Where There's a Will

by Virginia Hale

  Beth smiled. “Thank you.” She crossed the lower level, past the lounge where an intense game of bingo was being played and took the stairs to the bistro.

  There was a sign at the top of the landing before the bistro doors. After-bingo morning tea: 9:30-11:30.

  She found Dylan behind the bistro bar in conversation with an older woman Beth didn’t recognise. Her heart leapt at the sound of Dylan’s laugh, and she stood, watching, as the older woman disappeared back into the kitchen and Dylan returned to the till. A second later, Dylan looked up.

  Their eyes locked. Scratching at the back of her neck, Dylan dropped her gaze.

  Clutching the handles of her bag like reigns, Beth crossed the empty bistro, past the tables, the padded vinyl chairs. She stopped in front of the bar. “Good morning.”

  Dylan ran her tongue over her teeth. “Morning.”

  “I wanted to thank you for last night.”

  Dylan emptied a clip-lock bag of five-cent pieces into the tray. “You already thanked me.”

  Beth leaned over the bar, the Carlton Draught beer mat soft beneath her elbows. “Can we talk?”

  “I’m working.” Ten-cent pieces rained loudly into the till.

  “Ten minutes?” she pressed. “Dylan?”

  Dylan looked up, her expression hard as she spread her hands across the counter. “What do you want, Beth?”

  “Seriously, I won’t try to keep you any longer than ten minutes. I need to be at the homestead by ten to open.”

  Dylan studied her expression.

  “Ten minutes,” Beth whispered.

  Dylan rolled her eyes. “Okay,” she finally sighed. “You want an orange juice?”

  Beth took the offer as a peace sign. Her whole body seemed to sigh in relief. “That would be lovely. Thank you.”

  Dylan placed it on the bar counter. “That’ll be four-sixty.”

  Beth blinked.

  Dylan rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. Christ. Come on.”

  Dylan led her to the back of the bistro. At a sunlit table a few down from where they’d shared their Last Supper, Dylan pulled out a chair. As Beth took a seat opposite, Dylan sank into the chair like a surly teenager and stared out the window to the bowling green.

  Beth sipped at her orange juice and tried not to wince. The tang was as strong as Dylan’s sour expression. She cleared her throat. “So,” she started, her body humming with anxiety, “I would really like for you to come back.”

  “We’ve been over this.”

  “I know you’re upset. You have every right to be.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “Well…you’re offended.”

  “I’m not coming back,” she asserted. “Besides, I’m needed here.”

  Beth looked around. The bistro was empty. The woman behind the bar was refilling a canister with straws. By the seafood smorgasbord, a younger man was wiping cutlery at a rate of two spoons a minute. Beth raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, fine, it’s not exactly busy now. Nobody wants to down an oyster at nine in the fucking morning.”

  “This is not what you’re supposed to be doing,” Beth said bluntly.

  Dylan scowled. “I don’t need you to tell me how to live my life.”

  “Dylan…” she tried. “You can’t tell me that this makes you happy. You told me it doesn’t.”

  Dylan sat forward and crossed her arms on the table. “This isn’t my grand plan, okay?” She lowered her voice. “I’m helping out here for a few months until my parents get back on their feet and then I’ll…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

  “You’ll what? Come on.”

  “No, Beth. There are too many changes.”

  Beth could feel the woman’s eyes on them from the bar. When Beth looked up, the woman looked away. Beth refocused on Dylan. “There really aren’t,” she said. “It’s just me over there. Nothing has changed, not really. I mean, the payroll system is a hell of a lot more organised than we had it, and the pay isn’t as great…”

  “The pay isn’t the problem,” Dylan countered.

  “So it’s me? I’m the problem?”

  Dylan refused to look up.

  Beth leant across the table and lowered her voice to just a whisper. “The fact that you agreed to ten minutes of my time, the fact that we’re arguing about this, tells me that a small part of you is considering it. Dylan, I want you to consider it.”

  Dylan pinched the bridge of her nose and squinted at the roof like she had a headache.

  “What about a trial?” Beth tried gently.

  Dylan opened her eyes. “A trial?” She scoffed. “I think I know what the job is like.”

  “See…you’re the one going on about the changes, but they’re no big deal. You haven’t even been inside the house. Everything is the same.”

  “Pfft.”

  “I swear to you, the biggest change is that they’ve hung Sarah’s dress on her bedroom wall behind a protective Perspex case. That’s it.”

  For a long moment, Dylan sat in silence. She seemed unusually jittery. Beth started when Dylan’s sneaker tapped against her ankle. Dylan’s eyes grew wide as she sat up straighter. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” Beth whispered.

  A few elderly bingo players wandered into the bistro.

  “Well, that’s my ten minutes up,” Beth said. Reluctantly, she stood. Well, that’s that…She’d given it a shot. She’d tried. Maybe in a month or so she’d find another chance. Maybe Dylan would think it over and…

  “Wait.” Dylan looked up at her. “I have tomorrow afternoon off.”

  Beth’s chest warmed. “Tomorrow afternoon…that’s perfect.”

  Dylan leaned back on the chair legs. “I could come past after midday. I’m stuck here from eight to twelve.”

  “After midday is great. Excellent.”

  Dylan chewed on her bottom lip. “Okay.”

  “And, I better warn you now, you will have to wear a uniform.”

  Dylan ran her gaze from Beth’s eyes, down the line of the buttons of her crisp white shirt to where the point of her hipbones protruded ever so slightly from the front of her skirt. Beth burned beneath the stare. Dylan raised her gaze. “Fine.”

  “I can drop the uniform off tonight. I can drop it off here, or…” She hesitated, wondering how to ask for Dylan’s new address when she’d already pushed her luck.

  “No, don’t come here. I’ll text you my address.”

  “So you didn’t lose my number…”

  Dylan averted her gaze. “No. I didn’t lose it. You called me last night. It’s on my call log.”

  “I mean before that.”

  “Huh?”

  “You didn’t lose it before that.”

  Dylan sighed tiredly. “I didn’t delete you, Beth.”

  “I thought last night, when I called…I thought maybe you wouldn’t know who it was. Who was calling. I wondered if that was why you picked up.”

  Dylan rubbed at her chin. “I knew it was you.”

  She sipped her orange juice and swallowed over the lump in her throat.

  As a larger crowd entered the bistro, Dylan stood. “Well, I have teas to pour and cakes to serve.”

  “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Bye,” Beth said softly as she watched Dylan wander away across the room.

  She took her glass to the bar and headed toward the exit, watching Dylan from afar. Palms down, Dylan leaned over the end of a long table, chatting with seated bingo competitors. Judging by their grins, their vigorous nods of agreement to whatever it was Dylan was saying, they obviously thought she was the ant’s pants. Beth’s heart ached at the sight of Dylan’s smile. I miss her like breathing…

  Dylan looked up and offered a slight nod. Beth forced a smile to her lips. Leaving for the homestead without Dylan seemed absurd. She’d have to make do with the promise of tomorrow.

  At the doors, something compelled Beth to turn and look back.


  Dylan was looking over her shoulder, her head turned subtly, just enough for their eyes to lock and hold.

  The breath caught in Beth’s chest. As she felt heat rise from her chest to her neck, she bit her bottom lip.

  Dylan looked away sharply.

  Dylan’s home was modest, a small brick cottage with double chimneys and a picket fence. Olive-green shutters matched the corrugated iron roof. It was a Federation house, perhaps even late nineteenth-century. The hedges up the sides of the property were well-kept, the white-rose bushes alongside the path in full bloom. And other than the annoyingly familiar toilet plonked beside the front gate—for god’s sake, had she really thought it necessary to cart that eyesore across town?—there was nothing about 32 Regent Street that screamed Dylan.

  What most surprised her was that they lived just three streets apart, practically in line with Rose’s house on Derby Lane. For the last few weeks, they’d been living just metres away from each other, and Beth had had absolutely no idea.

  The lights were on inside.

  Beth looked up into the rear vision mirror to check her teeth, her mascara. She was glad she’d gone home and changed. She hunted through her purse for her strawberry Chapstick and applied it with the precision of a Golden-Age Hollywood starlet. She unhooked the coat hanger from the grab-handle in the back seat. As she started up the garden path, the plastic cover fluttered around the uniform in the hot evening breeze.

  The double chime of the doorbell was faint through Dylan’s front door. The clink of a pot or a pan on a stove top. Then…footsteps.

  Beth squared her shoulders. This is the right decision. You’ve made the right decision and everything’s going to turn out just…

  As the door opened and she set eyes on Dylan, her heartbeat quickened. She was still in her club uniform, one side of her collar popped up around her neck, but her hair was down, cast around her face in golden waves. She looked calm. Soft. Young. As Dylan’s eyes locked on hers and that delicious pull between them fused, Beth’s mind blanked.

  Dylan quirked an eyebrow. “Hey…”

  “You have a beautiful home.” Her face heated.

  “Thanks. It’s not much.”

  “It’s lovely.” Beth could see half a dozen cardboard boxes piled along the hallway wall, all open-topped. The braces of paint-splattered overalls hung over the lip of the last box, and a white t-shirt bra sat on the floor next to it, as though Dylan had returned home one day and stripped right there in the middle of the hallway.

  “I bought it as a fixer-upper,” Dylan muttered.

  “Really? I think it’s very sweet just the way it is.”

  “You’re just saying that to be polite.”

  “I’m not.”

  The corners of Dylan’s mouth lifted.

  “Sorry if I interrupted your dinner.”

  “You didn’t. I just got started cooking.”

  “Well, it already smells great.”

  “It’s just onion.” A pause. “But I suppose that is your favourite.” There it was, that subtle smirk. The small pout of her lips, the slight narrowing of her eyes.

  “Very funny,” Beth said.

  “Mmm.” Dylan nodded at Beth’s car out on the street. “Are you going somewhere?”

  She shook her head. “Why?”

  “I saw you beautifying yourself when you pulled up.” Dylan smacked her lips together teasingly.

  Beth flushed with embarrassment. “No…” She pointed to her lips. “Windburned.”

  “Right.” Dylan massaged the back of her neck.

  The moment stretched thin. Beth wet her lips, tasted her Chapstick. I suppose hoping for an invitation to step inside was reaching… Beth handed over the coat hanger. “Okay, well…I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Their fingers brushed. “Thanks for bringing it over.”

  “It’s no problem.” Beth slipped her hands into her back pockets. “I didn’t realise we only lived three streets apart.”

  Dylan shrugged as if to say, “How would you?”

  Beth took a step backward. “Come by whatever time suits you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Beth.”

  If Beth thought she had noticed the giant Dylan-shaped hole in her chest all the months they had been separated, it was nothing compared to walking away knowing she was so close and yet so far.

  And just as that thought tightened strings around Beth’s heart, a voice carried on the wind. “By the way, I’m not wearing the skirt.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Beth was finishing up with one group and the next was waiting outside when she looked out the gift shop window. It was only eleven. Dylan was early.

  Dylan parked further up from the visitor cars. She climbed out and slammed her door. Beth watched as she looked up at the homestead and seemed to gather herself.

  Don’t be too eager. Give her space. This is no big deal. Show her that this is no big deal. You need to make sure she’s comfortable, that she feels… When Dylan stepped around the car and Beth saw how she was dressed, Beth ran her tongue along her teeth in annoyance. You have got to be kidding me…

  Dylan was wearing the blazer, the shirt, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. She looked lovely, entirely professional—from the waist up. It was the denim shorts and white sneakers that Beth had a problem with. As she watched Dylan lock her car and cross the grass to the gift shop, Beth bristled with frustration. Why did Dylan insist on warring with her? Beth got it. Really, she did. She’d hurt Dylan, deeply. But there was no need for pettiness—it wasn’t going to solve anything. Do not bite. Whatever you say, do not bite…

  She stepped outside, the click of her heels loud as she crossed the mosaic-tiled veranda. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” Dylan stuffed her hands into her pockets, her gaze flickering nervously from the group gathered to the ground, to Beth, to the house, and back to the group again. Beth softened. It was a rare sight to see her so nervous, so out of her comfort zone. Beth didn’t like it.

  She moved closer and lowered her voice. “I was planning on taking them all through together, but seeing as you’re early, we’ll divide them up?”

  Dylan nodded.

  “I could give you a ten-minute head start, but these people have all been waiting for a while…are you comfortable working from Garland’s room down? And I’ll work from the parlour up?” Beth asked.

  Dylan raised an eyebrow. “Why do I have to tell the case backward?”

  “Because you’re better at telling it backward than I am.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is. When you tell it backward, you make it sound riveting, like you’re unravelling a mystery. I make it sound like I’m reading them an Agatha Christie novel but someone’s gone and shuffled all the chapters on me.”

  Dylan’s left dimple appeared. “Fine.”

  As they passed each other on the tour, winter came flooding back into Beth’s memory. Having Dylan at the house felt like it always had—smooth and easy and right.

  Beth was in Sarah’s bedroom in the middle of her two-thirty tour when a clamorous clomp-clomp-clomp sounded through the house, directly below Sarah’s bedroom—Dylan, in the parlour, demonstrating to her own group the thinness of the floorboards, the impossibility of Sarah not hearing the fallen thump of the maid’s body while she was “reading.” Beth’s heart lurched at the familiarity of the trademark performance, of Dylan’s muffled cadence from below.

  “Sorry,” Beth said as she tried to focus on the middle-aged man standing by Sarah’s lightly fluttering curtain. “Could you repeat the question?”

  Dylan’s three-fifteen had gone overtime, and so had her four-thirty. Not wanting Dylan to think she was eavesdropping—knowing that Dylan could hear her had been unnerving back in the day—Beth sequestered herself up in the office. She spied through the blinds as Dylan chatted with the last of the guests by the fountain and waited until their cars started up the driveway before she took the stairs down to the
first floor.

  “Sorry,” Dylan said as she closed the guest bathroom door behind her and found Beth in the hallway. “I didn’t realise you were waiting to use the bathroom.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t,” she said. “I was actually in the office.”

  “Office.” A whistle. “Fancy.”

  “Just the loft.” She paused. “Would you like to come up and see what they did with it?”

  Hesitant, Dylan looked up the stairs. “Yeah. Okay. I guess.”

  Dylan followed her up the stairs. Beth watched her look around the space. Where the bar fridge had once sat humming was a printer atop a cabinet. A low bookcase where Dylan’s dresser had been. “It seems insane that I lived in here,” Dylan murmured. “Anne Frank had better real-estate in the Secret Annex.”

  Beth lifted the lid on the box on the long desk beneath the window. “Your statuettes from the gift shop are in here. You left them behind.”

  “I don’t want them.”

  “Well I’m not going to throw them out.”

  “Why not?”

  Ignoring the question, Beth slipped her blazer off and hung it on the back of the chair. She clicked the computer on and sank into the seat. “Come and take a look at this.”

  “Do I have to?” It was clear from the way that her lips twisted that Dylan didn’t want any of it. “I thought you took care of this stuff.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why are you going to make me suffer through a slideshow of spreadsheets? I have a chicken at home that needs defrosting.”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Please? I don’t want you to be in the dark about any of it.”

  The corner of Dylan’s mouth twitched. “Fine.” She perched on the edge of the desk. “But if you keep me longer than twenty minutes, I’ll be forced to microwave the chicken and I’ll have to sue you for salmonella poisoning.”

  “Good. You can serve Brian the lawsuit.”

  She kept Dylan so long that sunset wore to dusk. After she clicked out of the payroll system, she looked up. Dylan was frowning. “It’s complicated.”

  “Well, it’s not your old out-of-date tax-file index,” she joked, “So yeah, it’s different.”