Water under the Bridge

by Lily Malone

  ‘So I thought he might be you. I mean, Mum liked you. You had a bird just like our birds. You taught me stuff, like the quad bike and picking up sticks. You even got Mum swimming again.’

  ‘He’s not me, Sam,’ Jake said, meeting the boy’s gaze before he returned his own eyes to the road. Or I’m not him. ‘But I can tell you that if I was your dad, I’d be the proudest dad you’d ever seen.’

  Sam seemed to shrink in his seat.

  ‘I wanted it to be you,’ Sam said, every bit as stubborn as his mother. ‘I really, really thought when you came to the house last night before the dance … I thought you might have been far away for a while, but you were back.’

  ‘It’s not me, Sam.’ Jake’s gut clenched for the kid. ‘Doesn’t matter how much I might wanna be, I’m just not. You can’t make it that way, mate.’

  Sam digested that and nodded once. ‘When we were all at the dam and you and Mum were swimming, Ollie said you loved each other. Ollie said you and Mum were gonna marry each other, because that’s what it means when you love each other. That’s what you do. Get married.’

  He could have told the boy there was a bit more to it than that, because there was. Love was never that simple. But he didn’t, because Ollie’s wisdom wasn’t that far off the mark.

  He’d been thinking the same way too.

  * * *

  Sam got a packet of stronger painkillers, a purple cast from his left wrist to his elbow and a nurse and a doctor to sign their names on it alongside Jake’s, and he seemed pretty happy with that as they climbed back into Jake’s car with an ice-cream each.

  Then man and bashed-up boy hit the road back to Chalk Hill.

  Sam spent the first part of the drive licking his ice-cream; the middle part of the drive admiring his cast; and the last part of the drive struggling to keep his eyes open. Every now and then Sam’s head would jerk upright and his eyes would open, and Jake would drive and watch as those eyes closed.

  Sam woke properly when they pulled the car into Ella’s driveway. The way she appeared on the porch, you would have thought she’d been standing there since he drove away.

  Maybe she had.

  ‘Be good to your mum, Sam. She loves you, and whatever you’re thinking right now, she thought she was doing the right thing.’

  ‘How can the right thing for me be not to have a real dad?’

  ‘We’ve all got a real dad. Yours is just somewhere else.’

  ‘Far away. I know.’ Sam smashed his seatbelt button with his thumb and finger and threw the strap off hard enough to make the silver buckle thud into the frame.

  ‘Steady on a bit, Sam. Don’t want to break the other arm. Or a leg.’

  But Sam was out of the car.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’ Ella asked Sam as the boy neared the steps.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Ella looked at Jake.

  ‘It’s a green stick fracture. Coulda been worse. Six weeks in the cast. No sport at school. No riding his bike. No wrestling tigers.’ Jake smooshed Sam’s hair with one hand, and Sam ducked around Ella’s hip and into the house.

  ‘You don’t have to come in,’ Ella said, and Jake got the sense she was blocking the way.

  Fair enough. Maybe it was best to give her and Sam some time alone.

  ‘I rang Erik this morning. He’s on his way down.’

  Jake couldn’t tell from her tone whether Erik’s visit was a good thing or not, so he said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘I rang Harvey this morning, too,’ she said.

  ‘Righto.’

  ‘Gina Scarponi is pregnant, and she wants to cut down her hours. I asked Harvey if I could get some training into Gina’s admin job and reception.’

  Jake scratched his chin. ‘How will that work with selling houses?’

  ‘It won’t. I’m not doing it anymore. I’m going to hang around in Chalk Hill till they get this town pool finished, because I committed to that. A few days admin work will at least pay the rent. Then Sam and I will move back to Perth. It will be easier for me to work this out with Marshall if I’m in the city. Too hard from down here.’

  Jake’s stomach hit his knees. ‘Perth?’

  Ella nodded.

  He wasn’t following. ‘You’ve been doing too much thinking when you’re too upset to think. Sleep on it for a while. Don’t rush into something like that. You’ve loved it here. Sam is just settling in—’

  ‘Does Sam really look like he’s settling in, Jake? I don’t think so.’

  He tried again. ‘You’re letting last night skew everything, Ella. Don’t rush into these decisions now—’

  ‘What’s the point in sleeping on it? I won’t change my mind. Sam hates Chalk Hill, and he’s more important—’

  Jake interrupted. ‘He doesn’t hate Chalk Hill, not anymore, and he’s met Ollie. He’s starting to make friends. You’ve got to give it more time.’

  ‘I need to put money on the table and real estate is not paying the bills. Bob and Harvey have the real estate needs of this town covered anyway. I’m just a fifth wheel. It was a dumb idea to think I could make this work. I’ve sold one house in six months. It’s time to stop dreaming.’

  ‘What about Tynan Kennedy at the dance last night? His wife specifically asked if you’d come appraise their place.’

  She jolted, and Jake knew that with everything else that had happened last night, she’d forgotten all about it. ‘It’s not enough. They won’t want to sell it anyway. They’ll just want to show me their place and get some idea what it’s worth.’

  ‘So it’s too bad for them, hey?’

  Ella crossed her arms. ‘I’ll tell Harvey about it. He’ll flick the lead to Bob.’

  ‘You’re giving up, Ella. Don’t do that just because of what happened last night. You gave up swimming and you’ve regretted it—’

  ‘I haven’t regretted it,’ Ella threw at him. ‘Don’t you dare say I regretted it! If I regret giving up swimming that’s like saying I wish I’d never had Sam, and I don’t wish that. I’d never wish that.’

  The pair of them hesitated, out there on the tiny piece of cement porch under the brick archway, their only audience a pot plant at their feet.

  Ella took a deep breath, and tried to ease her shoulders down.

  ‘Maybe if I’m lucky I can learn a bit about reception and admin work, and how to work a photocopier and make the boss coffee before I leave. Maybe it will make me more employable back in Perth if I know a bit more than how to follow a swim coach up and down the side of the pool, making notes about split times. And maybe I can teach a few kids how to tread water long enough to keep their heads above water if they get in trouble. That’s about all I’m good for.’

  It was stupid to argue. Ella wasn’t thinking straight and he’d be better off having this conversation when she’d had a chance to calm down, but it was so hard to bite his tongue. Couldn’t she see she was blowing Sam’s accident out of proportion? Kids broke bones. Boys ran away from home. It happened.

  Sam wouldn’t hold this against her forever.

  It wasn’t the time. It wasn’t the place. But he couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t let Ella go without putting it out there. So he said, ‘What about you and me?’

  She laughed.

  It wasn’t the same kind of belly laugh as Cassidy’s that day at the top of Mount Snowdon, and it wasn’t as if he’d asked Ella to marry him, but the impact was every bit as meteor-like as it crashed through his ears.

  ‘I see,’ he said, stepping back off Ella’s porch. ‘There is no you and me?’

  ‘I have to do what’s best for Sam, Jake. I have to contact his dad.’ Her eyes were huge pools, deep and wet. ‘I have to call Marshall and tell him he’s got a ten-year-old boy. I have to do that before I can think of anything else. Definitely before I can think of me and what I might want. The whole last year has been about what I want. Doing my real estate certificate, leaving Erik, moving here … and look how that’s worked out? It’s not a fairytale. There�
�s no happy ending. Thanks for taking Sam to the hospital for me,’ she said, and it felt like goodbye.

  Jake waved the thank you part of that away and focused on the other thing. The bit about the happy ending. ‘Don’t give up on the fairytale, Ella. Don’t give up on us.’

  She started to shut the door. She almost had it shut when a voice from inside rang out, ‘Hold on!’

  Sam’s head appeared behind Ella’s hip. She blocked him from coming out the door.

  ‘I said wait!’ Sam yelled. ‘Where’s Jake going? I want him here. I don’t want you,’ he said, kicking at Ella, who couldn’t restrain him because she didn’t want to hurt his arm.

  ‘Erik’s coming this afternoon, Sam, all the way just to see you,’ Ella said.

  ‘So what, Mum? He lied to me too. You both did. I wish you were both dead. I wish you weren’t my mum. I wish Jake was my real dad. I wish my real dad was here and wasn’t so far away.’

  Ella tried to push him back in the house and shut the door.

  Sam yelled, ‘No, no, I don’t want Jake to go!’ and wouldn’t stop yelling, wouldn’t stop crying, and Ella gave in. ‘Okay. Okay. If Jake says it’s okay, I’ll ask him if he can come back when Erik gets here, okay? But, Sammy, Jake has jobs to do. He has his farm. He can’t be here all day.’

  ‘Please, Jake,’ Sam said, all puppy eyes and heartbreak. ‘Please.’

  And there was really no going back after that.

  ‘Text me and I’ll be here, Ella. Okay?’

  CHAPTER

  33

  Ella got the front door shut after Jake said he’d come back. Sam stopped yelling and went to his room, and she slumped on the carpet with her back against the wall. Slid down the wall and sat there, hugging her knees.

  Had there ever been a day since she learned she was pregnant, and then learned Marshall didn’t want to know her or the baby, that Ella hadn’t thought about the day she’d have to face the truth that was here right now?

  So many decisions she’d made, some of them with Erik, none of them with Marshall, but all of them hers and now her cross to bear.

  She should be stronger than this. She had to be stronger than this, for Sam’s sake. Ella knew that, but she couldn’t make her legs push her up. Not to make a cup of tea or make her bed; not to throw a load of washing on or pack the rugs off the couch where Jake had slept last night.

  Eventually, not even the wall was solid enough to hold her, and she rolled sideways until her cheek touched carpet, and she lay curled with her knees into her chest, tight as a frightened echidna.

  That’s where Erik found her when he knocked on the front door, tried the handle and found the door unlocked.

  ‘Ella?’

  Erik dropped to the carpet beside her, trying to unfurl her legs and arms.

  ‘I cannot carry you, Ella-my-Bella. You must rise up.’

  No. She didn’t have to get up. She was happy here. Thanks.

  ‘Ella? Where is Sam?’

  Through the fog, Ella realised the name was important. Sam was important. ‘Sammy?’ she said, utterly confused because she should know the answer, and she really wasn’t sure. ‘He’s in his room.’

  Erik left her to check and quickly returned.

  ‘No, he is not in his room,’ Erik said.

  That was important too. Ella sat straighter, moving her limbs under her own steam this time. ‘He might be outside. He doesn’t want to be under my roof so he might be outside. He hates me.’

  ‘He could not hate you. It is shock.’

  No. He hates me. I hate me.

  Between the strength in Erik’s one arm and the blood returning to Ella’s legs, they got her up and she shuffled into the kitchen and collapsed in the nearest chair.

  ‘Stay here. I will check the yard,’ Erik said.

  He was back before he’d had much chance to be gone. ‘Sam is here. I see him sitting on the step.’

  ‘Did you say hello? Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘First, I want to know what did the doctor say? His arm, is it broken?’

  Ella explained about the greenstick fracture and the cast, and then she got to the part where Jake brought Sam home. How Sam had shouted he hated her, and she and Erik were liars, and he wished Jake was his father. He’d hoped Jake might be his father.

  Erik’s face turned grim, then grimmer. Then he let out an almighty, ‘Mhmmm.’

  And it was so very comforting to have Erik here, Erik and his mhmmms, that Ella found a smile for the first time since she’d trod on Jake’s toe as they danced last night.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Erik,’ she said, leaning across from her seat, hugging him close.

  ‘I always am here for you. Always.’

  His one hand rubbed her back, and Ella let herself sink into his hug and draw from his strength.

  ‘This Jake who was with you at this disco and took Sam to hospital, he is the same Jake who owns the famous house for sale? He is becoming important to you? I think this is obvious,’ Erik said.

  Ella pulled away and wiped at her eyes. ‘I’m not sure what I think about Jake right now, but yes, he’s important. I have to let him know now that you’re here. Sam wants him here.’ Her fingers fluttered towards her phone.

  There were so many other things she should think about. Sam. Her career. The pool. So many other things to be so much more important, and yet Jake had her heart. He mattered.

  She didn’t need to tell Erik. He saw it in her face.

  ‘Mhmm … I think you call Jake, and I think you brush your teeth and comb this hair and wash your face too.’

  ‘Okay, Coach.’ Ella tried to make her lips smile, and then discovered the smile wasn’t so hard to find because Erik mattered too, and always would.

  * * *

  The whole thing struck Jake as remarkably like a séance. Any second now someone would light the candles and they’d all join hands around the table and perhaps they’d see if they could raise the ghost of Sam’s father because they couldn’t produce the real one.

  Not that he was wishing death on Marshall Wentworth.

  Well, not really.

  Jake sat across from Erik with Ella on his left and Sam to his right, and so far no one had said a word.

  It would be a pretty sad séance, all things considered, if it came to joining hands. Erik only had one hand to bring to the mix, and one of Sam’s was in a cast.

  Ella’s were under the table, no doubt wringing in her lap.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Sam,’ Ella said, and Jake could have sworn all four of them sighed with relief that someone got brave enough to make a sound. ‘I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about your real dad, and that you had to find out the way it happened last night. That was really unfair on you. It was awful for you.’

  Sam’s gaze stayed on the fruit bowl in the centre of the table. All that was in there were four lemons.

  Ella filled her lungs with new air. ‘You can ask me anything you want to know, Sam, and I’ll tell you, okay? Give me a clue about where you need me to start.’

  Sam said nothing.

  ‘Come on, mate. You can’t count lemons forever,’ Jake said, leaning over to nudge the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Okay then,’ Sam said, chin jutting forward, blond hair scrambling across his eye, ‘I want to know, who is my real dad? I know he’s a swimmer. Is it Kieren Perkins?’

  Ella’s hands danced out from her lap to alight like butterflies on the table. ‘No. Not Kieren, Sammy.’

  ‘Well, who then?’

  ‘Do you know Marshall Wentworth from the telly? When we watched the swimming at the Rio Olympics, he had the microphone a lot of the time. He was commentating.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Sam screwed up his face in concentration. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Marshall and your mum were members of my swimming squad when they met,’ Erik said.

  His comment surprised Jake because till then the big German had sat there like a block of granite, except when he looked at Sam or at E
lla. Then the granite softened and he could have been butter.

  Ella seemed surprised to hear from Erik too.

  ‘Did you love him?’ Sam asked Ella. ‘This Marshall guy … my dad … did you love him?’

  ‘Yes. I thought he was great,’ Ella said. ‘He was an amazing swimmer. He could swim like a fish. He was very tall and handsome.’

  A jealous spike snuck through Jake’s guard, and his gaze cut to Ella’s face. Then he felt better, because it was clear Ella was using language geared to make sure Sam understood. Then Jake got it, too, as clear as if someone had shouted it in his ear. Ella wasn’t going to run Sam’s dad down. She wouldn’t do that, no matter what Marshall had done to her then, or how much he cost her now.

  ‘Why didn’t he want me, Mum? Why did my dad go so far away?’ Sam burst out with so much anguish that when Jake looked at Ella and Erik, leaning forward towards their boy, eyes wet with tears, damned if he didn’t feel a prickle up the top of his nose too.

  ‘It wasn’t you Marshall didn’t want, Sam. It was me,’ Ella said. ‘Your dad didn’t want me. Not you.’

  ‘We both love you, Sam, me and your mother,’ Erik said. ‘I wish and wish and wish every day that you would be my real son. I think of you like you are my real boy always.’

  ‘Erik was with me in the hospital the day you were born, Sammy,’ Ella said.

  ‘It is the very best day in my life,’ Erik vowed.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? If you told me, I could have written Dad a letter. I could have told him where I was and he could find me,’ Sam said.

  Ella leaned across the table, reaching around the four lemons in the fruit bowl. It was like watching a snail strike out for the south pole—Sam could have been that distant. Jake wasn’t sure if he’d leave his hand where it was or snatch it away.

  He left it there, and Ella’s fingers clasped his.

  ‘If you want to see your dad, I will do everything I can to make that happen, Sam, okay? As long as I can get through to him—and you need to be patient because he’s a famous man and it might take a while—’

  ‘Erik is famous,’ Sam said belligerently. ‘You were famous.’

  ‘Your dad is a bit different kind of famous, Sammy,’ Ella said, not letting go of Sam’s fingers, ‘and it is a long time since I spoke with him, okay? You know how sometimes if you don’t see a friend in school for a long time, you can think sometimes that they aren’t your friend anymore, and you might not know what to say to them? I will just have to work out what I can say.’