‘It’s fine.’ His tone was unusually curt. ‘I’ll hear it another day. Let’s get going.’
‘Hang on. I’ll just pick this one.’ She stretched to reach a last bloom. ‘I was going to tell you who Wallace Sinclair married. Don’t you want to know?’ She glanced across at Tait to see if he was listening.
The flower she’d picked slipped from her fingers and dropped to her feet. Tait’s answer was written all over his tortured and guilt-ridden face. He didn’t want to know who Wallace Sinclair had married – horror imploded within her chest – because he already knew.
Her hand flew to cover her mouth. ‘Oh my God, Tait.’ She could hardly hear her words above the thumping of her heart. ‘You’re no tourist.’
Body braced, silent, his eyes held hers.
‘You’re Wallace’s son.’
Chapter Twenty-one
Panic burned deep in Tait’s gut. The woman he loved knew he wasn’t the person he’d said he was. He went to speak but his vocal cords wouldn’t function. All he could do was nod, knowing that by doing so he’d be signing his relationship’s death warrant.
Paige’s hand dropped away from her mouth. Her eyes were so large they appeared to fill her face. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It wasn’t important,’ he rasped.
‘Bullshit!’ The force of her reply sent a pair of galahs fleeing the nearby coolibah tree.
‘Paige, Bruce is the father who raised and loved me. Wallace …’ Tait jerked his head toward the ruins beside them and didn’t try to strip the bitterness from his voice. ‘Wallace is just the selfish bastard who destroyed far more than bricks and mortar.’
If possible her eyes widened further. ‘I think I need to sit down.’
‘That makes two of us.’
He dragged in a breath, only to inhale the perfume of the roses he’d forgotten he held.
He removed his hat, tipped the flowers into the crown before walking to where a section of the post-and-rail fencing missed its top rail. He waited for Paige to settle on the lower rail before placing his hat on the ground and sitting beside her. He rested his elbows on his knees and lowered his chin onto his linked hands. The guilt that had become as much a part of him as breathing needled his conscience. Paige had done more to save his home than he ever had.
‘Tait?’ Her warm hand curled around his bicep. ‘Talk to me.’
‘What can I say? You’ve every right to be angry. I haven’t been honest with you.’ He risked a sideways glance at her ashen face. ‘I’m no city boy. Hell, I would have been born in the same hospital as you if my mother had been allowed out of the house.’ He stopped. He’d said enough.
‘I’m not angry, really.’ Her words slowed. ‘I’m more … shocked. Does anyone else know?’
He shrugged. ‘God help me if they do because I’ll be shown the door by the whole district. Look at his plain headstone. My father wasn’t exactly the most popular guy around. I reckon Mrs Jones would have put two and two together by now.’
‘She thought she recognised you but you’re wrong about people turning their backs on you because of who your real father is. When you had your allergy attack, everyone was worried and Dad says he’s taken heaps of calls since to see how you’re doing.’ Her hand squeezed his arm. ‘There would have been no ball if it hadn’t been for your generosity and kindness. You’ve friends out here and people who care about you.’
‘People I’ve deceived.’
‘For a reason.’
He dragged his fingers through his hair. ‘A reason I don’t want to go into, okay?’
He felt the hand on his arm tense but she didn’t withdraw. ‘Okay. So where is this tree you said you climbed as a kid? It was in this garden, wasn’t it, not in the city?’
Grateful for a change of subject, he nodded, collected his hat and stood. Paige’s fingers slipped down his arm and clasped his hand. His heart bled. She might think she knew all there was to know about him now. She was wrong.
In silence they returned to the house and he drew her around to what had been the back garden. In the far corner, an old jacaranda tree his grandfather had planted still endured. When Wallace had been on one of his rampages, his mother would whisper for Tait to go and climb the purple tree. He walked to the tree’s base and looked into its vast canopy. In the fork of the third branch he could just make out the shape of the letters T S.
Paige spied them too. ‘Tait Sinclair.’
‘A name I haven’t been called in a lifetime and a name I never want to be known by again.’
‘Tait,’ Paige’s voice was quiet, ‘don’t let Wallace take away everything and everyone that is a part of you. Mum always said that your grandfather, Ross Sinclair, was my grandpa’s best friend and my grandma used to always reminisce about your grandmother, Violet, and her beautiful garden. Talk to Dad. He’ll tell you so many happy stories. Being a Sinclair isn’t anything to be ashamed of. It isn’t only Wallace’s blood that flows through your veins.’
Tait pulled his hand from her grasp and folded his arms. ‘But it does and it’s not something to be proud of or something that I want people to know.’
‘But you could have told me.’ Hurt echoed in her words. ‘Wallace may have seemed frightening to a young child with an over-active imagination but it wasn’t as though he was a bad man.’
‘I think his drunken and jealous rages cross him off any father-of-the-year list.’
Bloody hell, he’d revealed too much. Paige was far too perceptive for her, or his, own good. He swung away.
She grabbed his arm. ‘What do you mean jealous rages? Wallace was once engaged to Mum. Did he stay jealous at Dad?’
It was too late. She’d already begun joining the dots.
‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It would be best if you asked Connor.’
Her chin angled. ‘I’m asking you.’
‘Paige. Don’t go there.’
‘Well, I am. Tell me, Tait.’
‘No. I’ve already said too much.’ Tait turned away but he knew the gesture was futile. Paige’s stubbornness wouldn’t let the subject rest. She caught up to him, her breathing shallow. ‘Dad and Wallace had a fight over Mum, but blues happen, especially at the pub on a Friday night. Something else must have happened. What did Wallace do that was so terrible?’
‘No comment.’ He continued walking. Then suddenly she was no longer by his side. He briefly closed his eyes. Please don’t let her have worked it out. But as he turned and saw her standing stock-still, her lips bloodless, he knew she had. In two strides he was by her side and put his arms around her.
She pushed him away. Her gaze blazed at him with a fierceness and a despair that cut at him like a blade. ‘It wasn’t my father who bore the brunt of Wallace’s jealousy, but my mother.’
‘Paige.’ His tone was almost pleading. ‘You need to talk to Connor about this.’
‘No. I don’t.’ Her hands clenched by her sides. ‘I’m not reopening old scars, like about Mum and Anne’s mysterious car accident. Like about how Connor lost his son. I want you to tell me.’
‘Not here.’ He took hold of her hand and led her into the skeleton that was all that remained of his childhood home. When he reached a small room overlooking the jacaranda, he stopped and let go of her. After checking all the bricks were secure on the low wall that once housed a window, he indicated that she sit. He then sat beside her and picked up a small piece of debris that he rolled in his fingers.
‘Where would you like me to start?’
‘At the beginning.’
‘Okay. As good a place as any, I suppose. Basically Wallace never forgave your mother for choosing Connor over him and spent the rest of his days making her life, and anyone she loved, a misery. He tried to go out with Anne, but she saw through him, so then he targeted the third friend in the trio, my mother Lillian. Even with your mother and Anne warning her Wallace was unstable, she believed that below all his gruffness and eccentricities a good man lurked. It didn’t.’
‘How do you know all of this? Did your mother tell you?’
His fingers clenched and the mortar crumbled. He allowed the dust to trickle onto the floor. ‘Not directly. I’d grown up believing my real father died when I was a child. Mum didn’t ever talk about her life before Sydney and when I asked about the angry man we used to live with all she’d say was that he was gone. Then Mum married Bruce and he became my father so I didn’t ever ask again. The day after my mother died, Bruce came into the kitchen. I was crying at the table. He handed me a thick yellow envelope and stayed with me while I read page after page about my mother’s and my life. I guess she didn’t know how to tell me, or had simply been waiting for the right time, so she wrote everything down in case she never had a chance to do so. The last few lines of her letter went on to say how much she loved me and was proud of me.’
Paige’s hand anchored itself onto his knee but she didn’t speak.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘to cut an ugly story short, my mother married Wallace and when he called her Molly on their wedding night, she knew she’d made a mistake. But it was too late. Wallace isolated her from her friends and family and she became a prisoner at Killora Downs. Both my grandparents had died so there was no one here Lillian could turn to. Molly and Anne would visit but by then Wallace drank heavily and it’d become too difficult for Mum to hide her bruises so she’d refuse to see them.’
Paige’s hand tightened on his knee.
‘When your mother became pregnant with Patrick, that’s when Wallace really lost the plot. He couldn’t deal with the fact she carried Connor’s child so …’
From the whiteness of Paige’s face he knew he didn’t need to elaborate. But despite her anguish she finished his sentence anyway. ‘So he ran Anne and Mum off the road and she lost Patrick.’
‘And then got my mother pregnant to twist the knife into Molly even further. Believe me, I was no child born of love.’
Paige pressed her lips together.
He released a deep breath. ‘But somehow Mum still loved me. My earliest memories are happy ones. We did everything together and I soon learned to stay away from the bleary-eyed and stumbling man who lived on the other side of the house.’
‘But things didn’t stay that way?’
‘No. I’ve no idea how old I was, Mum said in her letter I was four, but one night I hadn’t been quick enough to keep out of Wallace’s way and he hit me.’ Tait’s hand clenched on the ledge, the hard bricks bit into his palm. ‘And then when Mum came between us, he took off his belt …’
‘Stop.’ Paige leaned forward.
He briefly took her fingers in his. ‘It’s okay. It was the last time he ever laid a hand on us and it was our last day at Killora Downs.’
‘How did you get away?’
‘Through this window. This was once a music room. My mother used to have a piano over near the door and I’d sit on the floor with my toy cars while she played for hours. It was the only room in the house Wallace wouldn’t go into.’ He paused. ‘I don’t remember much from that night but I do remember the sound of Mum smashing the window pane with a chair.’
Paige stared into the barren paddocks where Lillian had fled with her precious son. Paige couldn’t speak, all her energy was concentrated on holding back tears. She knew there would be more things Wallace had done but she’d heard enough.
She looked at the noble and decent man beside her who continued to suffer because of the sins of the father he’d never known.
‘Tait,’ she said, her voice husky, ‘you’re a good, good man. You’re nothing like your father.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘One hundred per cent.’
‘I’ve done many things I’m not proud of.’
‘We all have. It’s called being human.’ She smiled to ease his suffering. ‘And even you, Mr Pretty Country Boy, aren’t exempt from normal human failings.’
A brief grin tugged at his mouth. ‘Country boy I can live with, but the pretty-boy tag really needs to go.’ The light ebbed from his eyes. ‘I ignored my mother’s last wish and turned my back on Killora Downs. No way can such a thing be excused as a normal human frailty.’
‘Yes, it can.’
‘How? In her letter she called Killora Downs my birthright and said that I would be the property’s salvation.’ Tait looked around at the destruction in which they sat. His posture so rigid it was as though he carried the entire property on his shoulders. ‘Some salvation I turned out to be. I didn’t even think twice about selling it.’
‘I’m guessing you found out about Killora Downs at the same time you found out about Wallace?’
He nodded. ‘The first I’d even heard of the place was when some photographs fell out of the envelope Bruce had given me. It seems Wallace never had the presence of mind to complete all the paperwork to change his will. As the only child of an only child, on Mum’s death the place passed to me.’
‘There you go. You were seventeen and grieving for your mother when you inherited Killora Downs. You weren’t in any position to make a rational decision.’
He slowly shook his head, his cheeks hollow. ‘Maybe, but in her letter Mum especially asked me not to let it go. She had plans drawn up to rebuild the homestead and dreamt of the property becoming our second home. But after finding out the truth of my childhood I didn’t want anything to do with Wallace, or from him. So I told our lawyer to sell Killora Downs, give it away if he had to.’ The tanned skin of Tait’s throat moved as he swallowed. ‘And he did. So you see, in a fit of selfish rage that would have made Wallace proud, I threw away my heritage that my mother hoped one day I’d rebuild. And now I’ve spent my life creating companies to save other people’s farms because I was too weak to save my own.’
‘Oh, Tait.’ Paige moved close to him and rested a hand on his chest. ‘It’s not too late to make things right. We can find out who owns Killora Downs and you can buy it back.’
His hand covered hers and prised it from his chest. ‘This is my mess, Paige, not yours. I made it and I need to fix it.’ He stood. ‘Now I think it’s time we head back before Connor sends out a search party.’
The way Paige burst into his office told Connor two things. One, she’d found Tait. And two, she knew who he was.
He put the pen down on his desk as she stood before him, hat pushed back on her forehead and hands on hips.
‘You knew. You knew who Tait was even though he thinks you don’t. That’s why you stalled calling Mr Tipson and why you didn’t want me to rush out looking for him. You knew he’d be at Killora Downs.’
‘Yes.’
She flopped into the closest chair. ‘You could have saved me half-a-day of worry, you know.’
Connor breathed a little more easily. Paige didn’t seem as angry as he’d expected over Tait’s deception – just exhausted – and from the lacklustre look in her eyes he’d hazard a guess she also hadn’t been able to have her talk with him. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know for sure. I thought he could have also gone back into town.’
‘So how did you know who he really was? It wouldn’t have been from his surname as he’s taken his stepfather’s last name.’
‘He looks like Lillian.’
‘So that’s where the photo of Mum and Lillian has gone from off the hutch? Then there is also the one of Lillian, Mum and Anne missing from the china cabinet. You didn’t want to risk me seeing any resemblance. I’m shocked. I didn’t think you had a devious bone in your body.’
He straightened the papers on his desk to hide his tension. It’d been his devious bone that had engineered Tait coming to stay at Banora Downs in the first place.
‘Do you think Tait would ever have told me who he was if I hadn’t followed him?’ Paige’s expression turned pensive. ‘Would he have left and I would have been none the wiser?’
‘Don’t take him not telling you personally. When Tait first arrived I called his stepfather. Tait has become obsessed with getting his hands back on
Killora Downs. He seems to think by selling it all those years ago he let his mother down. And while I can understand his wish to make things right, we men do also have a way of being very single-minded about things.’
She arched a brow. ‘You don’t say? So you do know Bruce?’
‘Yes. He and I were at Somerdale Farm even though we haven’t seen each other in a very long time. He’d made a fortune on the stock market and as he had a big house in Sydney and no family, Molly and I knew Lillian and Tait would be safe there. Tait was so young when he left I wasn’t sure if he knew how he and his mother ended up at Bruce’s and if he even knew of his stepfather’s connection with me.’
‘I’m sure he didn’t.’ Paige rubbed at her temple. ‘I can’t keep track of all this. You and Mum were the ones who helped Tait and his mother get away?’
‘Yes, and we would have done it years earlier if Lillian had let us. I guess having a child to protect gave her the strength to finally go. She was a wreck when she arrived that night. Her feet were cut and she was blue with cold, but the fire in her eyes told us she would rather die than go back. So we had a workman drive her and Tait straight to Sydney. We couldn’t go ourselves as we knew the first place Wallace would look for them was here. And he did, but they were long gone. Your Mum then found a fancy lawyer to make sure Lillian would also eventually be legally free.’
‘But if Mum was so close to Lillian how come I never saw her or heard much about her? Anne has always been a big part of my life.’
‘In the early days your mother had to keep her distance. Wallace was hell-bent on finding them. He’d go through our mail looking for any letters. Hoodlums didn’t blow up our old car mailbox. Wallace did it to send us a message. In later years, when your mother went to Sydney for radiation therapy and I had to be here, she’d always stay with Lillian.
Your mother actually met Tait a few times, and do you know what she said?’
Beneath Outback Skies Page 23