Where There's a Will

by Virginia Hale

  Dylan rolled her eyes. Beth’s cheeks flamed as Dylan took one twin by the hand and pulled him around Beth and back to the wall. As Dylan did the same with his brother, Beth looked around. Was anybody watching?

  “Thank you, I almost had the nerve to move,” she said, embarrassed.

  Dylan shrugged. “I’m not going to push you to do something you’re not ready for.”

  She smiled as Dylan twirled before her, her mind racing as she contemplated Dylan’s simple statement. It was hard to take in her instructions—how to angle her feet, when to bend her knees and twist her hips—when Dylan was being so patient with her, so completely attentive. Is this what she’s like with her girlfriends? Is that what Lisa had been—a girlfriend? A twinge of jealousy settled low in her stomach.

  There was no point denying to herself that she wanted Dylan, but that was where it needed to end. It was important that Dylan trusted her wholeheartedly—anything romantic between them would only serve to complicate things when she finally found the nerve to broach the subject of selling. She knew that. Still, it was very challenging to resist Dylan when she was so lovely. They got along so well and seemed to match in an odd way.

  How did Dylan make it look so easy, gliding across the ice, encouraging Beth forward? Perhaps, if she could just stop thinking. She reached out, let Dylan snatch up her hands, and pushed off the edge.

  Chapter Nine

  Dylan stepped forward in line and scanned the crowded tables for Beth. She couldn’t see her by the pizza truck, or the gozleme stall. Not by the corn vendors either. Perhaps she had found a table on the other side of the food area. Most of the seating was taken, the only free tables left sticky with electric blue pools of spilled snow cones. Couples and families hovered around tables of twos and fours, cartons of steaming food in their grasp as they waited, ready to pounce on diners close to moving along.

  She spotted Lisa and her family at a table across the grounds. She watched as her former best friend ran a baby wipe over her daughter’s face, the toddler squirming on her lap. It was odd, Dylan thought, how they had once had so much in common but now their lives were completely different.

  Dylan hated herself for wishing it had been Lisa who had lost a sibling. The same age as Kyle, Lisa’s sister would be nineteen now, just two years older than Dylan had been when Kyle had died. Dylan hadn’t seen Lisa’s little sister in years. She was probably off at university, or travelling, or working somewhere bigger and better than Jembala Lakes, seizing all of life’s opportunities that Kyle would never know.

  She pushed the terrible thought away. Lisa was a good person, and Dylan couldn’t blame her for losing touch. Back then, at seventeen, they were far too young to deal with the tragedy that had gripped their small town.

  After finishing high school, Dylan had drifted into a downward spiral. It had taken four months after school finished to drag herself from the depths of depression and move on. By then, Lisa had found a boyfriend and a brand-new group of TAFE mates. Dylan had been left with nobody but her parents, and living in the stifling heartbreak of their home was suffocating. Shortly after, she’d found Elma and the homestead, a sanctuary to reclaim her life.

  She hoped that’s what it looked like to Lisa—that she’d gotten her life back together, that she’d worked hard on repairing the parts of herself that had broken when her nine-year-old brother had been taken from them. This year marked ten years, and the tenth year was perhaps the hardest. Not because, like every year, it marked the longest anniversary, but because it was a year longer than they’d been lucky enough to have Kyle in their lives.

  She’d never be the same. There would always be pitied looks, sympathetic stares. That would never go away.

  She collected their coffee from the vendor, the heat of the foiled churros bag permeating through her coat as she tucked it under her arm and quickly downed a Ritalin with a sip of coffee.

  As she wandered through the crowd in search of a navy coat and a tan beanie, there was a pull on her elbow. “I’m sorry,” Beth said, her warm breath visible in the cold, “I couldn’t find a table. I didn’t want to keep looking and lose you.”

  “God, I give you one instruction,” she joked, handing Beth her three-sugared cappuccino.

  Beth seemed content to stand on the spot and drink it, babbling on about how her toes were still frozen from the ice skating, but Dylan caught the way her teeth chattered, how her slight frame shivered and blond waves whipped about her face in the breeze. There had to be somewhere warmer, somewhere protected from the wind… She spotted a gap between the hedges.

  “Where are we going?” Beth asked as Dylan’s arm curled around her waist and ushered her across the grass. Beth’s gaze skirted around as she searched for the free table she assumed Dylan had spotted.

  They crossed the gravelly path toward the hedges, toward the bright yellow barricade tape between the hedges. “Shh.” Two groups were crowded in front of the tape, invested in hearty conversation. She urged Beth past them. “Go under the tape,” she murmured.

  Beth’s eyes widened. “We can’t. It says ‘caution’. It’s out of bounds.”

  “Nobody’s watching,” she muttered. “Just go, quick…”

  Beth slipped under the tape and Dylan followed. Beth had barely moved five feet into the garden. “Where are we?” she whispered, hesitant.

  She drifted her fingers over Beth’s back and led her down a narrow path. “The Storybook Garden.”

  The small garden, too precious to endure the crowds, had been sectioned off for the festival, the influx of rambunctious children incapable of meeting the ceramic, life-size Little Jack Horner without clambering all over him. There was only so much the brittle thumb-sucking statue could take.

  “Come over here,” she whispered, reaching for the warmth of Beth’s hand. She led her around Jack and Jill, the statues’ arms splayed out as they lay face-planted on the small hill.

  “We can’t go any further, Dyl!”

  She led Beth down the gentle incline. “Just a bit further, there’s somewhere to sit down here…”

  The statues were barely visible in the dark, little more than silhouettes. There was an egg-shaped cast on the wall at the opposite end of the garden that Dylan vaguely remembered to be Humpty Dumpty, but she vividly recalled where their path led. When they reached the end, she placed her coffee cup down between Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum’s cups and saucers and gestured for Beth to take a seat at the long table of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

  “For a recluse, you’re pretty wild,” Beth whispered. In the dark, Dylan watched Beth feel her way across the long wooden bench—reserved for children to be with Alice and her friends—before taking a seat.

  The fact that they were protected from the icy wind definitely made up for the lack of light in the depths of the garden. Dylan slipped onto the bench beside her, so close she could feel the heat of Beth’s thigh against her own. “I’m not a recluse.”

  “You kind of are.”

  “I meet dozens of people a day.”

  “Strangers.”

  Dylan smiled as she tore open the churros packet, setting their dessert out between the Mad Hatter’s plaster cakes. She watched from the corner of her eye as Beth squinted in the dark, looking from the ceramic Cheshire Cat grinning atop the nearest hedge, to wide-eyed Alice, and finally to the purple-coated Mad Hatter at the other end of the table.

  “Do you think they mind that we’re crashing their party?” Beth whispered jokingly.

  Carefully, Dylan peeled the plastic lid off their tiny pot of melted chocolate. It was exactly how she felt sometimes—as though she were seated at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. But she hadn’t felt that way in a while. With Beth around, life seemed a little less like she had fallen down a rabbit hole while the real world continued on without her. “Nah,” Dylan played, “They look pretty thrilled to have new company.” She gestured for Beth to start eating. “Don’t double dip,” she whispered.

  “Don’t you doub
le dip.”

  She licked her lips, felt her windburn. She needed to take a leaf out of Beth’s book and start wearing Chapstick more often. Beth took such good care of herself. She bet Beth’s lips were soft. They always looked soft, even now, chewing at her bottom lip as she worked the mini churros into the chocolate sauce with etiquette fit for tea with the queen. Beth brought the churros to her lips, a hand hovering to catch the dripping chocolate in the dark. “Did you come here as a kid?” she asked.

  “A few times. There wasn’t much to do around here but the gardens would put on carnivals, stuff like that. There was a circus once, I remember that. That was probably when I was around fifteen, sixteen, though. Haven’t been back since then.”

  “Did you outgrow carnivals?”

  “I think I kind of outgrew everything.”

  “What were you like in high school?”

  Dylan focused on her breath between them in the cold. At the mention of her teenage years, she felt her walls rising brick by brick. “I don’t know. I had a hard final year. Everything that came before that is sort of blurry.”

  Beth’s eyes scanned her face. “I get that.”

  No, Beth. You don’t.

  “I had a difficult time in Year Twelve, too,” Beth said. Her stare was studied, cautious. “Was that when you figured out you were gay?”

  Dylan felt her throat tense. “Yeah.” That part was true—figuring out her sexuality the year she’d lost Kyle had really been the icing on the cake.

  They fell quiet, listening to the squeals from the rink, the chatter from the crowd, the faraway jazz trumpets and saxophones.

  “So what was young Beth like?” she asked.

  Beth smiled. “High school was a long time ago for me.”

  “How long?”

  Beth’s laugh was soft, melodic. Dylan’s chest ached at the sound. “Are you trying to figure out how old I am?” she said lowly.

  “I know exactly how old you are. Your birthdate’s on the solicitor’s papers.” She couldn’t stop the quirk of her lips. “Thirty-seven isn’t that old.”

  Beth scoffed. “Gee, thanks.”

  Dylan reached into the packet and pulled out another hot doughnut stick. She dusted the sticky sugar from the back of her hand and broke the churros in half. “I suppose you’re wondering what’s up with Lisa…” she whispered.

  Beth plucked the offered doughnut from her fingertips. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  She felt hot under Beth’s intense gaze. Had she been that transparent? “It probably seemed odd to you.”

  “Well…you did go very quiet.”

  Dylan sighed. “We drifted apart.” She took a sip of coffee. “She didn’t invite me to her wedding and that was kind of the last nail in the coffin.”

  Beth licked sugar from her lips. “I’m sorry.”

  Dylan waved her hand. “Water under the bridge.”

  “Yes, but losing friends is hard…”

  She nodded tersely. “We were really close, since we were twelve. I’ve never really had a friend like that since. I mean, I had Elma, but an age gap of sixty years limits sharing certain things you would with somebody your own age.”

  Beth focused on trying not to drip chocolate across the table. “What kind of things?” she asked innocently.

  Dylan leaned forward and ducked her head to get Beth’s attention. Beth looked up from the bag. Their eyes locked. “What do you think?” she asked playfully. With a blush, Beth popped the churros between her lips. When she finished chewing, she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth to lick away melted chocolate. Dylan burned at the sight.

  The cries of quarrelling children cut through the air. The high-pitched argument drew closer, closer again. There was a flash of fluorescent blue glow stick directly through the hedge. Unaware that the two women could hear him on the other side of the hedge, a father scolded his kids, demanding they share their glow stick, warning that he wasn’t going to say it again, and if he had to, the seven-dollar stick was going into the bin. The poor guy sounded like he was at his wit’s end. She grinned at Beth until the argument moved off. “Eugh,” Beth groaned as she took a sip of her coffee.

  Dylan smirked. “You don’t like kids?”

  “No, I do. I think.” Beth paused. “Probably.”

  “Well, ‘you think’ and ‘probably’ are fantastic odds for your firstborn.”

  “I think I would like my own,” Beth whispered. “It’s other peoples’ children I have a problem with.”

  Dylan chuckled.

  “What about you? Do you want kids?”

  “Definitely,” Dylan said instantly. “I think it’s something I’d be really good at.”

  Beth smiled, like she knew a secret that Dylan didn’t. “I think you would, too.”

  As she dipped a churros into chocolate, Dylan wondered how Beth would react when she finally told her about Kyle. The longer she kept it to herself, the weirder it would probably seem to Beth. But where would she begin? She’d never actually had to tell anybody about Kyle—they just knew. And the fact that every Tom, Dick, and Harry in a fifteen-kilometre radius knew meant that, soon enough, Beth probably would, too.

  For the most part, Beth kept to herself, but the longer she remained in the Lakes, the higher the chance that somebody would let it slip, and she didn’t want Beth to think that she didn’t trust her enough to tell her. It was best that she was the one to tell Beth—she wanted to be the one—but it would change things. She didn’t want Beth to suddenly start treating her differently, to feel as though she had to walk on eggshells around her. That she felt sorry for her. The only person who hadn’t treated her as though she belonged to a glass menagerie was Elma, and she was gone.

  Beth placed the lid over the pint-sized container to save the melted chocolate from hardening in the cold. “Did you want any more before I cover it?”

  Suddenly, torchlight blazed across the hedges, shining brightly from the caution tape at the top of the path. Beth’s breath hitched. Dylan pressed a finger to her lips, watching in delight as Beth’s eyes flamed fearfully in the semi-darkness. There was sugar on the corner of her mouth. Dylan imagined kissing it away. In the dark, away from the homestead, it felt like anything was possible.

  They sat stock-still as the light travelled around the Storybook Garden. The beam drew over the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and mistook them for ceramic figures before it continued over to the corner, to the dish running away with the spoon. In a dash, the light disappeared.

  Beth sighed shakily in relief. “Oh my god,” she laughed lowly, and then it happened—her warm, gentle hand squeezed just above Dylan’s knee.

  The need was overwhelming. Nothing had happened between them and yet she couldn’t get Beth out of her head. Beth was intelligent, sophisticated, beautiful. Every day Dylan was tortured by her smile, by her perfume, by the goodness that shined in her eyes, bright and blue. And those rare, so very, very rare moments when Beth’s tongue would slip and she’d call Dylan honey? Nothing had ever compared.

  “Dylan…” she said breathily.

  The weight of Beth’s gaze was too heavy, too understanding. Dylan averted her eyes and swallowed over the lump in her throat. She’d never wanted another woman like this, and it upset her deeply to know that this was all just temporary.

  Whatever it was Beth felt the need to say, she couldn’t bear to hear it. She couldn’t respond, couldn’t kiss Beth, couldn’t taste what this was like and have it snatched from her.

  She stood, Beth’s hand slipping from her knee. “It’s freezing.” As she picked up their foil wrapper and popped the lid onto the chocolate, she tried to ignore the way Beth looked up at her, her expression dripping with disappointment. She snatched up her half-empty cup. “Are you ready to keep going?”

  Chapter Ten

  Scrubbing her hands beneath the tap, Beth studied her reflection in the mirror, the dark circles beneath her eyes, her cold-blushed cheeks. Their quest to escape the hellish
queues out of the festival car park had taken almost as long as the drive back to Jembala Lakes, and by the time they’d finally arrived, it was pushing eleven thirty. She just needed to pop inside and pick up her laptop, she’d told Dylan. She’d been up since five and she looked as weary as she felt. She desperately needed sleep, and on the drive home her body had let her know it in the most terrifying way imaginable.

  She’d nodded into a microsleep, and it had terrified her. In a blink, the cold flush of fear had rushed through her like iced water. She’d sat up straighter in the driver’s seat and tried to calm her galloping heart. Beside her, Dylan hummed along with the radio, completely unaware.

  When they passed the halfway point—the Stop, Revive, Survive reserve—Dylan had offered to take over the driving, and it was then that Beth had wondered…had Dylan noticed that she’d nodded at the wheel a few kilometres back? She’d doubted it, putting Dylan’s offer down to thoughtfulness. She’d assured Dylan that she was fine, confident in herself that she was too shocked to put Dylan in that kind of danger again. Dylan had continued to flick from station to station as they passed the rest stop, a ball of energy in Beth’s passenger seat. How was it that, when there were only ten years between them, Dylan was always so lively? Even as she’d unlocked the side door to the homestead and led them out of the cold wind, Dylan had shown no hint of tiredness.

  Raking a hand through her hair, Beth wandered down the hallway in the direction of the taka-tak-tak of energised fingers on her laptop keys. She stopped in the kitchen doorway and blinked.

  At the table, Dylan was typing away at the colour-coded document that had kept Beth company late into every night of the past week. She trailed tired eyes across her mess—her notebook splayed open beside her laptop, the stapled research documents, her loose-leaf notes, Elma’s copy of her thesis.

  She cleared her throat. Engrossed, Dylan still didn’t look up. “You offered to pack up my crap, not amend the Constitution…”