Even if she had to leave . . . even when she had to leave . . . this Christmas would stay with her forever. It was Harold’s last Christmas. It was a miracle Christmas.
She’d fallen in love this Christmas, she thought, and even if things with her and with Max were impossible . . . this Christmas would stay with her forever.
*
He sat with Harold and he listened to the sounds from inside with not a small sense of foreboding. It sounded like murder—or possibly ten murders.
“What do you reckon?” Harold muttered and Max said: “I wish the ambulance would get here,” and Harold struggled to nod his agreement.
Max looked at his friend and thought he very much wanted the ambulance to get here and it wasn’t just for Katie.
“Your breathing’s getting harder,” he told Harold. “Should we take you back to hospital?”
“Don’t you dare,” Harold managed and when the ambulance finally arrived, he waved the paramedics away as if they were annoying buzz flies.
They headed inside. Harold went back to breathing, each breath more labored than the last.
The noises from inside settled.
What a Christmas, Max thought. What a . . .
And then, the screen door opened.
He turned and it was Sarah, carrying a bundle. Smiling and smiling.
“I’ve borrowed him,” she murmured. “I have him for two minutes, but Katie wanted him introduced. The ambulance is taking her into hospital to be checked. I’m not a midwife; I don’t have the skills to be sure but honestly, she seems great, the baby’s perfect and they’re saying she’ll be home again by morning. But, before he leaves, he’s here to meet you. Harold, this is Harry. He’s named because Katie says this has been the best Christmas ever and Harold, it’s thanks to you. Max, meet your new nephew. Harold, here’s your final Christmas gift, a baby named just for you.”
And, she knelt by Harold’s makeshift bed and tugged back a corner or the warmed towels so Harold could see the tiny, wrinkled face of his namesake.
Harold turned to see, a Herculean effort, and his old face crumpled into an echo of a smile.
“A baby,” he whispered. “Harry. After me. Isn’t that bloody perfect. The best Christmas . . . Family . . . ”
And then, he gasped and his eyes turned inward.
“No.” Sarah handed Max the baby and took Harold into her arms. “Harold, love, no . . . ”
But there was no denying what was coming. They called out to the paramedics. The guys did what they could. Sarah did what she could—but five minutes later, he was gone.
*
Midnight.
The dramas of the day were ended. Doug and the littlies were asleep. Katie and her baby were tucked up in Waratah Bay hospital for the night—but she’d be back by morning. “I want to be home,” she’d said, and Max had hugged her and said, “We want you to be home.”
For he wanted her to be home. She was his little sister and Harry was his nephew. He . . . needed them?
He needed family. How many years had it taken him to acknowledge that?
The ambulance had been and gone and then come again for Harold—or rather for the husk of Harold. The whispers of the old farmer stayed behind, a gentle, benign ghost. His last words echoed and echoed.
“The best Christmas . . . Family.”
Sarah had been inside for an hour now, cleaning up after the drama of the birth, after the drama of the day. He’d wanted to help but she’d sent him outside.
“Max, I need to be alone, and I think you do, too.”
Maybe she was right. He sat on the edge of the veranda, surrounded by dogs, and he thought . . .
No. He couldn’t call what he was doing now thinking. He was shell shocked. Grief stricken. But . . . blessed?
Finally, he heard the sounds from the kitchen stop. The screen door opened and she padded across the veranda in her bare feet to join him.
Jeans. Faded windcheater. Bare toes. Tousled hair. She’d worked as a midwife and then she’d fought for Harold’s life. She’d made this Christmas. She’d sat up all the previous night turkeydunking without complaint. She’d worked solidly all day. She’d almost stood on a snake and she hadn’t screamed.
She’d swum seven strokes without sinking, and when Harold had died she’d closed his eyes with love and with honor.
How could he have thought this woman was a gold-digger, here for what she could get? She’d blessed Harold’s last Christmas.
She’d blessed him.
He reached back and held out his hand to her. She hesitated a moment, and then came and took it, sitting on the edge of the veranda with him, looking out at the moon hanging low over the distant ocean.
“Have you rung your mother?” he asked, because the formalities had to be done. Lorissa and Harold had long been divorced, but Sarah wasn’t the only step-daughter. There were three.
“Can I ask you to ring Lorissa?” Sarah asked, diffidently. “She’ll . . . she’ll let the girls know.”
“But . . . ”
“I’m leaving in the morning,” she said. “I did what I came to do. There’s nothing here for me.”
“You won’t stay for the funeral? Your sisters . . . ”
“They’re not my sisters,” she told him, quietly into the stillness. “I’m not Harold’s step-daughter. I’m sorry that I let you believe it. When we met you assumed it, and by some miracle, Harold didn’t set you right. You were so angry when we met . . . I thought . . . I knew you wouldn’t let me bring him home. Maybe the hospital wouldn’t let him home . . . if I was just a friend.”
There was a long, long silence. His brain was refusing to work. It was as if Harold’s death had muted everything, put things in a different perspective, a different plane.
“So you’re not Sarah Carlton?” he asked at last, trying to think it through.
“I am.”
“But Lorissa married . . . ”
“My father. Benson Carlton. And yes, her girls took my father’s name and good luck to them. They wanted to join a world I wanted no part of.”
More silence. The dogs had moved back to make room for Sarah, but they’d settled again, making a ring of protective warmth around the pair of them. It seemed so right to be sitting here with this woman, Max thought, and yet . . . who the hell was she?
“Who the hell . . . ”
She smiled then, ruefully. “I’ve been inside, clearing up, thinking what to do,” she said. “And part of me wanted to go to bed tonight and get up early and just drive away. No questions. No explanations. I need to get back to the States. I don’t feel the need to stay for Harold’s funeral. Lorissa and the girls will be here, demanding what they feel is theirs, and I don’t want to see them. I just want to be . . . gone.”
It was a statement to make a guy’s gut wrench. He didn’t have a clue what was going on. All he knew was that she was here, right now, and it felt . . . right.
But there were lies between them. Deceit. He should feel angry.
Should he? He could drum up desolation. He could summon grief, but anger was nowhere.
“You want to tell me?”
“Dreary story,” she said.
“I don’t think sleep’s in the equation. Go.”
“I did love Harold. I do.”
“You think I don’t know that? Give.”
So she gave, sitting staring out at the moonlit sky. Her hand was still in his, but she seemed almost unconscious of it. She just talked, and it seemed like her story was part of the night. Birth, death and all the dramas that go between.
“My father’s Benson Carlton,” she told him. “American. Entrepreneur, gambler, occasional conman. He’s suave, too good-looking for his own good, and he can charm his way into anyone’s life. My mother was a model. Savannah. She . . . wasn’t a good mother. She died of a drug overdose when I was five.”
“Sarah . . . ”
“I hardly remember her,” she said. “After that . . . I’m not sure if I was
lucky or not that Dad didn’t put me up for adoption. Life was a succession of nannies in the good times, Dad’s mistresses, or no one when things were bad. When I was thirteen Dad was caught up in some international con. He made a heap of money, but he needed to get away from . . . Well, I was never sure what he needed to get away from, but we ended up in Australia with enough money to send me to boarding school in Sydney. The same school Harold’s step-daughters went to.”
“Hence the link . . . ”
“Yeah,” she said bleakly. “The only link. I’m not Harold’s step-daughter. I’m nothing.” She shrugged. “Anyway, there I was, in some prestigious school that for once Dad had the money pay for. Lorissa liked playing the social parent and Dad even turned up to the odd school event, too. Thus, he met Lorissa. Did you ever meet Lorissa?’
“No.”
“Consider yourself lucky. She took one look at my Dad and she wanted him. Heaven knows why. But before I knew it Clarissa, Harold’s second step-daughter, had invited me here for the mid-year holidays. I was surprised—Clarissa was in my class, but she wasn’t exactly my friend, and I was even more surprised when Dad said I had to come.”
“So he could visit Lorissa?’
“Of course. I came here, only to realize it wasn’t exactly happy families. Lorissa and the girls lived pretty much separately from Harold, and all the time they were here they were bored to snores. Then, surprise, surprise, Dad appeared on the horizon. He took Lorissa and us girls out on excursions—which basically meant dropping us in town and then the two of them doing what they wanted for the day. I imagine Harold knew what was going on—we all did—but there was nothing he could do about it. Then, at the end of the holidays, I came down with glandular fever.”
“Hell.”
“It was,” she said simply. “I couldn’t go back to school, and when the girls went back . . . well, Lorissa went, too. I don’t know where, but I did know she was with my father. Dad wouldn’t answer my calls or the school’s calls. That left me stranded. I stayed here for the whole winter term, sick, miserable and mortified to my soul that Dad had stuffed Harold’s life.”
His grip on her hand tightened. She should let it go, she thought numbly. She should retreat, but she’d started now. Why not say it all like it was?
“I think Harold saved my life,” she said simply. “At school I’d been so miserable I wanted to die, and with the fever . . . Well, Harold just decided that it was his personal purpose to make me enjoy life. He used to light the big fire in the living room every morning and he made a bed up for me on the sofa. When I was really bad, he’d read to me. His dogs lay all over me. Paddy was a puppy then, and Tip was four, and the cats used to be a mat round the bed. Then, when I was recovering, he’d take me round the farm, teaching me stuff, sharing so much . . . By the end of the term, I was so in love with Harold I never wanted to leave. He was the Grandpa I never had. He was all I had.” She paused and then sniffed. “He’s all I ever had.”
“Sarah . . . ”
“Sorry.” She sniffed again, and tilted her chin, fighting for control. There was a moment’s silence and then she started again, resolute.
“Anyway at the end of term the school wouldn’t take me back—unpaid fees, of course. Dad was gone and I still couldn’t contact him. Maybe he’d have been happy for me to stay here forever, but of course, I didn’t have migrant status and no one could find Dad and there was no way would any authority let Harold adopt me. So, I was shipped ignominiously back to the States. Harold gave me some money; he even wept when I left. I went back and stayed with a cousin who’d been good to me. I got a job. I managed to work my way through nursing and then someone saw me on the street and noticed my Slavic bone features or whatever—my looks are the only legacy my parents have left me with—and I got caught up in modeling.”
“You wanted to?” he asked, and he couldn’t help sounding incredulous.
“No,” she said, harshly now, and her grip on his hand tightened. She could still feel the desolation of that decision. “But nursing pays zip and I had so much debt. And I’d been writing to Harold every week and he wrote to me. Lorissa had married Dad. I knew the girls had changed their names to Dad’s but I never saw them and I knew they never saw Harold. In his letters, Harold seemed . . . even more alone than I was. I was desperate to get back to see him before . . . before . . . ”
“So modeling did that for you?”
“I signed a four year contract,” she said simply. “I’m half way through it. It means I finally had the means to come here for Christmas, but I’m bound by legal clauses so tight I have no choice but return. It doesn’t matter now, though. I did what I came to do. Now, I can go . . . home.”
“But where is your home?” he asked gently, and the world seemed to still.
“What . . .what sort of question is that?”
“I think it’s the heart of the question. Three days ago, I’d have said my home was here, but that was a world ago. Tonight, now, I’d be saying that my home is with you.”
She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. There was nothing but the silence enveloping them. Nothing, nothing and nothing.
“I lied to you,” she whispered at last.
“You didn’t lie.”
“I knew you thought I was Harold’s daughter. I let you believe it.”
“You did what you had to do to get Harold home and I’ll be grateful for that for the rest of my life.” And then he smiled, ruefully, and glanced backward into the house. “And you hauled Katie and her brood back here for Christmas. You know there’s no escape from this. They’ll all be here now. My family.”
“They love you.”
“I love you.”
Such simple words. Three words to make her heart stand still.
“Y-you can’t,” she managed at last, but it was little more than a husky whisper. She could barely manage that. “It’s the shock. It’s Harold’s death. You don’t know . . . ”
“I know what’s in my heart. I know that I’ve fallen truly, madly, deeply. I know what I said is immutable truth—that my home is you. I thought I wanted isolation. I thought I wanted silence for the rest of my life. I was crazy. Sarah, I was wrong. I love you, and I’m asking you to stay.”
“You won’t think it in the morning.” She was fighting to think through the tangle of emotion sweeping every part of her. This was so far out of left field . . .
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe every time he touched her she’d felt it. Maybe her body knew it for absolute truth.
“I’ll tell you again in the morning. Could you love me, do you think?”
“Max, I have to go.”
“Because of the contract?”
“Yes.”
“I could follow you.”
“Right. With how many dogs?”
“We might need to get a largish apartment.”
“This is nuts.” She was close to laughter. Close to tears. “Max, don’t. You’d hate it there. So many people . . . You’d be closed in.”
“I figure I don’t mind if I’m a bit closed in,” he said, diffidently. “I may not always have felt like that but now . . . As long as you’re around . . . ”
“I can’t. You’d never see me. It’s a crazy, stupid life. They own me.”
“Then live here,” he said, evenly now. “With me. Happily ever after if you will. Sarah I don’t have a ring. I can’t figure out where to find one at midnight on Christmas night, but . . . ” He grimaced, looked around and his gaze fell on the nearest dog—Paddy. Paddy had lain on Harold’s bed as he died, but almost as soon as he died, he’d shifted. He was leaning against Max. Taking and giving comfort?
Take Paddy to New York? No and no and no.
But Max wasn’t thinking of New York; he was focusing on things closer to hand. He unclipped Paddy’s collar.
“Is it alright if I borrow this, mate?” he asked Paddy, and Paddy shifted a little closer.
“Just until the shops open,” Max said, and unclipped the lit
tle round dog tag, re-clipped Paddy’s collar and lifted Sarah’s hand.
“With this ring . . . ” he said softly. “Would you wear it? Just for a little. Just until we can find you a diamond. Just to say you’ll marry me.”
“I can’t!” She was weeping now, openly. She couldn’t stop the stupid tears sliding down her face. “Max, I can’t. Even if I thought you really wanted to . . . I’m chaos. I’d want it all, family, kids, dogs, noise, laughter, mess. I’d want everything you don’t want.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“In three days?”
“I know, it’s taken too long, but I’m a bit slow. Can you cope with a guy who’s a bit slow off the mark, Sarah, love?”
“How can you doubt it—but even if I could . . . Max, think about it. If you still feel like this in two years . . . ”
“When you’ve worked off your contract?”
“Yes, but . . . ”
“How much is your contract worth?” he demanded and she never told anyone. It wasn’t anyone’s business but her own, but . . . but . . .
She told him and he blinked. “Wow,” he said. “Someone other than me knows your true value, then.”
“So you see, it’s impossible.”
“Do you know how much I earn? Seeing we’re laying our private stuff on the table . . . ” He told her and it was her time to blink. “So I can buy you out.”
Silence.
He was asking her to marry him, she thought, stunned. But . . . He was offering to . . . buy her?
She loved this man. She looked at him in the moonlight and she saw care and compassion. She saw gentleness and humor.
She saw a man she could love with all her heart.
No.
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“I don’t know if you can understand this.” She was speaking softly into the dark again. “But I spent my childhood flailing. It was dependent on whether or not my Dad had money as to whether or not I was loved. When he was in funds, he was proud of me, he showed me off, he had a daughter. When he didn’t . . . ”
“Sarah, I am not your father.” There was more than a trace of anger in his voice now. He took her shoulders in his hands and forced her to face him. “I’m me. I have demons like you, demons that’ll be with me forever, but I’m hoping, I’m asking that we can face them together.’
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