“Come on, you have to put up with me. I hear that’s considered cruel and unusual punishment in some quarters,” he said.
She smiled. “Stop fishing for compliments, Oliveira.”
His mouth tilted up on one side and he reached out to turn the radio on. She gazed out the window and watched the suburbs slip by. As Eddie had guessed, the roadwork choked the traffic flow on the way out of town, but it wasn’t long before they were free of the worst of it and the Bentley had settled into a quiet, powerful cruise.
It would take them at least three hours to get to Albury-Wodonga, a regional town that straddled the border between Victoria and New South Wales. Blue’s thoughts turned to what lay ahead. She wondered who she could expect to see at the funeral. Sienna, obviously, but it was hard to know who else might turn up. In the time she’d been at Alice’s house, there had been four “permanent” residents including herself and Sienna, but Alice had offered emergency accommodation, too, and there had been half a dozen or so other kids who had come for only a few weeks or months. And that was just in the time that Blue was there.
As Sienna had said, Alice was one of the good ones, but at the time, Blue hadn’t appreciated Alice’s brand of blunt honesty and decency. All Blue had wanted was out, and she and Alice had clashed more than once over what time Blue should be home, what sort of marks she was earning at school, and what was and wasn’t appropriate to wear. Typical teenage stuff, in hindsight, but beneath every battle, every tussle of wills, had been the friable, incendiary knowledge that Alice was not her mother, that Blue was not loved unconditionally, and therefore that every misstep, every challenge was dangerous. It had taken Blue a while to work out that Alice could take whatever she dished out, but by then Blue had been ready to move out and begin her own life.
“You want to stop for coffee?” Eddie asked, and Blue glanced across at him.
He looked like he should be in an expensive watch ad, tooling along in his expensive car in his sexy suit.
“I’m good to keep going if you are,” she said.
He took his eyes from the road briefly to glance at her. “We’ll keep rolling, then.”
She took advantage of the protection of her sunglasses to study his handsome face for a moment. He’d been nothing short of wonderful since he’d arrived on her doorstep and hauled her into his arms on Tuesday. He’d sat with her for three hours that night, not saying an unnecessary word, just being there for her when she succumbed to tears or needed to share a memory of Alice. The next day, he’d shifted appointments around so they could both have today off, then found her the name of a reputable florist in Albury so she could send flowers.
Now he was driving all these miles for her, his hands steady on the wheel. The fact that he was doing all this after the fight they’d had gave her hope that maybe their friendship wasn’t as screwed up as she’d feared it was. It also made her extremely grateful for the man he was.
Eddie might not get it right all the time, but he was a deeply generous, decent person, one of the many reasons she loved him as much as she did.
“You should try to get some sleep before we get there,” he said.
She thought about it for a moment before pressing one of the fancy buttons on the side of the seat to send it into the reclining position. She’d had bugger all sleep last night, lying awake thinking about the day ahead, and it wasn’t long before the steady hum of the Bentley’s big engine lulled her into a doze.
She woke when the car bumped over something hard, jerking awake with a start.
“Just a pothole,” Eddie said. “Don’t tell Raf.”
He grinned at her, and the rush of love and desire she felt was painful in its intensity.
“Nothing happened with Reid the other night,” she said suddenly. “We went out for dinner, but that was it.”
There was a short, tense silence, then he nodded briefly. “Good.”
It was only because she was watching him so closely that she saw the muscle work in his jaw and the way he blinked rapidly a couple of times, as though letting go of something that had been troubling him.
She returned her seat to the upright position and looked around. “Where are we?”
“Just hitting the outskirts of Albury. Not long now.”
Her stomach dipped at his words.
“God, I hate funerals,” she said, wiping suddenly clammy hands down the front of her pants.
“Because of your parents.” Eddie said it as though it was a fact, and she shook her head.
“I didn’t go their funeral,” she said. “The social workers wouldn’t let me. They said I was too young.”
Eddie was silent for a beat. “You never told me that before. That must have been tough, not being able to say goodbye.”
“I didn’t need to say goodbye. I knew they were gone,” she said.
Eddie glanced at her but didn’t say anything.
Twenty minutes later they entered the city proper, passing the many motels and take away food outlets peppering the highway on the way into town. It took Eddie another fifteen minutes to locate the funeral home. That left them with just over half an hour to kill before the service, and Eddie insisted on taking her to a local café and buying her a sandwich. They ate in a nearby park, the two of them sitting on a peeling park bench. The sandwich was bland, but she ate it anyway, hoping the food would help ease the tension in her belly.
When she was done, she wiped her hands on the serviette and let out a heavy sigh.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
She stood, and Eddie followed suit, leading the way back to the car and retracing the route to the funeral home. The parking lot had started to fill with cars when they arrived and they got out and joined the queue of somberly clad people filing into the building. Eddie’s hand landed on the small of her back as they stepped inside out of the warm sunshine, the weight very welcome, and she shot him a grateful glance as they entered the chapel.
“Blue.”
She looked to her left to see Sienna waving, gesturing for them to join her in the pew Sienna had chosen three rows from the back. To her surprise, Blue saw there was a little girl sitting beside her former foster sister, her small, pointy features a miniature version of Sienna’s.
“This is Bree,” Sienna said, shy pride evident in the way she ran a gentle hand over the back of the blonde child’s head. Blue guessed Bree was two, maybe a little older.
“Hi Bree,” Blue said. She glanced over her shoulder at Eddie, who was waiting patiently behind her. “I don’t know if you remember Eddie?”
“Oh, I remember Eddie,” Sienna said with a hint of her old, roguish smile.
On any other day, Blue would have smiled or rolled her eyes. What had she been thinking — women always remembered Eddie.
“Good to see you, Sienna,” Eddie said.
Blue studied the other woman, aware that Sienna was returning the favor.
“You look good,” Blue said.
The last time she’d seen Sienna, she’d been pale and too-skinny, with bruises up and down her arms and legs from shooting up. Today, her face was round, her complexion healthy. Her blonde hair was long and shiny, tied back in a ponytail, and she was dressed in a neat black skirt and a plain black top.
“Yeah, well, having a kid kind of puts things into perspective for you,” Sienna said. “It’s not just about you any more, you know?”
Blue nodded her understanding, glad that something had come along to stop Sienna’s destructive downward spiral.
“Jonah’s here. And I saw Becky before,” Sienna said. “And that red-haired guy. The one who was only with us for a couple of months before they moved him on.”
“Andrew,” Blue said.
“That’s him.” Sienna smiled faintly. “You were always better at remembering everyone than I was.”
There were a lot of people crowding into the small room, and Blue wondered how many of them had been under Alice’s protection. Eddie stirred beside her and she glanced to
ward the front of the chapel and saw that a silver-haired woman was standing there, clearly waiting for everyone to take their seats before the service could begin.
Blue sank onto the pew beside Sienna’s daughter, aware of Eddie sitting beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. Music came up — an instrumental version of Amazing Grace — and she took a big, deep breath to try to ease the tremulous feeling in her chest and belly.
Eddie’s hand landed on hers where it rested on her thigh, and she glanced at him and found herself looking straight into his eyes. There was so much familiarity and affection there. So much hard-won knowledge and understanding. It was so good to have him here with her, to know he was on her side.
Turning her hand, she threaded her fingers through his and held on tight.
Chapter Eighteen
Two hours later, Eddie watched from across the room as Blue stood listening to a short, nervous looking guy with thinning red hair. Her expression was neutral, but she nodded every now and then, and when the short guy started crying, Blue reached out and touched his arm briefly.
Short guy wasn’t the first person to approach Blue at the wake, and Eddie was guessing he wouldn’t be the last. It didn’t surprise him one iota that Blue was popular amongst her former foster siblings. She was beloved by the staff at Ink, too, all of whom loved her for her salty tongue and no-bullshit, seize-the-day attitude. Eddie figured the same held true here.
The woman in front of him finished with the coffee urn and he helped himself to a cup before adding milk. He was considering the cookie selection when Sienna joined him at the refreshments buffet.
“Avoid the ones with the little black bits in them. Raisins as hard as rocks,” she told him.
“Noted, thanks,” Eddie said.
He glanced across at Blue, and Sienna followed his gaze.
“That’s Andrew. He was one of the short termers.”
“Alice obviously helped out a lot of people.”
“Yep. She was pretty amazing.” Sienna blinked rapidly a few times, then gave a sniff that was almost a laugh. “Sorry. You’d think I’d be all done with crying, I bawled so much at the chapel.”
Eddie shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s a funeral. I’m pretty sure tears are almost mandatory.”
“Blue didn’t cry,” Sienna said.
Blue hadn’t. She’d held his hand so tightly it had hurt, but she hadn’t cried.
“I suppose she’d consider it a weakness, breaking down in front of all of us,” Sienna said after a thoughtful beat. “She was always good at keeping up her boundaries like that. Tough as nails.”
There was unalloyed admiration in the other woman’s voice.
“She’s pretty stubborn, that’s for sure,” he said, aware there was admiration in his tone, too.
“It’s more than stubbornness,” Sienna said. “She’s got this unassailable core, you know? When we were at Alice’s together, half the time I’d be a sniveling wreck because of something one of the other kids said or something that had happened at school, but Blue was like Teflon. You could throw stuff at her, but it just never stuck.”
“She knows who she is,” Eddie said. It was one of the first things he’d noticed about her, all those years ago. She didn’t have a problem standing up for herself, and when she liked something, she let it be known. Ditto when she didn’t like something.
“Yeah. That’s it. Not like the rest of us.” Sienna laughed self-consciously. “Look at me — I’ve spent half my life trying to find myself in a hypodermic needle. Becky keeps hooking up with guys who want to hurt her. Don’t even get me started on Jonah… Blue’s the only one of us who came out unscathed. She’s amazing.”
Eddie frowned. Unlike Sienna, he didn’t think Blue had come out of her difficult childhood untouched. There was a reason her apartment looked like a furnished rental, after all.
Across the room, Blue and Andrew had been joined by a tall guy in army fatigues, his neck and arms inked with the kind of amateur tatts prison inmates typically inflicted on one other. He had the unblinking, challenging stare of someone who’d done time, too, and he towered over Blue’s five feet nothing as they started talking.
“That’s Jonah, right?” he checked with Sienna.
“Yep. That’s Jonah.” Sienna leaned across and snagged herself another cookie. “I used to have the biggest crush on him. But Alice wouldn’t let any of us go out with each other. Not a bad rule, in retrospect.”
Eddie could only imagine the kind of crap that might have gone down if Alice hadn’t had that very wise rule. Especially in a house full of messed up, hormone-crazed teenagers.
“Jonah told me this story about Blue once,” Sienna said suddenly. “I always think about it when I’m up against it. He heard it through some other kid in the system. Apparently there was this bitch in charge of a group home where Blue got shelved for a while, and she freaking hated the fact that she couldn’t get to Blue, couldn’t make her cry. You got people like that sometimes. Sick bastards who enjoyed the power. Anyway, Jonah told me that Blue apparently had this book that she used to keep all her photos and letters and other stuff from her parents in. Like a scrap book, I guess. And this bitch found it and made up some bullshit excuse to burn it in front of everyone.”
“Jesus.” Eddie set down his coffee, his appetite suddenly gone, his head filled with images of a young and vulnerable Blue trying to cope with an act of such deliberate cruelty.
“Here’s the amazing bit,” Sienna said. “According to Jonah, Blue still didn’t cry. Not a single tear. Instead, she went to her room, and she stripped it back to bare bones. Then she dumped everything she didn’t absolutely need on the street. Just threw it all away, to prove to that bitch that there wasn’t anything she could do to Blue that would hurt her.”
A chill swept down Eddie’s spine, following by a wash of heat. The knowledge that Blue had been exposed to such targeted malice and squared up to it so powerfully made the hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
God, she was tough. Stronger than titanium. But he also knew that underneath that toughness, Blue would have been bleeding. She might never have sought comfort from anyone, but she would have mourned the loss of her precious memories privately. Deeply.
Emotion burned the backs of his eyes as he imagined Blue quietly choking down so much loss and hurt. She’d been a kid, completely alone. It hurt him to even think about it — but Blue had lived it. She’d survived it, all on her own.
It was so wrong, it made his gut and chest ache. It made him want to do something violent, something monumental enough to express his outrage that Blue had been dealt such a shitty hand by life. If he could, he’d tear down the world and remake it for her so that she had all the things she needed and deserved - parents who loved her, a childhood full of laughter, the knowledge that no matter what, she could always go home.
All things he and Raf had always taken for granted — things they didn’t even know to value, because they’d always been there, part of the furniture.
If Blue would only let him close enough, he would do his best to make up for those losses in her life. He would make it his life’s calling. His mission.
Across the room, Blue looked up and caught his eye. Her gaze was so bleak it jolted him out of his own thoughts, forcing him to remember why they were here.
Today was not about him and what he wanted. It was about Blue, and what she needed. Everything else could wait.
He pointed to the coffee urn, and Blue nodded.
He glanced at Sienna. “Can I get you a coffee?”
“No, thanks, I’ve already had so much tea I feel as though I’m going to float away. Anyway, I need to go check on Bree.”
She headed over to the corner where Bree was playing quietly with another little girl. Eddie busied himself making coffee for Blue, tucking a couple of cookies onto the cup beside the saucer.
She made room for him when he joined her and the two men who had been monopolizing her for the last ten minutes.
“Eddie, this is Andrew and Jonah. They both lived at Alice’s place when I was there.”
“Some of us longer than others,” Andrew said with a wry smile.
Eddie handed over the coffee and stood listening as they reminisced about Alice, burning with the need to put his arm around Blue’s shoulders, to touch her in some way, but knowing that she wouldn’t tolerate it.
Instead, he focused on the stories, and each new recollection hollowed out his chest a little more thoroughly.
The toughest thing was that the three people standing with him had no idea that their stories were sad. To them, they were funny. The time Alice used the cover from the phone book to patch a hole in the sole of Jonah’s shoe until the next allotment of money came through from the government. The time Alice had them all on a roster washing sheets for the kid who couldn’t get through the night without wetting the bed. The time they ate sausage stew every day for a week because the hot water service had blown and all the spare money had gone into buying a replacement.
It was after five by the time the wake broke up. The weather had turned while they were inside, and the sky was now cloaked in dark, low-lying clouds. The rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and people glanced about uneasily as they headed for their cars.
“I don’t know about you, but I need food,” Eddie said.
“Food would be good,” Blue said quietly.
They found a Chinese restaurant on the main road and he plied Blue with all her favorites. Despite being ministered with sweet and sour pork and lemon chicken, the energy visibly drained out of her during the meal, and by the time they’d finished she was pale and silent, pushing what was left of her food around on her plate.
Rain had been lashing at the window for the last part of their meal, and when they exited the restaurant they both pulled up short at the ferociousness of the weather. Blue shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, her shoulders hunching forward, and he knew they wouldn’t be driving back to Melbourne tonight. Blue was far too exhausted.
“We’re not driving back in this,” he said firmly.
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