Matt’s voice was barely above a whisper as he said, “I was born September 30th 1984 in the Westport General Hospital, and I believe that you’re my father.”
Silence descended as Darryl shook his head and Matt held his breath.
Darryl’s gaze fell to the table where he stared, lost in a memory. When he did speak, his voice was husky and low. “She told me she was pregnant, but I didn’t believe her. Instead I took off on my motorbike, leaving town. I came back a year later looking for her, but she’d gone. None of her friends would tell me where she’d moved to.”
“Did you try to find her?” Matt asked, his jaw tight.
“I didn’t put a whole lot of effort into it. Instead I lost myself in the bottom of a bottle and then spent the next five years in jail for armed robbery.”
It was my turn to gulp.
“She’d moved to Tasmania where she raised me as a single mother.”
“Is she still in Tasmania?”
“No. She passed away a few years ago from cancer.”
Sadness enveloped us as we momentarily got lost in our own thoughts of Jemima. I’d never known her, but I knew the man she had raised, and from that I knew she was a good person.
“Life’s a bitch,” muttered Darryl, lifting the bottle to his lips and downing its contents.
As an awkward silence sat between us, I reassuringly placed my hand on Matt’s thigh and thought about life.
Darryl had so many sliding door moments. If Carol hadn’t have given him up for adoption. If his parents hadn’t been killed at such a critical age. If he’d stuck around and been the father that he could have been. All those moments led him to where he was today. Was it too late for him to change any of it?
I knew that Matt hoped for the fairy tale ending, but I wasn’t sure how Darryl felt. His body language was tense, and he looked like he wanted to run for the hills. Yet something in his eyes told me that he wanted to learn more, and I prayed there was a chance he would stick around.
“I’m not sure what you want from me now,” said Darryl, his eyes downturned. “I’ve done nothing with my life I’m proud of. I have nothing to offer you.”
“I’m not looking for anything but your time. Other than that, I have no expectations from you.”
“You want to get to know me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Darryl shrugged and fiddled with his beer bottle. “Maybe I’m not worth knowing.”
“Are you willing to let me be the judge of that?”
Darryl gulped as emotion burned bright in his eyes. “Can I have some time to process this? It’s a bit of a shock, you know.”
Matt laughed a nervous laugh. “Sure. I understand. But there’s a lot more to this story than you think.”
“Maybe that’s something for another day,” I offered. Darryl was already pale enough. To give him the story that his parents weren’t really his parents might just be a shock too many.
“Okay. But at least let me buy you another beer,” offered Matt. “And I might just have one myself.”
I’d give Darryl his due. He was made of strong stuff. As much as he eyed the door, not once did he attempt to run out of it.
Instead he made small talk with Matt, allowing him to retell stories of Jemima and his life growing up. Darryl smiled in all the right places, but it didn’t take a genius to see the distance between them.
“So, it was mum who instilled in me I should always donate blood,” Matt finished.
“Yeah, yeah. Mine too,” offered Darryl, the first words he’d said in the last ten minutes. “I know my blood group is rare so I donate when I can. Do you know the funny thing?”
I knew lots of funny things but didn’t offer them to the conversation.
“Neither of my parents had the same blood group as me,” Darryl mused.
“That’s not funny,” I said, remembering an assignment I’d done in biology at high school. “AB blood group comes from either parent having A or B, not necessarily AB.”
Matt frowned and squeezed my leg.
“Both my parents had O blood type,” Darryl finished.
It was then I remembered Darryl was adopted. Well, that explained a lot.
“Mum had A blood type,” added Matt. “What do you have, Molly?”
“O. All my family have it. It’s the most common.”
“I wonder what our baby will have?” Matt smiled down at me through his dark lashes, and I knew no matter what happened with Darryl, he was going to be okay.
“Your baby?” coughed Darryl.
“Yeah. We forgot to mention. You’re going to be a grandfather.”
Chapter Fifteen
I sat up in bed and pushed my hair from my face, my breathing ragged. The nightmare had felt all too real and I reached across to Matt, just to check he was alive.
Vampires and blood filled my mind as I tried to shake the dream, and a cold trickle of sweat dripped over my clammy skin.
Untangling my feet from the sheets, I threw my legs over the side of the bed and padded to the bathroom, using the moonlight streaming through the bathroom window to light my way.
Turning the taps to cold, I dabbed my face with water and tossed my nightshirt in the dirty wash basket, before searching for a dry one. I hadn’t had a nightmare like that for a long time, and I wondered if it was the full moon or all the talk of blood causing my imagination to go into overdrive.
Whatever it was, I hoped not to repeat it in a hurry.
Now the problem with dabbing your face with cold water at one a.m. was that it woke you up, and after I got back into bed all I did was toss and turn.
But as I snuggled into Matt, the distant sound of the waves hitting the shore calmed my anxious mind, and my nightmare felt a lot less scary, making it possible to think about it without my heart rate spiking.
There had been so much blood covering Matt and Grannie Carol. As Darryl wandered around the edges of my dream, I’d tried to save them all, but as with all stupid dreams just as I was making progress I’d been transported back to high school. To a biology class to be exact. The chalk board was covered with the same blood that had covered Matt, and I had a drive to learn where it was coming from. As the Grim Reaper greeted me at that classroom door, I’d woken up, tears streaking my cheeks. But what had it all meant?
It probably meant nothing other than my mind doing its nightly download, placing memory where it needed to be. I just wished it could do that job in a much happier environment. Something along the lines of a tropical beach and Chris Hemsworth walking towards me shirtless.
I sighed. Where were those dreams when you needed them?
Neither Matt nor Harper shared my insomnia, their snoring in sync with each other, and by the time the clock ticked over to two a.m., I gave up on sleep and shuffled my way to the kitchen for a hot cup of cocoa and one of those Tim Tams I’d stashed in the back of the fridge.
I’d been living in the same apartment for just over three years and I knew every sound it made. The creaking of the walls as they released the last of the days heat rivalled the hum of the refrigerator, and the quiet whoop whoop of the fan. A lone mosquito buzzed past me, but I didn’t bother swatting it. Instead, I opened the fridge door and blinked as the light blasted my retinas. Small sacrifice for the chocolate biscuit I grabbed. Popping it in my mouth, I filled a cup with milk and zapped it in the microwave, yet all the while parts of my dream moved to the front of my mind.