A Single Breath

‘I’m gonna light the barbecue,’ he says quickly. He swaps the knife for the tray of fish, then strides from the room with his eyes lowered.

*

They eat on the deck, watching the dusky pink clouds feather away into night. Saul says very little and Eva picks at the fish, a faint feeling of nausea hovering nearby.

When she’s eaten as much as she can manage, she sets down her knife and fork, then slides her sweater off the back of her chair and pulls it on.

‘We can go inside,’ Saul says.

‘No, it’s nice out.’ She looks up at the emerging stars; there are no clouds tonight and she thinks in another half-hour the night sky will be dazzling. Citronella candles burn at either end of the table, and the air swirls with a lemon scent.

In the quiet she hears the stirring of the bay and the chirp of crickets in the bush. ‘When I met your dad,’ she says, glancing across at Saul, ‘he mentioned he doesn’t come out to Wattleboon any more.’

He nods slowly.

‘Is that … because of your mother?’

Saul leans his elbows on the table and looks out towards the bay. ‘Her ashes were scattered up at the cape. I think he’s always felt guilty about not going there since.’

‘I wish I had Jackson’s ashes,’ Eva says, the admission surprising her.

Saul turns to look at her.

‘It’s just …’ she says, ‘maybe it would help.’ She draws a candle towards her and runs a fingertip around the warm, supple wax close to the wick. ‘A few weeks after Jackson drowned, I walked down to the beach where it happened. It was freezing. There was frost on the sand, but the sun was out and the water seemed peaceful. I remember just standing there, staring at the sea, thinking how impossibly serene it was – yet only weeks before …’ She pauses, swallowing hard. ‘One minute I was standing on the shore, and the next I found myself wading in.’

She feels Saul’s gaze move over her face as she continues.

‘I know it must sound crazy, but I needed to be in the sea to feel what Jackson would’ve felt.’ She’d wanted to feel the water soaking his clothes, the cold turning his muscles to lead, the waves pulling him under.

‘You needed it to feel real.’

She nods, pressing her fingernail into the candle. ‘It’s hard – there not being a body.’ She digs out a warm lump of wax that she rolls between her thumb and forefinger until it hardens. ‘But it’s good to be out here, seeing where Jackson grew up. There are so many things I never asked him – so much I want to find out.’

Two years. That’s all she’d shared of Jackson’s thirty years of life. A fragment. Her hand travels to her stomach and she realizes the need to build a connection with his past is even stronger now.

Inside, a phone rings. Saul looks relieved by the distraction and leaves the deck. She hears him answer, saying, ‘Dad?’

Eva leans back in her chair looking up at the stars, wishing Jackson was with her, wishing she could share the news of their baby with him. Over the past few weeks she’s learnt a lot about loneliness. It isn’t just about remote places or a lack of contact with people – it’s a sensation that something has been carved out of you.

When Saul doesn’t return, she begins clearing the plates from the table, scraping the fish bones back into the foil and then stacking the plates. She carries them into the house – but pauses when she catches her name.

Saul is talking in another room and Eva hovers, listening. ‘She came out here like you said … Yeah, Thursday.’

Saul exhales hard. Then there’s the sound of footsteps pacing back and forth. ‘No. Course I didn’t!’

Eva holds her breath, straining to hear.

The footsteps stop. ‘Just that one time … No, haven’t heard from her since.’

When she hears him finishing up the call, she backs out of the house onto the deck, and returns the plates to the table, pulse racing.

Saul comes outside with his hands dug into his pockets. He shifts his weight as he says, ‘I’ve got a bit of work I need to get done for tomorrow.’

‘Then I suppose I should be going,’ she says curtly.

‘I’ll see you down the steps.’

Before she can tell him that she’s fine on her own, he’s taking a slim flashlight from his pocket and leading the way. He shines the light behind him so that she can place her feet in the beam. ‘Careful,’ he says. ‘Some of the steps are a bit loose.’

They descend in silence, the air growing cooler. When they reach the beach Saul stops to face her. Away from the candlelight, the darkness suddenly feels consuming. She thinks of the strange lie Saul just told his father and a prickle of uncertainty travels over her skin.

Jackson’s voice echoes in her head: You can’t trust him. He’s a liar.

She feels a surge of hurt and confusion over the oddly abrupt ending to the evening. Her teeth clench around the words she wants to say. Yet something pulls her back.

Saul is her – and her child’s – only link to Jackson. She feels the fragility of that connection as if it runs between them like a single fine thread. She needs to hold onto it tightly so it doesn’t slide out of her grasp.

*

Back in the shack, Eva shuts the door firmly and switches on all the lights. She tugs at the cord of the blinds, disturbing a moth that flies straight towards her, its dusty wings brushing at her cheek.

Eva shivers, turning a circle in the room. Alone. I am alone. She tries to keep her breathing level and push away the hollowing sensation of loneliness.

She sucks in a deep breath and crosses the room to the photo of her and Jackson at the jazz festival. She angles it towards the light, longing to be back there with the sun on her skin, hearing the rhythm of the music, feeling Jackson’s arm around her waist.

In the light she can see two marks on the glass either side of the photo. They look to be thumbprints, as if someone has just plucked the photo from the shelf to look at it. Her brow furrows as she remembers polishing the frame this morning, removing every trace of dirt and grease. How can there be thumbprints?

Perhaps she’d made them just now as she’d picked up the picture. Holding the frame, she places her thumbs in the exact spaces where the marks are.

Yet the prints don’t fit; hers are almost half the size.

She brings the frame even closer to the light so that she can be sure. She is almost certain that these are not her thumbprints.

She sets down the photo with a sharp shake of her head. She’s being absurd; they must be hers. No one else has been in the shack.

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