Where There's a Will

by Virginia Hale

  Well, Dylan could relax. Beth wasn’t planning on going anywhere any time soon. In the meantime, her conversations with Brian were just talk. Maybe his suggestions weren’t worth bringing up with Dylan yet, especially if they would upset her the way an almost-discussion had.

  “Why is the radio on?” Dylan mumbled, her voice rough with sleep.

  She sat back in her chair. “I was on it this morning,” she said smugly.

  Crumpet between her fingers, Beth pushed her chair back and moved to the counter to stand beside Dylan. She rinsed her cup under the tap, her hand raised to block the glare spilling through the window. “I was the eighth caller and I won tickets to the Winter Wonderland Festival at the gardens in Pokolbin.”

  “Congratulations, Doctor,” Dylan said. She gripped Beth’s sides and shifted her to reach for the tea bags.

  “It’s for tonight.” She swallowed the last bite of crumpet, her nerves fizzing. “I thought maybe you’d like to come with me.”

  “Oh. Umm…” Dylan raked her fingers through her loose bun.

  Disappointment bubbled in Beth’s chest like pop rocks. “It’s okay if you have plans,” she said. “I’ll just give it a miss.”

  The kettle clicked. “No, I…I’d love to go with you.”

  Beth hesitated. “Only if you’re sure.” She couldn’t stand the thought of Dylan taking pity on her.

  She watched as Dylan poured boiling water into Beth’s cup, then her own. “I’m sure.” They locked eyes. “I’m going to shower.” She picked up her cup and crossed the room. “Elizabeth?”

  “Mmm?” She turned to find Dylan stopped, the steaming cup hovering in her hand as she peered down at the laptop screen.

  “May I ask why a sticky tab is covering your webcam?” Dylan asked, amusement naked on her face.

  “Oh.” She returned to her seat. “You never know who’s watching.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You can laugh, but it’s happened to people.” She picked up the tea Dylan had made for her and blew lightly at the steam. “It’s a real problem.”

  Dylan’s fingers were cold on the back of Beth’s neck as they squeezed playfully. “Of course it is.”

  Minutes later, when Dylan returned from her shower, so did her old self.

  As the queue drew closer to the ticket counter, the artificial snow gusted over the patrons at the front of the line. Children unacquainted with a true alpine winter waved eager hands at the onslaught, amazed by the phenomenon as the “snow” clumped in their hair, latching onto their woollen coats like bees to honeycomb. With a laugh, Beth plucked a flake from her eyelashes and watched it disintegrate between her fingertips.

  Spreading her fingers against the corner of her left eye, she turned to Dylan. “Did I get it?” She blinked. “Or is there an eyelash in there? I can feel something…”

  Dylan was distracted, her gaze narrowed as she glared across the cobblestone path. “Look at that kid,” she mumbled with a tilt of her head.

  Beth blinked the discomfort away and looked around a congregation of rowdy teenagers. Over by the furthest barricade, a little girl reached for snowflakes beside the small pond.

  Dylan shook her head, her lips pursed in concern. “Her parents are all the way over here…”

  “Where?”

  “These two,” Dylan said in a quiet breath, “just in front of us.”

  Beth looked between the twirling child and the couple arguing. They’d been bickering for so long that she hadn’t realised they’d had a daughter other than the baby in the pram. God, why are there so many prams in the queue? Beth wondered. Had she won tickets to a winter festival or the annual baby expo? “Are you sure those are her parents?” she whispered.

  Dylan nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been watching. Mum’s busy with the baby, Dad’s glued to his phone, she could fall right into the pond and they probably wouldn’t even notice…”

  It was difficult to give much thought to Dylan’s odd concern when Beth’s focus was drawn to the little girl’s parents as they argued about a pair of pink gloves that had been left behind in the boot of their car. She shared a grimace with Dylan as they listened to the couple’s hissed accusations. God, these two need therapy, Beth thought, relieved when they surrendered their spot in the queue to trek back to the parking field for the forgotten gloves. They pushed back through the crowd and Beth heard Dylan exhale in relief as they called their snow angel over to them.

  They inched closer to the family in front where a mother was crouched, berating an impatiently wriggling child in a pram.

  The air smelled delicious, a salty mix of popcorn and barbecue. “God, I am starving,” Dylan muttered as she looked around the counter to the food trucks just inside the gates.

  She blinked, distracted with how the snow in Dylan’s hair glittered beneath the lights of the ticket counter. “You can’t possibly be hungry,” she said. They’d stopped for dinner at a small roadside restaurant not forty minutes before. While the remainder of Beth’s meal was in a takeaway container on the back seat of her car, Dylan had cleaned her entire plate.

  “I’m hungry for dessert—” Dylan tensed and quickly turned her back to the queue. “I just remembered that I left my ID in the car,” she murmured. “Can I have the keys?”

  Beth squinted. “Your ID? You won’t need it.”

  “I might. Come on, give me the keys.”

  “Dyl, you’re youthful-looking, but I doubt you’ll get ID-checked if you try to buy alcohol.”

  “Beth, come on.”

  “You can’t go now! We’re four groups from the front and we’ll lose our spot. Look how long the line is now…”

  She watched as Dylan’s eyes cast over with something akin to dread, her cheeks reddening. “What’s wrong?” Beth whispered.

  The woman in front of them stood back from the pram and locked eyes on them—on Dylan. “Dylan,” she said, the surprise clear in her voice. “Hi.”

  Dylan shoved her hands into the pockets of her dark coat. “Hi, Lisa.”

  Beth looked at them alternately. The woman had friendly eyes and a warm smile, but she looked as uncomfortable as Dylan. Lisa gathered her dark hair around a shoulder and fidgeted with her beanie. “How have you been?”

  “Good, thanks.” Dylan stood taller. “You?”

  “Great.” Dylan avoided the brunette’s gaze, her eyes falling to the whimpering toddler in the pram who struggled with the toggle of her jacket in an attempt to unzip it. “Sorry, terrible twos,” Lisa laughed, smoothing a hand over her daughter’s beanie. She clasped a hand around the forearm of the tall, bearded man beside her. “This is my husband, Ryan,” she said as she pulled him closer.

  “Hey,” said Dylan.

  The couple turned their attention on Beth, waiting. “Uh, this is Doctor Elizabeth Hordern.”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Just Beth.”

  Beth caught a flicker of misunderstanding cross Lisa’s face—she thought they were together. It’s an easy conclusion, Beth thought. The Winter Wonderland Festival served two purposes—date night or family affair. There was no way Dylan could have missed Lisa’s assumption either, but she didn’t correct her.

  Lisa slipped bright yellow gloves onto the little girl’s restless fists. “Do you still work over at the Blaxland Homestead, Dyl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right. You’ve been there for a really long…” She trailed off, struggling with her daughter’s curled fingers. “God, she just wants to get up and run!” she laughed.

  Beth stole a quick glance at Dylan. It looked like she wanted to do the same thing.

  “Here, hon, let me,” Ryan offered.

  Beth smiled. Dylan smiled. Lisa wet her lips, swatted a snow flake from the tip of her nose. “I see your parents at the club all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Dylan said. “Mum said she saw you a few months ago.”

  “I love your mum, she’s just an angel. She just takes everything in her stride, and she seems to be doing so wel
l these days—”

  “Oh,” Dylan looked past Lisa, “looks like you’re up!”

  Lisa turned to see the woman in the booth urging them forward. She tapped Ryan’s shoulder. “Well, it was great to see you again, Dyl. I’m sure I’ll bump into you in town sometime soon.”

  “Yeah. Good to see you.”

  “Who was that?” Beth whispered as they took their place at the front of the line.

  Booth Two waved them over. Dylan’s hand was warm at the small of her back as she guided her in the opposite direction of Lisa’s family at Booth One. “My best friend from high school,” she said tersely.

  Beth hadn’t seen anything as lovely as the Winter Wonderland Festival in a very long time. They chatted comfortably as they wove in and out of the tracks, admiring the fairy lights webbed around trees, the glowing hedges and the illuminated icicles dangling from bare branches. Languidly, they made their way to the heart of the garden, happier to take the smaller, less-impressive tracks to dodge the prams that were like bumper cars at their ankles, to avoid families eager to reach the skating rink.

  Down the roads less travelled, the jazz music rained quieter, allowing Beth to feel Dylan’s presence more acutely. Regardless of how cold the night, the sweetness of the festival filled her with pure contentment as it wrapped her up in small country-town warmth. There was a lovely brand of peace in its simplicity, and it settled as she walked beside Dylan.

  As they ventured on, Dylan seemed to relax. It was obvious that Lisa had unnerved her, and while Beth was curious to know why, she didn’t want to break the spell by prying. Things had been going so well all day and the last thing she wanted to do was unsettle Dylan again. Hopefully Dylan thought she was somebody she could trust—she couldn’t jeopardise that. Dylan would open up to her when she was ready, and if she chose not to, there was nothing Beth could do about that.

  Further into the gardens, the ice-skating rink was quickly filling up. Beth counted as many penguin skating aids crowded on the ice as children.

  Dylan rubbed her hands together excitedly. “I haven’t ice-skated in years,” she said as they crossed the grass to the temporary rink. Without offering a response, Beth smiled thinly, her hands smoothing over the tickets in her coat pocket. Side by side, they continued past the makeshift grandstand and around the border of the rink. “Where are we going?”

  Dylan turned to look over at her. “Skating.”

  Beth tightened the belt of her navy coat. “I didn’t realise you wanted to.”

  Dylan’s grin broke slowly. “Don’t play games, I know it’s included in the price of the ticket.” Suddenly, she slipped her hand into Beth’s pocket to retrieve them. Through the material, Dylan’s hand bumped against the juncture of her hip and abdomen. Beth jolted at the sensation, and Dylan just laughed, slapping the repossessed tickets against her palm like she’d hit the jackpot in Vegas.

  “Dylan, I can’t ice-skate.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, I actually cannot—”

  Before she could finish, Dylan was gone, her poorly twisted bun bobbing as she ventured toward the hire shed for their ice skates.

  With a frustrated huff, Beth leaned against the boundary fence and watched teens twirl and toddlers wobble. This was not going to go well. She was the most uncoordinated individual in the southern hemisphere. Her upper-body strength was embarrassingly poor, and her lower body made next to no effort to make up for her abdominal misgivings. As soon as she set foot on the ice, she’d be jelly from the waist down. Her thighs weren’t strong and commanding like Dylan’s. She’d seen her legs in yoga pants, the way the toned muscles played, flexed…

  “You’re still a size eight, right?”

  She twisted. Dylan was holding two pairs of skates. Beth raised an eyebrow. “How do you know my shoe size?”

  “You left a pair of thongs in Elma’s broom cupboard when you left. I figured that your foot probably hasn’t grown since your twenties. Big feet for a small lady, I mean, considering that you’re shorter than me.” Dylan led them up to the third row in the grandstand and flipped a plastic seat down for Beth.

  “Wait…are you talking about my black Havaianas?”

  Dylan nodded as she took a seat beside her and handed over the size-eight skates.

  “I always wondered what happened to those. I thought maybe somebody stole them from my veranda in Sydney. I had no idea I left them at the homestead. They were my favourite.”

  “Fine,” Dylan huffed teasingly. “I’ll give them back.”

  Beth blinked, watching as Dylan unlaced her Doc Martens and yanked them off. “You still have my old thongs?”

  “Yeah. I mean, they’re a size too big, but yeah. I’ve never had a pair of Havaianas—my thongs have come from Big W ever since I could walk. I wasn’t going to let the fact that they flopped a bit stop me.”

  Reluctantly, Beth unzipped her boots. “Looks like I know what to get you for Christmas.”

  Dylan’s brow furrowed as she tucked her black jeans into the ice skates and began to lace them. “Sticking around that long, are you?”

  Beth looked up, surprised to see the weight of the question in Dylan’s stare. Her heartbeat quickened. Christmas was still months away. “I…” She watched, distracted, as a flicker crossed Dylan’s face. God, how could she possibly think when Dylan was looking at her like she hung the moon?

  Suddenly, Dylan reached down and slipped a finger between Beth’s ankle and the tongue of her skates. “Did you do them up tight enough?” She twisted her finger and Beth squirmed, clenching her thighs at the surprise tickle. Dylan wiggled an eyebrow with the movement of her finger. “Nope, too much room. Can’t have you breaking an ankle.”

  Dylan slipped to her knees and freed Beth’s laces with deft fingers. Even through the denim of her jeans, she could feel the heat of Dylan’s breath on her knee as she yanked on the laces. “Too tight?”

  “Perfect.” Beth smiled. “That’s what I was going for but my fingers sort of locked up in the cold…” Her gaze tracked the planes of Dylan’s face, the perfect line of her nose, the way her eyelashes fluttered as she worked on knotting the laces. Beth’s throat tightened, her awareness sharpening. When had her curiosity and mild attraction moved into infatuation? Why did her resolve suddenly feel like it was shattering? She imagined what it would feel like to give into the impulse, the desire to reach out and rake her fingers into her friend’s hair, draw her up from her knees and press her lips against Dylan’s.

  Soft blue eyes shot up to look at her and Beth’s breath hitched. “Are you nervous?” Dylan asked.

  She nodded.

  Dylan coughed, rubbing at her chest as she wheezed. It was the third time she’d done that since they’d arrived. “That doesn’t sound good,” Beth worried.

  Dylan released a slow, deep breath. “Yeah, I have asthma,” she said softly, as though revealing she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “No biggie.” She coughed again.

  “Do you have a puffer?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like to use it. Makes me feel worse, sometimes.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I’m fine. The cold just gets to me.” Dylan smirked as she patted Beth’s knee. She stood, balancing perfectly on her skates, and sent both pairs of their boots beneath the chairs with a light kick. “Come on, up you get.” She reached for Beth’s hands.

  Beth pushed off the chair, unsteady as she attempted to find her balance. “I haven’t done this since I was six.”

  Dylan led her to the railing as they climbed down the short set of stairs. “It’s packed, so when we get on the ice, just be super careful if you fall over—”

  “—and I will fall—”

  “—to watch your hands.” She pointed across the rink. “That kid over there thinks she’s Tonya Harding—she’s not stopping for anyone. If you go for a sixer, keep your hands close, don’t spread them out. My cousin lost tw
o fingers ice-skating.” She made a snipping motion across her first row of knuckles.

  Reaching out to grip the low wall of the rink, Beth blanched. “Seriously?”

  Dylan’s dimples deepened. “No.”

  “I hate you a little bit.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Dylan took the first step onto the ice, sliding out a few paces to make way for the children crossing the wall.

  When the group at the wall cleared, Beth took a precarious step onto the ice. So it wasn’t a disaster. If she just held onto the wall while she got her footing. She pulled herself along the wall slowly, further, a little further again. Okay, so what if she kept a death grip on the wall until the end-of-session horn blew? At least she was out there. It was better than watching from the sidelines. She could just stay right where she was, safe and still, and…

  Twin boys dragged themselves across the boundary toward her, determination in their eyes. Somebody was going to have to move, and judging by their expressions, it wasn’t going to be them. Her eyes shot to Dylan for help, but Dylan could only offer a laugh as she skated closer, her movements so smooth it seemed she was floating. “Quick, they’re coming, time to push off,” she chuckled, gesturing for Beth to take her hands.

  Lightheaded, she only gripped the boundary tighter.

  “You have to move off the wall sometime, Lizzie Borden.” Dylan pried her stiff fingers from the rim. “The littles are trying to get past. Get it together, you’re in your late thirties.”

  She groaned.

  Dylan ducked her head to meet her dropped gaze. “Want me to go grab you a penguin?” she teased.

  She shot her a glare. “I don’t want a bloody penguin.”

  The boys approached, and as Beth locked eyes with them, she realised that they were older than they had looked from a distance, maybe nine or ten.

  “Are you gonna move?” one asked rudely. “We wanna get past.”

  Dylan skated to the edge. “So be gentlemen,” she said. “Turn around and go back the way you came. Or skate around us.”

  “We can’t,” the other said. “The man who works here says we can only go clockwise.”