Again, she started laughing and struggling harder. She was a lot stronger than she used to be. I almost had to try.
“No, Cole!”
Five minutes later, I gave up. We sat back down to finish eating, well, drinking, our melted ice cream. She made me feel like a teenager again.
“Jasper wants to go,” she blurted out. Okay…
She had done that a lot recently, slipping serious stuff into conversation. She’d be joking one minute, and then something she obviously found difficult to say would slip out.
“To the trial?”
“Yes. I tried to talk him out of it but he told me he’s made his decision and he’s going.”
I wanted to be there when they were both found guilty and sent down too.
“Why would he want to hear what happened?” she asked, ‘What Dad had done?”
“Probably for the same reason as you. He wants closure, Oakley.”
She sighed and rested her chin on her hands. I knew what she was thinking.
“I feel guilty.”
For a few seconds I was speechless; it was so hard to know what to say. But then I replied, “Why do you feel guilty?”
“Jasper lost his dad, and as much as he says he hates him there must be some part of him that still cares.”
“Some part?” What the hell is she thinking?
“Yes! The part that remembers Dad teaching him to ride a bike and drive a car. Every Christmas where Dad would make a fort out of the empty boxes. When he took him to the park and helped with his homework-”
“Okay, stop. That man wasn’t real.”
Her eyes glazed over, and I felt the temperature drop.
“But that’s not true. He was real to Jasper.”
I moved quickly, sliding in beside her and wrapping my arms around her tiny body.
“The guilt shouldn’t be with you. It’s not your fault. Jasper may have lost his dad, but that’s not because of you.”
Oakley nodded against my chest.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“No one believes you, Cole,” she said with a shaky voice, trying to make a joke.
“That’s because you all suck,” I mumbled against her hair. Her body shook lightly as she laughed.
Every time I saw her upset, I hated myself. I didn’t understand how we all could have missed it. I had told Oakley thousands of times over the years that she could tell me what was going on but she never did.
“Sorry. Again. You must think I’m an unstable mess!”
“Not unstable. Although you are getting a little more like Jasper,” I joked.
Oakley’s moods were about something. She had a good reason, whereas Jaspers were about the most random things, even when he was a kid. He had always been the joker and after a while no one could tell if his reactions were genuine or an act.
“That’s the same as unstable.”
I chuckled quietly and closed my eyes, pulling her closer. She couldn’t feel exactly the same about me as I felt about her or there was no way she would be able to go back to Australia. But if I felt leaving her was the best thing for her, could I do it? I thought about that for a while. Loving someone meant putting them first. I would have to do it.
“Do you want to go when it starts?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to be in there any longer than I have to.”
“So you’re just going to give evidence and watch the verdict?
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
“Thanks, Cole,” she whispered.
“Stop thanking me.”
To change the mood, I started a conversation about our childhood and the time she tried to rescue a half-dead bird. She kept it in an old shoebox filled with tissue and made me and Jasper bring it worms because she wouldn’t touch them. It died after two days, and we buried it in her back garden.
“He’s still there, you know.”
“Yep. The new owners probably think ‘Squawk’ is a cat or dog.”
My dad carved the bird’s name into a cross we made from lollypop sticks.
“Poor bird. I was really upset when he died. That was the day I stopped wanting to be a vet.”
I laughed.
“Yeah, you shouted that you couldn’t even save one bird so you would be the ‘rubbishest’ vet ever.”
She was only four. I think that was one of the last times I heard her shout, too.
I took in every part of her as we spoke. Her light blue eyes and long wavy blonde hair. Her full pink lips that I had a hard time not attacking. No one was supposed to be perfect, but to me, she was.
Finally, long after we’d finished eating and drinking, I drove her back.
“Do you want to come in for a bit?” she asked.
“You just don’t want to face your mum and crazy brother alone, do you?”
“That’s not the only reason.”
I was a little taken back with how honest that was. I expected a sarcastic reply.
“Sure, I’ll come in.” I don’t want to leave you yet either.
I couldn’t help putting my hand on the small of her back as we walked inside. Touching her was too natural. Oakley grabbed the post from the floor as we walked towards the kitchen.