On the Jellicoe Road

Chapter 27

And life goes on, which seems kind of strange and cruel when you’re watching someone die. But there’s a joy and an abundance of everything, like information and laughter and summer weather and so many stories. My mother urges me to write them down because, “You’re the last of the Markhams, my love.” So I record dates and journeys and personalities and traits and heroes and losers and weaknesses and strengths and I try to capture every one of those people because one day I’ll need what they had to offer. Worst and best of all, I get to see who Tate Markham could have been and sometimes I feel so angry that I only got to know this incredible person just when I’m going to lose her. She has a belly laugh that Narnie wasn’t able to hear in her grief, so Ha

And life goes on.

When some days are worse than others, I find myself walking out of school and sitting at that point on the Jellicoe Road where I can ring Jonah. I’ll feel his frustration and his sense of uselessness at being six hundred kilometres away but I need to hear his stories about Da

And life goes on.

When one day fate visits us again, Jessa comes ru

And life goes on.

When we know it’s close I move into the house and we lie there, my mother and I. I place the earphones in her ears and I let her listen to the music Webb was listening to when he died. Of flame trees and missing those who aren’t around. I tell her that he’s been waiting all these years for her and that ever since she’s been with me he’s visited my dreams every single night. I tell her that the euphoria he feels is like an elixir—one that I believe will be enough to keep her alive.

But one night he’s not there anymore, nor is Fitz, and my despair is beyond words and I’m screaming out for him, for both of them, standing on the branch where we’d sit. “Webb! Fitz! Please. Come back. Please.” And I wake up and I hold her in my arms, sobbing uncontrollably, “Just one more day, please, Mummy, just one more day, please.” And when it hurts too much, I go up to Ha

My mother took seventeen years to die. I counted.

She died in a house on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tu

God’s country, Raffy says. She swears to God it’ll change the way I see the world.

Want to believe in something.

But love the world just the way it is.

Some ask me why she didn’t give up earlier. The pain without drugs would have been bad. Others say that it was wrong for us not to ease her pain. But my mother said she wouldn’t die until she had something to leave her daughter.

So we scatter her ashes with Fitz’s from the Prayer Tree and in the summer we finish a journey my father and Ha

While we watch the others throwing themselves into the surf, I sit with Jessa and Ha

“I wanted to see the ocean,” she tells us, “and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, ‘What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?’ and my father said—”

She stops for a moment, to catch her breath. “He said, ‘Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,’ and that was the last thing he ever said.”

Jessa leans her head against her. “Ha

I look at Ha

“I wonder,” Ha

Epilogue

He sat in the tree, his mind overwhelmed by the idea that growing inside Tate was their baby. The cat purred alongside him, a co-conspirator in his contentment. Through the branches he could see Fitz coming his way, his gun balanced on his shoulders, whistling a tune. So Webb closed his eyes, thinking of the dream he’d had the night before where he sat on the branch of a tree and spoke to their child. In the child’s voice there was so much promise and joy that it took his breath away. He told her about his plans to build a house. He’d make it out of gopherwood, like Noah’s ark, two storeys high, with a view he could look out on every day with wonder. A house for Tate and Narnie and Jude and Fitz and for their families. A home to come back to every day of their lives.

Where they would all belong or long to be.

A place on the Jellicoe Road.

Acknowledgements

Mum, Dad, Marisa, Daniela, Brendan, Luca, and Daniel. Love you guys to oblivion.

Thanks to all who ploughed through the manuscript in its most basic form and still managed to find words of encouragement: Mum, A

Much gratitude to Laura Harris and Christine Alesich, Lesley McFadzean, and everyone at Penguin Books, and Cameron Creswell, who make my life a bit less stressful!

Thanks to Farrin Jacobs at US HarperCollins and Mary Arnold and the Printz Committee: Elizabeth Burns, Do

I am especially appreciative of the hospitality shown on my Leeton, Colleambally, and Cowra trip in March 2005, which introduced me to the Murrumbidgee and Lachlan rivers. Thank you Margaret and John Devery, Trish and A