But from that direction, a female voice calls, “Your chicken’s trying to escape.” Grandpa starts cussing, and Trent eases the truck door closed—slowly, holding up the handle, so it doesn’t even click—and yanks me into a crouch behind the truck.
I blink at him and he gives me a look that says,stay still. Then he peers around the truck towards the path and jerks back again, almost smacking into my face. His lips are pressed tight, and I hear the clop of shoes coming nearer.
He turns his head, exhale sweeping over my cheek, and whispers, “Aunt Sara.”
I give him a puzzled look and turn my aching wrists. The handles were gnawing into my palms so I’d plonked the bagsdown and... oops. One has tipped over and a lime is rolling down the gutter. Past Trent, towards theclop-clop-clop?—
Trent winces. In the space of a second, he hesitates, and then darts his hand out. I can feel his held breath as he clutches it to his chest, pressed tight and low.
Her shadow drifts along the truck’s paint, then passes. A car starts; tyres churr down the street. Trent lets out a breath and rests his head back against the door.
“What?” I murmur. “She scary?”
Trent picks himself up and takes the bags off me. “She’s lovely.”
“Then . . .”
“I didn’t... know how to introduce you,” he says. The words come out young, boyish. Not like the thirty-year-old he seems like the rest of the time. He turns towards the path. “She knows he’s alive in Grandpa’s memories; she knows about the postcards.”
“Then—”
“But she doesn’t know those postcards have turned into... you.”
A missed lime splits under my shoe, scent sharp and clean against the tension stuck in the air.
Trent shakes out his shoulders and keeps moving. “She doesn’t come by much. And when she does, she tries not to bring up Ika at all. It’ll be fine. It’ll be all right.”
I follow after him, once more plucking at my wristband.
Kitchen. Dawn. The kettle clicks off; outside in the backyard, a kaka is stripping bark off a pine tree, and I wonder if the chickenis watching on. Watching on and approving. Get that sap, then poop on the fresh washing. Hehehe.
It’s been two weeks. And those kinds of random thoughts are becoming a frequent occurrence. I blame the lack of sleep. I can’t get any of it. I’m sure Trent hasn’t got any either. How could he with me tossing and turning above him, rattling the whole bunk frame? Yet he says nothing, and even if he looks slightly more wrecked with each passing morning, he still makes sure to make us scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast.
At the table.
To which I am now totally accustomed.
Stop side-eyeing me! It was one sneaky forkful.
Grandpa is around three of these mornings in a week; the other mornings, he’s picked up earlier for daycare. On the mornings he’s around, at least I have an ally. At least I can hide behind Grandpa’s uncensored banter, and nod when he complains about the lack of pig on his plate.
This morning he comes into the living room and startles at finding me at the table. He squints. “Trenty! Look who’s back!”
Trent calmly brings over scrambled eggs on toast. “Grandpa, Ika’s been here a couple of weeks.”
“As long as he’s back.” Grandpa points the end of his walking stick at the postcard wall. “We have the best beaches here. Stick around.”
Trent eyes me quietly, and I know what to do. I pat Grandpa’s hand. “You bet. Now eat up.”
Grandpa sighs at his plate. “Where’s the bleeding bacon?”
“None of that,” Trent says. “Doctor’s orders.”
Grandpa begins an epic rant that I am both appalled at and fascinated by, while Trent shakes his head in resignation and opens the paper—something they still get.
“The short of it is, doctors don’t know a damn thing. I’ve eaten bacon and cursed at the radio every morning for seventy-nine years, and I’m still here. Fit as a fiddle.”
“Only eleven months to go,” Trent says dryly, not taking his eyes off the sports page.
