The third rope remained empty and still. While Andy had reluctantly scaled to the top, he hadn’t reappeared. Perhaps Eddie was talking him down.
Bree took out her phone. In every direction was a picture-perfect scene waiting for capture. The girls would have loved this. Sam too. She sighed hard. They would never travel as a family without some kind of financial miracle. Her dream of seeing the world had withered with her dream of a musical career. She stepped closer to a bush, its thin, olive-green leaves studded with bursts of white and yellow flowers. She held up her phone for another postcard image.
“It’s wattle, and it’s edible.”
Bree jumped a mile as Sloaney appeared behind her. “The flowers?”
“No, the seeds. Grind them into flour and make bread. The bush is full of life, you know.”
“What else can you eat from this bush?”
Sloaney beamed. “Not this bush, the bush.” He strode to a squat bush laden with rich-red berries. He snapped off a few and popped them in his mouth, biting down hard, the juice dribbling down his chin. The other berries balanced on his weathered hand. “Here.”
Bree took one and gingerly placed it between her lips. She bit down, and a tart burst of sweet juice flooded her mouth.
Sloaney grinned as he shoved the remaining berries into his mouth. “See? Full of life.” He marched to the base of the cliff and steadied one of the ropes gyrating wildly. “Lincoln! Legs straight like I told you.”
The rope slowed its frenetic swinging and Sloaney rejoined her. “There is life out here—food everywhere, clean air, clean water. I wouldn’t live anywhere else for a million bucks.”
“How does it all stay alive when it doesn’t rain?”
Sloaney chuckled as he pointed beyond the wall on which her friends dangled. “I’ll take care of your mates. Follow the path. You’ll find some rock carvings that have been there for millennia. Go ahead and have a look, but no photos please. The rock carvings are sacred and we respect that.”
Bree walked past the dangling ropes and followed a track that veered around the cliff’s base. Twenty yards later, the path was split in two by an enormous gum tree, its mottled branches jutting beyond the shade into sunlight. Underneath it sat a rounded boulder, long sweeping scratches adorning its surface. She padded along the track, and as she stood in front of it, she only saw thick gouges in the rock that occasionally crossed, smaller sweeps that lost their meaning.
It was no longer a picture. She felt, rather than saw, the slightest movement a couple of feet above her head. Her heart started to pound as she let her eyes drift slowly up, and she gazed into the softest, fluffiest, most gorgeous face of the one creature she wanted to see on this trip.
In the crook of the mottled branches sat a koala, nonchalantly chewing eucalyptus leaves while surveying her with casual disdain.
“Oh, how beautiful.” Bree raised her phone and rattled off nearly a hundred photos.
“You’re gorgeous.” She eased her hand toward it. The chewing slowed and the koala’s eyes narrowed.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Sloaney moved in next to her. “Take all the photos you want, but I’d leave that fella alone.”
“Why is that? He’s adorable.”
“See how he’s holding on to the gum tree? You wouldn’t want to get in the way of those, and there’s the chlamydia too.”
Long, thick nails like talons sprung from the ends of the koala’s claws and were embedded in the tree.
“Wild koalas aren’t as cute as you think they might be, but I think your girls might like a photo of you two together.”
Bree handed over her phone and backed slowly, nervously, toward the tree, one eye fixed on the koala, whose interest in Bree had all but evaporated.
“Smile, you’ll be fine.” Sloaney took a picture, then handed back her phone. “Fantastic!”
Bree snuck one last look at the koala. “Now all I need to see is a kangaroo.”
“We’ll be lucky to see one during the day. Wait until dusk and you’ll see mobs of them. Now, these rock carvings. Come with me.” He curled his finger and Bree followed him back along the path. He turned her shoulders until she was facing the carved boulder again.
“Now you’re standing in the best place to see it. Everyone goes too close and they lose the perspective.”
The lines converged, their sweeping breadth joining together to make sense. Bree could make out a turtle or some kind of animal. A harsh, rich cackle burst from the trees on the ridge above their path and Bree ducked.
Sloaney reached for the near-vertical rock wall. “That’s a kookaburra. A beautiful bird. There’s no need to worry about him.” He scaled the first few feet. “I’ve got to get up there and rescue your friend. Lincoln is giving him a hard time.” Bree’s gaze followed Sloaney as he clambered up the wall.
Eliza rounded the corner as she unclipped her helmet. “What have you found?”
She pointed to the rock carvings. “You can look, but you have to be here to get the right perspective.”
“Perspective, a good lesson.”
“But that’s not all. Follow me. Quietly.”
They padded along the path to the gum tree and its lone occupant. “Oh, how gorgeous. How soft is his fur?” Eliza reached out a hand but Bree stopped her. “Sloaney said not to touch him, check out his claws, and you can get chlamydia.”
Eliza shot a quick glance at Bree, lowered her hand but raised her phone. They rattled off a dozen photos—together and alone with the koala. She peered past Bree at the corner of the path. “Can I talk to you?”
She really didn’t want to talk about the audition. Not now.
“It’s Andy. We need to help him. Will you support me if we have an intervention?”
“Of course.” Relief flooded through Bree. The time to talk about the audition wasn’t now—she needed time to prepare for the inevitable. Eliza’s unhappiness that Bree had kept such a big secret for fifteen years from her best friend from college.
Eleven
Andy burned with embarrassment. Sloaney had lowered him from the cliff top like a removalist shifting a piano from a penthouse. Andy needed some time on his own, time to think. Time to fume. He sat on the flat rock, his feet dangling in the water as he looked deep into the water hole. The bottom was down there somewhere, below the murky blue-green. The water could have been feet deep or miles.
Andy had always been able to wave away criticism, but Lincoln’s antagonism had slipped under his skin. Had he known that Lincoln had changed like this, Andy probably wouldn’t have come.
He shook his head with a bitter laugh. Who was he kidding? That wasn’t true. This was the price to pay—hopefully the last price he would pay for a while.
The bushes behind him rustled. Silence. The leaves shook again, and Andy glanced around for a rock. Anything. The leaves parted as a face pushed through the scrub. Two beady eyes focused on him. A twitch of the ears. An inquisitive cock of the sloping, pointed head.
A kangaroo.
Andy sat dead still, his heart pounding, unwilling to surprise the animal two feet from him. Didn’t they kick with powerful legs when they felt threatened?
Strings of grass worked their way around the kangaroo’s mouth—like a cow working its cud. It placed gentle hands on the ground as if to steady itself and hopped its back legs closer to the water hole and him. Andy was within touching distance of an Australian icon. It slowly worked the grass, the sun catching the sheen of its gray-and-brown coat. Ears twitching 180 degrees. He reached out a slow hand to pat it and the chewing stopped.
Sweat funneled down Andy’s temples, drawing the flies. He fought hard against the urge to wave away their itching annoyance. “It’s okay.”
The kangaroo bounded backward into the bush in one hop at the sound of Andy’s voice and was gone.
Andy ducked for cover, his pulse again pounding in his ears as the adrenaline coursed through him. Lincoln appeared at the cliff top, backing up to the edge. Th
e indignation flushed out the adrenaline.
“Come on, Andy, get up here!”
Andy fumed. Lincoln had played some stupid competitive macho game in front of Eliza and accused him of slowing them down. Andy’s place in the world—to use Eddie’s words—had started with Lincoln’s words. One piece of information that had won a short-term victory but triggered a series of long-term losses. A resentment toward his old friend rose, but now Eliza was also on his case, and once she got hold of something, she didn’t let go.
Andy exhaled hard as he kicked his legs in the cool water and waved away another advancing wave of flies. He didn’t want to talk about why he wanted to disappear. He needed a clean break, where no one knew his name or his history.
Behind him the bushes rustled again. Andy made a slow turn, his lesson learned, but the bushes rustled higher than they did before. Higher than they should for a kangaroo.
In front of him, bubbles blooped to the water’s surface near his feet, and Andy felt a brushing against his toes.
“Ahhh!” He scrambled to his feet.
“Ahhh!” Eliza jumped back into greenery from which she’d emerged. “What are you doing? You scared the life out of me.”
Andy shook the water from his toes as he counted them. “There’s something down there, and it nearly had me for lunch.”
Eliza placed a caring hand on Andy’s arm and smiled. “You wandered off. Are you okay?”
He stepped back from her probing concern. “I’m a little shaken after a kangaroo scares the life out of me and a monster from the deep tries to drag me in.”
Eliza sat on the large, flat rock and patted the space next to her. Andy set his feet and folded his arms.
“I came to ask if you’d like to continue the conversation we had last night. You never got a chance to answer my question about whether or not you needed help.”
Andy stared at the rock wall and the deep water, his mind ticking it over. In a way, owning up to drugs might be easier. “All I want to do is enjoy this trip, okay?”
The crinkle above Eliza’s nose deepened. “If something is holding you back . . . Something from the past?”
Lincoln appeared at the top of the wall for the third time, helmeted and attached to the rope. “Woohoo!” He waved at Eliza and his taunting chant rained down. “Two-nil. Two-nil. Two-nil. Two-nil.”
Andy bit his lip hard until he could taste the salt of his own blood. He wanted this conversation to end, and for this part of his life to end, without being given the third degree. He tingled with hurts long buried but recently uncovered; nerves exposed to the air. “You want to have a conversation about our pasts? How about you talk to Lincoln about how he started all this for me back in college?”
* * *
Eliza powered between the fallen rocks, as she forged up the path that led from the gorge, shuffling the pieces of conversation she’d been drawn into. That she needed to fix.
Crunching steps grew closer. The stride was too long for Bree, too purposeful for Andy.
She turned and Lincoln’s sweaty, smiling face filled her vision. She stepped aside to let him pass, but he instead ushered her to lead the way and he fell in behind her. “Can we talk?”
“Sure. I was hoping to get a moment to chat with you as well.”
Eliza waved away the flies and brushed off the sweat pooling under the peak of her cap. They ascended in silence, Eliza waiting for whatever Lincoln wanted to say.
“I guess you officially win the competition for most successful.”
She turned on her heel and stopped on the path. Lincoln skidded to a halt, his nose inches from hers. “Really, Lincoln? Is that what this is about? I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m wondering about the value of all that, so I’m not really interested in competitions or success. Goodness knows I’m not impressed by it, if you haven’t worked that out.”
He took a sheepish backward step as she took the wind out of his sails.
She sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t want there to be bad blood spoiling the vacation.” She waved a hand around them. “Not out here in paradise.”
Lincoln nodded. “You’re right. Let’s keep going.”
Eliza resumed the climb. He kept bringing up his success—at first bragging about it, now downplaying it. What was his game?
“Do you mind if I ask you one question?” Lincoln’s words now came between puffs of exertion.
“Sure.” Eliza braced herself.
“What did you mean by being lost in life?”
Eliza relaxed, warmed by his interest. “I think I’ve been chasing this dream, and now I’m wondering if it was the right dream in the first place.”
“But Bree said you have the perfect life—career, apartment, car, party scene.” A pause grew, pregnant with intent. “Lots of guys.”
Eliza tensed. She knew when a conversation was being led somewhere. “Maybe life is more than that.”
“So you don’t have anyone in your life at the moment?” Lincoln’s question trailed up with a lightness that felt forced.
Her suspicion ran ahead of her, waving frantic flags. Eliza slowed her pace and closed her eyes, reining in control of her breathing to center herself. Her pulse slowed as the moment arrived. “Do you?”
“Not anyone serious. At the moment.”
Eliza could feel Lincoln tense behind her as he fell silent. This was not the old Lincoln who could have represented his country if talking were an Olympic sport. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“What was so bad about a letter that made you snap at Bree?”
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“But she’s really upset, and whatever’s in there, she didn’t read it.”
“Fine. I’ll apologize again.”
“And you didn’t answer my question.” She turned to him, and his gaze drifted to her nose. “Tell me if I’m prying.”
“You’re prying.”
The screeches of the white-and-pink galahs filled her ears as Eliza resumed the climb. One minute Lincoln was concerned about her, the next he was quizzing her about her private life while slamming doors on his own. The old dynamic threatened to scratch its way to the surface, and she didn’t want to let it back out. Not fifteen years later.
Eliza stepped onto a finger of rock that stretched over the riverbed a hundred feet below. The metal security fence creaked, sagging as she leaned on it, and Lincoln joined her. The wind whipped at the wisps of hair escaping from under her cap as she pulled out her canteen. “We need to talk about Andy. I’m really concerned about him. I’m wondering if he’s got a drug problem, so can we talk to him tonight around the fire? As friends?”
Lincoln’s eyes softened, the eyes Eliza had lost herself in ages ago. She batted away the sparking reconnection. “Of course. That makes sense. He’s been pretty cagey since we all met in LA.”
Above them, a wedge-tailed eagle screeched to a midflight halt, a hovering fixture in a crystal-blue sky unblemished by clouds.
Back down the path, Bree’s and Eddie’s heads appeared on their way up.
“Andy said one other thing down there at the water hole. He said you started all his problems back in college.”
Lincoln shrugged, his face a blank slate. “No idea. Started off his problems? With what?”
The distant chatter drifted up to the lookout. Lincoln’s leg muscles rippled in the sun, and Eliza forced herself to stay in the present.
Lincoln leaned against her. “You know it’s good to talk again, Lize. It’s been ages since we’ve been able to talk properly. We could talk about anything back in school.”
Eliza shook her head. Lincoln had been more than an old friend in college until she’d drawn the curtain across it—and she hadn’t spoken to him “properly” in more than a decade.
Lincoln stared into the reflective blue-green of the water hole below, the wind tousling his brown hair. Like it used to. “You know, I’ve always wondered what our lives would ha
ve been like had we stayed together.”
And there it was. She had to put a stop to it. Now.
Eliza turned to him and folded her arms with a hint of defense. “We were kids back then, and we didn’t know what we wanted.”
Lincoln’s eyes were no longer hard but soft. College soft. “To be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t had a relationship that’s worked out since.”
Eliza’s resolve steeled. She didn’t want to rehash things that belonged in the past, much less be blamed for them. As much as she had told Bree before their flight that she’d moved on, it was becoming clear that Lincoln hadn’t. And he was using her as the reason to stay stuck in the past.
* * *
Andy leaned against the four-wheel drive as the group disappeared into the scrub to take in yet another wonder of nature. He had to fast-track his plans, and Eliza would not be the ally he had hoped for. She was fast becoming the biggest threat.
Sloaney rounded the vehicle. “You coming with us, mate?”
Andy nodded. “In a minute.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Taking some time off and working out here, maybe at a cattle station.”
Sloaney bobbed his head. “I’ve got a mate who’s got a place. A small holding, only about a quarter of a million acres.”
Perfect. “Could you put me in touch with him?”
“Sure. What can you offer?”
That was a question Andy had never considered. A job in the outback wasn’t something to do. It was somewhere to go.
Sloaney leaned in with a whisper. “What’s your deal?”
Andy stood back as he tried to pump genuine indignation into his voice to conceal his anxiety. “Deal? No deal. I thought working in Australia for a while might be fun.”
Sloane’s eyes narrowed. “I could put you in touch, but there aren’t a lot of jobs out here at the moment, with the drought and everything. Maybe when we get back into town?”
“I’d like to call them before that if I could. Maybe on your satellite phone?”
Where the Road Bends Page 8