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Shadows had lengthened before he reached Marks Park, and when he crossed it to walk to the railing above the cave, he had reason to wish he’d convinced the NCR board to make pills to prevent heart attack.
Foley stood at the railing, at the place they’d met, at the place he’d left her. His feet faltered. He clutched at his chest like cardiac arrest was an acute possibility. She couldn’t possibly want to see him a second time today, but why was she there?
He said her name so she wouldn’t startle as he came up beside her. She half turned so he caught a glimpse of her face and gravity became an arbitrary force. She looked broken, was so huddled into herself, he found it hard to stay upright. He took hold of the railing because otherwise he would take hold of her and never let her go.
She looked out towards the beach and he watched her, frantically wanting the space between them to dissolve.
She tightened her grip on the railing. “I haven’t come here for six months. You were gone, there was no point.”
“But you came tonight.”
“I thought it might help.”
“Does it?”
She took a deep breath. He thought she might turn to him, but she got further away without moving. “Not yet.”
“But you have hope?”
“Maybe that’s what I should call it, hope. But it’s a flimsy thing. Nothing much to it.” She looked to the sky as a lone black cockatoo flew overhead. A bird less ordinary in a sky full of gulls. “Why did you come?”
He shifted his weight so it was all on the leg closest to her. He’d settle for an accidental touch, a graze of their bodies in the growing dark, because if he initiated a deliberate one, he feared she’d recoil.
“I came looking for you.” He’d been looking for the acceptance and love Foley gave him his whole adult life.
She hissed and turned her face further away and he was bereft she’d found him here, but he might lose her here for a second time.
“You’re not a hermit squatter any more. I’m not sure how to feel about that. You were intimidating then; now that you’re this, I don’t know how to deal with you.”
That she’d come here, that they both had tonight, was a kind of symbiotic reaching for each other beyond his comprehension. Like she was the moon and he was the tide, and they were hooked to each other’s inevitable highs and lows. That she was thinking about dealing with him at all, it shook him greater than the surprise of her being here—he could almost make a home on that alone.
“You always knew how to manage me. Support me in all the ways I needed and was too arrogant to ask for. I’m not sure I’ll ever be exactly normal. In fact, that’s not the idea.” He’d be the black cockatoo flying with the seabirds. “The idea is to do something extraordinary.”
“I heard.”
What Drum heard was frustration. “I’m sorry about the car, about shanghaiing you. I’m sorry about the way I left you and how that hurt, but there was no guarantee I’d make it back, or have anything to offer you if I did, and I couldn’t tie you to that.”
Foley was so still, so contained. She was the cold front that replaced the steamy heat of their encounter that morning. She was more lethal this way, because her feelings were crusted by frost and he couldn’t find his way to her usual prickly warmth.
She kept her eyes away, trained on the horizon. “How did you do it? How did you fight your way out of the cave, off the cliff?”
He leaned forward so he could see her lovely face in profile. “I never stopped thinking about you, Foley. Wanting to be a different man, a better one. Wanting to be worthy of you. I needed a lesson in absolutes, in the value of the spaces between black and white, before I knew what to do about it.”
She grunted in annoyance, a hand coming off the railing to wave the comment away. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s so sensible it’s my new rule.” Her hand went to her side. He could reach for it. They’d started with a handshake when all they were to each other was a problem. “I bought a house. Not far, it’s a renovator’s delight. It’s called Sereno. I think you’d like it.”
“You bought the Beeton house.” She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “You.”
The most valuable thing in that house was hanging off a bent nail that held a strip of doorframe in place. His mother’s engagement ring. He hoped Foley would like that too, if he could earn the chance to show it to her. Why else had he kept it, carried it, keeping it safe from sand traps, teenage gangs and holes in his pockets, if not to bring it back to her?
“I don’t recognise you.”
If he could get her to look at him, just once, she might. “Yes you do. I’m not so different. Better clothes, better hair. I’m still type A. Still aggressive, moody and difficult, stubborn and set in my ways.”
She shook her head. “How did you get the scar?”
He put his hand to his cheek. “I fell. Out there on the ledge, the night I lost you.” It’d seemed a small price to pay for the pain he’d caused her.
