Where There's a Will

by Virginia Hale

  She cleared her throat. “Like I said, I’m determined to help out.”

  “And what exactly is your idea of helping out?”

  “I could start running tours.”

  Dylan blinked. “Tours?”

  “Yeah.”

  A condescending smirk pulled at the corners of Dylan’s mouth. “Okay, Norma Rae, you don’t just…it doesn’t work like that. If you want to do that, you’re going to need to watch me for a few weeks—”

  “I think I can handle—”

  “Don’t get cocky, Beth. I’ll need to supervise you. It’s going to take you forever to learn the script.”

  Beth chuckled. “The script?”

  “I’m serious. What? You think it’s easy going over the whole case in front of half a dozen people ten times a day? Stutter once and they’ll have your head for it. I’d love to see you try.”

  It irked Beth the way she grinned, poorly attempting to stifle a laugh. She watched as Dylan shook her head and took another bite of her steak. “Bless your heart,” Dylan laughed through a mouthful.

  Beth’s expression hardened. “I know what I’m talking about. I wrote my thesis on Sarah Blaxland.”

  “Good for you. Doesn’t mean you can entertain a crowd.”

  “We’re retelling a homicide case, not doing stand-up comedy.”

  “And thank god for that. You seem about as uptight as a prude in a strip club.”

  Beth reached for the bottle of water and refilled her glass. “There’s an online review that says you have no filter.”

  “There are also other reviews that speak quite highly of me. You have to take the good with the bad. So, when are you going to start coming ’round so I can supervise you?”

  Beth let the comment slide. “Well, I have a few things to unpack, to settle into—”

  “I think you should start tomorrow,” Dylan interrupted. “Sunday is usually our busiest day. You’ll get a real feel for the demands of the job.”

  “Tomorrow?” It was an awfully quick about-face for someone who had declined her offer moments before.

  “What’s wrong with tomorrow?” Dylan reached for Beth’s empty plate and took it to the sink. “How much have you got to unpack?”

  Beth twisted in her seat. “Not much, I suppose…”

  “Good. Oh—speaking of your stuff, I have something for you upstairs.” Dylan slid in her socks across the hardwood kitchen floor and stilled herself on the bannister. “Come on,” Dylan encouraged. “Bring your onions, too.”

  Chapter Four

  Dylan never gave much thought to how small her bedroom was until she brought women back to the loft. The sun would rise and her guest would sit up, topless, attempting to gain her bearings as her eyes shot around the tiny space.

  She watched as Beth’s eyes flickered from the pedestal fan in the corner to the overflowing bookshelf, from the novels piled knee-high against the far wall to the mattress atop the double pallets she’d pinched from the back of Woolies one night. In hindsight, probably should have gone with the natural timber pallets instead of the spray-painted green… She glanced down at the thick wad of blankets she’d kicked to the end of the bed in the early morning. “You’ll have to excuse the mess, I wasn’t expecting company.” She bent to pick up a towel and hung it on the en-suite doorknob. “It’s not much,” she added. “I know that.”

  “Oh, no,” Beth shook her head against the frozen bag of onions, “It’s just that this used to be my room.”

  With Beth distracted, Dylan quickly turned the photo of Kyle face down on top of the dresser. She opened her closet doors. “Really?”

  From the doorway, Beth nodded. “My bed was under the window, though. Speaking of the window…don’t you worry that people will think the photo thing is a gimmick?”

  Dylan knelt on the floor and reached into the far recesses of the closet. “Experience has taught me that the believability rate is eighty-twenty,” she muttered. “Pretty good odds if you ask me.”

  “Why do you do it though?”

  Dylan shrugged as she pulled at the plastic bag she’d stuffed in the back of the closet a month ago. “It makes for a better review. Business dropped last summer.”

  “But I heard you tell the guests not to write about it on Yelp…”

  “Exactly. Letting them think you share a secret with them—letting them think they’re special—pushes their review from a four-star to a five.” She dropped the bag onto the bed. “There’s value in the ghost thing.”

  “And what did Elma think about that?”

  “Elma was eighty-two, didn’t qualify for the pension and liked to pay her electricity bill each month—she learned to bend her ethical elbow.”

  “Is it worth it though? You’re putting the credibility of the homestead on the line for, what, an extra thirty bucks a week? Is the extra star really worth it?”

  She hunted through the bag. It was all in there, ready to be returned to Beth. “We host a ghost hunter’s sleepover every six weeks for two hundred dollars a pop, so yeah, it’s worth it…”

  Beth gasped. She shifted the bag of onions higher against her temple. “Two hundred dollars? Per head? For just one night?”

  “Breakfast included.”

  Beth blinked. “It would fucking want to be.”

  “Oh my, the lady doth have a filthy mouth.”

  Beth leaned against the doorjamb. “Elma let this happen? The sleepover?”

  “It’s no biggie, Beth.” She sat on the mattress, curled a leg up under her and dropped the other foot onto a plank of the protruding pallet with a thud. “It’s not like we have a room full of twelve-year-olds in sleeping bags in the parlour. It’s mostly middle-aged, respectful out-of-towners, just a small group who know what they’re in for, how to behave…”

  “They sleep in the parlour?” Beth frowned. “What? Just on the floor?”

  “Yep. Like school camp. It’s kind of fun.” She patted the mattress in a gesture for Beth to take a seat. “Honestly, you would not believe the shit that comes out of people’s mouths on those nights.”

  Beth moved across the room and sat down beside her. “You sleep in there with them?”

  “I keep an eye on things, cook breakfast out the back in the morning—bacon, eggs, that sort of deal. You should come to the next one.”

  Beth smiled nervously. “Maybe.” She removed the frozen onions from the side of her head. With a shiver, she gently placed it on the pallet and wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s still freezing up here.”

  “Yeah, it gets chilly. One night last week it was so cold that I went down and slept in the parlour for the heating. Wi-Fi connection’s stronger down there anyway.”

  “The rest of the house has heating?”

  “Elma couldn’t afford it for every room, so we had to make sacrifices. The kitchen and up here don’t have it. It’s always been free rent for me, so I wasn’t complaining about a little bit of chill. I’ve never really known any different.”

  Beth raked her fingers across her painful hairline. She brought her fingers to her nose and winced. “I’m going to smell like onion for days.”

  “Probably.” She hesitated, wondering if Beth would find humour in the admission that tickled the tip of her tongue. The doctor had relaxed over dinner. She wasn’t as uptight as Dylan had initially thought. “I…uhh, I had a bag of frozen peas in the freezer too, but I figured the onions would achieve justice.” At Beth’s astonished look, she added, “I couldn’t let you get away with your little this door was never locked episode.”

  The corners of Beth’s eyes crinkled as she grinned widely. “Well played.”

  Dylan tried to fight back a smile of her own.

  Beth’s eyes fell to the plastic bag between them. “So what’s in here?”

  “A few things that were Elma’s. And yours.”

  “Oh.”

  “Have a look.” The plastic rustled as Beth peaked inside. “It’s not much, really, just stuff that she had in the s
itting room wardrobe.”

  Beth pulled a hard-bound copy of her thesis from the bag. She lifted the cover back, and Dylan watched, silent, as Beth read the handwritten inscription inside. To My Dearest Elma, for sharing with me stories about your family too special to include in this research, for trusting me, and for teaching me the true meaning of history and respect.

  “Thank you, Dylan,” she said softly, “I have my own copy, but this one is…different.”

  “It was nothing. I just found it, is all.” She decided against telling Beth that she’d read it cover to cover three times.

  Also in the bag was an elastic-banded wad of old birthday cards and Christmas cards. Beth held them for a moment, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, before she placed the cards on her thesis.

  “Now,” Dylan said, “This could be weird and you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to—I’ll just hold onto it—but Elma left this jumper in the closet downstairs and I’ve kept one of her cardigans for myself so I thought maybe you’d like this one.”

  Beth unfolded the jumper across her lap and touched her palms to the mauve wool, splaying her long fingers across the softness. It was relatively new, and Dylan knew there was no chance Beth had seen Elma wearing it, but it was Elma’s nonetheless. It still smelled like Chanel No. 5 and the “special” oatmeal soap Elma had circled in the Woolies catalogue and bought in bulk each time it was on sale.

  Beth’s voice was deeper, huskier when she whispered, “Thank you so much.” She looked up and met Dylan’s eyes. “Can I ask how she passed away?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “Was she with someone?”

  “No. She was at home. At her place across town.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” Dylan said softly. “It happened sometime in the early morning. She didn’t show up here early like usual. At first, I thought maybe she had slept in. I went over around ten when she wasn’t answering her phone. Sometimes she couldn’t hear it when her hearing aids were acting up, but I thought the fact that she wasn’t here and wasn’t answering the phone was…” She trailed off, her chest aching with memory.

  “Did you find her?” Beth asked gently.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “Well, thank you for this.”

  Dylan shrugged. “Like I said, it’s not much. Her nieces raided her house in town—it’s already up for sale. I hid what was here. I mean, I doubt that they’d be interested in two old jumpers, they didn’t strike me as the sentimental types when I met them. Not that they had much to say to me at the funeral.”

  Beth’s unease at the mention of the funeral was obvious. Dylan watched her swallow as she focused intently on folding the jumper. “It’s late. I should go.” She shifted on the mattress and began repacking the plastic bag. “Thank you so much for dinner,” she said politely.

  Dylan stood. “Well, I guess I’ll walk you out then.”

  “I know where the door is, you don’t need to do that.”

  “I need to lock up, anyway.”

  As Dylan followed Beth down the back stairs, it was hard not to notice that she seemed completely comfortable in the house. She wasn’t spooked. Even Dylan’s parents were on edge when they visited. But Beth seemed so at ease. Maybe too at ease. Dylan wasn’t so sure what to make of her and her wanting a job, but what choice did she have? If she refused Beth’s request to join her, she was worried that Beth would push her to sell. Things could get nasty, and Dylan couldn’t afford to play nasty. It was better to lose half of her newly acquired income than her job, her home, her entire life. At the very least, Beth seemed genuine. For now, that would have to be enough.

  Bathed in the floodlight, Beth crossed the veranda, the pin-thin heels of her boots tapping loudly across the mosaicked tiles. “What time would you like me tomorrow?” she asked.

  Just as Dylan turned off the taps of the shower, a message tone beeped from her phone. She reached around the curtain, wincing as the wet plastic, cold and slimy, licked her thigh. She wiped condensation from the screen before wrapping her shivering body up in the thick white towel. Warming beneath the ceiling heat lamp, she opened the text.

  Are you busy tonight?

  No, she typed. Come over?

  Do you have company?

  No.

  Give me half an hour.

  She smirked. So that changed her plans to crawl into bed and start a new book. It felt nice for once to be the pursued instead of the pursuer, especially by a woman as classy as Rose Plympton.

  The steam from the bathroom followed her into her bedroom, and she hoped it would warm the space before Rose arrived. Foregoing underwear—what was the point?—she pulled on a jumper and a pair of track pants. She looked around the loft. Should I tidy up? She didn’t want Rose’s pretty nipples to invert at the sight of her cluttered bedroom. Fuck it, she thought. Rose had seen it in the light of day often enough, and she was still coming back for more. She pulled up the duvet. The least she could do was make the bed before they unmade it.

  Dylan switched off her bedroom light and let the bathroom strip heater dimly light the space. She flopped onto the mattress. Was half an hour up yet? She opened Crush, the dating app aptly named for the way it often left her—crushed—and flicked through a bunch of old messages to which she had failed to respond. Most came from bored holidaymakers out on the point, or women dragged up from Sydney by their straight friends for bachelorette weekends in the Hunter Valley.

  Dylan refreshed the homepage, and as the grid of available women loaded, she shot up to sit on the edge of her bed.

  Beth. 9.1km.

  Rose’s small chest heaved gently as she came down from her high. Dylan watched, enchanted. Her own body was still humming, still hungry to touch and be touched, but she was happy just to lie there beside Rose, to feel the warmth of her skin, her breathing against Dylan’s shoulder as she calmed. Tracing her fingers across flushed skin, Dylan brushed the tip of Rose’s straining nipple, lightly, delicately. She lowered her head and pressed a tentative kiss to the pale swell of Rose’s breast.

  Rose squirmed beneath her touch. “Dylan…”

  “What?”

  As Rose sat up and reached across the pallets for her bra and underpants, Dylan followed the heat of her body. The ends of Rose’s hair tickled her sternum as she moulded her chest against Rose’s back. She bowed her head and pressed her lips to a freckled shoulder.

  “Do you want to have dinner with me this week?” Dylan whispered.

  Rose twisted. Her eyes locked on Dylan’s for a moment before she reached to the end of the bed for her thermal singlet. “I’m just…I’m so busy with work.”

  Dylan pulled back. “Right.”

  She watched unashamedly as Rose stood to dress. In the low light, Rose drew her tapered black pants up her legs and worked the zipper. Hands at her waistband, she paused, exhaling an exasperated breath. “Dylan, you snapped the goddamn button off…”

  Dylan’s gaze focused on Rose’s fingers as they pulled at the loose thread where the button had been. She swallowed. She’d been too desperate, too eager to undress her. “Sorry,” she said softly. “I’ll help you find it…”

  “Don’t bother. I’m sure I’ll have a spare at home.” As Rose sighed her annoyance, a familiar numbness arrested Dylan. She stared at the back of the other’s woman’s head, her dark auburn hair that was like silk between Dylan’s fingers. Did Rose think she didn’t notice her sudden detachment each time they were finished? They’d been sleeping together for four months, yet Dylan barely knew any more about Rose than she had as a teenager.

  Rose had come into her life shortly after Kyle’s accident ten years ago, sent by Community Health Services to spend two afternoons a week with Dylan’s family. Back then, when they’d first met—Dylan in her final year of school, Rose a bereavement counsellor in her late twenties—they’d barely spoken five words to each other. Each time Rose had
shown up, every Tuesday and Thursday for a year, Dylan had made herself scarce, disappearing to the library or the shops while her dad took off for the club.

  She couldn’t bear to watch her mum spend the afternoon in tears, puffing away at a cigarette at the kitchen table as she confided in Rose. Once, when her mum had tried really hard to get her to stay, Dylan had gone where nobody would think to find her. She’d sat on the platform of the train station for two hours, keeping herself busy studying. She’d wanted nothing to do with the social worker. Dylan didn’t need her help, her wide-eyed naivety, her desire to take their pain away. Eventually, Rose’s visits had stopped, and as the years passed, Dylan only saw her every now and then in town.

  In early January when Rose had popped up on Crush, her social work visits had seemed like a lifetime ago. But Dylan knew Rose felt differently, that she thought their relationship unethical. Rose had never said it outright, but she hadn’t voiced a lot of things that Dylan still knew to be true. That Dylan was damaged, that she still had things to work through. And she suspected Rose still felt guilty that she hadn’t tried harder when Dylan had obviously needed help. Some things, Dylan supposed, were better left unsaid.

  “Am I coming on too strong?” she whispered.

  Quietly, Rose collected her glasses from the nightstand and pulled on a thick pair of socks. She took so long to answer that Dylan wondered if she’d heard her, if she’d have to ask it again, but Rose leaned over and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. Slowly, she pulled back. “You’re just so much younger than me,” she breathed against Dylan’s cheek.

  Younger. Dylan knew it had more to do with the way she was than it had to do with their twelve-year age difference.

  She stared unabashedly as Rose clipped her bra. She was gorgeous, timelessly beautiful, and Dylan was hungry. She shifted across the bed until she was sitting on the end of the mattress. She reached out, linked her fingers into the gaping waistband of Rose’s pants, and drew her forward.

  Rose’s fingers raked into Dylan’s dishevelled bun, her resolve faltering as Dylan pressed a hot, wet kiss to her belly. Unsated, she ran her palms down Rose’s slim legs. With a featherlight touch, she scratched her fingers up cotton until Rose’s breath hitched. Dylan smirked, let her fingers settle in the crease at the top of Rose’s thigh. She rolled her tongue, curved her teeth against the slight swell of Rose’s belly and pressed gently, just the way she knew Rose liked. Her pride surged as Rose tensed beneath the bite. “Dylan,” she sighed. “I really have to go.”