by Darian Smith
At least she hadn’t completely broken down in her neighbour’s arms. His very strong arms and broad chest with its woodsy, masculine scent. She felt very strange about the whole Nate Adams situation, to be honest. The decisive way he had taken the phone and pulled her into an embrace had been exactly what she’d needed in her moment of weakness and pain, but she worried it was a sign of a controlling nature. Was this the kind of red flag she should have seen in Greg, and didn’t?
Still, there was no denying that he’d saved her bacon today. His quick thinking to bring down the generator and make her look further along than she actually was, and his offer to assist with the wiring and rebuild of structural damage was, she was certain, a big part of the reason the inspectors had been so lenient. They could easily have forcibly evicted her from her house and she had nowhere else to go.
Time would tell whether Nate was simply a kind neighbour, another of her mistakes, or if the spark she thought she’d felt around him could be something real. For now, attractive men needed to be the last thing on her mind.
She dropped the sheaf of paper on the dining room table. She could deal with the realities brought by the building assessment later. First, she’d promised herself she would reconnect with her art. The question was, how?
She looked around for something to draw and finally settled on the photograph of great aunt Bridget and her cat. She set the frame down on the table, propped up a little by the building report, and began sketching.
Her pencil quickly blocked out the shapes of the woman’s face and body, then she went back to correct the proportions she’d gotten wrong. The shoulders were a little too broad, the forehead a little too short. “Too damn out of practice,” she muttered to herself.
It was strange drawing from an old black and white photograph. She wondered what the woman in the picture was really like in person. What colour had her hair been? Her eyes? Did she always seem so formal and stern or had she painted this expression on as part of the pose for the camera? The cat with her seemed an odd, softening touch.
“What were you really like?” Sara’s pencil paused on her sketch as she fancied the eyes in the picture looking back at her. Two women, generations apart, living in the same house, studying each other. This was the woman the haunting rumours were about. She had to have been a character to inspire such talk.
Sara looked at her sketch. Sadly, it failed utterly to capture the unique character in Bridget’s face.
She sighed. Whatever talent she’d once had was very rusty now. Still, there was a certain enjoyment in being able to see the problems, even if she couldn’t yet fix them. The tension in the jaw was wrong, the cheekbones not quite high enough and the hair...she’d fallen back into the beginner’s habit of making the crown of the head too small. She flipped the page over and began again on the back.
Thu-thump.
Sara sketched a few lines before the sound registered on her awareness.
Thu-thump.
She put down the pencil. It was difficult to say where it had come from but she assumed someone was knocking at the door. When she opened it, however, the porch was empty.
Thu-thump. This time it was definitely coming from inside the house.
Sara followed the sound, her breath shallow. “Hello? Anyone there?”
There was no response but the strange thumping noise, over and over, like a slow, giant heart-beat.
Her steps slow and careful, Sara made as little sound as she could moving along the corridors of the house. She peeked into a couple of rooms, trying to find the source of the noise, but always it was further along, further away.
Not for the first time, she wished she had a reliable torch or something as simple as electric lights in this house. Nate had installed a couple of lamps wired up to the generator in the front rooms, but they were too far back to be any comfort as she explored deeper towards the back of the building. Shadows crept in around her, suffocating and cold.
All the ghost stories she’d ever heard or read about seemed somehow more vivid and real now that she was alone in this abandoned house. The thumping was too regular to be an animal or a loose shutter in the wind. She didn’t think Nate would be the type to play a trick on her. “Moana?” she called out. “I better not find you in my house right now. This is harassment.”
Thu-thump.
She passed the stairs. The threadbare strip of carpet on the floor was frayed at the edges, the loose threads poking out like sunbeams from a child’s drawing. Wallpaper pieces were peeling away from the walls.
A worse thought occurred to her. “Greg?”
Still no answer.
Thu-thump. This time she was sure it came from behind a cracked wooden door with a red sticker on it.
Sara pushed it open. The hinges creaked in protest. “Bridget?” she said, feeling silly.
The room beyond smelled damp and musty. It was dark, curtains drawn and, from the pattern of light against the fabric, the window was overgrown by ivy and wisteria on the outside. It felt cold inside and as if no other human had been in this room for a very long time. The only piece of furniture was an antique chest of drawers. The top one was open, sagging on an angle like a panting dog’s tongue. As she watched, the open drawer moved on its own, wiggling up and down – thu-thump.
“What the...?”
The drawer burst into a frenzy of movement, up and down, up and down, each shift sliding it further and further from its casing. Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump. Then – BANG – it slipped entirely off the track and hit the floor, splitting apart into little more than kindling.
Among the pieces was an old leather-bound journal, grey with dust.
Sara’s heart was thumping as swiftly as the drawer had done. Her chest felt tight and her skin cold. It was an animal, she told herself. Some large rat or kea was hiding behind the drawer, pushing it out.
But there was nothing in the gap.
A gust of wind blew open the journal, scattering the dust clumps like drab glitter across the floor. The page had large letters hand written in flowing script: The Private Diary of Miss Bridget O’Neill.
Sara swallowed. This was impossible. It couldn’t be real. Could it?
She gritted her teeth, then swooped down to snatch up the book before running from the room and slamming the door behind her. The house was darker and colder as she hurried back to the dining room. Even Nate Adams’s lamps seemed hard pressed to push away the shadows.
It was a good ten minutes of silence in the house and a warm cup of tea chasing away her fears before Sara, at last, opened the diary at random and began to read.
Chapter Ten
13 August, 1835
We’ve completely finished the cellar now and started on the main level of the house. Thank the Lord we’re done with all that digging and lugging stone. If Jereth hadn’t been here to help us with it we’d have hardly scratched the surface. His people’s ways are surprising and exciting to watch.
Papa and Nan say the upper levels will go much more quickly and certainly there’s no lack of timber in these parts. It’s just a matter of utilising what is close at hand. Papa has built many a fine house back home and he insists ours will be the best of any of them.
He doesn’t like the other settlers coming up to our land though and I believe I now see why. Yesterday, I visited Tammy Connor at her family’s land down by the bay, and she says they all pitch in to help each other and it takes whole teams of oxen to shift the native kauri tree logs. They would be shocked to see how quickly we can do it with Jereth’s help. Nan says we should always be careful not to stick out too much in folk’s minds in case they blame us for the bad things that come. I think she’s worried they’d want too much of our help and there’d be no time for making Papa’s vision for our new home come true.
Jereth is eager for Nan and I to finish our own work in the forest. Last night, he told me he will speak with his parents as soon as we are done and tell them how we feel about each other. Intermarr
ying is unusual but not unheard of. He simply needs permission to go ahead with our plans.
For myself, I am more concerned with the reactions of my own family. I believe that, for all our people have a history of consorting with his, the thought of Jereth and I being together will be something beyond their understanding.
So for now we must try our best to remain proper when we are together but it is so difficult to stay my hand when it desires so ardently to reach out for his touch. When he is not near me, I think of him and I long to wear his ring but I cannot. No one can know of our love until the time is right. So I watch him from a distance, all strength and shining beauty, and long for a time when he will truly be mine.
It could take a while though. We were visited by the local Maori again today. This time they brought their Kuia. I think she’s a wise woman, much like Nan. She spoke to us about our work in the forest and told us they believe what we are doing is dangerous. She called Nan and I kauwaka, and said we were fooling with things that are sacred and should not be touched.
I thought we had left the fear and ignorance behind in Ireland but this new country seems almost as bad. Maori have their own magic, Nan says. It may be that we will need them and their guardianship of this land to complete our task. For Jereth’s sake and my own happiness, I hope we can convince them of the purity of our mission.
Chapter Eleven
A loud banging on the front door jerked Sara from sleep. She flipped Bridget’s journal closed and rubbed at her face where she’d been resting on the hard wooden table. Dozing off during the day was very unlike her but it seemed she’d been more worn out by the stress of the morning than she’d thought.
The front door creaked loudly. Sara got to her feet. “Who’s there?”
“Hello? Sara? Are you home?” It was the little girl she’d met the other day.
Of course. Sara sighed in relief. She’d promised Nate she would babysit when he was working. “In here, Abigail.”
The girl was wearing grey trousers and a small pink bomber jacket with her hair in pigtails. “Dad said I should come over here for the afternoon instead of going to Auntie Moana’s.”
Sara nodded. “That’s fine. When does your dad finish work today?”
“I dunno...” The little girl shrugged and her gaze slid over the table to Sara’s earlier sketches. “Did you draw those?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Wow.”
Sara smiled. Kids were so easy to impress sometimes. “Tell you what, how about you help me strip some wallpaper and then we can do some drawing together later?”
Abi stared at her. “Strip wallpaper?”
“Yeah. I’m renovating. Watch.” She found where the building inspectors had poked at the wall, grabbed a lifting edge and pulled. A long strip of paper peeled away like a banana skin.
Abigail’s eyes widened.
“You want a turn?”
The little girl reached up and worked her fingertips into a crease, then paused and looked at Sara for confirmation.
“Go on,” Sara said. “But only ever do this on the walls I tell you to, okay? We’re doing it so we can put up new paper.” And probably new jib board for that matter, but explaining construction to a seven year old seemed unnecessary just yet.
Abigail tugged and the paper came away with a satisfying ripping sound. She giggled and clapped her hands. “Can I do it again?”
Sara laughed with her. “You bet. Let’s do this whole wall. You take the bottom half and I’ll do the top.”
The afternoon went by quickly after that. Both Abigail and Sara were having fun with their planned destruction, tearing strips of paper from the wall. Much of it came away easily, the glue long since degraded. For the rest, they used rags with warm water to soak and then peel away with fingernails or a butter knife.
This was part of the process Sara had always enjoyed. It felt like the house were some growing insect and she was helping it to moult out of its old skin, into the beautiful creature it would become. The colours and clean, new vibrancy were not there yet, but the potential was, lurking beneath the tired, dirty, mouldy exterior of each wall. It was a new beginning. And those were always full of promise.
As she stripped away the old paper of the house, Sara could feel her old life and fears falling away as well. “Race you,” she said to Abigail, and the two of them began tearing at the wall even faster. Strips of paper fell like confetti across the floor and the sound of their laughter filled the room.
Finally, they reached the end and stepped back, huge grins on both their faces.
“Good job,” Sara said, picking a loose piece of wallpaper from Abi’s hair.
“That was fun!” Abi said, wrapping her little arms around Sara’s legs in a hug. “You’re fun. Auntie Moana would never let me do something like that.”
Sara could well imagine she wouldn’t. Moana seemed like she’d be the authoritarian type. “Well, your Auntie probably hasn’t been redecorating her house recently,” she said. “And you must only peel off wallpaper if the owner of the house says it’s okay.”
Abi nodded and pulled back. Her eyes wide. “So you own this house now?”
Sara let her hand teeter side to side. “Sort of. My family does. I’m the one living here at the moment.”
“I hope you stay.”
Sara smiled. “Thanks, Abi. Now how about we clean up this mess and then have a drink and do some drawing?”
They settled down at the table with a piece of paper each. Abigail had a set of coloured pencils that she’d brought with her and happily used them to draw colourful pictures of fairies and ponies.
Sara watched the girl work and let her own pencil sketch out her features. This time her skills worked better. She’d always been better drawing from life than from a photograph. After half an hour, despite the girl’s inability to sit still, she had a fairly decent likeness of Abi’s studious expression, chubby cheeks and intense eyes as she worked with her coloured pencils.
Sara used her finger to smudge a final bit of shading and sat back to study her work. Not bad.
Abigail also sat back, seemingly happy with what she’d done.
“So what have you drawn, Abi?”
The little girl turned the page sideways so Sara could get a better look and pointed to some of the colourful figures. “That’s you and this is your castle.”
The castle looked suspiciously like a squashed box with cotton wool trees beside it, but Sara nodded and made encouraging sounds.
“And this is the fairy prince come to marry you. He’s going to live in the castle and you’ll have a baby and live happily ever after.”
Sara felt numb. The colours on Abigail’s drawing seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat. Her prince had been a monster, not a fairy. And her baby...her baby was all the proof she needed to know she didn’t deserve a happily ever after.
Her fingers clenched, scrunching paper into her palm. Her own drawing. Was it Abigail she had drawn? Or some wistful dream of what her own child might have been if she’d lived? If she’d trusted her mother to take care of her.
Abi was staring at her. “Don’t you like it?”
Sara forced herself to smile. “Of course I do. It’s beautiful. Thank you.” She stood up from the table. “How about a drink of water?”
Without waiting for an answer, she strode quickly across to the kitchen. Her jaw tight, she swallowed hard, forcing the emotion down.
She held out her hand and let go of her drawing. The sketch of a child slipped softly into the rubbish bin.
Chapter Twelve
Nate felt a dull throbbing pain building at the base of his skull as he pulled on the handbrake and got out of the car at the old O’Neill place. The sun was low and he squinted against the glare as he looked over the house. There was a lot of work to be done – that much had always been obvious at a glance – but Sara was right: the majority of the building was structurally sound and it was worth saving. He just wondered how much she would b
e counting on him to save it.
Moana had been in his ear for the last hour as he’d finished up the accounts for the day’s jobs back at the shop. He should have known she would be after he’d come to Sara’s rescue this morning. If he’d had any sense at all he would have taken the paper work home or simply left it for tomorrow, but he hated leaving the business untidy if he could avoid it and he knew from experience that there would be little time or energy for it after an evening with his seven year old daughter.
Other dads might be able to take time out while their wives entertained the kids, but Nate didn’t have that luxury. People always said solo parenting was tough but he’d never fully appreciated how much easier life had been with Emma until she was gone. She always seemed to understand their daughter so much better than he did. God knew what he would do when it came time to talk about bras and tampons. Still, the least he could do was give her his attention when he was home with her. He might not be able to give the girl her mother back, but he was determined to give her as much of a father as he could.
Too much, if Moana was to be believed. His doting was one of her usual favourite topics. Not today, however.
“What were you thinking?” Moana had called out, almost before he’d made it through the door of the shop. “Are you that easily taken in by a pretty face?”
Nate, his head still full of details for the day’s jobs had looked completely blank.
“The girl next door with the falling down house that she’s convinced you to help her patch up? Those must be some mighty fine eyelashes she’s been batting at you, boy. Or is it something lower down? I get that it’s been a while for you, but...”
“Hey,” Nate’s voice was nearly a growl. “A little more respect please. For your sister’s memory if not for me. And Sara has done nothing wrong, so why don’t you leave her to sort out her house in peace for a bit?”
“Her being here is wrong,” Moana muttered. “She’s stirring up things that should be left alone.”
