Nicole had quit her job without giving notice. Since she’d gone Alex had worked every shift, and the long hours were beginning to take a toll.
I kept to my routine of arriving just before closing so he’d give me a lift home. “Alex, I have something for you,” I said, waving a bunch of papers at him as I approached the counter.
“Sounds ominous. What is it?”
“Nothing bad,” I assured him.
“So I don’t need to meet with your principal or hire a lawyer?”
I pulled a face at him. “It’s my passport application. I’ve filled most of it out, so you just need to sign it so we can lodge the papers.”
I put the stack of papers on the counter.
He barely glanced at them. “We’ll go to Sorell next week, if I get time. We’ll lodge them there.”
“We can do it here, at the post office.”
Alex stared at me like I was missing something obvious. He picked the papers up and waved them at me. “You want to give these papers to Valerie Daintree?”
I nodded.
“You’re out of your mind. If you wait a few more months you won’t need my signature anyway.”
“I don’t want to wait, Alex,” I informed him. “I don’t care if people find out …unless you do.”
Throwing it all out there would only be empowering if both of us were prepared to let the secret go. His frown showed he wasn’t ready yet.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” he said, handing papers back to me. “Just give me a while to figure out how.”
I nodded but said nothing. There was nothing I could have said that would have reassured him. Alex was dealing with issues much older than me and I had to give him the time he needed. In fact, I was prepared to let it drop indefinitely. At worst I’d have to wait until I turned eighteen in December and no longer need his signature.
It was Alex who broached the subject again, over breakfast the next morning.
“I’ll close up early today, pick you up after school and we’ll lodge the papers,” he told me.
I swallowed. “You’re sure about this?”
He scraped butter across his toast while he deliberated. “Charli, keeping quiet was never anything to do with you. You know that, right?”
I nodded, hoping I looked convincing.
“When I was a kid, we moved around a lot. My mum would spend a few months running up debts, drinking away her money. Eventually the wolves would come knocking.” He smiled, but there was nothing humorous in what he was saying. “So we’d move on. It was that way for years. When I had you, all I wanted was a stable life for us. Mum was so far gone by then that there was no way she could be on her own. Whatever plans I made had to include her. A guy I knew offered me a week of work on one of his boats. It was an opportunity to make some quick money and set us up somewhere new. All Donna had to do was stay sober for a week to look after you.”
“But she couldn’t do it?”
“Apparently not.” He grimaced. “She packed up and brought you here on a drunken whim.”
“Thank goodness for Floss, huh?”
“Floss took very good care of you until I got here,” he agreed. “By the time I arrived, Donna had already begun spinning the same crap I’d heard a hundred times before, telling everyone that life was good and she had it all together. But now her story included the sweet little daughter that she dragged everywhere with her, including the pub.”
I dropped my eyes to the table, unable to look at his tortured expression.
“The point I’m trying to make is that by the time I got here, I was tired of starting over all the time. I liked it here. I wanted you to grow up here. People in town were already talking about Mum, but it was harmless. Everyone just thought she was a lush – which she was.” He winked at me and I smiled. “I stuck to the story she’d started. I couldn’t bear explaining the truth back then.”
“And now?”
He stared straight at me, deliberating. “Now, I’m not sure that I care. No one can say I’ve done a bad job, right?”
I rolled my eyes, grinning. “You’re right, Alex. I’m almost normal.”
“Exactly,” he said exultantly. “My kid grew up to be ten times smarter, prettier and more brilliant than theirs.”
Apparently he still liked to hang out in La La Land.