So Many Beats of the Heart by Carrie Cox

Author:Carrie Cox [Cox, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Published by Affirm Press in 2021
Published: 2022-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

25

Evie had felt small on James’s boat, happily reduced by all the elements. An uncharacteristic surrender of sorts. The willingness to accept whatever beauty or calamity lay beyond the bow, beneath the water.

She suspects the appeal was very different for him, that James feels much bigger on the water than he does on the shore. The wheelchair far behind him, a picture of abandonment on the dock, James had looked to Evie like a man with new claims on the horizon. Someone who had a particular right to be out there, conjuring speed out of air and mastering forces that were still his to master.

It made her wonder more carefully about what sailing was doing for Angus, what nerve it was tapping in her lost boy. He’d barely missed a Sunday since the season began, always returning home a picture of salty spent contentment, ready to sleep away the afternoon on the couch. She’d asked him if she could come along with him next time, just the once she promised, and Angus had minutely shrugged by way of agreement.

And it’s not quite the same brand of day she’d experienced with James, when the sea and the sky had been ablaze together, but it’s warm and alive and it feels a long way from melancholy. The water is a darker blue today, its insides a secret, and the sky seems unsure about whether to give in to the hovering clouds.

Having completed the club’s learn-to-sail course and paid his full membership, Angus is now free to hire out their Laser boats at reduced rates whenever they’re available. The Laser, he explains to his mother once she’s ensconced in the seat beside him and trying not to look conspicuously adrift, is one of the most popular single-handed dinghies in the world. Barely anything about the Laser’s design, Angus says, has changed in twenty-one years. ‘Just like Sera,’ he adds and the comment catches Evie by surprise.

‘Very much like Sera,’ she says, seizing upon the segue, ever the counsellor. She watches Angus’s eyes scan the length of the boat’s mast. ‘I think she might be one of the few twenty-one-year-olds to have nothing to fear about the speeches at her party.’

Angus offers no reply to this. He is apparently, and somewhat deliberately now, concentrating hard on changing the boat’s direction.

‘Anyway, I’ve booked our flights,’ Evie continues. ‘It’s a really early start in the morning but what can you do? Such a long flight. You forget how far away it is.’ And what a blessing that can be.

Angus gestures at something in the water. Evie sees nothing but regardless makes a ‘wow’ face with her mouth and eyes. ‘So,’ she continues, trying hard not to yell above the insistent wind. ‘How are you feeling about the party, anyway? About going back to Perth?’

‘Perth’s fine,’ Angus says looking straight ahead, ears pinned hard against his wet hair.

‘Okay. And how are you feeling about seeing your dad?’

Evie waits. She badly wants an answer to this, something to measure herself against.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.