The image had survived fire and water and bore the tell-tale creases of the journey from the Home Free back to Deloraine, but none of that prevented Tony from beaming at them. He wasn’t as young as he’d been the night he’d held James in this room. He was maybe thirty-five or so, and he had his arm around the dark-haired fellow, who had one hand resting on Tony’s bare chest, their faces closer than mates would have allowed. His cousin was looking straight down the barrel of the camera lens, his joy launching out with a brilliance that completely impaled James.

Doris inhaled and one hand covered her mouth. James could hear the air coursing between her fingers as though feeling its power too. The other hand reached out directionless, like she had nothing to hang onto, so James gently took it in his.

His aunt brushed it aside and pulled the photo from behind the trophy that blocked the face of the man Tony had chosen to be with.

‘He looks so happy,’ Doris whispered. She went to say more, but the words disappeared on a deep exhalation of regret and confusion, and she let the image go.

‘They sure do,’ James said, pressing the trophy back against the photograph.

‘Your father tells me Bobby Jones is claiming he only wanted to give Tony a scare,’ she said, and judging by the trembling of her head she looked about to collapse.

James took both her hands now. ‘Tony wasn’t easily frightened, he would have put up a fight,’ he said, feeling his throat tightening. ‘We need to be prepared for a long wait for justice, Aunty Doris,’ he added. ‘But he was worth it.’

She found his eyes and seemed to regain her sense of balance in them. ‘Thank you for bringing him home,’ she said, giving their hands an encouraging shake before releasing James and taking herself quietly from the room.

James felt his tears again and looked back at the image of his cousin. There was nothing of Doris and Bill’s weathered disappointment in those features, only the shining hair and satisfied smile that would make the front pages one day, the centrepiece of an article so revelatory that the truth could never be denied again.

There was a headline somewhere in all this torment. The words ‘love’ and ‘loss’ formed in James’s mind, so close in shape and significance that they’d work perfectly together on the page.

But he preferred to hold onto just the image of Tony, looking out from the top of his chest of drawers for as long as Doris and Bill kept their boy’s adolescent milestones suspended in expectation. His cousin’s gaze was far more powerful than that, so James adjusted the angle of the picture to meet the window, allowing Tony to always see the morning coming, and sometimes glance across a golden field ready for harvesting.

Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS