I drew a breath. “I could have?—”
“Natty,” Will said, his voice low, “I managed when you were at school, and I can manage now you’re back. I’m tired of fighting with you about this. You’re not coming out on the boat, because I need you here. Mum needs you here.”
I clamped my mouth shut, because I knew if I said anything else it’d just lead to more arguing. And it wasn’t like Will was wrong—but he wasn’t totally right either. Mum needed someone, but it didn’t have to be me. When I’d been away at school, Aunt Jane or Big Johnny or Aunt Agnes had visited Mum every day to bring her lunch and check in on her when Will was out on the Adeline. Mum hadn’t gotten worse once I got back to Dauntless or anything—she was just the same as always, or at least the same she’d been since Dad had drowned. If Will had managed when I was away at school, like he said, then what was different now I was home? He didn’t have a good reason for not letting me work on the Adeline—he was just being stubborn. Button John said he probably didn’t want me to talk back to him in front of his crew, because I wouldn’t be able to help myself. There was more truth in that than I wanted to admit, but he didn’t have to put the word out to everyone else not to hire me.
Nipper Will regarded me warily, his good hand clamped around his fork. “Thanks,” he said at last, gruffly. “For dinner.”
I think he really meant for not arguing.
“The wind got up today,” I said. “Must have been rough out there.”
He nodded. “Bit rough, yeah. Not too bad.”
As much as I wanted to fight with Will until he admitted he was wrong, I knew that wouldn’t happen until hell froze over, and I also liked not fighting. I just wished we had more to talk about than his job, and I fished around uselessly for some other topic.
Will cleared his throat. “Copper’s yard needs mowing.” Apparently he thought we’d needed a change of subject too. I just wished he hadn’t picked that one. He scraped his fork over his plate. “You slacking off?”
“You didn’t want me working for him in the first place!”
He shrugged. “I didn’t, and I don’t, but you gave your word.”
“Well, I still am,” I said. “I’m just running late this week.”
Will’s raised eyebrows asked me what the fuck I had going on in my life that was so important my schedule was blowing out. I tried not to think about what his expression would do if I told him the truth: I’m avoiding the copper ever since he sucked my dick, actually. That was not a dinner conversation that either of us needed.
“I’ll get to it tomorrow,” I said.
Will nodded and looked at his empty plate. “There any more of this?”
“Yeah.” My chair scraped as I got up and went to the fridge. I grabbed the container out and spooned some more pasta onto Will’s plate. I carried it over to the microwave.
“It’s good,” Will said, and there was something hesitant in his tone, even though it was hidden well under his usual gruffness.
We were both tired of fighting, I guessed, and both realising that we didn’t have very much to talk about at all.
“It’s just sauce from a jar.”
“It’s good,” he said again.
Even when we were kids, me and Will hadn’t been close, because we hadn’t been kids at the same time. By the time I was old enough to keep up with Will, he hadn’t wanted to hang out with me, and by the time I was old enough to be interesting, he’d been at school in Sydney. When he came back on holidays he sometimes took me swimming with him, and he and Red Joe would keep half an eye on me for a few hours to make sure I didn’t drown. But there was a decade between us, and a decade was a lifetime when you were kids. I’d always thought that one day we’d have a boat of our own together, and he’d be the captain and I’d be the first mate, and Mum and Dad would be waiting for us in the harbour every afternoon when we tied up at the jetty.
“Thanks,” I said. It should have felt better that we’d spent this long talking without arguing, but it somehow felt worse, because it just showed how much distance there was between us and how neither of us had the right words to bridge it.
I went and looked in on Mum while Nipper Will was finishing up his second helping, and she’d already taken herself to bed. It wasn’t like she couldn’t do stuff—she just sometimes needed reminding. To eat, to shower and dress, to brush her teeth, to go to bed. I remember after Dad died that everything felt fuzzy and foggy and not real, like my brain had just turned off or something. But after a few weeks, it changed. It didn’t hurt any less—it hurt more, in some ways, because I’d finally realised it was real—but it changed shape just enough to make room for the other, ordinary stuff. Schoolwork, the jobs I did for pocket money back then, hanging out with Button John, taking the yabby pump to Seal Beach at low tide, buying junk food from Mavis’s shop; the ordinary stuff. Sometimes I thought that Mum was still stuck in the fog and had never come out the other side.
“Natty,” she said with a smile when she saw me standing in her bedroom doorway. “You’re getting so big!”
“Goodnight, Mum.”
Her smile faded as she closed her eyes. “Goodnight.”
Usually I would have hung out in my room to avoid having to talk to Will, but usually we were fighting, and usually my room was my sanctuary. Now it was the place where I felt guilty and weirdly turned on, especially whenever I looked out the window towards Dominic’s house. So I went downstairs again, figuring that avoiding Dominic was more important than avoiding Will, and started to do the washing up.
Nipper Will surprised the fuck out of me by grabbing a tea towel so he could dry. “Sea John Barnes heard from Buzzy Pete that the phone network should be working in a few days.”
“Me and Button John went up and had a look this morning. There were guys all over the lighthouse.”
“Yeah, we saw them from out off the point.”
