Page 75 of Echoes in the Storm
Dawn crept on the horizon as she set her jotter aside, the corner of the pages crumpled from her constant flicking back and forth. Words were scrawled so hard in places, the lines repeated on rote as she worked through a train of thought, she’d literally pushed through to the page beyond.
But through it all, through the story of this man’s life, she’d found one thing he hadn’t. A crucial element to his personality that he had neither named or recognised during her questioning.
Hope.
Duke still possessed hope, still retained the simple ability to look beyond, to plan ahead, and some of his counterparts didn’t.
And that, his hope, would be the thing that brought him salvation.
She was sure of it.
Cammie
Sunlight dances in patterns across my palm as I lie on the sofa, my arm slung over the side to rest on the floor. I twist my fingers back and forth watching the slivers of gold that morph and merge on my flesh.
“Are you only taking the three boxes to the Salvation Army, love?” Mum flits between the entrance and Taylah’s room, finishing what I started.
“At this stage.”
It may have taken me four or five attempts, but finally, after changing my mind almost daily about it, I stepped inside her room last week to begin the task of selecting what to keep and what to be donated to children in need.
The agent has a fair offer on the house—not my parents’—and if nothing else, I know for certain that my time here is limited.
Five weeks have passed since Duke left, and I think it’s fair to say my last reason to stay here left that day, too. I’ve let go of the torment over Taylah that kept me shackled to this house as though it were a shrine to my daughter. The only good memories I had left here were those I shared with him. And now he’s gone and ruined those, too.
“Mum?”
She pokes her head around the corner. “Yes?”
I can almost smell how eager she is from here. She’s been on at me to talk to her for weeks … since Duke left, really. But I’ve kept her at arm’s length, a little mad and harbouring a grudge over the fact it washermeddling that got us involved to begin with.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She adjusts her messy bun as she glides into the room, settling on the floor beside me.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
Her hands go to her chest as her eyebrows rise in the middle. “Oh, Cam.”
“Is it possible to know in such a short time the truth of how you feel about a person, or do you think that feelings will always change?”
Her hands drop to her lap, and she places one to the side to lean her weight on it. “I believe that yes, people’s feelings do change over time, but it’s more of an adjustment. You learn to accommodate a person, to live with the things that may have irked you at the start, and likewise, you learn to adjust the things you do that irk them.” She pauses, rubbing her lips together. “But … I also believe that the root of what first brought you together never changes. If you love someone, you love them; it’s that simple.”
“Do you still love Dad, then?”
She shrugs. “I love him, but I’m notinlove with him. Regardless, the way I feel about him is still different to how you love a friend.”
“Hmm.”
She picks my hand up, massaging the palm with her thumbs. “What have you been thinking about, love?”
“Everything.”
The way I coped in the first two weeks after Duke left can only be described as chaos in motion. The after-show drinks at the pub turned out to be the first of several nights when I ended up so shit-faced I couldn’t remember how I got there.
But then the show ended.
And with that went my last reason to keep busy, keep occupied. I crashed hard and spectacularly, breaking down in the middle of the office at work, tears tracking over my face no matter what I did to try and stop them.