Page 87 of Chasing Blue
Nate is the only one of us still in Palmers, and I do sometimes feel guilty for choosing to live so far away especially with my dad getting older.
Dad’s mostly retired now, leaving the running of the family construction firm to Nate, so at least they don’t have to work as well as live together like me, Finn, and Amelia do, but even so, the guilt kicks in occasionally that my old man feels like I’ve abandoned him.
* * *
Less than an hour later,I’m receiving the same manly back slaps from my dad as I did my brother.
Exactly like Shannon’s, Scott Cole’s once jet-black hair is completely silver, and has been that way since his early forties. At sixty-two, my dad’s still lean, fit, and what most consider good-looking. He easily passes as a brother and not the father of us four kids.
There’ve been women since my mum died, leaving him to raise four kids, including a toddler, on his own, twenty-three years ago, but none he’d gotten into anything long-term with. He’d just focussed on raising Amelia and getting us boys, aged fifteen, seventeen, and nineteen, when it happened, to manhood.
I think watching my dad do it so well is the reason I didn’t so much as flinch at raising Finn on my own.
“Good to see you, son. What brings you up this way?” my dad asks before we’re even inside the house.
Throwing my bag down at the bottom of the stairs, we all head out to the undercover alfresco, where my dad and Nate spend most of their time.
My dad hands me a beer before my arse is even in a chair at the outside dining table.
“Do you remember Scarlett O’Brien?” I ask my dad. I watch as he frowns while chugging from his Crownie.
“Asher’s sister who worked at the bar? The little redhead you were seeing one summer?”
“Yeah. She’s living in Melbourne now, not far from me,” I start to explain when my dad points his beer bottle towards me and interrupts with, “That’s who you’ve been seeing? The girl Shann was on about from here, the reason the bloke punched you Friday night?”
I nod slowly as he talks, then explain everything to him. The back and forth between me and Scarlett, what happened Friday night, us finally deciding to make a go of things, her ex smashing up her showroom, and ending with Eden telling her we were getting back together.
I watch as my dad chews on the inside of his cheek before pointing his bottle at me again.
“Did what I could to raise you lot the right way,” he says. Nate and me both shift in our chairs wondering where this is gonna go. “Stayed out of your business most of the time, hoping I’d done enough that you’d make good choices, which, I can say, hand on heart, you all mostly did.”
Nate stands, collects three more beers from the fridge, and sets them down in front of us.
“But fuck me, Jackson, why’d it take so long to wake up to what a nasty little bitch Eden Miller was, and from the sounds of it, still is?”
Twisting the cap off my beer, I open my mouth to answer, but my dad continues, “You were miserable. Always blueing, nothing you did was ever good enough for her, years you put up with her poison, and I’ve no idea why.”
“He was getting his dick wet on the regular from the age of fourteen, that’s why,” Nate answers before I can. I flick my bottle top his way, and he swiftly catches it.
“That’ll do it,” my dad continues with a head shake. “Ya know, I think the happiest I’ve ever seen you was that summer after you split up and you were with Scarlett.”
I smile down at the table, both at my dad’s words and the memories of that summer as well as this weekend, with Scarlett.
“Why’d you two end it?” Dad asks. I look up and meet his eyes as I answer his question.
“She was eighteen, about to start Uni in Sydney, and I’d just found out I was going to be a dad. I didn’t want to hold her back, so I let her go . . .”
My dad begins another slow headshake. “Eden. It was Eden back then, and it’s Eden causing you trouble now. So, what you doing here, son? Why haven’t you gone straight to her to set things right?”
I flop back in my chair before yawning as a wave of exhaustion washes over me.
“Her mum was killed in a car accident last night, that’s why she’s flown home.”
My dad stares at me over his bottle, blinking a couple of times.
“What?” he asks.
“Right after Eden told her we were getting back together, her brother called to tell her their mum was dead. She took straight off for the airport and left before I had a chance to talk to her. When I caught up with her mate, she told me everything. I went home and kicked Eden out, who then told me that when Scarlett left here for Uni, she was pregnant with my kid, kept it secret, and then had it adopted.”
