Authors: Elisabeth Rose
His mother was making breakfast when Shay opened the back door.
“Morning, love,” she said. “You’re up early. Like some porridge?”
“Morning. I walked out to Wright’s fence. Where Bill hit the tree.”
“He was lucky. He could’ve been killed. Silly sod.”
“Is Joelle awake?” asked Shay. “I want to get on the road as soon as possible.”
“I think so. I heard someone in the bathroom just now. Your father’s still snoring. Do you want porridge or not?” She stood holding the empty saucepan in one hand and the familiar red box of rolled oats in the other.
“Yes, please.”
Shay plonked himself down at the table. His mother already had the tea made and places set. Shay poured milk into his cup and filled it to the brim with tea. He took a tentative sip at the steaming hot brew. He watched her measure rolled oats into the saucepan. She tossed in a pinch of salt, added water and set the pan on the stove. He’d made the wooden spoon she was using in Year Seven woodwork class.
“I’m moving back here,” said Shay. “I’ve decided.”
“Are you? When?” The unadulterated delight on her face made Shay smile despite the ache in his heart.
“As soon as I’ve fixed the details with the practice. Cathy O’Brian is willing to do a straight swap. House and all.”
“She lives in one of those new cottages,” said Amy.
“She said.”
“When did you decide this?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, you knew that.”
“Yes but to suddenly organise the whole thing like that without telling us.” She stirred the porridge vigorously. “Why now, all of a sudden?”
Shay shrugged. “When I was out walking just now I suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the noise and dirt of the city. Trev said I was welcome any time; Cathy O’Brian really wants to leave. I hadn’t made up my mind but this morning…”
“Good,” declared Amy firmly. “Good. I’m so glad, Shay.” She took the milk jug from the table and poured milk into the porridge pan. She resumed stirring and said thoughtfully, “Does Joelle know yet? I wonder how she’ll take the news.”
“Why?” Shay drank more tea nonchalantly. His mother’s back was turned; she wouldn’t notice his hand trembling.
“She’s in a mess, poor girl. About her parents, I mean. She might feel you’re deserting her just when she needs your support.”
“Joelle knows I want her to go and talk to them. She’s the one who won’t bend.” It came out far more viciously than he intended. “And she knows I want to move back here.”
“She’s had an awful shock.”
“It’s about time she got over it,” he said deliberately trying a new callous attitude. “It’s been weeks.”
His mother didn’t reply. She turned the heat down under the porridge and added more milk.
“I’m surprised Cathy O’Brian wants to leave, she’s been seeing a lot of one of the science teachers from Tamworth High.”
“She didn’t mention anything to me. Maybe it’s gone wrong.”
“Maybe. Love can be a complicated business.”
Joelle fought back hot tears when big Stan hugged her goodbye. They had a link no-one else could ever duplicate or destroy. The three of them: Shay, Stan and Joelle—forever connected by a chance encounter on a smoke-filled day from hell. Stan had taken her to the spot he found Emily. He remembered it exactly, he said, because of the dead gum over the fence and the road sign opposite indicating a sharp bend.
Now it was unremarkable. An ordinary piece of dry grass covered verge in a stretch of equally ordinary roadside. Joelle and Stan had stood silently staring at the spot he indicated.
“Did you ever discover how she got here?” asked Joelle.
Stan shook his head. “Complete mystery. But there was such chaos at the time—lasted three or four days, the fires, and then there was the clean-up afterwards, people lost their homes, people died—one little girl just got lost in the muddle. And we had two live babies to care for whose grandparents didn’t want anything to do with them.”
“You were wonderful to take in Shay,” she said.
“We didn’t see it like that. We regarded him as a gift. Just as your parents did you,” Stan reminded her gently. “Don’t sell them short, Joelle.”
Joelle walked to the car and opened the door. She slid into the passenger seat while Stan got in beside her.
He started the engine and turned the car awkwardly in the narrow dirt road. When they were heading towards Birrigai again he said, “Go and see them, love. You can’t carry this hurt for much longer. It’ll eat you away inside. You’ll grow bitter and hateful and that’s not the real you.”
“The truth is always the best way,” she murmured cynically. Pity William and Natalie hadn’t seen it Stan’s way.
“Yes. I believe it is. It’s also often the hardest way. But you can’t blame your parents for what they did. They’re human like the rest of us. They’ll be gone one day and you don’t want to live out your life regretting the words you never said.”
“Dad had cancer last year,” Joelle said suddenly. “We were terrified we’d lose him.”
“Is he all right now?”
“He’s in remission. I suppose it could return any time.”
Stan sighed. “All the more reason to make it right with them.”
“I suppose.” If William had a relapse she’d be at his side in a heartbeat, she knew. Holding this grudge was beginning to seem pointless and childish. Stan had a knack of cutting straight to the heart of the matter. Life and death. Choosing to give love or choosing to withhold it.
“Promise me, you’ll give it some proper thought,” he said. “I can’t make you forgive them but I know you’d never forgive yourself if something happened to your Dad before you got it sorted.”
“I promise,” said Joelle.
“Good girl.”
That was all he said on the subject. And that was also why Joelle hugged him tight and struggled to hold in the tears as they stood in the driveway with the early morning sun shining in her eyes.
“Come back and see us soon,” said Amy, hugging Joelle just as hard when it came to her turn.
“I will. Thank you…for everything.”
“No need for thanks, love,” said Stan. “You’re part of the family now. Drive safely, Shay. Don’t go speeding.”
“I won’t, Dad.”
Stan slammed Shay’s door and waved to Joelle through the window. He slung an arm around Amy’s shoulders. Jedda lolled against his legs.
“Safe trip,” called Amy. Shay started the engine.
Joelle craned her neck and waved until the couple were lost from sight, obscured by the trees and shrubs of the front gardens. She sniffed and wiped her nose on a tissue.
Shay drove straight through the sleepy town. No-one was up at seven on Easter Monday.
“We should be back in Sydney by two,” he said. He accelerated beyond the sixty kilometre per hour limit. Joelle glanced across at his face in profile. He was surly this morning, mouth set in a hard line, dark smudges under the eyes.
“Anything wrong?” she asked carefully. “If you like I can drive.”
“I’m fine.” Curt to the point of rudeness.
“You look tired that’s all.”
“I’m fine.”
The new cottages flashed by. Birrigai receded, open paddocks stretched to the horizon. The sun, still low-lying, shone bright in their faces as the road swung eastward. Joelle pulled out her sunglasses and stuck them on her nose.
“Amy and Stan are wonderful,” she said.
“I know.”
“I like Lisa, I’d love to meet her family. And Ben’s. Amy said I should come back for Christmas. Can I come with you? You go home for Christmas, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I’ll already be in Birrigai next Christmas,” said Shay without turning his head. Joelle frowned at the tone. Exasperated and bored—fed-up. Maybe he’d had too much of his new sister. An overdose.
She licked her lips, swallowed the rush of chagrin, the humiliation at being so oblivious to his true feelings while enjoying the warm embrace of his family and friends. She’d naively thought he was pleased at how well the visit had gone.
“Have you found a position?” she asked carefully after a few moments.
“I can do a complete swap with one of the doctors at the Medical Centre. House, job and all.”
The blank stare of his sunglasses flicked her way briefly then returned to the road ahead.
“Oh.” Joelle’s stomach plummeted. “When?”
“As soon as we can organise the details.” He said it with a certain grim satisfaction.
“I didn’t think you wanted to move until the end of the year,” she said, trying for a light conversational tone when really she wanted to wail in despair.
“If the opportunity is there I have to take it,” he said.
“I suppose so.”
More kilometres flashed beneath the wheels of the Golf. More brown paddocks. More listless sheep. More gums standing tall and stately. The sun rose higher so they were no longer blinded. Clouds began building in the distance chasing the sun’s ascent.
“I won’t see you very much,” said Joelle as if the half hour silence between comments hadn’t existed.
“Probably not,” said Shay. “I don’t see Lisa and Ben much and I haven’t seen Evan for months. Life’s like that. We all have our own lives.”
He didn’t care. His off-hand tone made it all too clear. He couldn’t wait for this trip to be over so he could drop her off and get on. He’d accomplished the goal of finding his sister, now he would set his sights on another—moving back to Birrigai. What would be the target after that? Finding a wife? Having children?
“I haven’t seen Bridget for nearly a year.”
Shay grunted which she took to be some sort of acknowledgement of her remark or, on the other hand, could have been a throat clearing. She wasn’t game to ask. His manner was too forbidding. What had happened between them? Again, she was too nervous of this unfamiliar, distant man to ask.
He stopped for a break at the same place they’d stopped on Thursday. Fifteen uncomfortable, tense minutes during which Joelle used the Ladies washroom then joined Shay at a table overlooking the parking area to toy with the froth on her cappuccino and pick at a sandwich. Shay didn’t appear to be hungry either. He left half his sandwich uneaten on the plate but drained his cup of coffee.
“I’ll go and fill up the car,” he said abruptly. “Come out when you’re ready.”
Joelle watched blankly as he hurried from the café. What had she done wrong? Why was he being like this? She took a bite of the soft white bread, lettuce and cheese. A sip of coffee. She really should eat because he probably wouldn’t stop again but it was an effort to swallow that mouthful and impossible to contemplate taking another. She drank her coffee instead and bought muesli bars and two apples on the way out.
Ten minutes later, they were on the road again. This highway would join the Pacific Highway soon, the main route along the east coast of Australia. Traffic would be heavier, progress slower, dragging out the journey and the tension to unbearable length. Joelle stared out her window. Came to a decision.
“Have I disappointed you somehow, Shay? Done something wrong?”
He didn’t reply for a moment. His jaw tightened. He was gritting his teeth.
Joelle tried again. “Are you sorry you took me to meet your parents?”
“No, no, of course not,” he exclaimed, startling her with his vehemence.
“I…I just thought…”
He cut her off.
“You could never disappoint me, Joelle.”
The abruptly tender way he said it made her heart turn over in her chest with the very unexpectedness. She waited for him to say more but his jaw took on that rigidity of before and his focus on the road ahead never wavered.
An accident on the outskirts of Sydney had closed two lanes of the freeway. The stop- start crawl added an hour to the journey so they arrived at Shay’s Glebe house close to three-thirty. He swung the car into the lane at the rear and pulled up near the garage where Joelle’s Beetle waited patiently.
“Would you like to come in?” asked Shay. But it was politeness, she knew. He really didn’t want to prolong the experience.
“No, thanks,” she said quickly. It seemed to her that he sighed with relief and virtually sprang from the car to unlock the roller door. Joelle opened her door and went to the hatchback to remove her suitcase and the two pots of marmalade Amy had given her.
Shay waited while she stowed the bag on the rear seat of the Beetle. She turned to face him.
“Thank you for…everything, Shay.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. If she did she knew she’d cry so she kept her gaze fixed on his shirt front. Surely, this wasn’t the end of their closeness. The end of that special relationship they’d forged so quickly. Perhaps the perception of a special bond had all been on her side. The love certainly was, she knew that. She could never tell him how she felt and she certainly couldn’t tell him how much she wanted to stay in touch, with the coldness of his gaze upon her.
“Let me know if you hear anything,” he said.
She looked up. “Hear anything?”
“About Graysons.” He was staring down at her with a blank expression. The sunglasses hid his eyes. She wished he’d take them off so she could see what he was thinking. But…maybe it was better not.
“Oh. Yes, I will.”
“Safe trip.” She took it as a hint. To leave. She climbed into the driver’s seat and stuck the key in the ignition. The engine roared into life.
“Started first go,” he remarked. He was standing inside the still open door with one hand resting on the roof of the car.
Joelle smiled faintly. “Marvin never lets me down.”
“You named your car?”
“Of course, haven’t you?”
He shook his head but the glimmer of a smile broke the grim set of his mouth.
“See you, Shay. I loved meeting your family. Thank you for taking me.”
“They loved meeting you.” He suddenly leaned down and kissed her cheek, placing his hand lightly on the nape of her neck. His cheek pressed against hers for a moment before he released her.
She was so surprised she couldn’t react quickly enough to return the embrace. He stepped away to close the door with a firm click. She wound down the window but he was already moving towards the Golf and she had no choice but to put Marvin in gear and drive out of the garage.