Shiloh (Wishes #6)
Page 30
As soon as she was out of earshot, Charli pounced. “So what do you reckon?” she asked excitedly. “See anything you like?”
I pointed at a crystal ball on the table. “How about that?”
Charli picked it up and turned it over. “Put that down,” I hissed. “That’s got to be bad juju.”
Cackling like a true witch, she did as she was told. “Come on, Mitchell. There must be something you like.”
I saw nothing but the ancient props of an old charlatan who’d spent her lifetime conning money from people.
Charli pointed to the wall behind me. “Dried starfish?”
I screwed up my nose. “No.”
She laughed, and when I caved in and turned around to check out the dead starfish, she laughed harder.
“Aw, look,” she drawled. “I’m pretty sure this bloke is one of Adam’s relatives.”
I turned around to see an ugly little black dog standing in the doorway. Nothing made me want to go near it. Even from a distance I could tell that it stunk. “It’s a French Bulldog,” I told her.
Making allowance for her baby belly, Charli crouched down as best she could. “That’s what I said,” she replied, patting its head. “One of Adam’s distant rellies.”
I couldn’t focus on Charli’s nonsense. I was too busy focusing on my own. “Shiloh wants a French bulldog,” I remembered. “She’s going to call it Peppermint.”
I cringed as I said it but Charli wasn’t fazed by the strange name choice.
“To each her own,” she replied. “My kid has a doll called Treasure.”
I reached for Charli’s hand and helped her to her feet.
“This is a sign, Mitchell,” she said, pointing at the dog as if she was casting a spell. “You wanted magic. There he is.”
“I never said I wanted magic,” I argued. “And I’m sure he’s not for sale.”
“He is a she,” announced Edna, returning to the room. “And everything is for sale. I can’t look after her any more.” She smiled, though it had a rueful tinge. “We’re both getting too old.”
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Patricia,” she announced grandly. “Derived from the Latin word Patrician.”
Charli chimed in. “What does it mean?”
“Noble.” Edna tapped the side of her nose and leaned in close. “But your wordsmith husband could have told you that.”
Charli smiled but I missed the joke.
Edna turned to me, terrorising me with her intense stare. “I want to show you something.”
When the old lady turned around and grabbed a jar of sand of a shelf, Charli intervened. Perhaps she knew what was coming. “Mitchell’s not interested in a reading, Mrs Wilson.”
Edna carried on as if she hadn’t spoken, dumping the jar on the table and spreading the sand with her hands. “If the winds prevail from the east, the dunes will run north to south.” Her eyes never left mine as she dragged her fingers through the sand. “Tell me why.”
When I opened my mouth to speak, no sound followed. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Because sand dunes form at ninety degrees to the prevailing wind.”
The old lady smiled brightly, looking far friendlier than before.
“That’s very impressive, Mitchell,” praised Charli. “How do you know that?”
“Because Shiloh told me,” I replied, bewildered. “And as far as I know, Mrs Wilson wasn’t there at the time.”
Charli gripped my arm just as hard as she’d slapped me. “I told you,” she whispered. “It’s magic.”
I expected a moment of magic to be serene and tranquil, but the stinky bulldog killed that notion by wandering over and sniffing my leg.
Edna clicked her fingers and called her back. “Patty, come here.”
Charli lost the plot. “You have to take her now,” she insisted, nearly pulling my arm out of the socket.
I grabbed her hand, trying to keep her still. “Why?”
Charli flashed me the biggest grin I’d ever seen her make. “Because she belongs to Shiloh.” She pointed to the dog at my feet. “It’s Peppermint Patty.”
***
After sitting on a plane for four hours, hiring a car and driving south for another five, I came to the conclusion that Lawler might as well have been on a different planet. On the plus side, if I turned up at Shiloh’s door and she told me to take a hike, the chances of running into her again were nil.
It took me two months to work up the courage to track her down, but when a sign on the roadside alerted me that I was only ten kilometres out of town, fear reared its ugly head.
I knew I was stalling when I pulled into the fuel station, and the act of filling the car with petrol it didn’t need was as cowardly as they come, but I did it.
Part of me was ready to call the whole thing off and skulk home, but as I stood at the bowser and mindlessly watched the numbers tick over, I realised a different part was winning.
I loved Shiloh, and that trumped fear.
Just as I hung the pump up, a small white car pulled up on the other side of the bowser.
And that’s where my journey ended.
Shiloh didn’t even notice me. She got out, lifted the pump and got on with the job of filling her car.
My position didn’t change, mainly because I was unable to move. Seconds passed like hours and it was becoming impossible to believe she couldn’t see me standing there.
Trying to catch her attention, I moved closer.
Nothing.
When I waved and still got no response, I knew she was intentionally blanking me.
“I thought police officers were supposed to be observant,” I called.
“They are.” I almost jumped at the sound of her voice. “I see you, Mitchell.”
I walked over to her. “And you’re just going to ignore me?”
“Our last meeting didn’t go so well,” she replied. “I figured it might be best to let sleeping dogs lie.”
Feigning indifference, I folded my arms and shrugged. “Makes sense, I guess.”
She turned around and hung the pump up. “But now that you’ve spoken to me, it’s an awkward chance meeting that’s likely to cause us both damage.”
“Shiloh, how can it possibly be a chance meeting?” I dropped my hands to my sides. “I’m four thousand kilometres from home.”
Finally she looked at me – and I saw nothing but hurt. “You should’ve stayed home,” she told me. “There’s nothing here for you.”
“You’re here.”
“I got over you, Mitchell,” she growled. “Why would you come here and dredge it all up again?”
I wasn’t convinced that Shiloh was over anything. There was too much venom in her tone.
“I have no plans of dredging up a single day of the past,” I assured her. “I’m only interested in going forward.”
“There’s no point then,” she replied. “Because I happen to like our past.”
“All of it?”
“Even the bad days.” She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “And trust me, my bad days were entirely different to yours.”
I had to concede that there was some serious backtracking to be done. To this day I had no idea what her job in Kaimte had entailed, and the reason why was simple. She’d protected me from it.
“Giving you a hard time for lying to me wasn’t fair,” I told her. “I should never have done that.”
Finally, I seemed to have touched on the right words to say. Her stance relaxed as if a tonne weight had been lifted off her.
“You want to know the worst part?” she asked.
I nodded but didn’t mean it. I was trying to bring love and roses back, not doom and gloom.
“I knew it was going to end badly,” she said. “Right from the start.”
I took her hand – and she let me. “It should never have ended at all,” I told her. “We should’ve come home and picked up where we left off.”
“But we didn’t.”
> “And that’s my fault, Shiloh.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “I own that one.”
“I couldn’t go through it again, Mitchell.” Her voice was so quiet that I struggled to hear her. “It’s too much to cope with.”
I took a step back. “I understand,” I said sadly. “But it’s not the outcome I was hoping for. I’ve no idea how I’m going to break the news to Patty.”
“Who’s Patty?”
“My French bulldog,” I replied. “She was looking forward to meeting you.”
Shiloh smiled for the first time. “You’re lying.”
I grabbed my wallet from my pocket and pulled out a picture. “This is one of the better shots of her,” I explained. “You can’t see her underbite.”
The photo shook in her hand as she burst into a fit of giggles.
“I miss your laugh,” I told her.
Her eyes drifted upward, locking my gaze in hers. “I’m leaving,” she told me. “You literally caught me on the way out of town.”
I looked across at her car. The back seat was packed to the hilt with luggage. “Where are you going?”
She shrugged. “I have a plane ticket to Melbourne. Beyond that, I’m not sure.”
“You quit your job?”
“Not exactly,” she replied. “I’m owed a lot of time off so I thought it might be a good time to get away for a while.”
“Well, I know of the perfect place.” Playing it cool was impossible, but I tried. “It’s a little town on the east coast of Tassie.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“I could take you there,” I offered. “Show you the sights, introduce you to a few people, that kind of thing.”
“Do you think we could be happy there, Mitchell?” she asked. “In a little Tassie town?”
“I guarantee it.” I took her face in my hands and gently kissed her. “We’re going to fall hopelessly in love, and then things are really going to get good.”
THE END
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