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A wheeze began in the back of her throat and she struggled to keep it from seeping out.
‘So?’ Joe cocked his head in the direction of the hangar.
She made some sort of noise. She wasn’t sure what.
He got out of his ute and walked around to her side, opening her door like she was attending a school formal and he was determined to play it old-school and mannerly.
He was grinning. He was happy and proud and decent.
Everything she was not.
‘This’—he gestured to the metal flying machine she was trying not to look at—‘is a 1955 CA-25 Winjeel. Dan, the pilot who’s taking us up today, tells me it was used by the Royal Australian Air Force for training and low-level reconnaissance.’
It was possible she was going to be sick, right there beside his scuffed boots, on the tarmac.
‘I did manage to find a Wirraway you can go for a joyflight in, but it’s in Newcastle. Apparently, there’s only five in the world still flying, Kirsty! I was tempted, I can tell you—but Daisy talked me out of it. She reckoned an eight-hour drive each way might be a bit much for a reconciliation date. Even a grand-gesture kind of reconciliation date.’
Now was the time to be honest, but her jaw was locked tight.
‘Kirsty? Is everything okay? You’re looking kind of pale.’
She’d had a life plan, hadn’t she? Work hard, live quietly, never stick around long enough for anything to matter.
But she hadn’t factored in a town like Clarence, where the locals had embraced her like she was one of them. She’d braided the hair of a bumptious kid called Amy, she’d played backyard cricket, she’d slept in her swag on a hundred-year-old railway station platform while cicadas sang her to sleep.
She’d gotten herself involved, let herself be invited to family parties, rubbed shoulders with the locals as though she belonged.
Lesson #10, she thought.Turns out, running away doesn’t stop the bad shit from happening. Running away means you miss out. On life. Onlove. On kind-eyed heartbreakers who maybe did deserve a second chance even if they’d gambled away their home, because by heaven they’d shown her nothing but kindness.
‘I can’t fly,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now. I’ve got … a problem. I can’t go up in that airplane.’ An image ofDoreen Anne’s freshly painted fuselage flashed through her thoughts. ‘I can’t go up inanyairplane.’ Not until she’d sorted herself out. Not until she’d found the courage to face up to her problem.
She hadn’t been poisoned. She didn’t have concussion, or a brain lesion, and she’d not suffered a stroke. She was a woman who’d once been a kid who’d learned to choke up the bad stuff and pretend it never happened. But she couldn’t choke it down any longer.
Joe reached out to hold her arm, but she twisted away. She couldn’t be touched, not now, not when everything was soraw, and she couldn’t be grabbedthere. She swallowed. ‘It’s … a lovely thing you’ve organised. Very thoughtful.’
Fudgebucket.
She had to get out of here, and of course she was miles away from her ute, which she needed now more than ever. Only not to run away, not this time.
To runback.
‘Could you please drive me to Clarence? There’s somewhere I need to be.’
