Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty–One
Chapter Twenty–Two
Chapter Twenty–Three
Chapter Twenty–Four
Chapter Twenty–Five
Chapter Twenty–Six
Chapter Twenty–Seven
Chapter Twenty–Eight
Chapter Twenty–Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty–One
Chapter Thirty–Two
Chapter Thirty–Three
Chapter Thirty–Four
Chapter Thirty–Five
Chapter Thirty–Six
Chapter Thirty–Seven
Chapter Thirty–Eight
Chapter Thirty–Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty–One
Chapter Forty–Two
Chapter Forty–Three
Chapter Forty–Four
Chapter Forty–Five
Epilogue
About the author
Praise for Louise Cusack’s Shadow Through Time fantasy trilogy:
“Just as you think you can predict what will happen, Cusack throws up surprise after surprise – guaranteeing that you will be picking up the next book, almost before you have finished the first. This is addictive storytelling.” —Doubleday Quest Book Club
And for Marriage & the Mermaid:
“Louise Cusack has boldly gone where no romance writer ever has gone before. The book starts with one hero and ends with another. Highly recommended. 5/5” —Romance Book Haven
Marriage & the Mermaid
by
Louise Cusack
Kindle edition
Marriage & the Mermaid
Copyright August © 2012 by Louise Cusack
Kindle Edition, License Notes
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, reproduced, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photo–copying, recording, or otherwise) without written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.
Cover by R&D Studios: http://rowena–cory–daniells.com/rd–studios/
Formatting by Anessa Books: http://www.anessabooks.com
Monday
Chapter One
Baz stood in the doorway of his father’s study feeling that familiar sensation of having stepped back in time. His family home was a century and a half old and had been remodeled many times, but this particular room remained untouched, an enclave of masculinity that was all oak paneling, family crests and hunting pictures, like a section of English manor house uprooted and rudely transported half way around the world to south east Queensland. It was positioned in the middle of the house so it had no windows and was completely unsuited to the tropical conditions. Baz often wondered if his colonial ancestors had complained about it being hot, or whether they’d maintained a typically British stiff upper lip.
As usual, on a home visit, Baz was having trouble with the humidity. Only nine in the morning and he was already wondering if it was too early to put on the ducted air conditioning.
“Hey, dad,” he said softly, hanging back in the doorway, watching the old man at his desk fumbling delicate conch shells into rows beside nut–colored periwinkles. Sand spilled over the edges of the antique mahogany desk onto the carpet. Another mess for Baz to clean up. Only a week home and he was sick of it already. How the hell was he supposed to live here? “Dad, why did Elsie leave?” Baz asked. “She wouldn’t say on the phone.”
“Do you like the pink beside the brown?” Ted replied, looking up with the expectant innocence of a five year old. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” He glanced back at the mini beach he’d constructed. “I think it’s pretty.”
Baz’s first instinct was to make some bland comment and back away, to pretend the whole dementia thing wasn’t happening, but instead he stayed put. A lifetime of running away had to stop somewhere, or at least that’s what his therapist had told him. Last week’s resignation call from his father’s housekeeper of thirty years had given Baz the perfect excuse to take a leave of absence from work, thereby escaping the embarrassment of having to face Wynne Malone in the staff room. That disaster was best left behind him. But even as he’d been filling the well–worn packing boxes for the trip north he’d realised there was a pattern. When his Brisbane removalist gave him a Frequent Customer discount it was confirmed.
Baz needed emotional Viagra.
And the only way he was going to develop staying power in relationships, according to the therapist, was to test what he could actually cope with rather than running out on situations the moment things got tricky. So despite the fact that he didn’t have a ‘dutiful son’ bone in his body, Baz was back home at Saltwood, determined to stay for as long as it took to sort things out.
One day at a time.
“It’s better than pretty, dad,” he said and uncrossed his arms to step into the room and sit at the desk opposite his father. “It’s beautiful.” Then Baz actually looked at the mini beach and realised he hadn’t lied. Elegantly simple, it was a miniature Japanese garden that stirred memories and caused a strange aching sadness to drift over Baz, like the shadow of a cloud blocking the sun. It reminded him of something, but he wasn’t sure what until sudden and unexpected tears prickled his eyes. He had to blink furiously to rid himself of them.
So much for coping.
But he stayed in the chair and tried to breathe through it, knowing that becoming a resident son again rather than a twice–a–year weekend visitor to his family homestead would awaken the past, and not in a good way. Luckily, the sight of a seventy year old man making pretty things was just bizarre enough to keep sentimentality from bubbling into hysteria.
“Getting back to the subject of Elsie leaving…” Baz blinked again to be sure his eyes were clear before he looked to his father, “Was it all the extra cleaning, do you think, dad?” He glanced pointedly at the sand still falling off the edge of the desk. “I mean, I know she was well paid —”
“Elsie never worked hard enough!” Ted snapped, his dark eyes suddenly shafting up hotly, the personality switch taking Baz by surprise. Again. “And neither do you. Playing with fireworks.”
Baz swallowed over the sudden racing of his heart, allowing himself a moment to adjust, to regather his composure. “They’re rockets, dad,” he said patiently. “I teach science to high school —”
“Toys!” Ted spat. “You think playing with toys will bring her back? Well do you?”
Baz simply stared at his father. They weren’t talking about the housekeeper any more, and all the calm Baz had mustered over the last seven days spiraled down into the gaping emotional wound his father had just stabbed opened. Two decades of living away and he could still be gutted by the sound of one man’s voice.
The world c
ontracted into a series of staccato images that Baz struggled to push away, but they came with sounds and smells, laughter and a salty kiss on his cheek, the remembered feel of gentle fingers on his forehead. And most vividly, the soft thudding of his mother’s heartbeat against his ear as he lay cuddled in her arms.
The beauty of those memories battered his heart so badly he could feel a squeezing pain inside his chest and he clamped his eyes tight, desperate not to fall into the warm sea of memory because drowning in past only made it impossible to survive in the present. Baz had learnt that as a grieving eight year old suddenly thrust into boarding school. He had to come back, and quickly, before the weight of all he had lost crushed him completely.
But it wasn’t quick. The return journey from that idyll of his early childhood was slow and agonizing, and when it was done his soul felt empty, hollowed out. Yet when he looked up, his father was rearranging the mini–beach as if nothing had happened. Baz swallowed a few more times and finally managed to say, “Anyway… it doesn’t matter about Elsie.” He was croaky so he swallowed again before adding, “I’m happy to do the cooking.”
“And Glenda comes to do the cleaning.” Ted reached forward to adjust a shell back into line, not even looking up. “Or she pretends to. On Fridays.”
“I know.” Baz had met Glenda three days earlier, though his father had obviously forgotten that. And in any case, Elsie had filled Baz in on the household routines when she’d rung to tell him she’d resigned. He only wished now that he’d asked her why she’d been leaving, instead of offering her more money to stay. But in the end Baz had needed a bolt hole.
His therapist hadn’t been impressed.
“So, dad…” he said, struggling for conversation, as usual. “Now that I’m here, is there anything I can do for you? Any paperwork or…” Baz wasn’t sure what his father’s business entailed. Investments, property and shares? Bonds maybe? They’d never discussed it. It had to be a fair amount of income to keep the isolated hundred acre property and historic homestead in repair. Not to mention the extensive remodeling his father had commissioned five years earlier so Baz could have his wedding here.
Waste of time and money that had been.
The wedding.
Not the renovations.
“I don’t think so,” Ted said, picking up a particularly bulbous hermit–crab shell to inspect it closely. Then he sniffed it, as though checking for an inhabitant, before putting it back down in its row. “I have a man who handles my business affairs.” He reached for another shell. “I don’t need a boy’s help.”
Another stab into the wound. “Okay. That makes sense. I suppose it’s your solicitor.” Baz suddenly realised he should be checking these things. If his father was mentally incompetent, which was certainly how it looked, a careless mistake could create headaches for Baz down the track. “Does he have a Power of Attorney for you, dad?”
“Oh, somewhere,” Ted said, waving a hand around, not looking up from his shells. “He emailed it to me. I think I sent it back.”
Baz had been reaching for a shell that was about to fall off the table when his hand halted in mid–stretch. “You use the Internet?” He glanced behind his father to the small desk at the shadowed back of the study. Two years ago he’d put a cheap laptop back there for himself so he wouldn’t be bored to death on his visits. It had been replaced by a black and chrome tower system with an impressively large flat–screen monitor.
What the … ?
“Mmm hmm.” Ted was using his index finger to carve a trail in the patted down sand, snaking it around the rows of shells, creating more spillage onto the carpet.
“Dad?”
No response.
Baz reached across and clasped his father’s wrist. “Dad,” he said, and waited until his father’s questioning eyes met his own. “Your solicitor sent you the forms over the Internet?”
Ted shook his head, all wide–eyed innocence again. “We play chess,” he replied, and pulled his hand back.
“You and the solicitor play chess?”
“No. Randolph and I,” Ted said, smiling his you silly boy smile.
Baz felt the first tendrils of panic tickle his solar plexus. “And Randolph is…?”
“A man I met on the Internet.”
Baz tried to breathe slowly, to stay calm. “So, this man you’ve never actually seen, this man who could end up being a psycho or even a thirteen year old girl, emailed you a Power of Attorney form and you signed it?”
“I think I need seaweed for the border.” Ted nodded to himself, and then started to pat his pockets.
As though the conversation was inconsequential.
As though it was the most natural thing in the world to sign over all your possessions to a complete stranger.
As though his own son didn’t exist.
Baz resisted the urge to lean across the desk and shake his father. “Dad, stick with the conversation. Randolph sent you the forms. Did you send them back?”
Ted looked up into Baz’s eyes. “Send what?”
“The Power of Attorney.”
“Randolph’s Power of Attorney?”
“Jesus! Is there more than one?”
His father’s expression morphed in an instant. “Don’t you blaspheme, boy!” he snapped, his eyebrows like thunder. “You’re not too old for me to put you over my knee.”
Baz had a momentary flicker of internal reaction, then he said, “Yes, I am too old, dad. I’m twenty–eight. You wouldn’t get away with it.”
A two second pause. “With what?” Ted blinked like an owl waking up.
Baz felt a pulse start to throb beside his eye. “So Randolph sent you the Power of Attorney and you signed it?”
“Yes I did.”
“Did you send it back?”
“I think so.”
“And you picked this Randolph,” instead of me, “because…?”
“He likes Grieg, “ Ted said, and started plucking shells out of the construction to put them into the pocket of his pajama shirt.
Baz simply stared at his father, too overwhelmed to feel angry.
Yet.
But it would come. He could sense it inside his chest, like a Tsunami gathering force. “I like Edvard Grieg’s music too, dad,” he said softly. “In the Hall of the Mountain King is one of my favorites.”
Ted smiled then, a genuine smile of delight. “Mine too!”
This is so fucked. Baz turned away and considered getting drunk. Very drunk. He was a responsible, employed adult, eminently capable of handling any amount of paperwork his father’s finances entailed. And the old bastard knew it. So that left only two explanations. Either the forgetfulness Baz had witnessed was a sign of legitimate incompetence, or the old man was foxing and the Power of Attorney was proof of what Baz had always suspected — that his father wouldn’t trust him with milk money, let alone the Wilson estate.
Yet instead of railing against the injustice of it all, Baz held his temper and said, “Is Randolph’s email address still in the computer, Dad?”
Ted frowned at his son, his lips curled into a pucker of uncertainty. “I like Randolph.”
“Me too,” Baz lied. “We’re mates. Hell, we all love Grieg. I was just going to tell him about an orchestral concert coming up. We could all go together.”
“A concert.” Ted’s eyes cleared and he smiled expectantly.
“It’s on soon. So I’ll need to email him today. Unless you’ve got a phone number?”
“Oh, somewhere …” Ted said, going vague.
“A phone number?”
“The concert will be somewhere and you’ll need to tell him where.” Ted frowned and looked down at the half destroyed mini–beach. “Unless we pick him up,” he said carefully. “But he might rather go in his own car in case he needs to leave early. People do, you know.”
Baz stared at his father. People also die of seemingly natural causes, when in fact they’ve been smothered by a pillow in their sleep.
�
��You were never mothered properly,” Ted replied, nodding at his own wisdom.
Baz blinked. Had he said that about smothering out loud? He had to get himself back under control. Focus on the big issues: the Saltwood estate, his family’s heritage, protecting his father. “Let’s get that email address, Dad,” he said, and walked around the desk to take his father’s arm, tugging until the old man rose, reluctantly.
“The beach looks after itself,” Ted said wistfully as Baz dragged him away from his sandy creation towards the new computer. “But the ocean…”
“Looks after itself too, dad. Come on.”
Ted turned for one last glance at his handiwork. “It’s what’s under the ocean that looks,” he said. “And we look at it, but we mustn’t touch, we mustn’t … It’s trouble if you touch it, you know,” he said, pinning Baz with a disarmingly penetrating glance.
“It’s just fish, Dad. Ease up.” But there was something uncomfortable in the old man’s knowing eyes. Baz found he preferred the child–like innocence of the witless–dad he’d recently become accustomed to.
“Just… fish,” Ted repeated.
“Sure. You eat them.”
Ted shuddered at that and looked at his son as though he’d suggested they murder the mailman.
“Well, you don’t,” Baz said. “But I do. Come on, dad. The email address,” and with another gentle tug he set his father in motion. However, the expression of dazed horror on his father’s face stayed with Baz for the rest of a frustrating morning.
Chapter Two
Winifred Malone sat in a fuchsia recliner, staring over the head of her busy fingernail technician to the wall mirror behind her. If Wynne turned her head slightly she could inspect the tilt of her own upturned nose. Definitely asymmetrical. She wondered if everyone noticed her flaws, or if it was only her. “What’s wrong with me, Rache?” she asked.
Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) Page 1