by Joan Kilby
Hayley’s troubled gaze fixed on the strawberry in her hand as if just now seeing it. She set it aside unfinished on the plate. Then she wrapped the sheet around her, pulling her knees up to her chin. “Shanghai is far, far away. Most of the time you’d be gone.”
“It’s only until I get the office established and running well. Then I’ll ask Lorraine for a transfer back to Melbourne and we can take it from there.”
“What if she doesn’t let you transfer back?”
“Then I’ll... I’ll quit and start my own company.”
“You could do that now.”
“I’ve worked toward this opportunity for ten years. I can’t throw it away.”
“No,” she said slowly. “I can see that. What about Summer?”
“I hope she’ll come with me, but if she chooses to stay with her mother I’ll make sure she has a place to keep Jewel.” He leaned forward to touch Hayley’s knee under the wads of cotton sheet. “You could come with me. I would’ve asked you first thing if I thought there was a chance you would say yes.”
Hayley’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “So you’re only asking me now because you think I’ll say no?”
“No.” He sat back. This wasn’t going at all the way he’d hoped. His plan had made total sense yesterday. It still did. Maybe it was because he didn’t have a plan B. “I’m not explaining properly. This will be good for us as a couple. I’ll make a lot of money and I can help you build your equestrian center.”
“That’s too grand a name for it,” she said, shaking her head. “I just want to help people and work with horses. I don’t want your money, Adam. I want you.”
“And I want you,” he said, increasingly frustrated. Why wasn’t she getting it? “I’ll come back every few weeks for a couple of days. When you have a slow period you could visit me. I’m sure you could find someone to look after your horses now and then. It’s not ideal, I grant you, but it can work if we want it to.”
She stared at him, her expression sober and thoughtful. Not joyful and excited as he’d hoped.
“We can email and talk on the phone, spend time together, get to know each other properly,” he went on. “I made a mistake the first time around by jumping into marriage quickly. I don’t want to do that again.”
“Who said anything about marriage?”
“Well, I just assumed—”
“And if you think hooking up with me could be a mistake, why do you want to bother?”
“You’re taking everything I say out of context.” It was like she was deliberately misunderstanding him. “We came together through a rather unique set of circumstances, Hayley. What if the only reason we fell for each other is because of Leif and Diane? This is the first relationship for both of us after our long-term marriages broke down. You have the additional issue of your husband dying. It’s a lot of emotional baggage.”
Hayley pleated the sheet against her leg. “And we’re dealing with it.”
“I don’t want to get you on the rebound only to lose you when you fully come into your own again. We have a common bond and understanding because our partners had an affair, but as individuals we come from quite different backgrounds.”
Her head shot up. “Values matter, not background. Or at least that’s what I always thought. Things like family and fidelity and working hard.”
“Yes, and we have all those things in common, including passion. It’s because you have a passion for what you do and a determination to pursue your goals that I know you’ll understand why I have to accept Lorraine’s offer.”
“And our passions are taking us down separate paths.”
“Temporarily,” he stressed. “Taking this job will secure our future. I’m doing it for us. For you.”
“No, don’t say that. You’re doing it because you’re ambitious, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everything you say makes logical sense.”
“Well, then?”
She just stared at him sadly and shook her head.
That was it? She was turning him down? A few minutes ago they’d been making love, welded together as if they were one soul in a single body. Now she seemed distant and separate and he felt more alone than when Diane had left him.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I need time to process things.”
Downstairs, the back door slammed open.
“Dad! Dad!” Summer’s terrified voice screamed through the house. “Come quick! The barn’s on fire!”
* * *
FIRE. SENSE MEMORIES flooded Hayley. Orange sky. Black smoke. The water around her boiling with snakes. Choking on acrid fumes. Choking and spluttering, gasping for air.
“Hayley, are you all right?” Adam had his shirt on and was pulling on his pants.
She fought her panic and forced herself into action. Blaze and Jewel were in the box stall. Off the bed. Don’t think. Just move.
“Call emergency services,” she said and ran back to her own room, putting on a long-sleeved shirt and heavy pants. She ran downstairs to find Adam stabbing at his phone.
“Fire at Lot 68, Timbertop, on the Hope Mountain Road, ten miles west of town,” he said. “The barn is burning. Hurry.”
Hayley dragged on her boots and a jacket, pulled a beanie over her hair and ran outside. The cracks between the boards on the left side of the barn glowed orange. Summer and Zoe huddled together in the yard, not knowing what to do.
“Girls, fill every bucket you can find,” Hayley said on the run. “If you have burlap bags lying around, oat bags, find them. Adam, get the hose by the garage.”
A high-pitched whinny pierced her brain and sent terror into her heart. She opened the barn door a crack and slid through. Blaze and Jewel were moving restlessly around the box stall. Flames shot from the loose bales of hay stacked near the tack room, licked along the wooden wall and ignited scraps of hay strewn over the wooden floor.
Blaze whinnied and pawed the floor, her eyes white-rimmed and wild. Jewel’s nostrils flared in and out, her small head high as she trotted close to her mother’s side. The door to the paddock had been shut, mostly likely by Summer wanting to keep Jewel close while she and Zoe spent the night.
Hayley pulled her shirt over her nose against the smoke and heat and slipped into the stall, dodging the terrified horses. Fumbling with the latch, she dragged the bolt across and pushed open the gate. Blaze surged past her, into the paddock and Jewel followed. The mare and her foal galloped across the field.
Hayley went back inside, shutting the door behind her. She grabbed the half-full basin out of Blaze’s stall and threw the water on the flames. The door opened. Summer staggered in with two sloshing buckets. Hayley emptied them on the fire and grabbed the burlap bags from Zoe.
“More,” she said throwing Summer the buckets. “Zoe, help Summer. Find anything you can carry water in.” As they ran out, Hayley began to beat at the burning straw littering the floor with the burlap.
Adam appeared with the hose. “Where do you want this?”
“Wet down the walls around the fire,” Hayley called above the crackling of the flames. She ran back to the door to intercept Summer, who held another full bucket. “Keep them coming, fast as you can.”
Adam handed the hose to Zoe with instructions and ran out again. Hayley had no time to wonder where he was going. The bales were fully ablaze and the wall behind them had caught. Smoke billowed through the barn, thick and black. She threw a bucket of water and retreated, coughing and spluttering.
Summer kept the buckets coming and Hayley carried them to the flames in an increasingly vain attempt to douse the fire. Panic tugged at her, and she fought the urge to drop the bucket and run for the dam. Or get in her truck and drive down off the mountain.
“My iPod!” Summer suddenly shrieked and
ran for the ladder to the hayloft where she and Zoe had arranged their sleeping bags for the night.
“No, Summer.” Hayley grabbed the girl by the back of her jacket. “Embers might have flown into the hay and could be smoldering. It’s not safe.”
Summer struggled to get away, pulling with all her strength toward the ladder. “It’s got all my school stuff on it and my diary and everything.”
Hayley took the girl by the shoulders and brought her face right down to Summer’s. “You need to help fight this fire or the whole barn will burn. Understand?”
Two tears rolled down Summer’s cheeks. “My backpack is up there, too, with stuff from the doctor.”
A siren could be heard coming closer. Thank God. They just had to hang on a little longer. “What stuff from the doctor? You can get more pamphlets.”
“Not pamphlets,” Summer shouted. “Birth control pills.”
“What!?” Adam had returned with a large fire extinguisher.
Hayley directed Summer toward him. “Take her out of here.”
While Adam led Summer, protesting, from the barn, Hayley hoisted the heavy canister, primed it to pump and sprayed the flames with retardant foam. She was fighting a losing battle and nearing the end of the canister when the fire truck rumbled into the yard, siren wailing, lights whirring. Four men and one woman poured out of the truck, donning their breathing apparatus. They took over, carrying one big hose inside while using the other to wet down the outside, spraying high up on the roof.
Hayley found Zoe outside on the grass, well away from the barn. Adam and Summer were nowhere to be seen. Probably in the house. She cast an uneasy glance toward the lit interior.
Birth control pills. Oh, boy. She hadn’t seen that coming.
“How are you doing?” she said to Zoe. “You look like you could use a drink of water. Come on inside.”
Zoe’s oval face was smudged with smoke and her brown hair was falling out of its ponytail. “Are the horses okay?”
“They’re fine.” Hayley barely had the energy to speak. Summer hadn’t told her about the pills. Did that mean she was planning to sleep with Steve again? She felt hurt and somehow used.
Hayley went inside, put on the kettle and got orange juice for herself and Zoe. Adam and Summer must have gone upstairs. Should she go up and try to mediate, or was this a golden opportunity for Adam and Summer to finally talk things out?
“Summer’s dad is really mad, isn’t he?” Zoe said, seated at the breakfast bar. “He practically dragged her into the house. But it’s my fault. You’ve got to tell him.”
“What do you mean? Were they your pills?”
“Huh, what pills? The fire was my fault. Summer shouldn’t get in trouble.”
“How did it start?”
Tears squeezed between the lashes of Zoe’s closed eyes. “I smoked a cigarette. I must not have put it out properly.”
“Smoking in a barn filled with hay! How irresponsible could you be?” Hayley blurted. “It’s lucky no one was hurt.”
Zoe sobbed openly. “I’m sorry.”
Oh, God. Hayley went and put an arm around her. “Don’t cry, it’s all right. Was Summer smoking, too?”
“I offered her one but she wouldn’t take it.”
Adam came downstairs, his footsteps heavy on the carpeted steps. Hayley had never seen him look so grave or so angry. “Summer’s in her room. Zoe, you can go up. But I want you girls to go to sleep. The party’s over.”
“It’s my fault, Mr. Banks.” Zoe tearfully retold her tale. “I’m so sorry. Are you going to call my parents?”
“Not tonight. Clean up and go to bed. I’ve set up a mattress in Summer’s room. In the morning we’ll assess the damage.”
“Okay,” Zoe said meekly and scuttled past him to run upstairs.
“I’m going to speak to the firefighters,” Adam said without looking directly at Hayley. “We’ll talk later.”
Hayley followed him out. As Adam went over to the fire truck, where the firefighters were putting away their equipment, she took a flashlight and checked the barn for damage. The tack room, the floor and the wall were charred and smelled strongly of smoke. She peered inside the tack room. One of her saddles was ruined, but the rest seemed okay. She went through the box stall. The front was a bit charred, but it and the fence connected to the barn were intact.
She raised the flashlight across the dark paddock. The beam of light bobbed around until it lit the cluster of horses. She counted heads. All present. Breathing a sigh of relief, she went back to the yard.
The firefighters’ faces were rimmed with soot and they’d discarded their heavy jackets even though the spring night was cool. Without their helmets and breathing apparatuses Hayley recognized most of them.
The captain, Don, a fit fifty-year-old with a shaved head, nodded at Hayley in greeting, then carried on with his report to Adam. “The loft didn’t catch alight, but the west half of the lower part of the barn is pretty badly burned. Any idea how it happened?”
“The girls were sleeping in there. I gather they were smoking,” Adam said.
Don shook his head. “Young idiots. We soaked the place but keep an eye on it for smoldering hay.”
“Would you like some coffee, Don?” Hayley offered.
“No, thanks. We’d just as soon be back in our own beds. I’ll leave you to it.” Don climbed into the truck with the rest of the crew, then they headed off.
“Zoe was smoking, not Summer,” Hayley corrected quietly as they walked back to the house.
Adam waved that off angrily. Inside the kitchen he rounded on her. “What I want to know is why you took my daughter to a doctor to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases and didn’t tell me.”
Hayley’s jaw tensed. “I couldn’t—not and keep her trust. How much did she tell you?”
“Everything. About being with Steve the night of the bushfires and him taking Bailey. Jeez, Hayley, didn’t you think I had a right to know these things?”
“I urged her to tell you. And now she has, finally. That in itself is a huge step forward in her recovery.”
“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” he said sarcastically. “And birth control pills. She’s fourteen, for God’s sake.”
“I didn’t know about the pills. She told me she wanted to just be friends with Steve. I agreed that was best considering her age. It’s hard to imagine her asking the doctor for them.”
“She says the doctor gave her the pills because her periods are irregular. She told you everything else. Why wouldn’t she tell you that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she worried I wouldn’t believe her when she said she wasn’t going to have sex again.”
Adam winced. “Please don’t use that word in connection with my little girl.”
“She’s not a little girl anymore. You need to believe her and trust her.”
“Why didn’t she tell me these things?” There was a world of hurt and baffled anger in his voice.
“She loves you so much, Adam, even if she doesn’t show it. She is desperate for your approval. She was afraid you’d think badly of her. Afraid you wouldn’t love her—that maybe you’d leave her.” Adam just stared at Hayley, bewildered and still angry. “Please try to understand. She hasn’t loved herself very much these past months. Be kind to her.”
Suddenly Hayley was exhausted. In the space of a few hours she’d gone from euphoria over making love to Adam to a scary flatness. He’d sort of asked her to consider a future with him, but sort of not, as if he was hedging his bets. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. If things didn’t work out between them, then at least he would have his career and his big promotion. And now he was blaming her for siding with Summer against him when she’d only done what was right and respected the patient’s confidences.
When they’d gone up to his room earlier in the evening she’d imagined them cuddling till morning, maybe making love more than once, and becoming intimate in word, deed and feeling. Now they almost seemed further apart than the day they’d met.
“I’m going to bed, too,” she said. “In my own room.”
Adam rubbed a hand tiredly over the back of his neck. “That’s probably a good idea.”
Hayley gave him a brief, cool kiss on the cheek and left the room. She waited for him to catch up and give her a warmer embrace. She expected him to, all the way up the stairs. But when she got to the top and turned to look back, he was staring out the darkened window, looking very much alone.
As she felt alone. By the time she undressed she was shivering, and not from the cold. A delayed reaction to the fire. Her experiences that night mingled with the fires of a year ago in flashes of orange flame and banked terror.
She crawled into a hot shower, but even the steaming spray couldn’t warm her. She’d done it again, fallen in love with a man who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give her his all. Only this time it was worse, because she’d believed in Adam and thought he was different.
At first she hadn’t dared to hope he would stay. Then he seemed to make attempts to become part of the community. Making love had shown her how deep and strong her feelings were for him. Of course she’d hoped he also loved Hope Mountain. She’d wanted him to be happy here and naively thought that all he had to do was get to know the place to feel its special beauty.
But his pie-in-the-sky version of the future had a feeling of unreality about it—gone a year or two, back every few weeks. He’d have one foot in each country, committed to neither. Whereas she lived with both feet firmly planted in Hope Mountain. Why should she take a chance on him when he wasn’t taking a chance on her?
Maybe Adam was right. They both had baggage weighing them down. Both were afraid to take a risk. She was afraid and she freely admitted it.
Adam wasn’t the same as Leif, she knew that. But she was still the same woman who wanted a home, family and a loving husband. What she didn’t want was to be so desperate that she submerged herself and her own needs for a facsimile of those things. She wanted the real thing.