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This comes out so fast it’s an unexpected reminder of Rae, but then she always was a mile-a-minute, like him. She is again now.
“And stop trying to change the subject.” Her hand shakes almost as badly as mine now that I’ve given up hiding them in my pocket or from her. “Hayden, how long have you been worried about PSP?”
I take a sip, surprised by the sweetness of this hot chocolate instead of the tea or coffee I’d expected. It’s a reminder of gulping down similar sugar-filled fuel on wintry touchlines. Of her breath clouding around the words, “Have fun!” before I ran onto the pitches back when football was fun for me. Maybe that’s why this slips out, although this confession doesn’t relate to any of my tremors. “I wanted to tell you. About the Tramadol.”
Her hand finds mine across the table, and that’s a second time today when someone hasn’t backed away from what got this whole shame-filled ball rolling for me. “You need to talk about that first?”
I shake my head. Then I nod.
She takes a sip of her own drink. There are more laugh lines around her eyes these days. Fuck knows how. They crinkle even deeper as she says, “Just as long as you know wearetalking about this.” Her hold tightens, squeezing until my hand stills, and that’s better. I can keep going just as long as she doesn’t let go, like Rae didn’t let go of me either under a willow almost stripped bare of its leaves.
This leaves me bare too. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I don’t know why.” I focus on the table between us. It’s scored with marks. With evidence of years of us sharing it as a team of three before a trio of baby Novacs joined us. “I’m sorry for not explaining.”
“You didn’t have to.” She sets down her mug to free up a second hand for me. “Neither apologise nor explain, Hayden. None of it was down to you. If I’d been more on the ball, I would have been there for you so much sooner.”
She’s told me that before, and I know it.I do.It’s why I’ve been able to take a second shot at building a life. How I learned to hold my head up despite everything.
Until lately.
“I meant I’m sorry for not explaining why I kept putting off coming home. Wouldn’t surprise me if you thought I was using something again and trying to hide it from you. I’m not. I wouldn’t.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Because your Tramadol use was only ever situational, wasn’t it?”
I nod. I know that as well. Have known it for years and put it all behind me to work on building a future for all five of us. Now that I sit here in the house that was only ever meant to be temporary, missing a second shot to do so is a reminder. Perhaps it’s why feelings I’ve sidelined for ten years keep bubbling up so often lately. “If I do have PSP?—”
“You don’t.” Her hold could give Rae’s a run for its tight money. She’s as emphatic now as he was about us not being done talking. She isn’t done yet either. “You absolutely don’t, Hayden. Neither do the girls. None of you share those genetic markers.” She squeezes again until I look up. “Spit it out.”
“What if they were wrong?”
My throat is full of brambles. I swallow, but they still snag on this.
“Those tests, I mean. What if they were all wrong, or I got someone else’s results? It could be an admin mix-up. And what if the science has moved on? Or what if I’ve got something like it, because this came out of nowhere, Mum, and it can’t have, can it? People don’t shake for no reason.”
Her hand clenches around mine. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll dig out all the test results.” This bulldozer wrapped in a feather boa keeps going. “And then I’ll get back in touch with your dad’s team.” She means the medics who ran batteries of tests on meand the girls when I was a teen and they were babies. The squad who did their best to play defence for him until they couldn’t, which is an odd time to picture Mitch and Justin.
It’s also a reminder of what else I’ve brought with me.
I itch to fetch that scrapbook full of photos of the man she next mentions.
“Dad’s experts will explain until you believe them, Hayden. Or we’ll get them to repeat the testing if that’s what you need. And then we’ll get any other tests you need to get to the bottom of whatever this is.”
If her hold gets any tighter, I’ll lose all the feeling in my fingers.
Right now, I hope she never stops, even when she couples it with a question I’ve been fending off for almost a year now. She touches one of the miniature sunflowers I sent her. “What did Dad always say about these?”
My throat is too thick to answer.
She does it for me. “They search for the sun, then face it. And if a cloud covers the sun and they can’t find it?”
I croak this. “They turn to each other.” Like they did in that picture Rae drew of our old garden.
My voice takes a turn at shaking, and I don’t try to hide it. “Mum, let me go grab something quickly?”
I head outside. It is colder this far upcountry. My breath clouds when I’m back in the Land Rover where I can grab a scrapbook I didn’t know existed and now feels like a gift. Yes, there’s pain between these pages. There’s also love—so much of it, and for a first time, I’m glad of the reminder that real teams always pull together.
My breath also clouds my phone screen.
I type regardless and hope Rae gets this message.
