Return to Stringybark Creek

by Karly Lane

  She felt the split second of surprise the action caused, before he recovered and kissed her back. She didn’t care that they had an audience; in fact, she was glad. She didn’t want to keep this thing quiet anymore. She had feelings for Ollie—real feelings—and she didn’t want to hide them.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, get a room,’ she heard Griff mutter in disgust.

  She pulled away from Ollie, taking a breath as she risked a glance up at him. ‘Griff, consider yourself informed about our current relationship,’ she said, without taking her eyes from Ollie’s heavy-lidded gaze.

  ‘Was that so hard to do? A little consideration wouldn’t have gone astray is all I’m sayin’,’ Griff said grudgingly, and Hadley knew that Olivia would be sending him a withering glare.

  ‘Great. So you two boys all good now?’ Olivia asked, sounding like a schoolteacher talking to two kindergarten kids.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Ollie said, sliding his arm across Hadley’s shoulder and pulling her close against his side.

  ‘Yeah. All good,’ Griff said grudgingly. ‘I may have been a bit out of line …’

  ‘May have been?’ Hadley said, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘It’s all good,’ Ollie said, giving her a squeeze. ‘You were just lookin’ out for your sister. I get that,’ he said pointedly, nodding towards his own sister.

  ‘Yeah, well, I may be okay with it, but you’ve still gotta tell Linc and Dad yet,’ Griff said with a touch too much glee in his voice to be considered comradely. It was her turn to give Ollie a comforting squeeze. She wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe he’d lost a little of his colour.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said. At least she hoped it would be. She still didn’t have any answers as to what their future would look like. Oh, well, it’s too late to back out now, she thought, and was glad.

  ‘Come over for dinner tonight,’ she said, turning in Ollie’s arms. ‘We’ll make it public. We’d better invite your parents too. May as well kill two birds with one stone.’

  She walked Ollie to the door and kissed him goodbye, lingering in the doorway as they rested foreheads together quietly. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really,’ she smiled weakly. ‘Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t want to hide things from our family anymore. I’m tired of always keeping secrets.’

  ‘Whatever you want to do, you’ve got my support.’

  ‘Thank you. For everything.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Yes, you have. You came over here to take on my brother. You’ve got my back. That means a lot.’ It was something she hadn’t really experienced before. It also highlighted how one-sided her marriage with Mitch had been. He’d never really had an opinion about her career—or anything else in her life for that matter. They’d led two separate lives under the same roof. This was nice. Different, but nice.

  Hadley had organised the dinner. Dodging her mother’s questions had proven challenging, but it was easier to distract her with Mia in the house, and the suggestion of a night off from cooking so she could enjoy her grandbaby prevented the grilling Hadley would normally have gotten.

  The atmosphere was festive, not unusual this close to Christmas and the two families always enjoyed any excuse for a gathering.

  Her gaze settled upon Sue and Bill and she found herself briefly considering how this new relationship might affect them. With a wry smile she realised Olivia and Griff had already eased the path for her and Ollie in that regard. The families used to joke about marrying all the kids off to each other and joining forces like some medieval clan, although she was fairly sure none of them ever actually thought it might come true. Not that she and Ollie were anywhere near that serious yet, she reminded herself quickly. She pushed the thought of marriage and going through all that again—ever—from her mind, choosing instead to focus on her unexpected happiness right now.

  She loved being home. She had missed it when she spent so long away. Over the last few years she’d found herself making excuses for not coming home because Mitch was uncomfortable around her family. He wasn’t used to their open affection and good-natured ribbing. She should have pushed him more, but she hadn’t. Maybe on some level she’d known that if she’d tried to force Mitch to be part of her family he’d eventually decide not to get married after all. It made her equal parts angry and ashamed of herself. Why had her ego—her need to prove herself to everyone—let her ignore the red flags that had waved for so long over her relationship with Mitch?

  Her thoughts drifted back to her sister, and her mother’s announcement earlier that Harmony was out of town and wouldn’t be coming along tonight. Hadley felt a twinge of guilt over her relief when she heard the disappointment in her mother’s voice. The reality of how things were going to change—had already begun to change—was not lost on her. Hadley assumed that from now on one of them would always try to find an excuse not to attend family functions to avoid the awkward situation. She felt sad that her parents, who always looked forward to having all their children home together whenever possible, would be the biggest losers in this whole, horrible mess.

  She glanced up when Ollie walked into the room and felt a warm sensation spreading from her stomach to her toes. The man seemed to get better looking every time she saw him. She’d never taken any notice of how his jeans fitted oh so perfectly, not skinny jeans designed for city chic, but real jeans made to fit a real man. He didn’t wear what was on trend, he wore what was comfortable, and yet somehow he managed to make what the models wore look like kids’ wear. How had she been able to look past those arms? Everything about the way he moved, the way he held himself, seemed to ignite primal urges in her. She inwardly scoffed at herself, but she couldn’t stop herself responding to him. Her gran would say she was smitten, but that sounded far too innocent for the things her imagination was coming up with right now.

  ‘Hey,’ Ollie said softly as he stopped before her, having greeted everyone on the way across the room. ‘How’s this thing going to go down?’

  ‘I have no idea. Should we do it before we sit down or at the table?’

  Ollie looked around as though trying to gauge the audience. ‘Well, they seem to be pretty loosened up,’ he said, eyeing the various glasses of beer and wine. ‘Maybe we should get it out of the way now?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve had enough to drink yet, but okay.’ She felt ill. This wasn’t the worst thing she’d had to announce, she told herself … For someone who detested drama, she was certainly having her fair share of it lately.

  Ollie took her hand and looked down into her eyes intently. ‘We’re in this together, okay?’

  His words cocooned around her and made her smile. ‘Okay.’

  Still holding her hand, Ollie gave a whistle and conversation instantly stilled in the room. ‘If I can interrupt for a minute,’ he started, and Hadley saw a few curious gazes dart from their joined hands and back to their faces. ‘There was a reason behind tonight’s get-together. Some of you might have suspected something’s been going on. Well, it has. Hadley and I have some news.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Gran piped up from her position on the lounge. ‘Is there another baby on the way?’

  ‘No!’ Hadley said, jumping in and swallowing hard at the sudden frown that had appeared on her father’s face. ‘No, Gran. I’m not having a baby. Ollie was about to say, we’re …’

  ‘Getting married?’ Gran supplied hopefully.

  ‘Ah, no,’ Hadley said, feeling the rest of the room getting restless as the situation began to get out hand.

  ‘Ollie and I have been … seeing each other,’ Hadley said quickly. ‘We just wanted to let everyone know. So it would be less … weird.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lavinia said, her eyes wide and her smile fighting to stay in place.

  ‘You’re … together? As in a couple?’ Sue said, as though to clarify.

  ‘And there’s no baby?’ her father said, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘Nope. No ba
by,’ Hadley said, forcing a bright smile.

  ‘Yet,’ Gran added cheerfully.

  ‘Well, that’s lovely,’ Lavinia finally said, getting to her feet and handing the baby to Cash before coming over to hug them both. It opened the gate to more good wishes and Hadley could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Thank goodness that was over and done with. She knew they’d now be facing a million and one questions about the how, why and what this meant for the future, but at least Ollie was there to help field them.

  ‘So, Dawson,’ Linc said, coming over to slap Ollie on the back. She heard Ollie bite back a grunt at the slightly overenthusiastic greeting. ‘As the older brother, I guess it’s up to me to point out that if you ever hurt my sister, you’ll have me to deal with,’ he said with a friendly smile, which on closer inspection had a slight tightness to it. ‘Family friend or not,’ he added, and Hadley glared at her older brother.

  ‘Okay, thank you, Linc,’ she said, intervening quickly.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Ollie said calmly. ‘I’ve said the same thing to Griff. It’s a brother thing,’ he said without his gaze leaving the other man’s. Clearly there was some unspoken brotherhood exchange going on between the two, so Hadley left them to it.

  She hugged Olivia and her mother and accepted Cash’s smug embrace. ‘I knew it,’ she said, nodding sagely. ‘You two were meant to be.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re not sure how it’s all going to work … but I guess we’ll see.’

  ‘This is the best news,’ Sue said, smiling warmly. ‘Something that Bill and I have been secretly hoping might happen for years.’

  So it was official: apparently she was the only one completely blinded to what pretty much everyone else had somehow suspected over the years. So much for investigative journalism skills. In the kitchen, having waved Lavinia away, Cash, Olivia and Hadley began serving up the meal.

  ‘So how does it feel to come clean?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘I don’t know. No one really seems overly surprised.’

  ‘Told ya,’ Olivia shrugged as she served the peas.

  ‘I thought your dad was going to bust a gasket there for a minute when he thought Ollie had knocked you up,’ Cash chuckled.

  ‘As though that would have been the biggest scandal I’d put the family through,’ Hadley scoffed.

  ‘It’d have given Mitch something to think about,’ Cash said harshly, unable to hide her contempt for the man.

  ‘Mitch wouldn’t bat an eyelid,’ Hadley said, dishing the potatoes out onto the many plates spread out before them.

  ‘He should. The jerk,’ Olivia added.

  ‘He never really wanted kids.’ Her thoughts briefly touched on the still tender memory of the baby she’d lost a little over a year ago. The sadness had dulled, but it was always there. She often wondered how things would have turned out had she not lost the baby. She doubted Mitch would have changed; if anything, he probably would have only grown resentful. He’d never liked it when something intruded on his pre-ordained plans.

  She looked up and saw her friend’s expression soften to one of understanding. It wasn’t often you had a friend who’d shared the very best and worst of times with you. Olivia had always been her rock and she blinked quickly as her eyes stung and threatened to well up. ‘We better get these out before the natives get restless.’

  Hadley smiled as Olivia moved past her and bumped her with a hip on the way out. Maybe things hadn’t been going great lately, but she still had to be one of the luckiest people in the world to have her family and good friends to support her. Her gaze searched the table until she found Ollie. And she had this amazing man in her life now. For better or worse, it was now public knowledge. Maybe it would put more pressure on them to make this thing work, but then again, everyone knew the obstacles they were up against, so surely they’d cut them some slack. One thing was certain though—at least now everyone wouldn’t be sending her any more of those ‘Poor Hadley’ looks that she’d been trying to ignore since she’d been home. If only one good thing came from all this, then that would be a pretty good one.

  Fifteen

  ‘Do you realise,’ Olivia said, looking at Griff after the meal was finished and they were recovering from a food coma, ‘that this is the last Christmas we’ll be single?’

  Hadley watched her best friend and brother exchange a smile and swallowed back a little ping of regret mixed with a touch of nostalgia. Two Christmases ago she had been in the final stages of planning her dream wedding.

  She looked around at the small group gathered and realised just how much had changed for all of them since that Christmas. Linc and Griff had almost split the family in two when they’d fought over Cash. Who could have known then that Griff would go on to find the woman he was really supposed to be with had been right under his nose all these years? Linc had fought his demons and won—won his girl and now had a baby—and she was an almost divorced, disillusioned journo hiding out at her parents place to avoid becoming fodder for the gossip magazines. Her gaze shifted to Ollie and she saw a sad, faraway look on his handsome face as he stared down into the beer he held in his hand.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked him quietly.

  His eyes shot to hers as though startled from deep thought. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘You looked like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders.’

  ‘I was just thinking about Luke’s family,’ he said, sitting up a little in his seat. He’d been to visit the Pattersons a few times since the funeral and had dropped by the day before to have a quiet beer with Terry. He couldn’t help but think while he was there that it should have been Luke sitting with his old man out the back having a drink to see in the Christmas season. Alice had joined them later and he’d listened to her reliving some of the more amusing antics from Luke’s childhood. Ollie had listened and grinned at some of them—he’d been part of one or two and had forgotten about them—but the stories, as funny as they were, were full of sadness. That’s all they’d have of him now—stories.

  ‘Christmas is going to be hard for them,’ Hadley acknowledged.

  ‘I feel like we’ve let him down somehow,’ Ollie said, picking at the label on the side of his beer bottle. ‘That something needs to be done. We need to do something.’

  ‘How do you stop people taking their own life, Ollie?’ Olivia said sadly. ‘It’s a choice they make. That’s why it’s so hard to understand.’

  ‘Then maybe the answer’s about finding a way to stop it before it gets to that point,’ Ollie said.

  ‘There’re a few programs about that deal with suicide. Maybe you need to get in touch with them and see what they suggest,’ Linc said thoughtfully.

  ‘I feel as though we need something aimed at farmers. How many local families do we know that this’s happened to over the last few years? We need to aim something at blokes like us. I think it needs to come from someone who isn’t a doctor or a psychologist, from someone like us, you know? It needs to be relatable.’

  ‘I think you might be on to something there,’ Cash said after a few moments.

  ‘But that’s all I got. I don’t have any idea how to go about making it happen.’

  Hadley put a hand on Ollie’s leg. ‘You’d be surprised how many ideas can spring to life with enough heads put together.’

  ‘Dessert time,’ Sue called out, clapping to get everyone’s attention and breaking the sombre mood that had fallen over their small group. Clearly, the mothers had taken over the party.

  ‘Hey,’ Hadley said, pulling Ollie back into his seat when everyone else got up and moved inside. ‘Don’t give up. We’ll think of a way to make something work. I’ll help you.’

  Ollie leaned over and kissed her gently, resting his forehead against hers. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t give up too easy.’

  ‘Lucky for me,’ she said softly.

  ‘Hadley, good news,’ her mother called as she walked into the kitchen the next day.

  Hadle
y had been reading through her emails and looked up as Lavinia put her handbag down on the bench.

  ‘I spoke with Ollie the other night about young Luke. He’s still terribly upset, isn’t he?’ she said sadly.

  ‘Yeah. It’s hit him pretty hard,’ Hadley agreed. She hadn’t known that he’d spoken with her mum about it.

  ‘Well, anyway, today at the meeting I raised the idea of doing something as a fundraiser towards mental illness on behalf of Luke’s family. Ollie’s right, everyone feels helpless and we need to do something positive. So I put forward the idea of a high tea, to raise money for an organisation that can do something useful with it.’

  ‘That’s great, Mum,’ Hadley smiled.

  ‘Normally we wouldn’t be looking at any kind of event until well after the Christmas season, but seeing as so many people are home during the holiday period, I think this would be a wonderful opportunity to do something.’

  Her mum was right. Christmas was one of the very few times of the year that everyone came home to the area. There would be a lot of old schoolfriends of Luke’s who would probably like to attend an event in his memory, many of whom hadn’t been able to return for his funeral.

  ‘I’m very excited about it actually. I’m going to invite as many influential people as I can so we can spread the word. We need councillors and our local member … health professionals,’ she said, listing them off and growing more enthusiastic with each new thought. ‘I spoke to Martha Williams, you remember she had a daughter—I think she’s a bit older than Harmony—anyway, her daughter is a psychologist and she’s very interested in getting on board, and I’ve asked if she’ll give us a bit of a talk about mental health on the day. I think we need to make this as much about raising awareness as raising money. What do you think?’ she asked, looking at Hadley expectantly.

  ‘I think that’s a fantastic idea, Mum.’ They did need to target the people in power, people who could make a difference, but it was kind of throwing her off balance the speed at which it was taking off. Still, leave it to her mother and things always ran at full speed until they were done.