A square-cut diamond ring.
He undoes the clasp of the necklace, takes my hand, turns it palm up and lets the ring slip from the chain and fall into my grasp.
‘You had the aurora hanging around your neck all this time, representing your dream. I had this.’
‘To keep you focused?’ I ask, unable to believe any of this is real.
‘To keep me hopeful. I didn’t want to interrupt your plans. I knew you had to take this trip, and why, but as soon as you left, I was just . . . bereft. Told myself it should be impossible to grieve this much for a woman who is still alive.’
‘I cried all the way to America. Desperately missing Cam. Desperately missing you. Wishing this whole thing wasn’t so complicated.’
‘It is what it is,’ he says. He’s right. It’s a mash-up of inconceivable devastation and unbelievable wonder. A clash of two almost overpowering tragedies, through which hope has been pushing up quietly, tenaciously, all this time. Fighting for light. Needing just the right amount of spine-tingling courage to tip the future in a new direction.
When Cam and I had that car accident, time slowed. Our past collided with our future at an awful, agonising pace I thought I’d never survive.
Time is warping again now, but in reverse. Everything Hugh and I have been through is being swept, suddenly, into a glorious whirlwind of all we can be. This precious second chance.
He glances at me for permission. Takes the ring out of my palm and hovers it over the end of my finger.
I’ve lost track of which one of us is asking now, but it doesn’t matter. A wave of strength and confidence and certainty carries us in.
‘All right, Kate, I’ll marry you,’ he says. ‘Thought you’d never ask.’
He slips the ring all the way onto my finger, and I’m too stunned by this entire turn of events to speak.
‘You know you disarmed me the moment you threw yourself at me in the gym,’ he confesses, twisting the ring on my finger to check the fit.
It must be a joke, surely. Next to Purple Pants, he noticed me?
‘Grace had just told you something awful about her fertility and that miserable relationship she was in, and she asked about you. And you’d made up some obvious lie downplaying how things were in your marriage. Grace wouldn’t have a bar of it. Said your husband was delicious and how happy you were after all those years. I remember thinking, “Lucky him”. And thinking about all I lost with Gen.’
I touch his arm.
‘And then, when you walked into that interview and hit it out of the park, I realised all the self-deprecation at the gym was probably a genuine loss of confidence since you’d had a baby. It was refreshing after all the “fake it till you make it” stuff everyone goes on with.’
I don’t want to interrupt this fairytale he’s telling me. He’s looking at my dishevelled self as we speak, somehow making me feel like the most desirable woman in the world.
‘I didn’t know I loved you though, until Cam asked me to help him. To help you. The way I felt about you came into sharp focus then. I very nearly capitulated. I realised I couldn’t stand to see you go through something similar to what I’d been through. Particularly when I had the power to prevent the worst part of it.’
‘It never occurred to me, until I rocked up on Justin’s motorbike, that you and I could look at each other that way,’ I admit. ‘Then once I heard about Genevieve, I was overcome with this out-of-all-proportion jealousy. The kind you just don’t have over your boss’s distant flame. There’s one bit I don’t understand though. Andrew told me Genevieve and I were nothing alike. Said she was a knockout, if you remember . . .’
Hugh grimaces.
‘Said he couldn’t put his finger on what it was about me that reminded him of her.’
‘It’s not Gen you remind him of. It’s me, when I was with her. Because I’m happy again with you. It terrified me, feeling that way for a woman again. Still does. My biggest fear is—’
‘Repetition,’ we both say at once. This path is treacherous. We cannot afford for another person we love to die.
He takes the glass from my hand, sets it on the bench, turns around, puts his hands on my shoulders and gently pushes me back onto the bed. ‘It’s been torture,’ he says. ‘Loving you through all of it. But when you left, I realised there was a fate even worse than your death.’
‘Separate lives,’ I answer for him. I’m crying now. Partly from everything he’s saying, and partly because he’s kicking off his shoes and joining me where I’m lying. He touches my face like he can’t believe I’m really here. I can’t believe it either. Then he smiles. That broad, rare, generous, gorgeous smile that turns me inside out whenever it’s aimed in my direction. I love this man. Somehow with all my heart. The same heart that will also beat for Cam with an unstoppable rhythm until the day I die. For once, I won’t overthink the mystery.
‘Now, Ms Whittaker,’ he says, kissing me in the longest, most excruciatingly unhurried way. ‘About that bucket list . . .’
EPILOGUE
Four years later
It’s not long after sunset, during what we landscape and astrophotographers call the ‘blue hour’. I dig the legs of my tripod into the sand on the secluded beach on Bruny Island, Tasmania. While there’s still a bit of light, I open the aperture wide, change the ISO and set a twenty-second exposure, ready. I’ve figured out the exposure triangle and then some over the last few years.
Nine-year-old Charlie is beside me with the telescope Hugh bought him last Christmas. ‘Tell me again the order of things,’ he asks. We’ve been through it so many times!
‘Grace, Justin and the twins arrive tomorrow afternoon. We’re picking them up from the ferry after school. Nanna flies in on the weekend.’ I look at the tall young boy standing beside me, about to turn ten. More than half his life without his dad, yet more like his dad every day.
The aurora forecast is strong again tonight, with a major geomagnetic storm that might make it visible, at least to camera lenses, as far north as Canberra. That would have necessitated driving south of the city and finding somewhere safe to park off the Monaro Highway, or delving deep into Namadgi National Park.
It’s so much easier from here. I’ve come to feel spoilt, knowing I can see it so close to home, so often.