“I know.” He shakes his head.
“I need to get home,” I blurt. “To Newcastle. I really want to see my parents. I’d go on the train, but—” It’s a huge ask, but I’m desperate enough to voice it. I follow up, taking the phone out of his hand, and show him my home screen. It’s filled with notifications from podcast followers I’ve never met tagging me to tell me #runawaywidow is trending. It sounds like a rom-com, but it doesnotfeel like one.
“I don’t even know if Mum and Dad are alive, but I need to see for myself,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “Why else wouldn’t they have been at the funeral?”
Or the hospital. Or in any of the social media posts I’ve curated over the last several years. They should have been my next of kin, instead of the in-laws I don’t remember. They should be in my phone. My inbox.My life.
“If my parents can’t come to me, I have to at least try to go to them. I’ve lost everyone that ever mattered to me, Drew. I need to figure out what happened. I know none of this is your problem, and I’m grateful you even brought me this far …” I trail off, my desperation hanging in the air between us in a way that I hate.
“I’ll take you,” he says, simply.Off-load me, I think he means.
“You’ll do it?” I can hardly believe he’s suggesting it. I find myself walking around to the passenger side before he changes his mind.
“Except, from the sound of it, Evie, I think you need to be prepared—”
I’m back in the car with the door slammed before he can finish that sentence. I don’t want him to voice the possibility that, when we arrive in Newcastle, I might not find what I’m looking for.
An hour later, we’re crossing the Hawkesbury River bridge. That first glimpse of the sunlight dancing on water dotted with houseboats and fishing vessels and water-skiers was always a symbolic promise that I was heading home. All those years boarding in Sydney as a scholarship kid, I’d watch excitedly for this view, proof we were truly north of the city and heading for the Central Coast. I used to imagine that bridge was magical. A portal between school and home.
Today, there’s no magic as we cross. Instead, I’m increasingly anxious about what I’ll find when we get to Newcastle. Or what I won’t find.
I envisage a car crash, and my body flinches.
Drew glances at me from the driver’s seat. “You okay?”
I see my parents gone, instantly, like Oliver. Mathematicians would say the probability of that is low when I’ve just survived a fatal car crash myself, but right now life feels precarious and explosive. Stats don’t mean a thing.
“If my parents aren’t alive …” I can’t continue the thought. If they’re gone, I’ll have already wrenched myself through the indescribable grief of losing them once, and now I’ll have to repeat that agony, from scratch. Can a human body even put itself through something like that twice over?
Drew focuses on the freeway as he threads in and out of traffic and overtakes semitrailers. “Try not to second-guess it,” he says, settling back into the left lane.
Second-guessing is all I’ve got, thanks to this horrible sinkhole in my memory. This not knowing has made me so hungry for answers that a spontaneous road trip with a strange man seems like the safest option, despite my intimate knowledge about serial backpacker murders along a stretch of road just like this. Each time we pass another turnoff down a dirt track into a national park, I breathe a sigh of relief that Drew isn’t swinging into it.
His phone, cradled in a holder on the dash, lights up with a call. Someone called Chloe. Is this that “frequency illusion” phenomenon, where you’ve never heard of a certain word and suddenly you hear it three times in a week?
He slams the red button fast, sending poor Chloe straight to the purgatory of voicemail. Sudden death. Have I ever evoked that reaction from a man?, I wonder.
“What’s your last name?” I ask him.
“Kennedy.”
I resist the temptation to google him right here. As if he’s a step ahead, he elaborates: “I’m at DK Imaging, if you want to verify me.”
“Why is a serious photojournalist covering a funeral?” I take up his invitation and type his business name into the search bar.
“Did I tell you I was a serious journalist?”
“Come on, everything about you screams brooding, artsy content.” Black car. Dark windows. Restless energy. “I bet you’re big on monochrome imagery. Haunting shadows. Negative space …”
I seem to be spouting artistic terminology like I have some idea what I’m talking about. The psych team warned me that this could happen. Pockets of unexplained knowledge canburst through the fog. It’s like those cases you hear about where people have a head injury and wake up fluent in Spanish or rattling off piano concertos, except nothing that impressive, in my case.
But as soon as Drew’s landing page fills the screen, the images take my breath away. My instinct was right about the black and white. But there’s also vibrant color. Clifftop sunbursts and crashing ocean waves. Wintry scenes of gnarled, high country snow gums. Deep, lush forests—mist curling through ferns and over waterfalls—and even photos of nebula and constellations and stunning aurora skies …
I drag my eyes away and look at him, still focused on the road, not giving the slightest hint of these depths. The artistry only makes me more confused about why he was mixed up with the media pack at Oliver’s funeral. Because he’s right. He’s notthatkind of journalist.
“Drew, these photos …”
He shakes off the compliment in my tone.
