Page 241 of Swallow Your Sorries

“That’s not true…” she croaks.

“That’s just what you keep telling yourself.”

“Jarett…” she begins, but then her watery eyes peer through the windshield and for a second they stop their frantic movements as she peers anywhere but at me. Suddenly they’re frozen, peering straight ahead through the windshield. “Jarett?”

What?

I follow her widening gaze but I can’t see whatever hallucination she is.

“What are you—”

Her fingers curl around the door handle and before I can blink, a gush of cold night air rushes in and she rushes out. “Jarett? Jarett!”

I slip out of the car after her, and the chilliness of the night pricks me back to reality. The few latecomers are staring as Mum stumbles between the vintage cars, her hips knocking into each shiny paint job as she goes.

“Mum!” I hiss, trying to catch up with her, but for someone so drunk, she’s as fast as she is tiny.

“Jarett!”

I gaze over her red bob and between the parked cars at two retreating figures. From the costume on the shorter man, he’s clearly a student, and from the tailored suit of the taller man, he’s clearly a visitor, perhaps a father.

But I stumble and freeze at the sight of him as he turns around, and Mum stumbles just out of my reach.

I’d know that height, those straight, broad shoulders anywhere and gait anywhere.

That dirty blonde hair that’s cut in a way so it’s feathered in the back, almost like a bird’s ass when its wings are closed.

Jarett?

No. It can’t be.

It’s some coincidence.

I speed up, by passing a couple and offering them a nod of apology as Mum tramples past them, only to be met with Rin’s frozen face. She’s with an older Korean man I’d mistake for her father. Or the man from the cafe. But something tells me that this man is neither because he’s carrying shopping bags and a bouquet almost as large as Rin.

We exchange a quiet glance and then I’m shooting after Mum again.

I’m just about to grab onto the back of her lumpy knit sweater when she reaches the man first.

“Jarett!”

He spins around and so does the other man in the costume.

I hadn’t recognized Sylo because his signature white blonde hair is covered in a jester’s hat. He’s taken on a half dozen roles that require brief solos, and the jester is just one of them. The minute his icy eyes land on me though, I finally realise why he looked so familiar.

He doesn’t look like Gant.

He doesn’t look like anyone I’ve seen before, besides the man standing right beside him.

The man whose face I can fully see now that a steering wheel isn’t masking half of it as he peers down at me scrawled across the pavement.

A man whose grey eyes are just a shade greyer than Sylo’s.

A man whose face resembles Jarett’s far too much for it to be a coincidence.

My brother.

The uncle I’d never seen.

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