‘Cal,’ she said gently. ‘One of the reasons for getting Henry is so that Adam could have
his
dog
back
.’
‘Oh.’ Break a mother’s heart to see that particular realisation lodge somewhere in the vicinity of her son’s heart.
‘Keep Blue up here of a night for a while longer if you want to,’ offered Adam. ‘The pup’ll settle easier if you do.’
Out of the car for all of them, then, but Adam didn’t come in. Just stayed at the bottom of the verandah steps while Cal untied Henry and two dogs and a boy headed for the verandah. Once there, Cal took Adam’s hat from his head and held it out to him.
‘Thanks for the lend,’ Cal said. ‘Of the hat too.’ And Adam nodded and put it on his head.
‘You can come in, you know,’ she said as Cal disappeared around the verandah, doubtless headed for the kitchen. But he was already shaking his head before she’d even finished the sentence.
‘Best not.’
‘Why not? Because you have money and status in this town and I don’t?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Fire in his eyes now. A fine and flattering tension in his body.
‘Then why not?
‘I just…’ He glanced towards the direction Cal had taken. ‘I just don’t want anyone getting too used to me being around.’
‘You mean Cal.’
‘And you.’ With eyes twice shadowed beneath the brim of his just returned hat. ‘No one gets hurt.’
She kissed him fast and fierce and greedy and pulled away hungry, needy and lit with temper. ‘You break my heart, Kincaid, you and your ghosts. You really do.’
‘Seems only fair,’ he said and started heading towards his ute, and there was no looking back for him. ‘You’re breaking mine too.’
With a vow to distance herself from heartbreaker Kincaid, Billie pulled three twelve-hour days, and had every intention of doing so again as she dropped Cal at school and parked out front of the pub just on eight-thirty am.
Her job was to open the pub to the public by ten. No one else in the pub at all at eight-thirty am, and Billie liked these quiet times in the morning. The opening of windows to let the air through and dissipate the odour of hops and ancient carpet. The carpet in the front bar was on her list of things that had to go. There was a hardwood floor under there somewhere that would make cleaning a breeze and that old-carpet smell a thing of the past, and if Roly complained that a hardwood floor would bring too much noise with it, well… there were ways to deal with that too, ways that didn’t involve smelly carpet.
The cleaners did a good job, but they weren’t miracle workers.
The door to Roly’s office stood open this morning and Billie frowned because Roly usually locked it. The overnight safe was in the office and although an evening’s take was nothing compared to that of a Sydney pub, Roly was meticulous about the handling and safekeeping of money.
The door to the kitchen stood open too, and the door to the music room as well. Nothing out of place in the kitchen and Billie shook her head and headed for the kitchen’s outer door, the one that led out back to the car park. That one
was
closed, but a turn of the door handle opened it.
Not locked.
And Roly’s car was not in the car park. ‘Roly? You in?’
But Roly did not answer. Billie shut the kitchen door again and tested the lock to check that it worked. It did. And then she spotted white paper on the floor, through the music room doorway and headed towards it for a closer look.
And stopped.
The room had been trashed.
Drinking glasses lay in shards on the floor, chairs lay on their sides, and sheet music had been torn apart and flung in every direction. She saw Tommy’s guitar on the floor beside the far wall, the splintered body curved around unbroken strings like a halo. Everywhere she looked she saw destruction.
And then she saw her mother’s violin.
‘No!’ She raced across to the shattered instrument and by the time she’d sunk to the floor beside it, her knees were shaking and her hands were shaking too. It looked like someone had grabbed the beautiful old instrument by the neck and slammed it against the solid brick wall. Billie gathered up the violin and cradled it to her body as if willpower alone could mend it, but the violin stayed broken and touching it only made the damage more real.
All the effort she’d put into making this room a cheerful, positive place for Cal and his friends to make music in. Not only her instruments broken but the amplifier for the bass guitar wrecked too, and little Anna’s violin in the same state as hers and the drum skins slashed.
She found her phone, the one that didn’t work out at Casey’s Ridge, and although her thoughts turned first to wanting Adam’s arms around her it wasn’t Adam she called. Wishful thinking indeed for her to think that he would be there for her during bad times when he could barely bring himself to be around for the good.
‘Roly?’ she said raggedly, into the phone. ‘Can you come in early this morning? There’s been a break-in.’
Billie made it through the morning. Through Sergeant Turner’s questions about what she’d touched and who had access to the room. Pointed, probing questions about Cal’s father, and questions about her relationships with others and whether she might have brought trouble with her from Sydney.
‘No,’ said Billie. No, she didn’t know who would do such a thing, or
why
they would do such a thing. Not even a theory.
Yes
, she was open to being fingerprinted should the need arise. And
no
, he could damn well
not
pull Cal from school to ask him if he’d been making enemies and having trouble fitting in. If the good Sergeant wanted to go down that line of reckoning he could damn well start by interviewing Cal’s teachers.
Handy indeed if the mindless destruction that had taken place in the music room could somehow be attributed to the outsider. Easy for Billie to whip up some silent, brooding anger at the bias in the policeman’s questions. Better anger than tears.
Until Cal came home from school and saw the broken instruments and turned back to look at her.
Then
there were tears and
dammit
they were hers, fat and silent.
‘Go home.’ Roly didn’t do tears. He did gruff and worried and awkward instead. No money had gone missing during the break-in. No alcohol had been taken. Nothing broken or battered except for the instruments. ‘Take the night off. You want me to find someone to drive you home?’
‘I can do it.’ Billie looked to her son, standing white faced and silent. ‘Cal, you want to go home?’
And Cal nodded and went to pick up the pieces of his father’s guitar.
‘It’s a crime scene, son,’ said Roly. ‘You can’t touch anything.’
‘It’s mine,’ said Cal and gathered up the guitar and her mother’s violin, and Billie let him and this time Roly said nothing. Jaw set and acutely aware that all eyes were on them, Billie walked through the pub with her son and headed for the car.
Blue dog and Henry were waiting for them on the verandah when they pulled up at the cottage.
So was Adam.
Billie closed her eyes and took a deep breath before getting out of the car and heading towards him. She wanted to step inside the circle of his arms and feel him gather her close. She wanted to rest her head on his chest and feel the steady beat of his heart against her cheek and take comfort from his strength, for hers was running low, but she did none of those things.
She simply stared at him warily.
‘Roly called,’ he offered quietly. ‘He wanted me to make sure everything was all right inside.’
Billie caught her breath, swayed, and Adam was beside her in an instant, his hand shooting out to capture her elbow and steady her.
‘It’s okay, everything’s fine. No one’s been in there except for me. Nothing’s been touched. But you can’t stay here. It’s not safe.’
‘Not that again.’ Not today. Surely he didn’t mean to turn them out today? ‘And where exactly would you have us go? The pub, perhaps?’
‘No.’ Anger flashed in his eyes but his voice remained calm. ‘You’re coming home with me.’
‘What?’ Billie stared at him uncomprehendingly, replayed the words in her fogged mind and finally found her voice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Get some clothes. Whatever you need for an overnight stay. I’ve got half-a-dozen bedrooms back at the homestead – when you get there, pick one.’
‘Adam, we can’t. It’s not—
‘Not what? Not right? Not a good look?’
‘It’s not your problem.’
Billie watched as his expression turned hard and patient.
‘You’re right, it’s yours. But for what it’s worth I'm offering you a safer place to stay tonight. Instant access to a phone. Me within yelling distance.’
Not what he’d signed on for when he’d made her his midday lover. ‘No.’
‘You’d rather endanger your son?’
‘Are you suggesting I can’t look after my son? That Cal’s safety doesn’t come first with me?’ Eyes hot, she clenched her fists and stared him down. ‘It always has. It always will.’
Adam said nothing.
‘Mum,’ said Cal from the doorway and the tremor in his voice had her closing her eyes on the spill of tears. ‘Can we? Just for tonight?’
‘Go get your things,’ said Adam quietly and Cal’s footsteps retreated and Billie took a shuddering breath and opened her eyes.
‘You don’t want us there,’ she said.
‘Maybe not. Maybe I have a few issues of my own when it comes to me being an adequate role model for your son. Maybe I wanted to keep that separate from whatever else is happening here. And maybe I worry about your safety out here more than I should, but you know the why of that and I'm asking you to cut me some slack. I want you where I can see you tonight, Billie. You and the boy both.’
‘Cal,’ she said faintly and Adam’s beautiful lips twisted.
‘I know his name.’
‘Then use it.’
So many unspoken words between them. A relationship that should never have begun and this was why.
Adam stepped away from her, his eyes a mass of conflicting emotions but his gaze never left her face. ‘Cal,’ he barked. ‘Bring Henry’s stuff too.’
‘Wow,’ said Cal as Adam walked them through kitchen and dining areas, lounge and office, another lounge, various bathrooms, and finally on to the bedrooms. ‘Your house is pretty big, isn’t it? It’s a bit like the upstairs of a pub.’
‘Really? The upstairs of a pub. I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
‘It’s the hallways.’
‘I see.’ Adam opened the door to a bedroom that might suit Cal. Double bed, cosy room. ‘This one could be yours,’ he told the boy. ‘Si uses it whenever he stays over. Closest to the kitchen. Your mother could have the one across from you.’
‘Okay,’ said Cal, and put the plastic bag stuffed with the boy’s belongings in the room and Billie put her things in the other room and that was that.
No big deal.
And then Cal and Billie went back outside to their car and when they came back, Billie was carrying a couple of small, gaily wrapped Christmas presents and Cal was cradling a broken guitar and an even more broken violin and the ground beneath Adam’s feet shifted again.
‘You want to put those up on the bench here?’ he said to Cal finally, and after a moment’s hesitation the boy complied. The presents went in a neat pile near the fruit bowl. ‘See if there’s anything we can salvage?’
‘There’s not,’ said Cal.
‘Maybe the guitar head,’ said Billie.
‘No,’ said Cal, with a glare for his mother. ‘You can’t
fix
this.’
Billie said nothing.
‘Nobody ever hacked roses down and smashed guitars to bits in Sydney,’ said Cal next, and there was a sullen edge to the boy’s voice that made Adam’s lips tighten. Defend the mother and reprimand the boy – that was his first instinct. But he went with instinct number two, which was to keep his mouth firmly shut and let Billie deal with it.
Her son.
Her rules.
‘No,’ said Billie with a weary smile. ‘They stole wallets and turned tricks in corners and overdosed in alleyways. It’s still better here, Cally. There’s Henry and Blue and Roly and Maude. There’s time to breathe. Room to
be
.’ Billie looked down at the battered instruments and took a deep breath. ‘It’s still better.’
The boy’s shoulders sagged as he looked towards Adam and quickly looked away. Close to tears, thought Adam. Dear God, let there be no tears.
Billie reached out and drew the guitar towards her, her fingers gently caressing the mangled mess.
‘If you’re wondering why this guitar’s so important to us, it belonged to Cal’s father,’ she said softly and broke Adam’s heart twice over. ‘There wasn’t an instrument Tommy couldn’t play, but the guitar was his favorite and it showed.’ She freed the E string, passed it to Cal, and started on the next as the boy began rolling it up. ‘Anyway, he saw this guitar in a hock shop window one day and went inside and played it and fell in love with it. He put down a deposit and hoped like crazy that the owner wouldn’t come back for it and finally he got a call to say he could buy it. By then he was writing his own songs and playing regular gigs along the east coast. Starting to make a name for himself.’ She smiled at Cal. ‘And looking forward to meeting you.’
‘But he died,’ said Cal. ‘Before I was born.’
‘Yes,’ Billie’s smile came bittersweet. ‘He died. But I think he’d have liked you. You have his love of music, his gift. I think maybe one day you too might fall in love with a guitar that calls to you from a shop window and do exactly what he did. Kind of like a family tradition.’
Billie freed another string from the wreckage and met her son’s gaze and a wordless exchange passed between the two, and there was love in that exchange, silent acknowledgement of adversity and steel enough to see adversity through.
‘I never did much like the colour of this one,’ she said with a tiny lift to her lips and Cal’s brow furrowed as he looked at the guitar again, and then he looked back to his mother.
‘Yeah,’ he said with the faintest stirrings of a smile. ‘Too brown.’
This, thought Adam.
The way she dealt with loss, and with life. The lessons she taught her son. The ways in which a person might move forward.