The Paler Shade of Autumn (31 page)

Autumn flinches—his insult reaching her like a punch to her stomach. She bites her lip hard to stop the sob that is sitting in the back of her throat. “How dare you. You have no idea what it’s like for me. None at all. And if I should be blaming someone, it should be you. You’re the one who gave me this insight.”

Jet gasps. “You truly believe that?”

“Yes, I do.”

He raises his fist to the door again but stops himself from throwing his hand into it. Instead he sucks in a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry to have inadvertently fucked up your life so much, Autumn. I really am. Perhaps I am better off without you because I really have no desire to live my life with someone who resents me. A man can only give so much of himself before he’s empty.”

Autumn nods and tries to answer in a strong voice, but instead it passes from her lips raspy and weak. “I’ll just pack a few things and I’ll be out of your hair.

“Don’t bother. I’ll save you the effort.” He spins and marches towards the foyer.

“Where are you going?” she yells after him.

He doesn’t answer. Instead she hears the lift ding and moments later the doors close. Jet is gone and she is left in an apartment that is so heavy with silence it is suffocating.

Jet doesn’t come home, he doesn’t call, not even a text message. Autumn never could have conceived of the choking grief that has overcome her, nor the regret that has consumed her since he walked out. The emotions, her own emotions, are heavier and so much more painful than any she has seen second-hand from others.

Eyes swollen from a night of tears, Autumn drags her body to the bathroom for a shower. She slowly undresses out her pyjamas, her body feeling so weighted she finds it difficult to stand. With shaking hands, she turns on the taps to set the water to steaming hot. As she lethargically raises her leg to step in, the intercom buzzes.
Jet
.

Autumn quickly turns off the taps and retrieves her pyjamas from the shower floor. She re-dresses while running towards the intercom.

“Hello,” she says breathless.

“Honey, it’s Dad, can I come up?”

“Dad?”

“Hi, honey.”

“I’ll—just buzz you in.”

She unlocks the doors for him and waits in the foyer, just outside the lifts. The doors glide open moments later to reveal her father. Frank’s already wrinkled face crumples as he frowns. “Honey, we need to talk.”

Autumn nods, wiping tears from her cheeks with her tank top. She leads Frank to the kitchen and flicks the jug on to boil.

“Jet came around to the house last night” says Frank, sitting at a stool lining the bench. He releases a long sigh. “He told me about what’s going on.”

“What did he say?”

“He was so drunk he could barely stand, so what he said was mostly nonsensical. But I could see he was distraught and what I did understand of his rambling was to enough to give the general gist: you’re not coping with your insight.”

Autumn nods, flutters her eyelids to keep the tears from showing again. She is absolutely sick of crying.

“He said you’re distancing yourself from people, including him. That’s not right, Autumn. You’re a young woman, you should be enjoying your life.”

“I’m a little different to most young women, Dad.”

“Jet wholeheartedly blames your mother for what’s happening.”

Autumn covers her mouth with her hand and groans. “I know, I’m sorry.”

Frank raises his hand. “I’m not here to place blame or to make you feel guilty for anything. You’ve been through enough.” Too soon that determined frown appears on his lips again. “I’m the one that should be saying sorry,” he says. “I should never have let it get this far.”

Autumn narrows her eyes. “What?”

“Autumn, I’ve neglected to tell you something important. And with things going from worse to worse, I can see now that it was a stupid decision to keep it secret from you.”

“What secret?”

“Maybe it’s best you find out for yourself.” He extends his bear-sized hand.

She eyes his hand reaching out towards her and shakes her head. “What are you doing?”

“Just take it, Autumn.”

“But you don’t like me to touch your hand.”

Frank cringes. “I know I’ve said that in the past, but I really would like you to just take my bloody hand.”

Slowly, she reaches towards his thick fingers with her own; takes his hand in hers. Nothing. She recoils and stares at him, eyes wide. “I can’t see anything, at all.”

He nods, his mouth drawn into a tight line. “Now try again.”

She touches her hand to his again and is promptly flooded with images. Wonderful pictures of him and her mum when they first met, the love they held for each other; swirling images of the day Autumn was born, his first thoughts as he looked into her curious blue eyes; and vivid emotions of wonderment and unfaltering love. But then the splashes of imagery change colour to a familiar shade, a shade she recognises with her own thoughts. And then, in an instant, the movie-reel stops. She releases her hand again.

“I don’t understand, Dad. What’s happening?”

He nods towards his hand again, willing her to grasp it. Autumn’s heart slams against her ribcage. Her movements are faster this time; tentativeness replaced with unsuppressed inquisitiveness. She grabs a hold of his hand and her entire body buzzes as the vivid colours, characters and motions dance in her mind and explain it all to her before she consciously registers it all herself.

“Oh my God, Dad,” she says, staring at him, eyebrows arching high. “You have this insight too?”

“Yes, honey. So if you’re going to blame anyone for giving you this gift, it’s me.”

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t expect you to say anything to me. My only hope is that this helps you.”

Autumn nods, mouth still hanging open. She can no longer find her voice as the information received from her father attempts to find a home in her mind. Suddenly she is dizzy, each breath hitching in her throat.

“Jet’s staying at the hotel. Go and talk to him. I’ve seen his mind, Autumn, and I know how much he genuinely loves you. I couldn’t ask more for my only daughter but to have her experience the happiness a love like that brings.”

Autumn has, since she was left in the silence of the apartment after Jet stormed out and felt the incapacitating pain his absence caused her, wanted to talk to him. She wanted to take back what she had said and wrap him in her arms and love him with all the intensity she has always loved him. Now, knowing what she knows, the desire and urgency to make things right between them has heightened. Autumn only hopes she isn’t too late. But despite all her willingness, she can’t move her rigid muscles.

Frank laughs, stands and takes her by the arm. “Come on, I’ll drive you there myself.”

Hotel reception rings Jet’s room to announce Autumn’s arrival. She rides the elevator to his room, hands clasped tightly together in front of her. She licks her lips, offering a measure of moisture, which her mouth seems completely devoid of. Autumn doesn’t know what to expect when she is standing in front of Jet. Has she pushed him too far? Has she hurt him too much?

It seems to take hours for the lift to arrive at his room, but when it does and the doors open on the familiar room, her stomach rolls over on itself. He’s waiting for her in the foyer, unshaven, his hair dishevelled.

Jet paces slowly towards her. “Hi,” he says, the frown never leaving his lips.

“Hi.”

He turns and leads her to the sitting room. They sit side by side on the small Victorian sofa.

Autumn lifts her attention from her hands and gazes at Jet. “I’m so sorry, Jet.”

Jet nods.

“I don’t blame you. I never truly did. I think I was just so scared that I might hurt you and that I was a burden to you. I thought pushing you away from me was the best way to deal with it.”

“Either way you lose me, Autumn.”

“I know. I can see that now. I also know that it feels far worse to be apart from you than anything else I could ever see with my insight.”

Jet rests his head in hands, his elbows on his knees.

“Is the damage, are the words I’ve said, irreparable? Am I too late to expect that we still have the chance of having a happy relationship?”

Jet lifts his head and looks at her, his eyes so forlorn she can barely look at them. “That’s up to you, Autumn.”

“I love you. So much. And I think we definitely can do this, as long as you still want to.”

“I’ve only ever wanted to be with you,” he says. Autumn nods, closes her eyes. Every muscle in her body has turned to water. “But this insight will always be a part of our lives and as long as you struggle to reconcile it with yourself and with your life, it will forever be an issue.”

“I know,” she says. “But I don’t think it will be a problem anymore.”

Jet sits upright. “What do you mean?”

“Dad visited me this morning.”

“And?”

“He told me something that has changed things.”

Autumn tells Jet, with as much detail as she can conjure, of what took place between her father and herself.

“Frank has this insight as well? I can’t believe it. I … wow.” Jet stands, shakes his head, and strides a few steps left, then right, before he sits again. “And he only just told you this now?”

“He’s kept it a secret from everyone, even my mother. He touched my hand and shared everything with me, the whole story from when he was just a little boy and was growing up with insight. He told me everything. My dad, who I thought was so uptight about it all, so practical, turns out to be the least practical of us all. He just had a secret he couldn’t dare risk anyone finding out about.”

“What? A secret greater than the insight itself?”

Autumn nods. “A much bigger secret than that.”

Autumn allows the images Frank gifted her to find voice. She tells Jet how her father was so much younger than her when he realised he was different from everyone else—just four years old. His mother had died when he was only two and his father was such a tough, practical man who resorted to physical abuse at the slightest of provocations. Frank tried to tell his dad about his gift when he was four, but was flogged so hard he couldn’t sit down for three days, for telling lies. From that point on, with no other siblings or relatives to confess to, he just learned to live with his insight in silence. And he coped well enough, until he was sixteen.

Frank had a crush on a girl at his school for years, since he was in primary school. But one cold Tuesday night she simply disappeared off the face of the Earth, or so it seemed. For months, nobody could find any trace of her. Until Frank discovered her whereabouts: buried in a shallow grave, rotting under moist soil and leaves in nearby bushland. She had been murdered and Frank glimpsed every horrid detail of it in the mind of the police officer who had done it. It tore Frank up. He didn’t know what to do. Did he keep his insight a secret and let this beast get away with murdering the girl, or did he risk his own personal comfort and tell police what this man had done?”

“So I’m assuming he told the police?” asks Jet.

A frown washes over Autumn’s face. “Yep. And they didn’t believe him, no matter how much he tried to prove otherwise. I felt his desperation and then the fear when the police turned on him and started to question how he possibly could know so much detail about the location of the girl’s body.”

“They thought he was the one that murdered the girl?”

Autumn nods. “The whole town was convinced he was a murderer. His own father had him as good as convicted, and beat him so bad one night that he thought he was going to die. Dad’s father was so much bigger and stronger and the only thing he could do to stop his Dad from beating him to death was to stab him in the leg with a knife from the kitchen drawer. He fled after that and never returned. He started a new life in Queensland, far away from everyone who ever knew him. For years he kept to himself, trapped by his own gift and by what the police thought he had done, and by what he had done to his father. He lived in fear of what else he might see or do and so hid away from the world.”

“I can’t believe he has lived with this secret for so long.”

“He couldn’t risk anyone knowing.”

“Not even your mother?”

Autumn shakes her head. “He didn’t think anyone would ever possibly believe him.”

“Not even after your mother found out about you?”

“Mum didn’t cope too well when she found out about me. He knew she couldn’t handle the whole truth of the matter, that he too had the same gift.”

“Why is he only telling you this now?”

“He saw the grief it caused you and me trying to deal the insight. He did it to help me. To help us. Mum still doesn’t know, so we need to keep it a secret between us three. But what he showed me has made me think so much differently about this insight and about the future. Before I could only see darkness amidst the memories of everyone around me, but now, I can see it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Jet moves closer, his face, lips, moulded by curiosity. “What did he show you?”

“He showed me that the insight is controllable.”

Jet ruffles his fingers through his hair. She can’t remember ever seeing him so scattered before, except perhaps when she first told him about her own situation all that time ago in Bodh Gaya. “Has Frank learned to control his insight?”

Autumn smiles. “He has. It took some years to master, but he can listen or not listen to the thoughts of others as he chooses. He has learnt to compartmentalise the memories of others away from his own and can lock them away until he chooses to view them.”

“Could you do the same?” His voice is only a whisper.

“I think so. With a single touch of his hand, he’s shown me how. I’ll have to practise, but I think I can.”

Jet’s body deflates as nine months of built-up pressure releases from his mouth via a single, long hiss. “This offers you hope—offers us hope.”

Autumn laughs. “It does. It makes me feel positive and hopeful and so happy.”

“Me too, Autumn.”

Autumn lowers her eyes to her hands as a solid surge of guilt racks her heart. “I am so sorry about what I’ve put you through, Jet. I’m so very sorry. I love you. So much. It hurts me to think I could ever try to push you away.”