Christmas at Candlebark Farm

by Michelle Douglas

  Luke shook his head. Since Tammy had died they hadn’t had the heart for Christmas.

  Luke’s forkful of lasagne halted halfway to his mouth when he saw Jason staring at Keira with a kind of enthralled fascination. ‘What do you do?’ his son asked.

  Keira picked up her knife and fork again. ‘There’s a group of my friends and we’ve dubbed ourselves The Orphans. Not that we all are, mind, but those of us who don’t have family, or who can’t visit them for Christmas, all get together for a big seafood buffet. We eat too much, play silly games, and just generally have a rowdy old time.’

  ‘That sounds…kinda cool.’

  Luke stared at him. It did?

  ‘It is.’

  He tried to ignore the glare she sent him.

  ‘Keira was sick this afternoon,’ Jason suddenly announced.

  ‘Ooh, traitor!’ She pointed her fork at him.

  ‘She said it’s normal. Is it?’

  ‘Yeah, sometimes,’ Luke assured him. He surveyed Keira through narrowed eyes. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Very well, thank you. I had a nice cup of liquorice tea and it settled my stomach nicely.’

  ‘Keira said you were the one who put her onto that?’

  Luke ran a finger beneath the collar of his T-shirt. Was the darn woman set on becoming the all-dancing, all-singing president of his fan club or something? He grunted. ‘It was nothing.’ He shovelled the last of his lasagne down. The domesticity in the kitchen was starting to wrap around him too tightly.

  ‘Did Mum have morning sickness?’

  The lasagne threatened to rise again. Luke swallowed hard. ‘For a bit.’

  ‘Would you like seconds?’ Keira asked, sending him one of those shiny smiles of hers.

  She half rose, but he shook his head. His appetite had fled.

  Jason suddenly burst out with, ‘Were you and Mum as happy about having a baby as Keira is?’

  Luke tried to stop his jaw from dropping. Ice streaked from his scalp down to the soles of his feet. He didn’t have the energy, the strength…the heart for this. ‘Keira’s carefully planned becoming pregnant. Of course she’s happy to find out that that all her hard work hasn’t been for nothing.’

  Jason scowled, the familiar surly teenager re-emerging. ‘And I wasn’t planned.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  What on earth…? Jason already knew all this. Luke pushed out of his chair. ‘We were nineteen. We were petrified.’

  He couldn’t stand remembering that time—the mistakes he’d made…the miscalculations.

  Without another word he strode out through the door and into the gathering darkness.

  Keira stared in disbelief as the door slammed shut behind Luke. She turned back to the scowling teenager and swallowed. Was Luke deliberately trying to alienate his son?

  ‘You know,’ she started, ‘if I’d fallen pregnant at nineteen I’d have been petrified too.’

  Jason didn’t say anything. He shoved away from the table and stalked off. Keira slumped in her chair. To think she’d thought a nice, cosy dinner would be just the thing…

  Luke sat bolt upright in bed and listened, staring intently into the dark.

  Was Keira was being sick again?

  In the next moment his suspicions were confirmed. He hauled himself out of bed and pulled on his trusty tracksuit pants.

  The bathroom door opened before he could knock.

  ‘Oh, Luke!’ She pulled up short and tried to smile. ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this.’

  His stomach clenched. She looked ghastly—a sickly pale grey, with fine lines fanning out from her eyes and mouth, and a film of perspiration clinging to her forehead and top lip. Her attempt at a joke kicked him in the gut. He didn’t know where she found the strength. Or the courage.

  ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you. Go back to bed. I’m fine again now.’

  He took one look at the way she leaned against the door-jamb, as if in need of its support. He slipped an arm around her waist. ‘C’mon, we’ll make you a cup of something hot. Don’t argue,’ he added, when she lifted a hand as if to remonstrate with him. ‘I’m awake now.’

  Her soft weight tucked in against his side as if it belonged there, making him want to pull her closer. The scent of vanilla clung to her hair and he wanted to bury his face in it. Hormones long buried, urges long denied, clamoured to the surface, racing through him with a speed and insistence that made his heart pound. When she laid a hand against his bare chest to steady herself, he thought he might lose the plot altogether.

  Get a grip! She’s ill. Had he sunk so low he’d take advantage of a sick woman?

  No!

  But this temptation had been building all day. He’d wanted to touch her from the moment he’d found her rifling though his sideboard. At her great-aunt’s place he’d nearly kissed her! She’d turned and looked up at him with those big grey eyes of hers and he’d wanted to seize her face in his hands and slant his lips over hers.

  He gritted his teeth and helped her into a chair at the kitchen table, then backed away. ‘Liquorice tea or lemon?’

  ‘Lemon, please.’

  Kissing Keira was out of the question. He couldn’t tarnish this lovely woman with his indefensible irresponsibility, his sinister and inexplicable inconstancy. To dim her wide smiles and all her colour, her bright hopes for the future, would be unforgivable.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured when he set a steaming mug in front of her.

  She closed her eyes and took a sip. Luke stared, fascinated at the way her lips shaped themselves to the mug. With an oath, he kicked himself away to pull a packet of plain biscuits from the pantry. ‘You should try to eat something.’ He hooked out the chair opposite and planted himself in it, gripped his hands together so they wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  ‘Maybe in a bit,’ she said, with a tiny shake of her head.

  He suspected she didn’t want to risk any larger, more vigorous movements. He should go back to bed, put himself out of temptation’s way. Even as the thought drifted into his mind he knew he wouldn’t act on it. He couldn’t leave her like this when she was still so unwell. What if she fainted?

  His hands clenched. What if she fainted when she returned to the city and there was no one to pick her up from the floor and put her to bed?

  ‘I’d have been petrified if I’d fallen pregnant at nineteen too,’ she said, apropos of nothing. He stiffened.

  ‘Sometimes I get terrified now, and I planned my baby.’

  His back unbent again. ‘What do you get scared about?’

  ‘The usual stuff, I suppose.’ One slender shoulder lifted. ‘Will I be a good mum? Can I do it on my own? Will my baby hate growing up without a father and blame me for the decisions I’ve made?’ She paused. ‘The worst one, though, is what will happen to my child if I die as young as my mother?’

  His gut clenched. Everything inside him rebelled at the thought.

  ‘I worry that the cancer my mother had could be hereditary, and what if I pass that on to my baby?’ She shook her head. ‘I know it’s silly to brood about things outside of my control, but…’

  But it didn’t make her fears any less real. ‘What happened to you after your mother died?’

  ‘My gran looked after me. She’d always lived with us.’

  ‘Your grandmother didn’t die young?’

  ‘Well…no.’

  ‘So maybe you and your baby will take after her.’

  Keira stared at him. And then she smiled—a bull’s-eye of a smile. ‘I hadn’t thought of that!’

  He angled the packet of biscuits towards her. She took one, nibbled a corner. ‘So you were scared about becoming a dad?’

  ‘Sure.’ He took a biscuit too, to give him something to do with his hands and in the hope it would distract him from the intriguing mobility of her face.

  She stared at him for a moment. She put her biscuit down. ‘What was it like the first time Jason was placed in your arms?�
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  He sat back and rewound his memories nearly fifteen years. He remembered the awe and the all-consuming love that had slammed into him. Jason had been so tiny and perfect. ‘It was…magic.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell Jason that at dinnertime?’

  Because it would have meant remembering how things had been, and how it had all then gone pear-shaped. And how that was his fault.

  He had to live with that knowledge every day. Wasn’t that enough?

  ‘Don’t you want a better relationship with your son?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my relationship with Jason!’

  She frowned. ‘You can’t honestly believe that?’

  Her incredulity stung. ‘Jason knows he wasn’t planned, but he knows Tammy and I loved him.’

  ‘Are you so sure of that?’

  ‘What makes you think I’m wrong?’ he shot back.

  ‘The look on Jason’s face when you stormed out this evening.’

  He swore. His hand clenched to a fist, crushing the half-eaten biscuit.

  That cute little furrow of hers etched itself into the centre of her forehead. ‘Are you deliberately trying to push him away?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He was doing no such thing. He tried to concentrate on ridding himself of the crumbs.

  ‘You won’t let him help out on the farm whenever he offers. You won’t talk to him about his childhood.’ She paused and speared him with a glance. ‘You won’t talk to him about Tammy.’

  He flinched at that last. So? What did that prove? What did she know? Nothing! ‘He doesn’t need to bother about the farm. That’s my responsibility. I want him to hang out with his friends after school and on the weekends—relax, have fun.’

  ‘He doesn’t, though, Luke. He shuts himself up in his bedroom. On his own. He’s becoming as big a hermit as you.’

  Her words sucker-punched him. He stared at her, slack-jawed.

  ‘He wants to help out with the farm chores.’

  ‘Why?’ The word croaked out of him.

  Her eyes softened. ‘Because he wants to hang out with you.’

  All the strength seeped from his spine.

  ‘And, Luke, you might want to save him from responsibility and the demands of the farm for as long as you can, but it’s not going to make up for losing his mum. Even if it does make you feel better.’

  Was that what he’d been doing? Trying to atone for the unpardonable, the unforgivable? Was he trying to ease his conscience at the expense of his son? The thought appalled him. He thought he’d been protecting Jason. But…was he only hurting him more?

  Luke couldn’t stand that thought. He’d lay his life down for his son, do anything to protect him from harm.

  He’d have laid his life down for Tammy too, if he’d been given the chance, but life rarely allowed you to make those kinds of bargains. He didn’t doubt for one moment that Jason would have been a million times better off if his and Tammy’s situations had been reversed.

  And now here was this woman who’d been at Candlebark for all of three days and it seemed she knew more about his son than he did.

  ‘You forget,’ she said softly, ‘that I lost my mother when I was young too. I can guess at, relate to, some of the things Jason is feeling.’

  If he were a better father, he would have been able to guess at them too.

  ‘Why won’t you talk about Tammy with him and tell him about the things you all used to do when he was little?’

  ‘Why does he need me to talk about that stuff?’ The very idea made him go cold all over. Brenda and Alf—they talked to Jason about Tammy all the time. It wasn’t as if he was missing out.

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment. ‘You want to know one of the things that scared me most after Mum died?’

  He ran his hand through his hair. She’d said her mum had died ten years ago. Fourteen was too young to lose your mum. And she hadn’t had a dad. He wanted to get up and walk away, but he couldn’t. ‘What?’

  ‘That I’d start to forget her. That I’d forget what she looked like and smelt like and the sound of her voice. That the memories would fade.’

  Jason forget his mum? He stiffened. ‘He’ll never forget Tammy!’

  ‘I know that, and you know that. But only you and Tammy’s parents stand between Jason and that fear. And, forgive me for saying so, but I doubt he’s getting much…balance…from his grandparents. He’s a smart kid. He’ll know that.’

  Luke recalled the stoic eleven-year-old who’d watched his mother’s coffin lowered into the ground. If their situations had been reversed, Tammy would have known what Jason needed. Instead Jason was stuck with a father who didn’t have a clue. ‘What helped you get through that?’

  Keira glanced about the kitchen. ‘Why aren’t there any photographs of Tammy around?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘Tammy and I had been living in the city. When we moved back to Gunnedah—’ because it was what he’d wanted ‘—we never got around to unpacking a lot of our boxes.’ Then they’d separated. And then she’d fallen sick. In the end it had been too hard to go through that stuff.

  For him. It hit him now. Not for Jason. ‘I’ll dig some photos out—put them around.’ They’d reproach him every single day, but it was no more than he deserved.

  ‘Jason would love to help you.’

  He nodded heavily. ‘Right.’

  Keira stared at him for a moment. ‘Talking about my mum with Gran kept her alive for me. Hearing my grandma and my mother’s friends talk about her made me…’ Her face grew sad, wistful and even more beautiful.

  ‘Made you what?’

  ‘Happy,’ she finally said. ‘It made me happy to know that people remembered her and still loved her and understood what the world had lost when she died.’ She reddened, pulled back and smoothed down her hair. ‘If that makes any kind of sense,’ she mumbled.

  ‘It makes perfect sense.’ And for a moment, when she smiled, the heaviness left him.

  It crashed back down a moment later when she said, ‘Talking about Tammy—would it be so hard to do?’

  He unlocked his jaw. ‘Mine and Tammy’s marriage…it didn’t last. I let her down. How on earth do I explain that to Jason?’

  ‘Oh, Luke! You and Tammy were nineteen when you married?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And you married because she was pregnant?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Then tell Jason the truth. That you were too young. That you married for the wrong reasons, but with the best intentions in the world.’

  There was so much more to it than that—a whole lot more…

  ‘Did you ever cheat on Tammy, Luke? Were you ever cruel to her?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And did you ever make her feel guilty for marrying you?’

  His head snapped back. ‘No!’ How could she even think that? Tammy had had nothing to feel guilty about. She’d had a heart as big as Keira’s. He should have been able to love her the way she’d wanted him to.

  ‘And you still wished her well after you separated?’

  ‘Hell, yes! She…she was my best friend.’

  ‘Then tell Jason that too. Luke, you have nothing to reproach yourself for.’

  Yes, he did.

  That weight settled around him more firmly—making it hard to move, hard to talk…hard to think. He’d caused Tammy so much pain—what if he did that to his son?

  Maybe keeping his distance was the smartest thing to do—the best thing for Jason? He knew Brenda and Alf tried to poison Jason against him. And why not? They were probably more right than not. He knew they pressed Jason to live with them. Every day he expected Jason to announce that was exactly what he meant to do. He steeled himself for it. Dreaded it.

  ‘Luke?’

  He glanced up.

  ‘Given all that you know now—that you would be left to bring up Jason alone—do you wish you and Tammy had never had him?’

  CHAPTER FIVE


  ‘NO!’ HOW could she think that of him? He loved his son. ‘I could never wish Jason away. I cannot regret having him.’ He might regret marrying Tammy, but he could never regret his son.

  ‘Even though it’s hard?’

  Hard? Some days it was hell. His hands curled into fists. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a struggle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She folded her arms. ‘So it’s hard, and it’s a struggle, but you don’t regret your son?’

  He didn’t know where she was going with this. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And you like your farm? You think this is a good place to raise Jason?’

  Something unhitched in him at that question. ‘That’s right.’ He loved this place. Returning here was the one thing he’d got right. But, heck, the farm needed work, and money—lots of money—spent on it to bring it up to scratch. That thing hitched up inside him again.

  She leant towards him. ‘Then where’s the joy?’

  Joy? With Tammy dead? Had she lost her mind?

  She reached out and poked him in the shoulder. ‘You’ve forgotten how to have fun.’

  He didn’t have time for fun.

  ‘You’ve forgotten to be grateful for the blessings you do have. You have a son who is healthy and…and lovely.’

  That almost surprised a laugh out of him. What he wouldn’t give to see the look on Jason’s face if he heard himself being described as lovely.

  ‘And you have a beautiful place to live. You have more than a lot of people yet all you can do is scowl and frown and…and yell at people and swear!’

  His jaw dropped.

  ‘Name me three things you’ve liked about your day today, Luke.’

  His mind went blank.

  ‘I’ll go first, shall I? One—I finally got to see my great-aunt’s house and it’s…it’s really lovely.’

  She was lovely. And off limits.

  ‘Two—I found out that I don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on said house.’

  Yeah, but that didn’t change the fact that someone had tried to take advantage of her.

  ‘And three—I bought a pregnancy magazine today, and do you know my Munchkin is now about the size of a tennis ball?’