Down Outback Roads

by Alissa Callen

  With the tea made, Ewan joined Kree at the table. Harry sat with a grunt in his chair. He pushed the plate of cookies towards Ewan and then faced Kree, his gnarled hands resting on the table.

  ‘So, missy. You sure took your time getting here. I expected you weeks ago.’

  Surprise, quickly followed by understanding, flittered across Kree’s features. ‘You’ve known who my father was this whole time, haven’t you?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘People think I don’t get out much, but I don’t forget a face. And you are your father’s daughter.’

  ‘Were you ever going to tell me?

  ‘Nope.’

  Kree blinked. ‘Why?’

  ‘I knew you’d figure it out. And you did, just not in the way I thought you would.’

  Ewan nudged Kree’s foot under the table. Harry might talk in riddles, but the answers Kree needed were there. She had to dig a little deeper in Harry’s shrewd brain to find them.

  Kree leaned forward in her chair. ‘So, how did you know my father?’

  Harry’s left hand twitched where it rested on the tablecloth. He didn’t speak. The electric hum of the fridge provided the only sound in the small room. Then Harry rubbed his whiskered chin.

  ‘Through … your mother.’

  ‘My mother? You knew my mother?’

  Kree glanced across at Ewan. The shock that lifted her brows was mirrored in his eyes. As she looked back at Old Harry and she saw memories soften his craggy features, Kree knew he hadn’t just known her mother, he’d loved her.

  ‘I sure did know your mother,’ Old Harry said, voice gravelly. ‘We grew up together, even though I was older. Our mothers were friends and when Mary lost her mother, my mother tried to do what she could for her. Your grandfather wasn’t a bad man, Kree, just a difficult and proud one. When your grandmother died, he wasn’t ever the same. She’d been the softness to his hardness. I guess he didn’t know how to raise a child, so he treated Mary like an adult.’

  Kree took a sip of tea, not taking her attention off Harry.

  ‘As soon as your mother was old enough, he shipped her off to a posh Sydney boarding school. She used to come home for holidays, until she made friends with a day student and her house became Mary’s second home.’

  Harry paused to stare at the pattern his blunt forefinger drew on the tablecloth.

  ‘Mary turned seventeen and when she came home for Christmas, I’d never seen anyone more beautiful. For me, our friendship had become something more.’ He sighed. ‘But I wasn’t brave enough to tell her. So, I promised myself the next summer I would. But … harvest was late and by the time I saw her she’d met an American artist while out riding.’

  ‘Oh, Harry.’ Kree briefly covered his wrinkled hand with hers. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It hit hard, losing her, but I knew in my heart I wouldn’t have truly made her happy. It was as though your mother and father filled a missing piece of each other.’

  Kree withdrew her hand. She could understand such a feeling. She risked a quick glance at Ewan. But all she saw was his back as he refilled the kettle with water from the sink tap.

  ‘I’m guessing there’s more to the story?’ she asked, again looking at Old Harry.

  ‘Yes. Mary’s father wanted her to marry a farmer, not some scruffy artist without prospects. He forbid her from seeing him and even took out a restraining order to separate them. But they kept seeing each other. The day she turned eighteen, she told her father she was getting married and going to art school, with or without his blessing. He threatened to disown her if she left.’ Harry took a gulp of his cooling tea. ‘Is it any wonder that impulsive brother of yours’ stubbornness kept him alive for two days? He’s just like his grandfather. But in Phillip’s case, such qualities didn’t save him. They ruined him. He spent the rest of his lonely life standing by a decision he made in anger.’

  ‘My poor mother. Did she ever try to change his mind?’

  ‘When you were born and then when Seth arrived. She hoped having a grandson would soften your grandfather’s stubborn heart. It didn’t.’

  ‘No wonder you knew who I was. Who Seth was. You already knew our names?’

  Harry pushed himself to his feet. ‘I might have lost Mary to your father but our friendship never ended.’ He hobbled to a drawer and pulled out a wooden box.

  He set the box in front of her and sat in his seat. ‘I’ve kept this for you and Seth. I knew someday you’d come.’

  Fingers unsteady, she lifted the lid. Inside was a sprig of yellow dried flowers and bundles of letters and photographs. She carefully picked up the flower.

  ‘I found one like this in my mother’s belongings.’

  Harry’s smile took decades off his time-worn face. ‘As kids, we used to play in the yellow wattle trees. Your mother pressed this and gave it to me for my thirteenth birthday.’

  Kree carefully placed the dried wattle on the table and took out a faded photograph of herself as a baby, being held by her mother. She traced the image of her mother’s peaceful and smiling face.

  ‘She wanted to tell you about her past,’ Harry said. ‘She hoped her father would accept what she’d done and that then she’d be able to tell you a story with a happy ending. She held off and held off … until it was too late.’

  Kree searched Harry’s now tired eyes. ‘She passed away when Seth was a baby.’

  ‘I know. Your father wrote to me. Then every Christmas, he’d send a card and photos, until they stopped when Seth was twelve. I figured something had happened to him. So I waited. I knew life would come a full circle. And sure enough, a young whipper-snapper called Seth Garrett came to farm-sit Berridale.’

  Kree spoke, even though she knew her voice wouldn’t be anything but an emotional croak. ‘And here I am, too.’

  Harry’s smile again lit up his weather-beaten features, his rheumy eyes watery.

  ‘And here you are.’

  She reached into her back jeans pocket and slid out the photocopy of the cabin drawing. ‘Do you know anything about the significance of this? I found the drawing with the wattle.’

  Kree opened the folded paper and smoothed it flat on the table.

  Harry didn’t even glance at the picture. ‘That’s the cabin where Mary first met your father.’

  ‘But it’s in the middle of nowhere on Ewan’s land so how would they …’

  All the puzzle pieces snapped together.

  ‘My mother’s middle name was Ellen,’ she whispered. ‘Her childhood home was … Marellen.’

  Kree’s gaze flew to Ewan’s. She and Seth were the homestead’s lost generation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It was good to be home.

  Tish placed an orange in the basket she carried. The smell of sun-ripened oranges and freshly mown grass chased away the city fumes she’d breathed in for the past four days. She plucked another orange and the evening breeze whispered in the russet-coloured leaves of the ornamental grape lining the fence between the orchard and vegetable garden. The rain had given the weeds a head start, and she couldn’t see her carrots for grass, but in the morning she’d get busy.

  Springs squeaked as the twins jumped on the large square trampoline. Heart full, she turned to watch her precious boys. How she’d missed them. She blew each a kiss, which they returned. A warm body collided with her shins as Freckle rolled onto his back as he and Midget wrestled. Fudge grazed to Tish’s left, the goat every so often squeezing her tiny head through the wire fence to sneak a quick mouthful of lettuce. If Fudge left anything uneaten, she’d have a good supply of winter vegetables. She and the boys would take a large box to her father when he came out of hospital.

  Tish reached into the tree canopy and the weight of a heavy orange filled her hand. Her father’s mini-stroke may have left him temporarily in need of help, but it had brought her family together. She’d spent hours by her father’s bedside, telling him about her garden and reading to him. She’d also brought him a cheerful purple Afric
an violet pot plant her mother had promised to water.

  As for her mother, Tish didn’t know if it was relief at having someone navigate through the uncertain world of her father’s care, or simply Travis owning a plane, but whatever the reason, her mother was no longer exerting any pressure on her to return to the city. She finally understood Tish and the boys’ place was in the bush and seemed to have accepted their home would soon be with Travis. Tish had also booked her mother an audiologist appointment, and it’d only taken a day for her protests to subside.

  Footsteps sounded on the sandstone pavers behind her and she stopped to wait for Ewan. He’d parked the ride-on-lawnmower in the shed after spending two hours mowing the lawns. When he caught her up, she linked her arm through his. She glanced at his face. The stars in her world might have aligned, but the sky in Ewan’s world was as black as his bleak expression. Ever since the news Kree’s family had built Marellen, Ewan had withdrawn into himself.

  A smile broke through his seriousness. ‘It’s great to have you back.’

  ‘You have no idea. I don’t want to spend another hour in peak-hour traffic ever again.’

  He opened the back door. ‘Just as well you’ll be doing more flying than driving to Sydney.’

  ‘Travis is so wonderful, isn’t he? I never thought I’d be so happy.’ As Ewan searched her face, an unspoken question in his eyes, she quickly spoke. ‘That’s not to say I wasn’t happy with Fergus.’

  She prayed her expression remained blissful. The memory of Fergus’s betrayal still cut her to the core. Ewan couldn’t suspect anything else wrong with her marriage other than Fergus’s drinking. She couldn’t tarnish Ewan’s memories of his brother or deepen his guilt at robbing the boys of a father.

  She hurried into the kitchen and busied herself filling the fruit bowl with the fresh and fragrant oranges.

  ‘Kree still in the shed?’ she asked as Ewan joined her in the kitchen.

  ‘Yep.’

  Tish examined the taut line of his back as he took a beer from the bottom shelf of the fridge. She and Travis had spoken about a short engagement and a quick wedding. But, as much as she wanted to be with the man she loved, she couldn’t abandon Ewan to live alone in the sprawling homestead. Until he and Kree sorted out whatever was going on between them, she and the boys were staying put.

  ‘The mural looks fantastic. Kree is so talented. I can’t believe how much she’s done while I’ve been away.’

  Ewan sat at the table and placed his cold beer on the chicken coaster Kree had bought in Glenalla. ‘She’s worked like a Trojan. The boys and I took her food-runs and I tried to make sure she slept, but I suspect she told me one thing and then did the opposite.’

  ‘She does look tired.’ Tish poured herself a glass of water and sat at the table, too. ‘But she says she has to finish tonight as Seth arrives tomorrow and she wants to move back to Berridale to stay with him.’ She softened her voice. ‘Kree’s not the only person looking tired. You do, too.’

  Ewan grinned but his eyes remained dull. ‘No surprises there. I don’t know how you keep up with the boys. They have more energy than Freckle and Fudge combined.’

  She eyed off the hollows in his cheeks. He wasn’t only tired, he’d lost weight.

  ‘Been doing some swimming?’

  He took a swig of beer. ‘No more than usual.’

  ‘Ewan … the first night when you called on Kree’s laptop, you both looked so happy. And it wasn’t just a “cows have been found” happiness.’

  Such happiness had given her hope that whatever had happened at the coach house during the working bee was now behind them.

  His fingers tensed around his beer bottle but he remained silent.

  ‘So, what’s changed, other than Kree discovering this was her mother’s home?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Such a fact doesn’t change anything other than that Kree has a reason to stay.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He stood, beer unfinished and gaze troubled. ‘Marellen is Kree and Seth’s birthright. It doesn’t feel right us living in a family home that should have been theirs.’

  Kree stopped outside Ewan’s office door and rubbed a hand over the base of her knotted neck. Her manic painting frenzy had taken its toll. She had aches in muscles she hadn’t even known existed. Her backpack was packed, ready to leave for Berridale. Seth had texted that he’d already left Sydney to head out west. She just needed to see Ewan and then she’d head to the Tylers’ and take a long soak in the bathtub. While the past days might be nothing but a sleep-deprived blur, at least the mural was finished.

  She’d also managed to sift through her tangled thoughts as she painted. While her grandfather’s decision to cut his only child out of his life remained incomprehensible, knowing Seth as she did, she could understand how her similarly wired grandfather could make a snap decision and then stand by it. Fate had then shortened her mother’s life and ended any chance of reconciliation. On their next visit to Glenalla, she and Seth would pay their respects to their grandfather and grandmother’s gravesites.

  While she’d painted, she’d also come up with a plan to put the ghosts of her family to rest. She had to make things right and Seth had agreed. She chewed the inside of her cheek. No matter how much the man she was about to talk to now might disagree.

  The quietness of the high-ceilinged hallway wrapped around her and her tense shoulders lowered. Marellen never failed to fill her with a sense of calm. And now she understood the peace and sense of belonging she’d always felt within the gracious homestead’s walls. It’d been her grandparents’ dreams that had built them.

  She knocked on Ewan’s office door.

  ‘Door’s open.’

  ‘Morning, stranger,’ she said as she entered, smile bright.

  Ewan glanced up from the computer. Longing fired in his eyes before his face settled into unreadable lines. Since Old Harry’s bombshell, Ewan had become preoccupied. Sure, he’d held her close and kissed her each night. But she glimpsed the unease in his expression when he thought she wasn’t looking and felt the desperation in his touch. Knowing who she was and where she came from hadn’t changed anything between them for her, but had it for him?

  ‘Morning.’ His gaze narrowed and she knew it hadn’t mattered how much cold water she’d splashed on her face, she couldn’t hide her late night. ‘Did you get any sleep?’

  ‘Three hours.’

  ‘Even if the mural isn’t done, I’m telling Seth to take all sets of car keys so you have to stay at Berridale tonight and sleep.’

  She slipped her hand into her back jeans pocket to double-check the paper she needed was there. There’d be no sleep tonight, even with the mural being completed, if the next ten minutes didn’t go as planned.

  ‘Well, you’ll be glad to know, as of half-an-hour ago the mural is officially done and dusted. The last coat of weather-proof varnish is drying as we speak.’

  ‘So, you have your life back?’

  ‘Yes, I have my life back.’

  ‘You should be so proud of what you’ve achieved. The mural really is incredible.’ His mouth curved. ‘And I’m not saying that because I helped paint the stage coach.’

  ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t have finished in time if it wasn’t for your food-runs, back rubs and you and the boys doing the Berridale jobs for me.’

  ‘Not to mention the constant supply of lamingtons.’

  ‘How could I forget the lamingtons?’

  ‘All I can say is chocolate icing and coconut cover a multitude of cooking sins.’

  Ewan stood and came to the front of his desk. But instead of touching her, he leaned against the desk edge and crossed his arms. ‘When’s Seth arriving?’

  ‘Mid-afternoon, assuming his ancient ute gets him here.’

  ‘Make sure he drives it around here for me to check it over. Seeing as it has no airbags or ABS brakes, and it sounds like there’s a dent in every panel, I want to make sure it’s as road-worthy as he say
s it is.’

  ‘Will do. It’ll be sometime before dinner. Then he can help you load the mural panels to take into town so you and Travis can attach them to the wall tomorrow, ready for the six o’clock opening.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  ‘Thanks, too, for keeping Fudge and Freckle for a little longer. The fundraiser will be a late night and at least here Whiskey and Midget will stop the terrible twosome from getting up to too much mischief.’

  A smile crinkled the corners of his grey eyes. ‘Or they might lead them astray.’ His expression sobered. ‘Is Seth staying until the Tylers arrive at the end of next week?’

  ‘Yes. But there’s a chance Don and Maureen will catch an earlier flight, so they might arrive sooner than we think.’

  A muscle working in his jaw was the only sign of life in his suddenly still face. ‘When they get home, you’ll head to Sydney with Seth?’

  ‘I haven’t planned that far ahead. What happens after the Tylers are home is something you and I need to talk about.’ She wet her dry lips. ‘But before that can happen … I have to give you this.’

  She pulled the small square from her back jeans pocket and handed it to him. Frowning, he unfolded the paper. A heavy silence weighed the air around them. Then he spoke, his voice low and husky.

  ‘There’s no doubt you and Seth belong at Marellen, not us, and in a perfect world I’d simply sign the property over to you both. But I’m sorry, Kree, I just need a little more time to nail down a figure I can sell for. While you finished the mural, I’ve talked to the bank, two valuers, and have crunched numbers to come up with the lowest possible figure. I promise I’ll have an amount this afternoon.’

  He went to hand her the cheque but she shook her head.

  She braced herself, ready to tackle his Mackenzie pride head-on. ‘This cheque isn’t to buy Marellen. This cheque is to buy into Marellen.’

  ‘Buy into Marellen?’

  Ewan glanced at the cheque that featured a coloured imprint of a snow-capped mountain and a figure that made his legs weak.

  Kree nodded and smiled hopefully.