On the Jellicoe Road

I stand up and walk towards her because my days of waiting for more are over. If I want more, I need to go and get it, demand it, take hold of it with all my might, and do the best I can with it. I put my arms around her and hold her tight and for once there is nothing between us. I’m holding one of only two people left in the world who share my blood: my father’s sister, who one night sat in the same spot for four hours just to protect her brother from a sight that would have killed his spirit.

“Is my mum here?” I ask quietly when she lets go.

“At the hospice. We can drive to Sydney tomorrow.”

I shake my head. “Ha

She nods. For once I get to make the decisions. “So where are our little tu

He takes her hand and draws her to his side. They don’t say anything as they walk with me, but I’ve been here before, so I know that words aren’t needed. I remember love. These two people taught it to me and when I see Ha

When my mother returns home for the last time to the Jellicoe Road.

Chapter 26

Aftermath. Everyone uses it all the time so I get very used to the word. In the aftermath we face the reality that the downstairs area of Lachlan is gutted. No photos, no posters, no fish, no clothing, no books, no diaries. Everything’s gone. In the aftermath, when the walls of my world are blackened and the taste in my mouth is of ash, my mother is due to re-enter my life for what will be the last couple of weeks of hers. In the aftermath Jonah Griggs prepares to leave and I have to take it on good faith and a great gut feeling that we will see each other, maybe for the rest of our lives. In the aftermath I finally accept that my father is dead and that the legacy left behind by the person who killed him is a thirteen-year-old kid who clutches my arm as we look at the space around us and whispers, “I knew you’d come and get me, Taylor. I told Chloe P., ‘Don’t worry, Taylor will find us.’”

I hear Mr. Palmer tell Ha

We spend Griggs’s last day at Ha

“You seem to have a problem with me,” he says in typical Griggs fashion.

I can tell he regrets saying it when he is treated to one of Ha

“I think it will be a while before I forgive the trip to Sydney,” she says flatly.

“Fair enough. I think it will be a while before I forgive you for what you put her through over the past six weeks.”

I watch them both and for the first time it occurs to me that I’m no longer flying solo and that I have no intention of pretending that I am. I have an aunt and I have a Griggs and this is what it’s like to have co

“Do you know what?” I ask both of them. “If you don’t build a bridge and get over it, I’ll never forgive either of you.”

From the verandah I watch Griggs inside, through the window, chatting to Raffy and Santangelo.

I can feel Ha

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say.

She doesn’t speak.

“Say something,” I say, wanting to take every bad feeling I have out on Ha

“What do you want me to say?” she asks with that ever-patient voice of hers.

“What you’re thinking.”

“Okay. Why does it have to be so intense between you two?” she asks.

“Because I have an aunt named Narnie and a mother named Tate,” I snap, and I want to stop myself from being like this but I can’t. I’m too sad. I look at her and I can feel tears in my eyes. “Do you think I don’t want him to be gone more than you do? I do. Because I need to know that I can still breathe properly when he’s not around. If something happens to him, I have to know that I won’t fall apart like Tate did without Webb. Even you and Jude. It’s not just my father or Fitz or even Tate you’ve missed all this time. It’s Jude not being in your life.”

“Jude is in my life, Taylor.”

“Then why aren’t you together?”

“He’s a soldier, Taylor,” she says tiredly. “He goes where they send him. East Timor. Solomon Islands. Iraq. Wherever they need to keep the peace. Why is it that we always have to fight?”

“We’re not fighting, Ha

She stares at me and I get this feeling of love because I know her history now and understand how it has made her the way she is at times.

“What makes me tick? Tate. Jessa. You. Jude.”

“When you look at him, he thinks you’re thinking that you’d rather he was Webb or Fitz or Tate. Did you know that?”

“He knows how much he means to me. He wouldn’t think that.”

“He told me. I asked him why you weren’t together and he said you’ll always be together but that’s bullshit. I’ve worked it out and I’m presuming that you were a couple until I was seven, but in the past ten years you’ve been apart and the only time you see each other is when it has to do with me. You wrote the book on all of this, Ha

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why won’t you marry him?”

“Because he hasn’t asked me. Maybe it was never meant to be that type of relationship. Maybe it was because we survived. The bond—”

“Ha

Ha

But I won’t let it go. “I’d forgive myself. To be with Jonah I’d do anything.”

Jude pulls up at the same time that Griggs comes out of the house.

“I’ve got to go,” Griggs says from the door. Ha

“Have a safe trip, Jonah,” Ha

“Thank you.”

He waits for me. “I’ll catch up,” I tell him as Raffy and Santangelo walk towards Jude, shaking his hand goodbye.

The plan is that Jude drives down with the Cadets and returns tomorrow with my mother. It’s what he always seems to be doing—saving us from ourselves. I remember the saints from Raffy’s books in year seven. St. Jude was the patron saint of the impossible—lost and desperate causes. I think he hit the jackpot in that department when he met the Markhams and Schroeders.