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hand. “Charlie, we’ve gotten pretty good at talking things through, haven’t we?”
    I nodded. “I’m trying to get better at it.”
    He smiled at that. “You’re doing great.” He squeezed my hand. “But do you remember in the beginning? It wasn’t easy.” He spoke so calmly. “You’d find it easier to lie and say you were fine when you really weren’t. You’d struggle so hard, and it was easier to say no and be on the defensive and act like you didn’t care than to let someone think, for just one second, that you might be open with them.”
    I swallowed so I could speak. “But why would he lie to some interviewer? He could have just said I was away at college and left it that, but he didn’t. He kept on about it. That doesn’t make sense.”
    Travis shook his head like I was missing the obvious. “He wasn’t lying to them, Charlie. What he said to you was the untruth. He was proud of you. He just couldn’t tell you.”
    I shook my head. It didn’t make sense.
    “Just like you, he’d have found it easier to tell the truth to some stranger than it would be to tell the person he loved the very hard truth. It’s easier to tell a stranger the truth because there’s no risk of rejection. Don’t you see? It was easier for him to act like he didn’t care to you, Charlie, because with you he had the most to lose.”
    I looked at Travis then. Really looked at him. Sitting right next to me, holding my hand, with the bluest of blue eyes, was the only person on the planet who really knew me. He knew my every secret, my every mood, dream and need, he’d seen the worst side of me, and yet he still sat beside me.
    “You hear what I’m saying, Charlie?” Travis said gently.
    Nodding, I swallowed down the lump in my throat and ignored the burn in my eyes. “You’re really kinda perfect, you know that?”
    Ma snorted, and when we looked over, she was wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “You boys are making me cry.”
    Just then, Nara walked into the kitchen and stopped when she saw us. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I was just coming in to help with lunch.”
    Which made us all look at the time. Shit, the morning was almost gone. I stood up and packed everything back into the first box and then realised I hadn’t even touched the second box.
    “I haven’t even started on lunch,” Ma said.
    “I should have fed Nugget by now,” I added, but I looked back at the unopened box.
    Ma put her hand on my arm. “Open it, Charlie. Don’t waste another day. I can get the bottle ready for Nugget…”
    “You know what?” Travis said. “Why don’t you two go and sit in the lounge room and go through the box. I’m sure you have lots to talk about. Nara and I can get lunch organised.”
    I don’t know whether he honestly thought me and Ma needed to talk or if he picked up on how pale Ma was looking, but it was a good idea regardless.
    And she didn’t argue.
    Lookin’ back, that right there, that lack of arguin’, should have told me something wasn’t right.
    But I was too engrossed in the box they’d found in the roof space to notice. The box of my childhood memories and the tiny little snippet of hope—the magazine interview clipping that maybe, just maybe, showed that my father didn’t hate me like I thought he did—sat my feet.
    Ma sat next to me, and I opened the second box. It was smaller and lighter than the first box, and when I opened it, I saw why.
    It only had one book in it.
    A small scrapbook. That’s all there was. I wondered why it was in a separate box if that’s all there was in it. I picked up the scrapbook and set the box down, and slivers of newspaper clippings feathered to the floor.
    I picked them up, probably six or seven, and opened the scrapbook. None of them were stuck in, just left loose, like my dad had run out of time or he wasn’t too sure what to make of them.
    I sat the book between me and Ma and opened the first folded clipping. The paper was old, yellowed and dry.