Evergreen Falls

by Kimberley Freeman

  “I will be happy, to see my daughter happy and my grandchild grow up happy, too,” Mama said, dropping her suitcase on the floor of her new bedroom.

  “I will do my best to make them happy, then,” Clive said, sliding his arms around Violet and gently rubbing her belly.

  Mama arched her eyebrows. “In my day, nobody would have behaved like that in decent company.”

  Violet laughed. “I’ll let you settle in.” She was halfway down the corridor with Clive when Mama called her back.

  “I’m dying to know. You can tell me, and I promise I’ll never breathe a word,” she said. “Who is he? This benefactor.”

  “She. My benefactor is a she.”

  The idea of a woman with money made Mama temporarily speechless.

  “I can’t tell you anything about her. She has her own life. She’s getting married next month. To a doctor. I’ve agreed never to reveal her name. But I can tell you this.” Violet smiled. “She is the kindest woman I have ever known.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  2014

  “Am I interrupting something?” Tomas said from the doorway. Lizzie and I sat on the couch surrounded by empty teacups and used tissues.

  Lizzie struggled to her feet. “I should go. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I said.

  “You don’t have to go,” Tomas echoed. “Is everything all right?”

  Lizzie tried a smile. “I’ll let Lauren tell you.”

  I handed Lizzie the sketch. “Here, you should have this.”

  “No, no. I don’t want it just now. I’m still . . . there’s rather a lot for me to comprehend.”

  “I’ll keep it safe for you.”

  “Thank you, dear.” She stroked my hair, tucked it behind my ear. “You are a good girl.” Then she left, closing the door behind her.

  “What happened?” Tomas asked.

  I pointed to the portrait. “Violet. Lizzie’s mother.”

  “No!”

  I explained the whole story, though it was hard to capture Lizzie’s reaction in words. She’d been at once shocked and excited, sad and delighted. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut for a little longer, until she’d properly recovered from her illness and surgery. But once I’d started, it had all come out.

  God help me, I even showed her the copies of the letters. She’d read two lines and handed them back. “I don’t want to see that,” she said.

  “She’s fiercely protective of her dad,” I explained to Tomas. “Clive—the man who raised her. It was all a bit much for her.”

  “I can imagine.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “You did the right thing, though. You couldn’t have kept it from her.”

  “I hope she’ll be okay.”

  “She’s tough.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me. “I have news.”

  “Good news? Or bad news?” Deep down, perhaps, I thought my relationship with Tomas was too good to be true.

  “That depends on how you look at it.”

  I sat on the couch, wondering if now I would be the one to need the box of tissues that sat nearby. “You’d better tell me, then.”

  He sat on the coffee table, his knees either side of mine, and leaned forward. “There’s been a change of plans at the hotel.”

  “You mean the redesign?”

  “Yes. They’re sending me home early.”

  My heart fell and fell, all the way through the couch. “Oh. How early?”

  “Whenever I want to go. Soon, probably. I’ll need to find another contract back home.”

  “And you won’t be back until January?”

  “February. Or maybe March. But I’ll definitely be back. After about nine months.”

  Nine months without Tomas.

  “I need to say something,” he said, straightening up, squaring his shoulders. This was it. He was going to break it off with me.

  “Make it quick,” I said.

  He took a deep breath. “I want you to come with me.”

  I stared at him blankly for a moment, before his words sank in. “Seriously? To Denmark?”

  “I know it’s soon. And I’m not asking you to marry me or commit to me forever. We don’t even have to live together. My sister has a spare room you’d be welcome in. I’m just asking you to seriously consider it. You make great coffee and you’d be sure to get a job and—”

  “But I don’t speak a word of Danish.”

  “You’d learn it quickly. I’d love to help you.”

  Did he think I was mad? To run off to a foreign country with a man I’d spent only a few weeks with? Without any prospects of a job, without any language skills, without any guarantees about Tomas or . . . well, anything?

  I started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he said, smiling cautiously.

  “You know what?” I said. “I am going to seriously consider it.”

  * * *

  I was in the staff bathroom, washing the day’s grime off my face and tidying my hair, when Penny walked in.

  “Your mother and father,” she said.

  My heart jolted. “What? Here?”

  She nodded. “You weren’t expecting them?”

  “No. But I should have.” Mum hadn’t called. I hadn’t called her. What I’d thought was a mutual agreement not to speak for a while was actually an opportunity for her to quietly plan a visit to prod me in person. I leaned my back against the sink. “What am I going to do?”

  “You have to go out and talk to them. They’ve come all the way from Tasmania.”

  “But I’m so angry with them and . . .” I checked my watch. “I’m meeting someone in ten minutes.”

  “They’re your family,” she said, and she gave me a gentle punch on the shoulder. “You have to forgive them.”

  I grumbled and pushed the door open. I could see Mum and Dad outside now, waiting for me. They had their heads bent together in conversation.

  Their timing was terrible.

  I grabbed my bag and called out a good-bye to Penny, then went outside to meet them.

  “Lauren!” Mum exclaimed, and folded me into a tentative hug. “You’ve lost weight. Have you been eating? What did you do to your eyebrows?”

  Dad gave me a kiss, mouthed the word sorry.

  “You really should have called first,” I said.

  “Oh, we won’t be any trouble,” Mum said. “We’re staying at a B and B, just here for a night or two until we get things sorted out. Is there somewhere we can sit and talk? Your flat?”

  “I’m meeting someone in ten minutes. Up there.” I pointed to the viewing platform.

  “Ten minutes isn’t enough. Is it that boyfriend of yours? Can’t you call him and tell him—”

  “Lauren has plans,” said Dad, interrupting her for perhaps the first time in his life. “If she’s willing to give us ten minutes, then that’s where we’ll start.”

  “Come on,” I said, leading the way up the path.

  Mum and Dad sat on the long wooden seat, but I stood with my back on the railing. I checked my watch, wondering if this was a very bad idea, if I should have just sent them back to their B and B and told them I’d talk to them tomorrow.

  “Go on,” Dad said to Mum.

  “Well,” Mum said. The afternoon sun caught deep lines around her eyes. Were they new? “Well,” she said again, “Lauren. I understand you’re angry . . .”

  I waited.

  “But I want you to know that it was a choice we made . . . well, a choice I made and your father agreed to . . . because we thought Adam would get the best care at home with us and—”

  “He was in love, Mum.”

  “He was too young to be in love. He was just experimenting. That’s what we thought. And it would have been the same if he’d thought himself in love with a girl.”

  I wanted to believe her.

  “In any case, it was the wrong thing to do, but we had bigger fish to fry. Our boy had a terminal illness. We made a bad de
cision, and we’re sorry. Really sorry.”

  “You’re saying sorry to the wrong person,” I said. “You should be saying sorry to Anton.”

  Dad interjected, “Maybe you can pass on our apology.”

  “Maybe you can tell him in person,” I said, pointing down towards the end of the road. “Because that’s who I’m supposed to be meeting now, and he’s right there.”

  Anton saw us together and hesitated. I knew that this would be hard for him. It might even undermine our newly formed friendship. But this wasn’t my business anymore.

  Dad stood, squared his shoulders. “I’d be happy to talk to him,” he said softly. “I’m not afraid to admit I wronged him terribly.”

  Mum’s mouth turned down, like a child trying not to cry. I felt a pang of pity for her. It was her past coming back to haunt her.

  “Talk to him,” I said gently. “I’ll be waiting by the café.”

  I walked back towards the hotel. When I turned around, Mum, Dad, and Anton were leaning on the railing together, talking, the slanting sunshine on their backs. Watching Mum from this distance, I thought about how effectively she had commanded every one of us, and it seemed ridiculous. She was barely five feet tall, a little lady with a big bust and a bad perm. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Mum was talking and Anton was listening. I didn’t know how it would end, but if she apologized, and if he accepted her apology, they might be able to make a start.

  * * *

  Mum and Dad came for dinner at my place afterwards. Dad was full of admiration for Anton and his quiet dignity. Mum was more guarded, telling me she didn’t want to talk about it. We ate pizza and tried to keep the conversation light, but then Mum came in with her killer blow.

  “This place is very small,” she said.

  “It’s big enough for me.”

  “We’ve kept your bedroom exactly the same.” She smiled. “It’s about time you came home, isn’t it?”

  “Home?” I looked over her head at Dad, who gave me a meaningful stare.

  “It’s been months now,” she said. “I could use your company. I miss you.”

  I wiped my greasy pizza fingers on a napkin then gently took her hand. “Mum,” I said. “I’m not coming home.”

  She pouted. “Why not?”

  “Because,” I said, “I’m moving to Denmark.”

  * * *

  “Are you all right?”

  Lizzie nodded. She hadn’t spoken more than half-a-dozen words since Tomas had picked us up that morning to drop us at the train station. Now we were clattering through the suburbs of Sydney, and she was looking distinctly pale.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” I said, but I didn’t mean it, and she probably knew it. It had taken me weeks to set up this meeting between her and Terri-Anne Dewhurst. Terri-Anne, for her part, was more than keen.

  “She’s my mother’s cousin!” she’d exclaimed. “She’s Honeychurch-Black flesh and blood. We will welcome her with open arms. I’ll come up there, or if that’s too overwhelming for her, I can meet her in Sydney.”

  But Lizzie had bristled with misgivings. “He wasn’t my father. Clive Betts was my father. He raised me. That’s what a father does.” The letters Sam had sent to Violet were too much for her to bear. They undid the dream of her own past in which her mother and father had loved each other madly. Young love, first love.

  “I do have to do this,” Lizzie said to me now, as the train rocked along. “She’s come all this way.”

  “Just from Goulburn.”

  “Still.” Then she said, “She’d better not think to make me part of her family. I have my own family.”

  “She just wants to meet you.” I pulled the sketch of Violet from my carry bag and handed it to Lizzie.

  “What?” she said.

  “Go on. Unroll it.”

  She did, smoothing it out on her lap.

  “Your father. Clive. He drew that.”

  “Somebody else wrote that,” she said, stabbing at the My Violet at the top of the page.

  “Yes, but Sam didn’t draw it. Look at it. Really look at it. You can see the love in every line. And her eyes. They’re so vulnerable. I think you can tell she loved him, too.”

  “She didn’t carve Dad’s initials into that rock you found.”

  “No, but I told you, she scribbled those initials out. Maybe she had a silly, girlish crush on Samuel Honeychurch-Black. But when she found herself in trouble, it was your father she turned to. The man who raised you and loved you as his own, and never let on that you weren’t.”

  Lizzie studied the drawing for a long time. Her eyes grew teary. “I wish I knew what happened.”

  “We do know what happened. We know that Violet left the Evergreen Spa and went on to have a fulfilling life. Went on to have you. Went on to have a loving relationship with your dad.” I tucked her arm under mine. “Come on, Lizzie. Smile.”

  “I’m too old for this, Lauren. Secret paternity and steamy old love letters. I just want to go back to believing that my mother and father married because they loved each other, that I was planned, wanted . . .” She shook her head. “A normal family.”

  “I don’t think there’s any such thing. You know that.”

  The train slid into the station.

  “Ready?” I said.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  I pointed out the window. “Look, there’s Terri-Anne. She’s brought some people with her.”

  “I’m not good with names,” Lizzie said, sounding very old all of a sudden.

  “Just smile and relax. I’m here.”

  We stepped out of the carriage and onto the platform together, where Lizzie’s new family were waiting to welcome the cousin they’d never met.

  EPILOGUE

  1927

  Violet opens her eyes. Sleep recedes. Last night’s wonders return to her memory. She smiles and rolls onto her side. There she is: tiny and pink and wrapped tightly in a white knitted blanket, sleeping peacefully in the crib next to Violet’s hospital bed. Violet reaches for her daughter, born just hours ago, and touches her sweet, soft hair.

  A shadow at the door. She looks up. Clive stands there. He looks happy but uncertain, vulnerable.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asks.

  “No. I’m too excited to sleep for long.”

  He pulls up a chair next to her and takes his hand in hers. “That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you leave when they told you to?”

  “Because it’s not every day a man gets to see his child born.”

  His child. Violet’s eyes well. “You don’t mind, do you? That it’s Sam’s baby.”

  Clive brings her hand to his mouth and kisses it gently. “This isn’t Sam’s baby,” he says, slowly, definitively. “This is our baby. I will love her and cherish her and give her everything I can: my time, my money, my body, my soul. We’re a family, Violet. And I love you so passionately.”

  Passionately. Once she had thought the word described something different. Something fast and hot, like lightning. Now, she realizes, passion is a deep well, ancient and fathomless. It rises slowly, like the tide, but when it does it is mighty and unyielding, and it causes things to happen in the world. Real passion is not content simply to dream. It endures. Clive loves her passionately—a passion that grows day after day and is evident in every word, every caress.

  She gazes at his dear face and lets her tears fall. “I have been a fool in my life,” she says.

  “We are all fools from time to time. You might be a fool again: Who knows? I’ll stay with you nonetheless.”

  “And I’ll stay with you,” she swears, pressing her hand across her heart. “You are the right one.”

  “The right one?”

  “It isn’t always obvious at the start,” she says.

  The tiny girl wakes, then lets go of an equally tiny cry. Clive scoops her out of the crib, and she quietens immediately. He holds her
in his arms, gazing down with wonder written on his face. “As long as I live, I will love you, little dear,” he says to the baby, to his daughter. “And when I’m dead, I’ll become a star, and I’ll love you from heaven.”

  Violet watches him, and her heart is at peace.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, I rely on the goodwill and support of many others while writing a novel. I would like to particularly acknowledge Selwa Anthony, Brian Dennis, Vanessa Radnidge, Heather Gammage, Paula Ellery, and my colleagues at the University of Queensland. I wrote a good portion of this book while staying with Bill and Maria at Whispering Pines Hotel, near Wentworth Falls, and thank them especially. Special mention must be made of my family, who are now well used to me ignoring their needs while I write. Luka, Astrid, Ollie, Mum, and Ian: I love you with all my heart.

  Finally, even though she’s no longer with us, I thank my grandmother, Stella Vera Spencer, for her lively and detailed memoir, which inspired so many aspects of this book.

     TOUCHSTONE READING GROUP GUIDE

  * * *

  EVERGREEN

  FALLS

  After the tragic death of her older brother, Lauren Beck decides to move from her family home in Tasmania to Evergreen Falls in the Blue Mountains—a place her brother cherished as the site of his last happy memory. In her new life, Lauren begins a relationship with the architect in charge of the refurbishment of the Evergreen Spa Hotel, and together the two discover evidence of a secret love affair from 1926 in the old hotel. In Lauren’s quest to piece together the narrative of the star-crossed lovers from long ago, she also uncovers family secrets of her own and begins to understand that love, while not always easy, will always triumph in the end.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. When Lauren discovers that Tomas has inadvertently left behind his key for the west wing of the hotel—the wing no one has been in for decades—she decides to let herself in, and in so doing, uncovers Sam’s letters to Violet. What do you think prompts Lauren to do something so bold, so uncharacteristic? Does this show of bravery hint at the Lauren we come to know by the end of the novel?