She swallowed. ‘Hi. Sounds like Aria is having a ride with you.’
‘Me too!’ Alecia cried.
‘Oh, goodness me, yes, you too,’ Chelsea said, patting the little girl on the shoulder.
‘Yeah, both these girls are going to ride in the police car and hang out with Santa while I drive him to the edge of town. I hear he has another car waiting to take him to the airport where his sleigh and reindeers are waiting.’
‘Can we go to the airport too?’
Dave shook his head solemnly. ‘No can do, sorry, girls. The airport is full of security because Santa is so important. You don’t have the required clearances.’
The girls’ eyes were so wide as they stared up at the detective that Chelsea had to look down so Aria and Alecia didn’t see her laugh. They turned and looked at each other, then grabbed each other’s hands before giving a little squeal of excitement.
As she watched them, Chelsea’s mouth fell open and she looked at Lily to see if she’d noticed, to see if she remembered. These two girls could have been the two of them when they were four.
‘I have room for one more. Would one of you ladies like to accompany us?’
Chelsea and Lily looked at each other.
‘You go,’ said Chelsea. ‘I’ll see if I can find Dad.’
Chapter 14
Chelsea leaned down and brushed Aria’s hair away from her face as she slept. Her long dark lashes touched her cheeks and she breathed evenly. When Aria was asleep like this, she reminded Chelsea so much of her father. When they had shared a bunk on the ship together, Chelsea had loved to watch him sleep. She had often propped herself up on one elbow and gazed at him. Aria’s deep brown eyes and long dark lashes were the same as her father’s, as was the colour of her hair. Seeing the similarities made Chelsea’s heart ache; she tried not to think about him too often.
At the end of Aria’s bed, Chelsea had placed a pillowcase full of little Santa presents: a book, a new set of crayons, colouring books and a tube of touch bubbles. The main present she’d put underneath the Christmas tree shortly. It wasn’t much; she didn’t have a lot of money left, but the cute backpack and lunchbox set would be great for when Aria started kindy next year.
The thought sent shivers through her. Where was she going to put her into school? As Aria gave a deep sigh and settled into a deeper sleep Chelsea backed quietly out of the room, determined not to think about the future yet.
Back in her room, she pulled out the wrapping paper she’d bought in Barker and looked for the sticky tape. She knew she’d bought some. It wasn’t there. Bugger. Must’ve slipped out of the bag.
Creeping out into the kitchen, she pulled open a couple of knick-knack drawers and had a rifle through them but didn’t find any. There wasn’t any in her dad’s office. Surely there’d at least be some masking tape somewhere! Or electrical tape—what farmhouse didn’t have that?
Would there be anything in her mother’s office, she wondered. She went to the small room next to the sitting room and looked at the door, which was tightly shut.
It’d been like that since she’d arrived, and not once had she seen her father go in or come out. And Chelsea hadn’t felt free to go in. In some ways she felt like a visitor in her old home.
Slowly she reached out and opened the door. The hinges, in need of oiling, let out a long screech. She froze for a moment before looking over her shoulder in case Tom or Aria had woken.
A strange thought popped into her mind. The loud screeching might be symbolic of emotions and feelings long since locked away and needing to come out. To be talked about and dealt with. That’s what Baxter would’ve said.
Great-Granda Baxter had always been one to look out for signs—‘From the universe, girl,’ he’d say.
Granny, Great-Granda Baxter’s daughter-in-law, would shake her head and shush him. ‘Don’t frighten the child. If the Lord heard you talk like that, he’d strike you down.’
Chelsea wished she recall her gran as clearly as Baxter. Trouble was, she was always busy looking after him and everyone else. Chelsea remembered her beautiful sponges and bread rolls rather than her personality—but she knew she’d loved her gran with all her heart and she knew her gran had loved her.
Maybe it would be better not to remember too much tonight. Not to remember the feeling of her mum’s hand on her forehead when she came to kiss her goodnight. Or her reaction when Chelsea managed to stop a goal during the netball grand final. Or just the feeling she had when her mum came in after a long day in the sheep yards and sat quietly in the sitting room, listening as Chelsea practised. No, the memories were too painful and she felt too much regret.
Feeling around, she found the long light cord and yanked it. The dim illumination showed her mother’s study: a desk stuffed with papers and old invoices, and on the wall a corkboard covered in photos of Dale. There he was at school—running on sports day, face smeared with red zinc, the colour of his sports house. Baring his teeth—or lack thereof, as he was missing his two front ones. Shearing sheep in the yards with their father, their arms around each other’s shoulders.
And this one. Chelsea pulled the pin out and sat down at her mother’s desk, never taking her eyes from the picture. In it Dale’s hair was cut into a mullet and he was wearing a pink tank top. He could’ve been a double for Jason Donovan in Neighbours. He was sitting on the back of his ute, the tailgate down, his arm around a black and tan kelpie, and it seemed as if the two were grinning at each other.
It was the photo that had been used on the order of service for his funeral and Chelsea was sure it was the last photo that had ever been taken of him.
‘Dale and Dixie,’ she muttered. ‘Inseparable.’
Her mum had obviously made this board after Dale died. She didn’t remember it being in the office when she was growing up. When she’d been younger her mum would be sitting at her desk, her glasses perched on the end of her nose and strands of hair escaping from her ponytail. She’d have the phone tucked in between her shoulder and her ear, talking to someone about a netball training regimen or laughing with a friend. Her feet would be up on her desk and she’d be leaning back in her chair, laughing raucously. And then there was Dixie …
Damn, she really didn’t want to think about this now. But Dixie forced her way into her mind.
For the first five weeks after Dale’s death, Dixie had sat at the front door barely moving. Every time a vehicle pulled up, she’d race to the end of the path and look hopeful. When the dog realised it wasn’t her master coming home, she’d slink back up the path and slump at the door again, her chin on her paws. If she’d been a human, Chelsea was sure there would have been tears slipping down her furry cheeks.
‘Stop it,’ she whispered as she tore her eyes away from the photos. ‘Not now. We’ve got to get through tomorrow first.’
She hurried over to the desk and pulled open the drawers, looking for some sticky tape. After all, she had presents to wrap and cooking to do. It was still hours before she could go to bed.
Nothing in the first drawer other than pens, paperclips and rubber bands. The second drawer was full of used envelopes. The third drawer held a box.
It took a moment for Chelsea to work out what it was. There was the outline of a blue flower on the lid, along with her mum’s name and the date that would be burned in Chelsea’s memory forever—the date of her mum’s death.
Pursing her lips, she continued to look at the container. She wasn’t sure what it held, but it must be something to do with her mum’s funeral.
Dale’s funeral was the only one Chelsea remembered clearly. In one way she was glad about that: it meant most of the people she loved hadn’t died. But oh, how she wished she’d been able to go to her mother’s funeral. No one knew the guilt she experienced every single day because she hadn’t been there.
Dale’s funeral she relived often, still seeing it as if she were there. There was a lot of noise—people crying, but also laughing at some of the stories that
were told. There’d been music—‘Angels’ by Robbie Williams and ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol. Then Chelsea had played ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ as a piano solo. She remembered pressing the keys automatically, as if in a trance. She could remember the sobbing as the pallbearers, from Dale’s cricket club, carried out the coffin.
Pulling her eyes away from the box, she looked around the rest of the room. Nothing else seemed to have changed since she’d been in here last, all those years ago. The blue curtains still hung over the window to block out the midday sun, and the office chair was placed by the window, where her mum loved to sit and drink her morning coffee while she looked over the creek and listened to the birds’ cacophony of song.
Not wanting to disturb anything, she picked up the container and sat down on her mother’s chair with it in her lap. Chelsea spent a long time tracing around the edges, trying not to think about her mum being buried on the cold grey day she imagined it had been. Maybe the wind would’ve whipped around the mourners standing at the graveside so they scurried out of the cold after the coffin had been lowered into the ground. After all, there was no way it would’ve been sunny the day her mother was buried.
Before she could stop herself, she took the lid off the box and stared inside. It was full of cards.
Dear Tom, We’re sorry to hear about the loss of Pip. At peace now.
To Tom, In your darkest times, remember how Pip always made you feel. She can never be lost if you do.
Tom, Let us know if we can do anything, mate.
As Chelsea flicked through them all, she realised her name wasn’t on any of them. They were all addressed to Tom. Not even Tom and family.
She guessed the community remembered he’d already lost a son, and his daughter hadn’t been seen in years. Maybe she’d been forgotten until she’d arrived home this week.
Towards the bottom she found an order of service. Written on the front page below a photo Chelsea didn’t recognise was: Philippa Teresa Taylor born on the 6th of March 1955 and left her earthly body on the 19th of August 2015.
She studied the photograph. Her mother was sitting on a fallen log in the creek just below the house. She was laughing at someone who was out of the picture, but it was the paper-thin skin and overly large smile that took Chelsea’s breath away. She looked ill. Had she been? No one had told her if she had. Or was it the after-effects of grief?
Opening the order of service, she saw the funeral had been conducted by Pastor Bill Higgins—not a name she knew—and the pallbearers had been four of the neighbouring farmers.
Chelsea looked up, tears threatening—except this time she didn’t see the walls of the office, she saw a cold church with a walnut-coloured coffin at the altar. A man she didn’t know dressed in robes, telling everyone how Pip would be reunited with Dale in heaven. She heard the electric piano start to play and the pallbearers walk to the front to escort the coffin on the final journey from the church. Her father walking behind, grief-stricken, and Cal alongside him, his face solemn and grave. The hush of the church as the procession made its way to the hearse and then on to …
Chelsea blinked. The tears rolled down her cheeks and fell onto her T-shirt. She’d still not asked her dad where her mum had been buried. For some reason she hoped it wasn’t in the cemetery. It was so cold there. So structured. Her mum would’ve needed to be free—her ashes scattered on Shandona.
‘What are you doing in here?’
Chelsea startled at the sound of her father’s voice. She looked up and saw him standing in the doorway. He was dressed in boxers and a singlet and looked pained.
‘I need to know about Mum,’ she said.
Tom looked at her steadily. ‘Why? You didn’t come. I didn’t think you cared.’
Chelsea jumped up from her chair and went over to him. Standing ramrod straight, staring him in the eyes, her voice was strong as she said, ‘I’ve told you why. I didn’t get the messages. I didn’t know. I didn’t know until after we got back into port. I hadn’t taken my phone with me when I went on that cruise ship. I didn’t want you and Mum to know that I’d failed. I didn’t want any communication. Dad, I didn’t get your messages.’
‘Why didn’t you come home afterwards?’
Chelsea looked down at the box. ‘I don’t know.’
Chapter 15
Chelsea sat at the piano; it was where she went when she needed to feel safe.
Tom sat on the chair with a glass of water and looked down at his hands. She noticed they were shaking slightly. His fingers were permanently stained with purple dirt and grease; no matter how long he scrubbed them, they were never absolutely clean. They were strong hands. Hands that would take care of her and Aria. Hands that had wiped her tears as a child and clapped when she’d finished a performance.
‘I didn’t know she was going to die.’ Tom’s voice broke a little. ‘If I had I wouldn’t have gone into town that night.’
Chelsea looked down at the floor and rubbed at the stain on the carpet just in front of the stool. She thought she remembered spilling Milo there when she was little, but she couldn’t be sure.
‘Jacko and Terry had asked me to play corporate bowls and normally she would’ve come too, but that night she didn’t. Said she was tired. So I went by myself. There wasn’t too much happening here; we had to start thinking about shearing, but that was a week or two away.
‘We had a couple of beers afterwards and I came home. Pip was already in bed, so I didn’t turn the light on, just got undressed and into bed. Usually she would’ve said something to me, or asked how it had all gone, but she didn’t say a word. I thought she must’ve been asleep.’ Tom swallowed hard and breathed in deeply through his nose before continuing.
‘I lay there for a bit, thinking about what we had to do the next day, and then I realised something. I couldn’t hear her breathing. So, I …’ He paused and started to mash his teeth together. ‘I put my hand on her. There was nothing.’
Chelsea gulped a little as a few tears trickled down her cheeks. She wanted to comfort her dad, but his posture didn’t invite that.
They both sat in the low light, looking at the floor. Chelsea’s mind was exploding with questions, but she wasn’t sure if she should ask them. How awful to be lying alongside your wife and realising she’d taken her final breath.
Of course, she must ask, she told herself. She might never get another opportunity.
‘Was she sick?’ she finally managed to choke out. ‘The photo on the Order of Service … She didn’t look, um, healthy. Mum looked—’ pausing, Chelsea finally said—‘frail.’
Her dad shook his head. ‘No. She’d lost so much weight since Dale had died. That was the pain and misery you could see in that photo, even though she was smiling. The autopsy—’
‘Autopsy?’ The word shot from her mouth before she could stop it.
‘They had to do one.’ Tom shrugged as he spoke. ‘The doctor didn’t know why she’d died. It was a heart attack. Massive. But you know what I think? I think her heart got weak from all the sadness. Then it couldn’t keep going.’
‘Heart attack? But she was fit—she didn’t look like she was a candidate for a heart attack.’ Chelsea couldn’t believe it. Her strong, active mother had a blockage in her arteries and her heart had stopped at sixty.
‘Yes.’ Tom sounded angry now.
Chelsea saw him get up and start to pace the room.
‘It’s not fair,’ he said, angrily, as he walked. ‘There’s a book on the bedside table. One of those biographies she liked to read. I never liked them, but I wanted to hold and read the pages she had.’ Dragging in a breath, he kept talking, faster and faster. ‘But I can’t read past where the bookmark is. Why should I know more about the book than she did?
‘I look at the clothes in her wardrobe and imagine what she looked like in them. I can’t clean it out—I don’t want to. If I do, I might lose her again. I dunno, to move on seems like some kind of …’ He cast around the room helplessly. ‘Some
kind of unfaithfulness.’ He stopped and looked at Chelsea. ‘Sounds ridiculous. But every step I take, I’m leaving her further and further behind, and while I’m losing her, I’m losing myself.’ He looked at Chelsea, a pleading expression in his eyes. ‘Why, why the hell do I feel like this?’
She had no idea what to say, because it was just like hearing her father talk after Dale had died.
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
‘Sorry?’ An explosion of grim laughter escaped from him. ‘Sorry?’ He dragged his eyes away from her now and walked to the window. ‘Not only was I dealing with your mother’s death, the whole town kept asking about you: “Chelsea will come home to help you now, I’m sure.” And “Where’s Chelsea? Be home soon, will she? I would’ve thought she’d come back for her mother’s funeral.” Then they’d tut-tut and I’d be left trying to explain where you were when even I didn’t know.’
The bitterness in his voice was undeniable and she shifted uncomfortably on the piano stool. There was anger inside her too but she’d trained herself not to let her feelings interfere with her performance, and somehow she’d become adept at not letting them interfere in her personal life either. Tori had summed it up one day: ‘What you feel is what you feel—neither right nor wrong, because they’re your emotions, your feelings.’ They’d been sitting on the balcony in Sydney, drinking wine. ‘But if you react to other people’s emotions, then they’re controlling you. There’s a difference between reacting and responding.’
It had taken her a long time to work out the difference, but finally she had. And here, in the sitting room, with her dad, she had a choice—to react or to respond. React to his anger with all the hurt and resentment she was feeling, or respond by using that hurt and anger in a positive way.
Taking a few deep breaths, she said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Dad. I would’ve been if I could. And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back home. I didn’t want to come home,’ she finally admitted. ‘I was scared.’ She wasn’t sure if it was worth explaining again that the messages hadn’t got through.
Where the River Runs Page 13