Where the River Runs

by Fleur McDonald

  A smile spread across Jack’s face. ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘Maybe I should ask to meet them. I’m beginning to think I’ve been set up here.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Kim said quickly, but a rosy blush was spreading from her neck towards her face.

  ‘My wife seems to have hoodwinked you, Jack. But I wouldn’t worry, she does it to everyone. If she thinks it’s worth a try, you might as well have a go.’ He started to say: ‘After all, what have you got to lo—’ when Kim stepped on his foot.

  ‘I’ve looked at a couple of them,’ Jack confessed, ‘but the questionnaires … I mean, really, who cares what my favourite colour is? How’s that going to find me the perfect partner?’ He took another swig of beer and thumped the bottle down heavily on the table.

  ‘Who knows? They must put all the answers into a computer and wait for them to spit out matches.’

  ‘I guess if it works, it’ll be a story to tell the grandkids.’ Jack sounded despondent.

  ‘Absolutely. Now instead of wallowing in self-pity, do you want to hear about the bones?’

  Jack straightened up and Kim leaned forwards.

  ‘You’ve got news?’

  ‘I do. The man in the grave was murdered.’

  Kim gasped and clutched her hands to her chest. ‘Really, how?’

  Dave gave her a little pat on the shoulder. ‘Settle down there. We in the police force don’t usually get excited about murders.’

  ‘What’s the drum?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Not only did he have a cracked skull, there was a shotgun hole found in one of his ribs.’

  The kitchen was quiet as they all took in the news.

  ‘It must be one of the hawker travellers, yeah?’ Jack said. ‘The family that was squatting.’

  ‘Could be. I ran into Chelsea at the hospital today and she said her great-grandfather, Baxter, used to write diaries. I asked her to have a look and see if she could find them. Hopefully there might be the name of a family or something in there we can use.’

  Kim twirled her wineglass around on the bench, a frown on her face. ‘What I want to know is, who is this Baxter?’

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Dave crossed his legs and leaned back in the chair. ‘From everything Tom and Chelsea are telling me, he’s Tom’s grandfather. He’s the one they all remember.’

  ‘I’d love to get hold of Leo’s birth certificate and see who’s named on there as his father. I think it’ll be Oscar.’

  Jack took another swig of beer. ‘I didn’t think there were allowed to be scandals back in those days. Wasn’t everyone a God-fearing Christian who knew they’d face Judgement Day if they sinned?’

  Dave laughed. ‘There might’ve been more scandals back then than there are today. Did I ever tell you about my great-great-grandmother?’

  Kim looked at him curiously. ‘Nope, what about her?’

  ‘On my mother’s side. She was a feisty old stick by all accounts. Living way out in the middle of nowhere, raising four kids. Husband used to come and go a bit, but she kept the farm running. Had all the kids working, doing their bit.

  ‘Apparently, even though she was married, there was always another man in the background. Now whether she was having an affair with him for years, I don’t know, but one day she got sick of the husband disappearing all the time, so she turfed him out. Told him not to come back.’

  Jack was listening wide-eyed. ‘Turfed him out? Were they allowed to do that?’

  ‘Pretty unusual for the woman to do it, but those women out in the bush, living in nothing but a humpy, they were tough, no-nonsense. If they felt someone wasn’t pulling their weight, they got told!’

  ‘There are a few people who could learn that today,’ Kim said wryly.

  ‘Anyway,’ Dave continued, ‘it didn’t take long, once this bloke left, for the new one to move in. They didn’t marry or anything, just moved him right on in. Like I said, he’d been hanging around for years, so you’d think they had a pretty good understanding of each other, but the minute they got together, Granny decided she didn’t like him as much as she thought she did and got rid of him too. The story goes that she chased him out of the house with a hot poker!’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Kim said with a giggle.

  ‘Here’s the best bit,’ Dave said with a cheeky grin. ‘He didn’t have any clothes on!’

  ‘He wasn’t keeping up to her standards?’ Jack asked with a snort. ‘I don’t reckon I’d want a hot poker near my dick,’ he added with a pained look on his face.

  ‘His hot poker couldn’t have been working the way she wanted it to,’ Kim said with another snort of laughter. She put her hand on Dave’s shoulder and opened her mouth to say something else, but Dave quietened her with a shake of his head.

  He was almost certain she was about to say, ‘Good thing yours works,’ but with Jack in the room that would be like talking in front of the children. He wanted to laugh but decided that would only encourage her.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket and he took it out to look at the screen. Frowning, he slid the green answer bar across and said, ‘G’day, Dean. How’s things, mate?’

  Kim’s eyes widened at the mention of Dean’s name.

  Dave got up and wandered outside to the patio so he could continue the call in private. ‘How’re you coping, mate?’

  ‘It’s something different,’ Dean said in a shaky voice.

  Dave leaned against the patio wall and took a sip of beer. ‘Tell me about it?’ he invited.

  ‘Geez, Dave,’ his voice broke off. Then he cleared his throat and sounded stronger when he continued, ‘Actually, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m ringing about something else.’

  Staying silent, Dave waited.

  ‘Would you come home?’

  ‘What do you mean, come home?’ Dave asked slowly.

  ‘Not forever. Just to see us. There’s unfinished business here, don’t you think?’

  Dave blew out a breath and stared at the stars. ‘There’s a lot of unfinished business in lots of people’s lives, Dean. I’m not sure what me coming home would achieve.’ He didn’t want to be forced to admit to his family that, after all this time, he was still angry with his father and brothers. More at his father, but Dave had always thought his brothers had been quite happy to see the back of him as well.

  ‘I’m going to ask you to think about Mum,’ Dean said. ‘Don’t worry about me or the farm. It’s Mum who needs to see you. And to meet Kim. I mean we’d all love to meet her and to see you both.’ There was a long silence before Dean spoke again. ‘Dave, when my arm was in the auger, I didn’t feel any pain. I knew what was happening and I was frightened—shit scared. But no pain. All I thought about was Mandy and making things right with her. My kids and you and Adam. For some reason our family has brooded over history that wasn’t of our making.

  ‘Dad caused all of this breakdown. And we’re partly to blame for that by keeping it going. Wouldn’t it be better to fix this before it goes any further? Before it’s too late to fix things? Like Mum said to you the other day, she’s not getting any younger.’

  The stars in the dark sky calmed Dave. This was what he’d fought the whole time he’d been living in South Australia. The black mist of fear swirled around him when he thought about going home. He loved his mum for sure, and he’d love to see her. But the hurt and devastation caused by his dad kicking him off the farm with nothing wasn’t that easy to get past. With Kim’s coaching, he’d talked a little about it, but he was a policeman. He’d been taught how to prevent feelings from affecting the way he operated, so he’d buried it and didn’t think about Wind Valley Farm and his family unless it was absolutely necessary.

  ‘Dave?’

  Clearing his throat, he said, ‘I’m here. Just thinking.’

  ‘Do you have any holidays coming up?’

  ‘I’ll have to check with Kim,’ he stalled. ‘I think she had plans to go and see her sister.’ Even as he said it, he knew she’d be on a plane to Perth in a
heartbeat if it meant he was going to see his family.

  He could hear her saying, ‘For someone who is so smart, you can be so stupid at times. You’ve got to face up to things, Dave. If you let them go they only get worse, until they reach crisis point, and when you get there, you usually can’t fix the problem.’

  ‘Well, look, I just wanted to talk to you about it. Having a near-death experience changes the way you look at things. Nothing material matters anymore. The only things I care about are the people I love: Mandy, the kids, Mum. You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re my brother. At the end of the day we’re blood. I don’t like what Dad did to you, but back then I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him, or even see the need. I’d been programmed by him to agree with most things he did. I’ve got to make up for that.

  ‘The past few weeks while I’ve been lying here in hospital, I’ve been replaying the night that changed everything. The one when you left. Course, I never knew anything about you going until after the buck’s night. I came home and the first thing I saw was Mum passed out on the floor. And you wouldn’t have known about that until later because you’d already left. Dad said you’d gone and I didn’t understand what he meant. I thought you’d gone to get help, but when the ambulance arrived, he said you’d left the farm. Then I got angry because I couldn’t believe you’d do that, right before my wedding.

  ‘It was when Mum was able to tell me what happened that I realised it wasn’t your fault. I need to apologise to you for not standing up in all this time—for you.’ He took a breath. ‘Material things don’t matter,’ he repeated. ‘But you’re not material. You’re my brother and I want to sort out all of this shit so I can have you as my friend.’

  Chapter 27

  Chelsea raised her glass of wine to Lily, who responded with her glass of lemon, lime and bitters.

  ‘Here’s to new beginnings,’ Chelsea said with a smile.

  ‘Yes, new beginnings. I can’t believe you’re going to stay here for good now. Aria and Alecia will be in the same class at school! I never expected anything like that to happen. Is she asleep?’

  ‘Ha! Me neither. Never in a million years did I think I’d ever come back to Barker to live. And, yes, when I looked in on her she was snoring. Poor little thing. These past few days have been a bit unsettling for her.’

  Lily put down her glass and looked at Chelsea. ‘So, spill. Tell me everything.’

  Chelsea smiled and took another sip of wine. ‘There’s so much.’

  ‘I’ve got all night. Tell me about Aria’s dad—how did you meet him?’

  ‘That’s a short story.’ Chelsea explained why she’d started working on cruise ships then said, ‘In the staff quarters of the ship, it’s a bit like a social world in itself. While all the passengers are upstairs, on the decks, drinking and eating and having a good time, well, we do the same below. I met a few of the other musicians and they were all really nice. We did some gigs together—I played the piano for some of the singers and also performed solo. None of us had any family around, so we became each other’s family while we were on the boat. Jazzy—she was a jazz singer of course—was there to save money so she could build a house in the English countryside. It was her fifth tour.

  ‘Then there was Gray, who was a comedian. Totally hilarious. I’d steal into his shows on the top decks if there was room. He’d have the crowd in stiches. I don’t know how comedians tell jokes and make people laugh without laughing themselves. He was driven, wanted to have a TV series of his own.’

  ‘So everyone had a reason for being there?’

  ‘Absolutely, it was a stepping stone.’ She took another mouthful of wine and swirled it around in her mouth. ‘Mine was to pretend I was still somebody. I still mattered in the world of music.’

  ‘Oh, Chels, you’ve always been somebody. Your music never defined who you were. It was part of you, but not everything about you.’ Lily leaned forwards, distress on her face.

  Chelsea shrugged. ‘I don’t see it that way. Anyway, not only was Gray funny, he was smooth and addictive. He always knew the right things to say to make you feel good. I was still smarting from not being able to play as a concert pianist anymore and he sort of took me under his wing on the first cruise. But on the second one, well, that was different.

  ‘We already knew each other, and it didn’t take long for us to become an item.’ She smiled sadly. ‘He was everything I ever wanted in a man: good-looking, funny, caring. I know, I know,’ she said at Lily’s raised eyebrows. ‘Sounds too good to be true. And he was.

  ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant until after I got off the ship. The thing was, he’d never made any plans for us to catch up. I had his phone number, but he had to go back to England to see his mum and dad and I had … Well, not much to do until the next cruise.

  ‘After a month I missed him so much I decided to fly to England to see him.’

  ‘Oh, Chels,’ Lily said, her face full of sadness.

  Through gritted teeth, Chelsea said, ‘Yep. Everything that is running through your head right now happened. He had a wife and two littlies.

  ‘He never expected me to come over. I managed to track him down to where he lived, through Facebook and a few Google searches. I planned to turn up at the front door to surprise him. I was waiting to cross the road and knock on his door when his wife came out, with the girls all wrapped up in winter coats and scarves.’ She swallowed. ‘I turned and walked away then. I was absolutely devastated.

  ‘But, do you know,’ Chelsea’s tone changed to upbeat, ‘I don’t care. I wouldn’t change anything because Aria is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. One day I’m sure she’ll want to find her dad. And I’ve promised myself I’ll never lie to her, so the minute she asks I’ll tell her.’

  Lily reached across and held her friend’s hand. ‘What a roller-coaster of a life you’ve been on! Makes mine sound incredibly boring.’

  ‘Tell me about you. And the hubs and kids.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, what’s to tell? I got married, stayed in the same town, had the two kids. I deal with day-to-day shitty nappies, teething, the occasional sex when I feel like it. It’s everything I dreamed about growing up.’

  Chelsea laughed. ‘Do you love your life?’

  ‘I do,’ Lily answered simply. ‘Look, we travelled before we got married. Went to South Africa and America. And I’m sure we’ll do more, once the kids have grown, but right now I don’t want to change a thing. Well, perhaps the youngest could sleep through the night, that’d be a bonus.’ She laughed. ‘Little bugger is going to be a night owl like his father.’ She picked at the salad in front of her. ‘Now you’ve decided to stay here, what are you going to do?’

  ‘Workwise?’ Chelsea asked, spearing a piece of chicken.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘To be honest, I have no idea. Dad will need some looking after and I have some savings. I’ll need to go back to Sydney and sell my flat, but I can do that when there’s time. It’s not urgent.’

  ‘Oh yeah, what happened with Tom?’

  Chelsea filled her in, finishing with: ‘It’ll depend on what the neurologist says. I don’t suppose it’ll be a quick diagnosis. Unless they do a scan and find something.’

  ‘It mightn’t be dementia, Chels. My grandma has MCI. Mild cognitive impairment. It’s when the person has the symptoms of dementia, but it’s not bad enough to disrupt daily life. Sometimes it goes on to become dementia, but other times it doesn’t. So far, touch wood,’ she tapped her head, ‘it hasn’t progressed.’

  Chelsea thought about that. If there was significant memory loss it probably didn’t matter what the condition was called. She sighed. ‘Well, no matter what the disorder is, it’s going to be a bit of a slog until we know what we’re dealing with. At the moment, not knowing what is exactly wrong is like playing with invisible balls. We’re not sure about anything! And,’ she paused before smiling coyly, ‘I’d rather play with balls I can see if you kno
w what I mean!’

  Lily snorted with laughter then cocked her head to the side. ‘Sooo, was he happy you were staying?’

  ‘Put it this way, he didn’t say no and he smiled. Dad has never been big on emotions.’ They ate quietly for a little while, then Chelsea said, ‘Hey, can I ask you something?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Why don’t you drink?’

  Lily kept eating, then put her fork down. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘I was the vollie ambo on call when your brother died. I was still a junior, at eighteen, but I was there.’

  ‘I remember,’ Chelsea said, corrected herself, then: ‘I heard you were there.’

  ‘I saw what alcohol could do to people. To friends. Jason’s never got over it. Shane and Kelly, well, they seem like they’re able to function, but you can always sense a deep sadness inside them.

  ‘I never want to be in a situation where alcohol makes me do something I’ll regret. Just the way it is.

  ‘Oh, and don’t worry, I know how much of a wowser this town reckons I am, but do I look like I care? Not one iota.’ She smiled widely. ‘Happy to be known as everyone’s designated driver!’

  ‘I saw Jason the night of the pageant.’ Chelsea picked up her wineglass and twirled it between her fingers. ‘He didn’t look good.’

  ‘He’s had so many DD charges, it’s a wonder he’s still got his licence. It’s crazy that one mistake you made when you were young can stuff up your whole life. Dale’s death was an absolute tragedy and no one could have foreseen something like that happening, but the devastation his death caused goes on forever. Do you know what I mean? Like you guys, you’ll never stop grieving for him, and no parent should ever bury their child. Jason lives with the knowledge he killed his friend every single day of his life.’

  Chelsea swallowed hard and put down her glass. ‘I miss my brother,’ she said. ‘Jason wasn’t to blame. It was an accident. The coroner’s report said so.’

  Lily leaned forwards and reached out to Chelsea. ‘I know that. Maybe, if you’re staying, it would be a nice thing to go and see him.’