She prickled at the old nickname, the long-ago endearment that used to be whispered in her ear or cried against her throat. She looked up and smiled, and made sure the welcome extended to her eyes.
‘Hi, Ethan.’ She didn’t trust herself to say more. Just standing this close to him made her heart feel heavy. It was foolish to miss a man who had left so long ago and stupid to let his occasional returns unbalance her so much, but she’d never been able to control that.
‘You look good. Your hair’s got long.’
Sam continued to scrape, unsure how to respond. He didn’t look good and she wouldn’t pretend he did.
‘Cal tells me you work at the yard.’
‘Yep.’
He paused, slowed by her monosyllabic answer. ‘It’s good to see you.’
Her hand stilled. She looked up, measured her tone and removed the sting from the words before she said, ‘One day you’ll say that on a normal day. But it’s good to see you too. How’ve you been spending your time?’
‘Poorly,’ was his unsatisfying answer. He reached for a near-empty serving tray of satay chicken and carried it into the kitchen behind her. It wasn’t worth salvaging and was scraped into the bin. He turned on the tap at the sink, preparing to wash the tray – then Dean walked in.
Dean was about four inches shy of Ethan’s extraordinary six foot seven, but he was equally solid. They shared their late mother’s brown hair and brown eyes. Ethan’s hair was longer and the curls less defined, but the pair were close in appearance otherwise. Unmistakably brothers; and right now, undeniably at odds.
‘Hey, Dean,’ Sam said, breaking the frosty silence that had stalked in with him.
His eyes softened. ‘Thanks for all your help, Sam.’
‘What else do you need?’
He opened his arms and she crossed to him. She squeezed tightly then eased away. He smiled down at her and lightly bumped her jaw with his knuckles.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured.
She glanced back at Ethan, stood rigidly by the sink, washing anything within reach. To Dean she said, ‘I’ll check on the kids.’
As she left the kitchen she imagined the temperature dropped behind her.
Nina was sitting on the back verandah steps, watching her brother kick a football with Cal. She shuffled against Sam’s hip the moment Sam sat down.
‘Hiya, Neenz.’
‘Hi, Sammy.’
The girls watched Cal shout and leap, attempting to animate Rowan and engage him in the moment. The afternoon sun was kind, warm and golden, and separated them from the black and grey of late.
‘I have questions,’ Nina said to her knees.
Sam’s insides jarred unpleasantly. Fear crowded alongside her sense of responsibility. As soon as she’d lost Bree, Sam had told herself that she’d help Dean raise his kids. She’d been in their lives from the start, they were as good as family to her. But she didn’t want to get it wrong. This was an important moment. A defining one. Nina had to know that she could always turn to Sam. She had to know that Sam had the answers, or that she’d try her hardest to get them for her.
‘Of course you do,’ Sam said. ‘Ask away.’
Nina sat in thoughtful silence for five kicks of the football. At last she said, ‘Everyone says Mummy’s gone.’
‘That’s right, darling, she is.’
‘But she’s down the road,’ she said, referring to the cemetery on the other side of town.
Six years old, Sam thought. Too young to need to understand death. ‘Her body’s down the road, Neenz. What they mean is that she’s not in her body any more.’
Nina considered this. ‘Daddy told me about souls. I said goodbye to her body, but. Cos her body has ears. Was that wrong?’
Sam hooked her arm around Nina’s slight shoulders and pulled the child against her. Tiny arms encircled her and held on tightly. ‘No, little one. That was good thinking.’
The football landed at Rowan’s feet and rolled. He watched it until it became still in the grass, then walked away.
‘She came back telling anyone who’d listen that you’d tricked her away from Bree’s wake!’ Dean said.
Ethan finished loading the glassware in the dishwasher and returned to the sink. ‘I said what I had to, to get her to leave. The woman was going to cause a scene.’ He dragged the bottom shelf out and began loading plates.
‘You made a scene
for
her! It was all anyone could talk about!’
‘Really? Never mind that she turned up looking like a one-night stand.’
‘We expect nothing less of her. But no one expected you to take her up on the offer!’
‘Because I’m clearly shagging her right now.’
‘This isn’t about you, Ethan!’
‘Damned if I thought it was!’
Ethan carried his bad temper into the living room. His hands shook as he reached for more plates to clear away. Dean followed, impatient to continue their row.
‘I’m getting goddamn fed up with that suit, let me tell you.’
Ethan swallowed the comeback that threatened and returned to the kitchen, his arms overloaded. He rinsed and stacked in silence, content to be Dean’s whipping boy only because the man was grieving.
‘What’ll it be next, huh? Ro’s graduation?’ The boy was eight. It was a well-aimed jab. ‘How long are you sticking around for this time? Where do you go when you disappear for years on end?’
‘I thought this wasn’t about me?’
‘You made it about you when you came home.’
‘I came back, I didn’t come home.’
‘Christ, Ethan, I can’t deal with this. Go back to wherever it is that you came from. And next time there’s a suit occasion just bloody stay away. Do us all a favour.’
Ethan threw cutlery into the sink. The noise was like a scream. He wiped his hands on the dishcloth then held them over his head. Although it near choked him to do it, he left the room without a word.
He passed Sammy in the hallway. Her pink cheeks and rounded eyes suggested she’d heard more than she’d meant to. She clutched napkins and tablecloths to her chest. Sometime in the last half-hour she’d kicked off her shoes. He clapped her on the back and moved upstairs.
The hallway was bathed in the fading light of day. Long shadows stretched along the beige carpet, in other places it burned gold. The western-facing window in his childhood bedroom also opened the space up to the sun. Light saturated the bedspread, the desk chair and the faded rug between.
He ignored it all as he strode to his suitcase and threw open the lid. Wrapped within a hooded jacket was a bottle of whisky. He uncapped it and drank from the neck. It burned. After a number of mouthfuls it began to warm. After a number more, it began to dull everything.
They were waiting for him in the kitchen. Rowan wore Transformers pyjamas and peered up at Ethan behind unruly curls. It was startling to think he’d once looked the same. Nina wore a soft pink nightdress. She, too, looked like a bird had nested in her hair. They stood before the stovetop, Nina holding a plastic container with both hands, Rowan holding an assortment of kitchen utensils.
It was a little before seven in the morning. He’d hoped to sneak downstairs, hunt up a few painkillers and return to bed. But luck had not risen with him today.
‘What have you got there?’ His eyes darted to the stovetop but nothing appeared to be on.
‘Pancakes,’ Nina supplied. She grinned. One of her front teeth was still coming in and the gap distracted him. She held the pancake-mix container up. ‘Please?’
There was a marching band in his head, but he hadn’t done enough for these kids. So breakfast became his only priority. He took the container, squinted at the label.
‘Where’s your measuring cup?’
Nina padded over to a cupboard to retrieve it.
‘And your frying pan?’
Nina found this too. The clatter of pots and pans rivalled the noise in his head. He winced and thanked her.
Minutes later, Ethan was frying butter and flipping pancakes.
Rowan looked into the pan, clearly perplexed. But it was his sister who voiced concern.
‘That’s not right. They’re s’posed to be circles.’
Rowan nodded.
Ethan considered them. ‘But look here – if they’re long, I can flip’em real easy. See?’ He demonstrated. Rowan raised his brows and Ethan considered that a kind of applause. Nina, however, did clap. She grasped Rowan’s wrist and wriggled on the spot. Once she’d finished her curious little dance she went to the fridge. Her eyes boggled at the plates and dishes stacked high on each shelf. She turned to Ethan, a small pout on her little lips. ‘Jam?’
He flipped another pancake and joined her.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘We should have started on some of this. Blackberry jam?’
‘No.’
‘Raspberry?’
‘No.’
‘What am I looking for here, kid?’
‘Strawberry.’
‘Strawberry. Got it.’ Thankfully it was in the door. He handed it to her and returned to the stove. As he waited for each pancake to cook, he watched the boy put himself to use. Four cups. Four plates. A cutlery stand and a bottle of juice. But when Rowan stood staring into the fridge, Ethan thought he might have become distracted by the shelves of colourful plates and food.
Then Nina said, ‘Cream.’ Quite urgently.
A small tub of cream was placed on the kitchen table.
The kid was long and lean. He had Ethan’s build and would probably grow to be as tall. But there was something in his face that gave Ethan pause. He couldn’t guess what it was until he was sitting across from Rowan at the table.
Rowan glanced up at him, shy and thoughtful, and for a moment Ethan saw his own father. He swallowed and looked away. ‘You have your grandfather’s grey eyes,’ he said to his plate.
Rowan nodded once.
Nina said, ‘Daddy says I’m just like Grandma. He says I’m friendly.’ There was jam beneath her right eye.
‘You certainly are.’
‘I have questions,’ she said.
Ethan tensed. Casually, he said, ‘Let’s hear’em.’
‘I looked and looked and you’re in no photos.’
Ethan caught Rowan’s eye. Rowan looked down and gave his attention to the cream. ‘I’m not around much,’ was Ethan’s answer.
She blinked. ‘You’re around now.’
‘True.’
They ate quietly for a time. Dean joined them a few minutes later, rumpled from a clearly fitful sleep. He did not comment on the pancakes as he took a seat opposite his daughter. He wiped the jam from her face and touched the back of her hand. Rowan accepted a pat on the back with a smile. And Ethan was ignored. Which he supposed was better than attention, if yesterday was anything to go by.
Dean did, however, give his attention to the cream. The kids noticed what had caught his interest and began to stare at it too.
Ethan wasn’t slow. He guessed the little tub had been for Bree. The others ate their pancakes without it and all were now pondering the fate of the dairy product. Did they bin it? Was it acceptable to throw away a person’s food so soon after their death? Or should it moulder in the fridge so no one’s feelings got hurt?
Ethan reached for it. Everyone blinked, startled. He had an audience as he spooned a helping on top of the jam on his pancake. When he took a bite, Rowan and Nina smiled.
Dean’s brows crept together. ‘You’re lactose intolerant.’
‘Not today I’m not.’
Dean speared a piece of pancake and concentrated on his plate.
Sensing a routine, Ethan bowed out of clean-up. He needed to shower off yesterday and chase away his hangover with soap. He found painkillers in the bathroom vanity and downed them gratefully. The shower was over the bath and the water stream was strong.
Standing under the spray, he lifted his face to the ceiling and waited for peace to find him.
When he gave that up, he stepped out and began drying himself. A broken tile caught his eye and preoccupied him. Wearing no more than a knotted towel around his waist, Ethan crouched before the basin cupboard and peered inside. It was old, original to the farmhouse, and within moments he found what he was looking for. Beyond the neatly arranged storage containers, the Damp-Rid and the dust, were three spare tiles, left behind long ago in the event of chips or cracks.
Twenty minutes later he’d dressed, raided the toolshed in the backyard, levered the cracked tile free and replaced it with one of the spares. He stood for a moment, scrutinising his work. Then he gazed around for something to stop the family from walking on the tile before the glue and grout dried.
He turned and spotted Rowan in the doorway.
‘Hey, kid.’
Rowan stared up at him then looked at the tile.
A fussy wooden toilet-roll holder would do the job. Ethan put it in place. As he stepped around the boy, he said, ‘Mind that tile, won’t you?’
By the time he hunted up a pen and scrap paper to write on, he’d been beaten to the job. Ethan stood in the bathroom door. A page torn from a notebook was taped to the holder. On it were three tall letters that said it all:
WET
.
Rowan was nowhere to be seen.
For the next hour, Ethan put his pen and paper to use and kept himself occupied. In one column he listed jobs that needed doing around the house, in a second the tools that would be required to get it done.
Dean found him poking at a cornice in the study.
‘I’m surprised you’re still here,’ Dean said.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t relocate me in my sleep.’
Dean grunted and Ethan wondered if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
‘What are you doing?’ Dean cast a suspicious eye over the page but he was too far away to read it.
‘Making a list.’
‘Useful. Listen, I’m going into work. I’m taking the kids.’
Ethan looked from the ceiling to his brother and lowered his hands. ‘Still at the garage?’
Dean crossed his arms. ‘Of course. We’ll be back around four.’
‘You don’t think you’re going back too soon?’
‘I don’t like the alternative.’
Because the alternative was staying at home with him, Ethan couldn’t argue. ‘Leave the kids with me.’
‘No.’
Ethan sighed. He eased down off the stepladder and hooked his thumbs in his shorts pockets. The page in his hand whispered against the fabric. ‘Just like that? No?’
‘Just like that.’
‘Don’t make them sit in your office all day. It may not be a circus hanging out with me, but it’ll be better than that dump.’
Dean considered this as one would the choice between lemons and onions. At length he uncrossed his arms. ‘You got a mobile phone?’
‘Of course.’
Dean withdrew an old model from his pocket and readied his thumb. ‘Number?’
Ethan rattled it off, all the while wondering if it were sad that his brother didn’t have it already. There were dark circles around Dean’s eyes. His clothes were creased and he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Ethan took this in and wondered where the line was. How much right did he have to care?
‘How’re you doing this morning?’ he asked tentatively.
‘My wife just died. How’re you doing?’
Ethan flinched. He said nothing when Dean turned to leave.
In the doorway, Dean paused. He looked over his shoulder. ‘Do you have a wife?’
Ethan shook his head. ‘No.’
And the strangers parted ways for the day.
‘You’ll find that horsepower is more than adequate. Anything faster and your wife will hunt me down, Buzz.’
Jonathan ‘Buzz’ Franklin chortled. He nodded and slapped the steering wheel. ‘Too right, too right. I’m just thinking greedy now. It just needs to be better than Donny’s, Sam.’
Sam leaned into the driver’s window and tapped the brim of Buzz’s football cap. ‘This one kicks arse,’ she said, referring to the latest model of laser-cut band saws, something they had been discussing for the last fifteen minutes.
‘Then get one of the boys to help me load it up.’
‘I’ve got it.’ She slapped the roof of the dual-cab ute and stepped off the running board. Walking ahead of Buzz’s car now, she indicated that he should follow, and got him to pull up alongside a collection of pallets full of power tools. Buzz leapt from the car to help, anxious that she would attempt to lift the large box herself, although Sam still carried most of the weight as they shifted it from pallet to tray. ‘Mum’ll ring it up for you at the front. See you round, Buzz.’
‘Catch ya, Sam. Cheers.’
She neatened up the plastic wrap around the saws still on the pallet, checked her watch and thought it about time she went over to the pub for that beer-battered flake her brother had promised her. When she checked in with her dad everything was moseying along fine: he was tinkering in the workshed putting finishes on a display board. She left through the staff gates. It meant she’d have to circle the lot to get back to the main street, but it was still faster than walking out past her mother. Catherine O’Hara lived her life serenely oblivious to other people’s schedules. Apparently no one had anywhere they need be going when they could stop for a quick chat with her.
Quick being the laughable word, there. Buzz wasn’t going to get out of the lot for at least fifteen minutes.
Samantha tugged her cap off and tucked it into her back pocket. She tousled her hair and undid her work shirt, exposing her singlet top and sun-bronzed skin. It was warm enough that she was perspiring, and the forecast predicted higher temperatures in the last few weeks of February. She liked summer well enough, but preferred autumn. The deciduous trees would turn from a brilliant green to a spectrum of red before they fell from their heights and lined the streets of Hinterdown with crackling colour. People would bustle about in scarves and beanies. It was all so cosy. Summer just burned. She’d been putting a towel on the front seat of her car, lately – not to protect the leather so much as her flesh.
Bright reflections off cars and windows tickled her eyes as she walked past the small supermarket and the modest chemist out of its depth the moment someone came down with something the least bit exotic. The front yard of one of the many houses along the main street was full of screaming, shrieking children in their bathing suits, enjoying a hot Saturday with their friends. A large sprinkler jetted cool water into the air and soaked the lawn underfoot.
To some this town was inconsequential – a small settlement built around the rich grazing areas of southern New South Wales – but to others, Hinterdown was more than enough.
Sam loved it here. She’d been born and raised in this town, just like Dean, Ethan and Bree. She knew every street, every local and every bit of gossip worth hearing in these parts. She sat in the same pub as her primary school teachers, sold machine parts to farmers she’d terrorised as a girl, and hadn’t been the subject of the town’s scrutiny in two years. Which wasn’t a coincidence.
That Ethan Foster, he managed to put Sam’s names on people’s lips every time he breezed through town.
People wondered if she still held a candle for him. One woman had even gone so far as to suggest Sam leave town to escape Ethan’s sporadic returns. But Sam didn’t want to leave. As much as she hated the spotlight on her now, as much as it might be easier to leave Ethan and Bree behind her and start again, she wouldn’t go.
She’d sometimes wondered if she should thirst for more. Maybe she was a small-town girl with small dreams, maybe she didn’t know any better, but she had no desire to leave and map out another life. She’d travelled and seen the odd wonder or two, but she would always return to this place. There were people like Ethan who could leave it all in his dust, and people like Anna who craved bigger and better things than this small country life – but then there were people like Sam, Cal and Dean – their loyalty to this town was solid and ever-lasting.
By the time Sam rounded the outer perimeter of the yard, she had missed the lunch rush. Even from half-a-street away she could see that the pub’s outdoor dining area was nearly empty. It would be the same inside.
Her stride hitched when little Nina Foster exploded out of a shop ahead, her little legs furiously pumping her towards the road. Before Sam had taken a step in her direction, Ethan appeared, a blur of white and khaki. He seized Nina under the armpits and lifted her into the air. Her delighted squeal was a beautiful thing to hear. Without pausing, he rolled her under his arm like a football and charged back into the shop, the sole café in Hinterdown.
Curious, Sam approached. She pushed aside the plastic curtain strips meant to deter flies, and saw Ethan waiting at the counter, Rowan at his side, Nina locked against the counter with his knee. She was giggling and swatting at him, trying to free herself, but the kid stood no chance.
Ethan looked to be nursing a temper.
It was the first time in eleven years that she’d seen him two days in a row. Every time before now he’d left the same day, staying only long enough to witness whatever milestone or highlight had made it onto his radar. Two years ago it had been Bree opening her little craft shop, six years ago it had been Nina’s birth, eight years ago, Rowan’s. When Dean and Bree had married a year before that, Ethan had left before the end of the reception, murmuring about the long drive.