Chapter Text
Chuck Hansen is ten years old when his Mum dies in an industrial accident, and he's eleven years old when he throws a message in a bottle into the Sydney harbour. The last year has been long and sad, even after Chuck's father stopped drinking and crying all the time, and started just drinking and crying at night instead.
One night after his Dad passes out, Chuck nicks one of his empty beer bottles. He folds up the message he's spend all evening crafting, slides it into the bottle and seals the top as best he can with duct tape. He leaves his father snoring in the arm chair and runs down to the harbour, and throws the whole thing in the water. Chuck leans on the railing for a while, watching the shiny bottle bob in the sea. He has to get back soon. He needs to be up early for school tomorrow.
--
Raleigh Becket is fifteen years old when his Mom dies of cancer, and he's sixteen years old when he sees a message in a bottle floating in the waves off the Anchorage beach. The water is too cold to wade in and get it, and anyway, he's meant to be watching his little sister Jaz while Yancy is at work, so he just stares out the window, willing it to come closer.
Yancy's home by the time the bottle finally washes up on the beach. Raleigh throws on his coat and races down to the shoreline, plucking it out of the surf. When he gets back inside, Yancy is setting the table for dinner and Jaz is chattering to him about her day at school. There are pots bubbling on the stove, and it almost looks like a happy family scene – except the parents are missing.
In the year since his Mom had died, Raleigh's father had disappeared, and his older brother Yancy had taken on the responsibility of looking after him and Jaz. It wasn't fair that Dad had left them. Yancy had just turned eighteen and was meant to start his Industrial Maintenance programme at the technical college in a few months, but instead he'd had to get a job at Safeway. He'd had to shoulder the burden of providing for his younger siblings – a burden he wasn't meant to take on when he should have been enjoying the best years of his life.
Raleigh does his best to keep his head down and do as he's told, because every day when Yancy comes home from another monotonous shift at work he looks so shattered it wouldn't be right to cause more trouble. Getting his homework in on time and dropping Jaz off at school is the least Raleigh can do. They're just trying to muddle through, and keep Jaz in clean clothes, and Raleigh feels like he's aged years in the last twelve months.
So it's exciting when he sees the bottle floating off the shore. It hits him suddenly, a fizzy feeling that he doesn't remember feeling since before his Mom died. It bubbles up in his stomach and he feels like a kid again.
Yancy smiles wearily at him. “Dinner's ready,” he says, dishing out the pasta from one pot and the ragu from another. There's silence as all three of them wolf the food down, hungry from long days and cold weather.
Raleigh offers to do the dishes, because Yancy looks dead on his feet, and scrubs them as quickly as possible, unable to get his mind off the bottle waiting in his parka pocket. He looks into the living room before heading upstairs, but Yancy has already fallen asleep on the sofa. Sleeping, Raleigh's brother looks like the nineteen-year-old kid he should be. Jaz is sitting on the floor, engrossed in drawing something, and doesn't even look up as he passes.
Finally alone in his room, Raleigh looks at the bottle properly. There's a bit of water in the bottom where it hasn't been sealed well enough, but the paper still looks intact. He picks at the duct tape covering the mouth of the bottle, slowly easing away the adhesive until it gives, and he can slide the paper out. When he opens it, he's a little disappointed to see some water damage, though most of the writing is still legible. He reads the childish scrawl:
Dear whoever you are,
My name is Chuck Hansen. I am 11 years old and im from sydney. I herd a story on the radio about a girl who put a message in a bottle and the person who found it wrote back to her and now they are friends. My mum died and none of my friends at school understand but maybe you do. She died in an accident last year. Anyway if you want to be friends then write to me i don't want dad to know so don't fone me okay.
Okay bye. From Chuck hansen
The writing at the bottom of the page was clearly an address once, but the water has smudged and blurred the ink so much that it's illegible.
Raleigh is surprised to find how disappointed he is – this Chuck kid sounds as lost as Raleigh felt last year, except it doesn't look like he has any siblings around for support. Just a deadbeat dad, too wrapped up in his own grief to remember what's left of his family, and, well, Raleigh knows a thing or two about that. But the address is gone, lost to the ocean, so no matter how much Raleigh would like to write back to Chuck Hansen from Sydney and tell him that he understands, it's just not possible.
He throws the bottle away but keeps the sheet of paper, folded back up and safely tucked away in the back of a drawer. Sometimes, when he really misses his Mom and – as much as he loves them – Yancy and Jaz aren't enough, he takes it out and re-reads it and tries to imagine Chuck Hansen.
--
Raleigh spends the rest of high school staying out of trouble as much he can, graduates with average grades, and, despite his protestations that he should get a job and help Yancy support their family, starts at community college. Yancy has been promoted a couple of times now, and is bringing home significantly more than he did as a shelf stacker.
It's been rough at times, but one day Raleigh is sitting in the living room with Jaz while she pretends to do her English homework and he actually does his French homework and Yancy watches the news, and he finds himself blindsided by sudden happiness. French always reminds him of his mother and her soft accent, and there's an immediate reflex feeling of guilt as that voice in the back of his head reminds him that Mom is gone – but instead of bringing him down like it usually does, it fades as he realises that, actually, Mom would be proud of what they've built for themselves. Raleigh is happy, and what's left of his family is healing, and he can't help but wonder if Chuck Hansen from Sydney has found something similar.
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Chuck Hansen is nineteen years old when he gets a Facebook message from some guy he doesn't know.
He'd long since given up on his hopes for receiving a reply to his message in a bottle, hope turning to anger turning to acceptance as he grew up. Neither he nor Herc ever really got over his Mum's death – Herc might have started only drinking on the weekends, but he'd never gone back to being Chuck's dad.
When he'd been younger, Chuck had blamed Herc for everything. He'd even blamed him for letting Mum go to work that day, and though as he got older he'd realised that wasn't fair, he was still angry with his father for getting so wrapped up in his own grief that he damn near forgot about his own son. He hated Herc most when he was drunk, when he tugged Chuck close and cupped his face with those big rough hands and looked at him with teary eyes and mumbled, “You look like her… you look so much like her.”
At thirteen, Chuck would shove Herc away and storm up to his room, slamming the door, frustrated at his father's inability to cope – Chuck was sad too, of course he was sad, but it seemed like his Dad wasn't even trying. At sixteen, he'd take the beer out of Herc's hand and help him upstairs to bed, and just hope he'd pass out quickly before he started crying and Chuck had to get out of the house to escape the sound. At nineteen, he'd say “I know,” and pull away and get Herc a glass of water, and sit beside him on the sofa while they finally, finally talked about Mum.
Nineteen, then, and Chuck is a year into a Marine Biology course at the University of Sydney. Herc's recovery has been slow and painful, and it will probably never be complete, but at least they're at a place where they can function in the real world without Mum. Herc has another job at the base just outside town, though long years of alcohol abuse have made him unfit for active duty and now he teaches at the academy instead.
Chuck has never really lost that kernel of anger burning deep inside, nurtured by years of neglect and confusion and grief. His father had abandoned him for years, as surely as if he'd left altogether, and even the best gestures now couldn't fix that. But he vented it through running and lacrosse, and sailed through high school with excellent grades, his teachers always surprised by his aptitude for academia when they heard about his home life.
He doesn't have any real friends at Uni, too quiet to speak to anyone and too prickly for anyone to speak to him. He's had to join Facebook to keep up with the Marine Biology course announcements, but his only friends on there are people from his course who've added him out of what is probably pity. So it's a surprise, to say the least, when his phone chimes with a message alert. At first his assumes it's from Herc, probably asking him to get something for dinner on his way home from lectures, but it's not the usual text sound, and when he checks the screen it says he's got a Facebook message.
He doesn't recognise the name – Raleigh Becket – or the face in the picture, but he can't help but defer to his curiosity and open the message. He scans the text and the memory of that hope he'd once had hits him all of a sudden. He doesn't remember much of his mother, just a few images of the curl of her hair and the shape of her smile, and the sense of feeling safe and happy, but it all comes rushing back as he reads the message.