Was he still upset about his grandfather? She wondered if she should pass on what Kitty had told her about this fishpond and Andy’s thoughtful, loving gifts. But what she really wanted was to rekindle the magic of being alone with Luke. His devastating kisses. His hands all over her.
‘I thought it would be easier to talk now than tomorrow morning,’ he said.
‘Well, yes, I guess breakfast will be busy.’
‘It’ll be mayhem.’
There was a soft splash in the pond and a circle of small ripples, but Sally couldn’t see what had caused it.
‘You should be very happy with how the party turned out,’ she said.
‘Yeah, it went well.’
‘And everyone loves what you’ve done with the homestead, Luke.’
He nodded. ‘Tomorrow we’ll have a family conference to work out the future of Moonlight Plains.’
‘Oh? Do you think the family might want to sell it?’
‘That’s the plan.’
She knew she had no right to feel disappointed, but her trips out here had become incredibly important to her. She hadn’t merely chronicled Luke’s progress or shared his bed – she’d also shared his plans and dreams. Plans and dreams for the homestead, that was; they’d never really talked about their future.
For casual lovers, the future was an out-of-bounds topic.
‘I’m fairly certain Jim’s going to offer to buy us out,’ Luke said. ‘He reckons he’d like to retire here. He loves the house. It was his childhood home, it’s close to town, and the property’s small enough to run with a part-time manager.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’d all love to see Moonlight Plains stay in the family.’
‘Yeah. I don’t think anyone will object.’
Which begged the question Sally forced herself to ask. ‘So, what will you do next?’
Luke half-turned to her, without quite meeting her gaze. ‘I’m already getting job offers.’
‘That – that’s fabulous.’
‘First up, Robert, my uncle, wants me to build a couple of tourist cabins on his property near Richmond. He gets a lot of gold fossickers out there and people hunting for dinosaur fossils.’
‘Cabins would be . . . great.’ Sally managed to sound happy despite the uncertainty that worried her now.
‘Robert’s keen for me to start pretty much straight away.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She tried to swallow the obstruction in her throat. ‘I guess that means that I – ah – probably won’t see much of you then.’
‘No.’ Luke’s hands gripped the edge of the seat. ‘That’s what I wanted to speak to you about.’ He stared grimly ahead and she could see the silhouette of his profile and the way his throat worked. ‘The thing is . . . ’ His face twisted in a grimace and then settled into an expression of stoical resolve. ‘We’ve never really talked about the end of the road, have we?’
The end of the road . . .
Slam.
‘Do – do you mean the end of our relationship?’
Luke nodded. ‘I’d say it’s run its course, wouldn’t you?’
She closed her eyes against the sudden wave of despair that swamped her. Why hadn’t she seen this coming?
Or had she known it was coming and simply refused to look?
In a nearby paddock curlews set up their mournful, soul-searing cry, while beside her, Luke sat in statue-still silence, waiting for her response.
She swallowed again, trying to ease the ache in her throat. ‘So . . . you mean we won’t be seeing each other any more?’
‘Well, not like we have been.’
‘I guess you’d probably still come to Townsville now and again.’
‘Maybe. Not often.’
He turned to her now and there was just enough light for her to see the concern and determination in his beautiful green eyes. ‘Sal, we always knew this was casual. Not leading anywhere. We had an agreement, didn’t we?’
She flinched, and yet everything he said was true. Absolutely, terribly true.
Of course they had an agreement. She’d insisted on their no-strings relationship and she should have known Luke wouldn’t hang around on the off-chance that she might change her mind.
Foolishly, she’d been so self-absorbed she’d left it too late to admit that her feelings for him had moved beyond casual. Even if she tried to back-pedal and confess how she felt now, Luke probably wouldn’t believe her. And who could blame him? She’d only just begun to believe it herself.
‘Sal?’ Luke was waiting for her reply.
She couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘Yes, I agree it’s over’, but she managed to nod.
Luke made a soft sound that might have been a groan and rose quickly to his feet. He stood looking down at her, his face tormented, as if he wished he could take back everything he’d just said, as if he wanted to reassure her, wanted to haul her from the seat and into his arms.
Sally’s urge to leap up and embrace him was huge. But before she could act on it, he turned abruptly and strode away. Into the night.
39
Dearest Kitty,
It’s a dangerous thing to look back as I have been doing in these letters to you. It’s especially dangerous to dwell too deeply on the twists and turns that our lives have taken.
Fate, if you believe in it, walks such a precarious tightrope. The wrong decisions are made despite the best of intentions. Words that should have been spoken are held back for fear of causing an upset.
I’ve been looking back, however, and thinking about you again . . . thinking in particular about the time we said goodbye at the hospital. I’ve been asking myself why I didn’t take a leaf from that precious old poser Macarthur’s book and promise you that I would return. Instead I gave you no hope, no hint that I planned to come back to Townsville.
Initially, there was the injury, of course – I couldn’t bear to saddle a lively young woman with a blind man. By the time I knew for sure that I was going to be able to see again, so many months had elapsed.
Perhaps, if I’d remained in an Australian hospital it would have been different, but once I was back in America, I experienced a strange sense of disconnection. Perhaps the blindness was part of it, but I felt cut off from the war and from the whole experience of meeting you, as if I was wandering in some kind of emotional wasteland.
Okay, I know that sounds over the top, but I’ve been reading the fairytale Rapunzel to my granddaughter, you see.
I’m sure you know the Rapunzel story, Kitty. The lovely girl is locked away in a tower and a prince discovers her when he hears her beautiful singing. Eventually the witch throws him out of the tower and he’s blinded when he falls into bramble bushes.
I’ve often thought of you as my Rapunzel, banished to that outback homestead. I think I fell in love with you on that first night when I heard you singing so beautifully to Bobby.
The fairytale has a happy ending, of course. After the prince stumbles around in the wasteland he eventually comes across Rapunzel, guided by the sound of her singing. By then the poor girl’s had his babies. Heaven help her, she’s had twins, and when the prince turns up, she falls into his arms, her tears restore his sight and the little family lives happily ever after.
Not so for our real-life story, hey, Kitty?
My sight was restored by medical care and by long periods of rest in faraway Boston. When I finally recovered, I was told that I couldn’t fly again, but I was made a flight instructor and promoted to major.
The war rolled on and eventually I was sent back to the Pacific on a tour of our various bases. My job was to help the pilots adjust to the Lockheed P-38 Lightnings, which replaced the inadequate Airacobras that Bobby and I flew.
But Kitty, even then, when I knew I’d be paying a visit to Townsville, I didn’t warn you I was coming. It was the middle of 1943 and I’d been gone for a year. I suppose I was worried that you’d ‘moved on’, as they call it these days. If I’d written in advance, heralding my return, you might h
ave felt obliged to welcome me, even if you had another guy. I didn’t want to put you in an awkward position.
At least that’s what I tell myself now. Too late . . .
Anyway, I returned to Townsville, which was swarming with more Yanks than ever, and I had an overwhelming sense of nostalgia mixed with soaring hope when I walked over the hill at the top of Denham Street and saw the sea and Magnetic Island.
I was remembering every detail of our weekend in that beach hut, as well as our meals in the Bluebird Cafe, our walks along the Strand, our conversations on the beach, our kisses at the water’s edge.
By the time I walked to Mitchell Street and was knocking on the lattice door on Elsie’s front verandah, I was desperate to see you.
I knew from Elsie’s reaction as soon as she opened the door that my visit would not have a happy outcome. My sudden appearance clearly distressed her and I will never forget the immediate onslaught of loss that hit me, as if a block of concrete had been tied to my hopes. I could feel my heart sinking to the very depths.
Still, I went through the motions. ‘How are you?’ I asked Elsie. ‘How’s Geoff?’
I gave her a food parcel – I can’t remember what was in it now, but she was very grateful. She said they were ‘sick to the back teeth with the rationing’.
And then, almost fearfully, I asked, ‘How’s Kitty?’
Elsie had so much trouble telling me. Her eyes were so sad, her lips were trembling and for a horrified moment I thought something truly terrible had happened to you.
‘Kitty’s married,’ she said at last.
Dearest girl, have you any idea how final and deathlike that word ‘married’ is?
‘She was married two days ago,’ Elsie said.
Two days.
Two days, Kitty!
Elsie was a little calmer then and she added details. ‘Right now, she’s away on her honeymoon. Just a few days at Paluma, up in the mountains.’
There’s no need to carry on about how I felt. In retrospect, I took some small comfort from the fact that you didn’t have your honeymoon on the island.
Elsie told me that you’d married an Australian, a boyfriend you’d known for years, and after a few careful questions, I was sure that he was the guy who’d been lost up in the islands. So I was glad he was safe.
But, damn it, he won you after all, Kitty.
Don’t worry . . . I had to get that off my chest.
What I also want to tell you is this: I’ve lived a long and successful and, I’m very pleased to say, happy life. I chose a suitable wife primarily to please everyone at home, but I was lucky. I loved Rose. Not as much at first as perhaps she deserved, for she was a good, talented, sweet woman, but over the years my love for her grew deeper and stronger and our marriage was, ultimately, very rewarding.
In time, Kitty, you were just a sad, sweet dream that came to me in my dark moments. You’ve helped me through the midnight terrors that visit anyone who’s been to war. So thank you, my darling girl.
I hope you’ve been as lucky as I have.
A tear slid down Laura’s cheek and onto the letter and she sent a hasty, embarrassed glance to the passenger sitting beside her. Fortunately, the portly businessman had become engrossed in reading a report on his laptop almost as soon as they’d taken off from Sydney and he’d only looked up when lunch was served. He certainly hadn’t noticed Laura’s weepy moment.
She looked down at the wet spot on the paper and blotted it with her fingertip, wondering if it would leave a mark. Not that it mattered. Now that she was on her way to Italy, flying somewhere over Northern Australia at thirty thousand feet, she wouldn’t be sharing this letter with anyone.
Perhaps, in time, she might show her father’s letters to her family, and possibly to Jim Mathieson if he kept in touch as he’d promised . . . but she had abandoned her original plan to show the letters to Kitty.
For Laura, the big takeaway message from her journey to Moonlight Plains had been the value and complexity of secrets. She knew now that guarding judiciously chosen secrets was sometimes the wisest action.
Yes, it was easy to feel puzzled and angry about everything that her father had kept to himself for seventy years, but Kitty and Andy had kept an even bigger secret, and reading between the lines, Laura suspected that Kitty’s friend Elsie had probably never told Kitty about Ed’s return to Townsville. Like the others, she’d wisely decided that sometimes the truth could only cause more harm than good.
The astonishing thing was, Laura realised now, that she alone was privy to all sides of this story. Her father would never know about his son, and Kitty would never know that Ed Langley had come back to Townsville to court her.
She wondered if this knowledge had changed her. The whole ordeal of her divorce had been bad enough, but she felt as if she’d been through another emotional maelstrom since she’d opened the first letter all those months ago. Now, after Jim’s revelations at Moonlight Plains, she felt as if her perceptions had been even further ripped apart.
It was hard to judge if or how this had changed her. Perhaps the art classes in Florence would help. She’d enrolled in advanced classes in oil painting that promised, among other things, to help her to express her subjectivity and her perception of situations and surroundings.
Laura smiled. She couldn’t wait to see how the results of her recent journey would filter through to her art. In many ways, the timing couldn’t have been better.
She was still smiling at the thought of Italy and the brand-new set of experiences that lay ahead of her, as she folded the pages along the old crease lines. She slipped the letter back into her purse, her fingers brushing the edge of a coin, the dollar Kitty had given her. A silver dollar from 1923.
Laura took it out to look at it again. So pretty, with the head of Liberty on one side and an American eagle on the other.
‘That’s a Peace dollar.’ Her neighbour was suddenly alert and excited. His laptop forgotten, his eyes were practically bulging behind his spectacles.
‘Do you know about coins?’ Laura asked, holding out the dollar so he could see it better.
‘Yes. These were specially minted in America after World War I to commemorate peace. Look here,’ he said pointing. ‘You can see the word “Peace” under the eagle.’
‘Oh, wow. How neat. Are you a collector?’
‘My father was. I’ve inherited his collection and I haven’t decided what to do with it yet. These coins are getting rarer. I’m not sure how much they’re worth.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t really matter,’ Laura assured him. ‘I won’t be selling this. Its main value is sentimental.’
She had given Kitty her word that once she was back in the States, she would do her darnedest to track down the Kowalski family. Kitty had told her the whole story about Bobby Kowalski and his lucky dollar, and how it had remained lost until Luke’s miraculous find. She knew it would mean a great deal to Kitty if the dollar found its way home.
Just then, the plane made one of those sudden stomach-dropping lurches, and to Laura’s horror, the coin spilled from her outstretched palm. Her heart gave a terrified bound as she grabbed at thin air.
Oh God.
Not again.
‘Oh, lucky catch.’ Her neighbour was grinning broadly as Laura’s fingers clasped around the coin. ‘If that had rolled onto the floor and under these seats, you’d have had hell’s own job trying to find it.’
‘I know . . . I know.’
Laura’s heart was still racing as she slipped the dollar back to safety and zipped up the inside pocket of her purse. She’d never been superstitious, but as she closed the purse with a reassuring snap and set it safely under the seat in front of her, she had an overwhelming prescience that her life was about to change again. This time, for the better.
40
The tourist cabins took Luke six weeks or thereabouts to complete. The work was straightforward and easy – his uncle didn’t want anything fancy – so the job was nowhere near
as interesting or satisfying as his project at Moonlight Plains. But what could a guy expect when he grabbed a quick job opportunity as a hasty escape?
At the time, he’d been sure that it was kinder and more sensible to make a clean break with Sally, far better than watching a great relationship fizzle out until it became stilted and awkward and painful.
Thing was . . . clean breaks were supposed to heal faster, and six weeks should have been ample time to get Sally out of his system, so it was damned annoying that he still thought about her all the time. It was even worse that he had no interest in dating anyone else.
A call from Mac towards the end of November included an invitation to Mac and Zoe’s property, Coolabah Waters – if Luke was at a loose end, Mac could use a hand securing some of his sheds before the cyclone season. Luke knew he should be following up leads on bigger projects, but he still felt restless and unready to settle into something long-term.
So, when Sally’s magazine arrived, he was working on Coolabah Waters and having a beer with Mac at the end of the day, out on the deck they’d both built overlooking the lagoons.
Zoe brought out the mail. ‘There’s something for you, Luke,’ she said, setting a large, stiff cardboard envelope on the timber outdoor table. Her eyebrows lifted as she sent him a pointed glance. ‘From Sally Piper.’
Luke did his best to appear nonchalant as he picked up the envelope and saw his name written in Sally’s curly script. She’d sent it to Richmond, and then his uncle had crossed out that address and forwarded it on to Mullinjim, and finally, Bella had sent it here.
‘I guess it’s a copy of the magazine with Sally’s article,’ he said, and his gut felt strangely tight and nervous. He wasn’t worried for himself, but he hoped for Sally’s sake that the story had turned out well.
Perhaps Zoe and Mac both sensed that he was nervous, for neither of them plied him with questions. Mac paid studious attention to his own mail, while Zoe returned to the kitchen, where Callum was perched on a high stool at the bar eating his dinner. She liked to feed him early and settle him into bed before the adults ate.
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