her head. “Maybe I just need to get out of this place.”

  They are both quiet for a moment, the words drifting between them. Then Callie gently says, “I wanted to talk to you about that. About coming home.” She wipes her hands together and sets them on her lap. “I was thinking that maybe—if you wanted—we could go back together. I’ve got the spare room in my apartment. You’d be welcome to it.”

  “It’s a lovely offer, Cal. A tempting offer. It would be wonderful living with you. But I . . . I just don’t know.” Eva runs a fingertip over her lips. “There’s so much here that still feels . . . unfinished.”

  Callie nods. “I’m not trying to sway you, but maybe getting back to London, to your career, would be a good thing.”

  Eva glances at her sideways, wondering if what she actually means is, It’ll be a good thing to leave Saul.

  “You don’t have to make a decision right now. I’m flying out on Friday. If you want to come, there are still seats left. We could go home together. But if you decide you need to be here awhile longer,” Callie says, looking at her steadily, “then that’s okay, too.”

  AT DIRK’S PLACE SAUL finds a parking spot behind a rusting Honda with a loose bumper. The morning has turned overcast and the flat, gray sky hangs low over the street. After Wattleboon, the strip of houses seems packed too tightly, a jigsaw of concrete and brick.

  Dirk was the one to suggest heading back home. He’d already been on Wattleboon ten days and told Saul it was time he got on with things.

  Dirk twists around in his seat to face Saul. “I just wanna say, thanks for putting me up like that. It meant a lot.”

  “It was good having you there,” Saul says with meaning. There is a pause, and then he asks, “What was it like when you went up to Warrington to see Jackson? Did he seem happy?” There is something niggling at Saul that makes him need to know this. He never once asked Dirk about Jackson’s life in Warrington, didn’t even want to hear his name. But now he needs to fill in those gaps, try to understand what was going on in his brother’s world.

  “Truth is,” Dirk says, “both times I was up there, I came back worried. Jackson wasn’t himself. He seemed jaded, like life had worn him down. You know what Jackson was like, always had a story or a joke for you. But not up there. That place shrunk him.”

  “Do you think he knew Kyle wasn’t his?”

  “I reckon he had his doubts pretty early on. But he’d already bonded with the boy. Jeanette finally told him the truth about Kyle a month before Jackson left for England.”

  Saul pulls his head back, surprised. “I thought he left as soon as he found out.”

  “Nah. Tried to make a go of it, I reckon. Or Jeanette was tightening the screws. When he finally left, he came here without anything. Just brought his passport. Didn’t even have a bag with him. I gave him a few of your old clothes to tide him over.”

  “Why didn’t he pack?”

  “Didn’t want Jeanette to know he was leaving—or that he was going to England. Made me promise not to tell anyone.”

  This strikes Saul as odd. He remembers Jeanette saying she had no idea Jackson was even in England until she heard the news that he’d died. Why would it have mattered if she’d known where Jackson was?

  The more information Saul has, the less everything seems to make sense. Eva said she felt as though she was going mad with all the unanswered questions and needed to let them go. But Saul isn’t ready to.

  “The thing I still don’t understand,” he says, “is why Jackson didn’t divorce Jeanette before marrying Eva.”

  “I know, I know,” Dirk says, blowing air from his cheeks. “I told him he was crazy. He could’ve ended up in jail, for Christ’s sake! But he said he wanted to be with Eva—and there was no way Jeanette would sign the divorce papers.”

  “She’d have had to eventually.”

  “I suppose so. But she’d have made trouble, I’m sure of it. She’s an odd girl. I dunno what you and Jackson ever saw in her, I really don’t.” Dirk draws a hand from his pocket and scratches the back of his head. “Anyway, what’s done is done. Don’t suppose any of it matters much now he’s dead.”

  Saul feels the power and finality of that word in his chest. His brother is dead—and they’d never made peace. He feels a deep wrenching inside him, as if something he’s tried to bury is scratching for the surface.

  “I wish I’d spoken to him,” Saul says suddenly. “I shouldn’t have let our fight go on for so long. It was my pride that was hurt, that was all. Pride.”

  “Ah, Saul,” Dirk says, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I didn’t take sides at the time because you’re both my sons, but Jackson—he was the one who behaved badly. He should’ve apologized, but for whatever pigheaded reason, he didn’t. What’s done is done.”

  Dirk looks at Saul closely. “Just promise me you won’t go spending all your time wishin’ it were different. I wasted too much of my life pondering what-ifs. What if your mother hadn’t gone up Eagle Cape that day? What if I’d come home the moment I saw the smoke? What if I’d left you boys with a neighbor and then driven right through the fire and pulled her from the woods myself? If ifs were riffs, I’d have written a bloody symphony! We could waste a lifetime wishing. We’ve got what we’ve got, haven’t we? And I’m gonna be grateful for that.”

  SAUL DRIVES TO THE lab, unsettled by his conversation with Dirk. When he arrives he makes himself a coffee, has a brief chat with his supervisor about a field trip later in the week, and then goes to his desk. He switches on the computer but doesn’t get to work right away. Dirk had given him a photo album to lend to Eva, and Saul lays it on his desk now, and opens it.

  The thick card pages are browned at the edges, globs of glue loosening beneath the cellophane. In the warm hum of the lab, he looks through pictures of himself and Jackson from their early teens onward. He turns a few pages, passing images of them both with skinny legs poking out of salt-stained shorts.

  There is a photo of Jackson on a beach holding up two Aussie salmon by their tails. Saul remembers taking the picture: they’d been fishing just off the sandbank at East Way. They had cooked up the fish in a chowder and had eaten bowls of it in the back of their friend’s van as the sky grew dark.

  On the next page there is a picture he hasn’t seen for years. It was taken during a summer on Wattleboon at the tall lichen-stained rocks off Gregg’s Bluff. In the shot they are both launching themselves from a rock that must’ve been a good forty feet high. The photo captures them a split second after they’ve jumped. Jackson’s hair—long then—is blown back from his face, his board shorts flattened to his thighs. Saul’s mouth and eyes are wide open, his arms thrown skyward, legs kicking out as if running through the air. The sun is on their faces, making their tanned skin glow golden.

  They used to spend hours up at the cliffs, doing di
ves and backflips, daring each other to go bigger and higher. He’d allowed himself to forget how close they’d once been, but now it comes charging back to him.

  The wrenching feeling inside him twists again and he feels his throat closing. He swallows hard, but he can feel a burning sensation rising through him, filling his tear ducts. Saul might’ve called his brother a cheat—but that wasn’t all Jackson was. He was the brother who hauled Saul back up the rocks when he was too tired to pull himself out of the surging swell; he was the brother who punched the air with both fists when Saul caught his first barrel; he was the brother who put iodine on Saul’s back when he got scraped along the reef in a bad dive.

  He loved his brother. Misses him.

  He squeezes his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes and gulps in air as his shoulders quake.

  Footsteps sound down the corridor outside and Saul pushes his chair back, wiping his face and standing. The photo album falls to the floor with a slap and he turns from it, pacing to the far side of the lab. He shakes out his shoulders and steadies his breathing until he gets himself together. The footsteps pass his lab and continue on.

  He pushes open a window to get some air flowing through the place. Once he’s gathered himself, he bends down and grabs the album. It’s open on a page showing a photo of him and Jeanette. It must’ve been taken in the few months they were together. He has his arm around her waist and he’s looking toward her, smiling. She’s wearing her hair loose, a red wave of it, and is looking directly into the camera, a slight smirk playing over her lips. He remembers being smitten by those lips, by the way she shook her hair loose from a ponytail, by the swing of her hips as she moved.

  But thinking of the woman she is now, he doesn’t feel any of that desire: he sees someone damaged, controlling, who lied to Jackson about Kyle to stop him from leaving.

  There’s a thought swimming in his head, something to do with Jeanette and Jackson, which he can’t quite reach. It’s as if he’s trying to read it underwater, so the message is blurred, not clear enough to make out.

  He keeps returning to the fact that Jackson didn’t want Jeanette to know he was in England. Did he think she’d follow him?

  A light sweat crawls over his brow. More questions are pushing forward, nagging at him. Why didn’t Jackson file for divorce when he decided he wanted to marry Eva? He’d certainly have had grounds to, if a paternity test proved Kyle wasn’t his. And why did he leave without any belongings, as if he were desperate to be free of her?

  It’s clear that Jackson had been running away from Jeanette, but what Saul can’t work out is, Why?

  I don’t know whether you’ve ever done anything you regret, Eva. I can’t imagine it. I don’t mean those small regrets like something you wish you hadn’t said; I mean the ones that keep you awake at night when the rest of the world sleeps. The type that makes you question the very essence of who you are and what you are capable of.

  I have lots of regrets. They stem like twisted branches from the roots of a decision I made back when I was fifteen years old. What happened that day isn’t a story I need to just tell you, Eva. I’ve said it a thousand times over in my head, but I was never brave enough to say it aloud.

  That’s the thing about me: I’ve always been a coward.

  30

  Saul finds Eva standing on a chair, trying to balance a radio on top of the bookshelf. She’s wearing a teal cotton dress that tapers in at the waist, and her feet are bare. “All right up there?”

  She turns, surprised. “Saul.”

  They haven’t seen each other since Callie arrived a few days ago, Saul forcing himself to keep his distance.

  The radio signal fizzes and then, with a final tilt of the antenna, music blares on. “Aha!” Eva adjusts the volume, then jumps down from the chair and stands facing him.

  Her short hair looks salt-thickened and wavy around her face and her cheeks are lightly flushed. “You look well,” Saul says.

  “Thank you.” She glances at her hands, and then up at him. “It’s good to see you,” she says with meaning.

  A pause unfolds between them. Saul’s gaze moves to Eva’s mouth, studying the bow of her top lip. He experiences the strongest urge to kiss her. Every reason they’d discussed for needing some space from each other deserts him, and all he can think is how much he wants her.

  “Where’s Callie?” he asks quietly.

  “Here.”

  He looks up and sees her standing in the entrance to the back bedroom with wet hair and a towel in her hand. She is glancing between him and Eva, a look of interest on her face.

  He takes a small step back from Eva, saying, “Good to have you on Wattleboon again, Callie.”

  “It’s lovely to be here—if a little unexpected.”

  “Sorry to hear about the show.”

  “Oh, it’s fine. I think the world can survive without yet another celebrity chef program. Anyway, how are you? What’s going on in the world of cephalopods?”

  “No giant squid reports this week, but I remain hopeful.” He smiles. “So how long are you here for?”

  “Three more nights. I’m flying back to London on Friday.”

  He notices Callie glancing toward Eva as she says this.

  Callie hangs the towel over the back of a chair and says, “I’m going to grab that wine for dinner before the store closes.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Eva says. “Do you want to take the car?”

  “I’ll walk. I fancy the fresh air. Catch you both later.”

  Saul stands aside as Callie slips past him onto the deck and then disappears.

  Then they’re alone.

  Eva turns to Saul. “Drink? Tea? Beer?”

  “I’d love a beer. Can’t stay long, though—I’ve got work stuff to sort out. I just came to drop this off,” he says, handing her a photo album. “Dad said you might want to have a look at it.”

  “Kind of him to remember.”

  He wonders if she’s eager to see photos of Jackson, but she doesn’t open the album right away. Instead, she places it on the coffee table and then fetches him a beer, getting one for herself, too. They take the bottles to the sofa and sit together; the way the cushions sag in the middle means their legs roll slightly inward and their knees touch. It would be easy for either one of them to adjust their positions to avoid this, but they don’t.

  Saul is acutely aware of the heat passing between them where their skin meets. He glances down at her knees, as if he might actually find them glowing with heat. There is something oddly desirable about the curve of her knees, the way the skin there is slightly more tanned than the rest of her legs. Has he found knees sexy before?

  A song on the radio ends and the news comes on. He tries to tune in to drag his thoughts away from Eva. There’s a report about changes in state welfare, but all he is thinking about is how much he wants to run his fingers over her knee, trace the skin as it softens and pales toward her thigh.

  “You took your dad back to his place?”

  “Yeah,” he says, shifting his legs and sitting up straighter.

  “How was he?”

  Saul takes a gulp of beer to moisten his throat. “He said he was fine—that he was ready to go back—but I dunno, I just felt bad leaving him there on his own.”

  “Has he got friends nearby?”

  “Yeah, but they’re all drinking buddies. Friends he sees down the pub. He can’t go there now. Not if he’s serious about staying dry.”

  She nods thoughtfully. “How did he find being on Wattleboon?”

  “Okay, I think. He liked being by the water again. He’s a fisherman who’s somehow ended up living inland.” He shrugs. “I guess life has a way of taking you on a course you weren’t expecting—and then you look up wondering how the hell you got there.”

  She laughs, a slightly sad note to it. “I know how that feels.”

  Eva finishes her beer, then crosses the room to the fridge. She glances back at him asking, “Another beer, Jacks
on?”

  She freezes at her mistake, her mouth still open around his name.

  Saul stares as heat rises to her cheeks. She wishes she could retract that one word—Jackson—swallow it down. But it is too late. They both heard it.

  The name resonates between them as though a bell has just tolled.

  “I’M SORRY,” EVA SAYS, mortified by her mistake.

  “Don’t be,” Saul says with a weak smile. “I won’t have another, though—gotta head off in a minute.”

  She doesn’t want him to leave. Not like this. She’s missed his company these past few days. There’s so much she wants to talk about: how his project at work is going; the dive she made when she had two boxy little cowfish eyeballing her; how he’s feeling about his dad. “Have you got work to do?”

  He nods. “I’m off up the east coast first thing. I’ve got some gear to sort out.”

  “Field trip?”

  “Yeah. They want me to look into a test site up there for more squid tagging.”

  “How long are you going for?”

  “Couple of nights. I’m drivin’ up early with my lab partner. Should be back Thursday night.”

  “Right,” she says, trying to busy herself with putting the empty beer bottles in the recycling bin. She knows she has to tell him what’s going on, what she and Callie have been discussing.

  Drawing a deep breath, she turns to face him. “Listen, Saul. I need to talk to you.”

  He must see something in her expression because his eyes widen. “You’re going to leave with Callie, aren’t you?”

  She swallows. “I’m thinking about it, yes.” The words hang in the shack like mist, chilling any remaining warmth.

  An ad trills on the radio, a jingle about booking driving lessons with “License to Wheel.”

  Saul gets to his feet and moves toward the doorway, rubbing a hand over his brow.

  “Saul?”

  “What do you want me to say, Eva? I don’t want you to go back to England, you know that.” His tone is level, there is no animosity there. “But it’s not my decision.”