About Three Authors

by Patti Roberts

  He shook his head. “There were a few guys over the years. A couple were actually quite serious. The last one, a couple of years ago, broke her heart, and really messed her up for a while. After that, she just threw herself into her work. I used to tell her to get back out there, but she’d just say she wasn’t interested, and that she’d rather shoot herself in the foot. And when I moved here from Darwin, and saw how happy she was with her work, and how excited she was renovating the retreat with the girls, well, I let it go.”

  “My uncle Steve said something along the same lines just recently, only I don’t think he’s as happy as he makes out. Apparently there was a woman a long time ago. I don’t think he ever really got over her.”

  “That would be the hardest part, never letting go. Not giving yourself another chance to move on and find someone new.”

  “My mother always used to say, when love shows up, you’d be a fool to walk it to the door.”

  “Ha,” Gary said. “My mum says, if shit shows up in your life, you’d be a fool not to kick it to the curb.”

  “I think my uncle Steve and your mum would really like each other. He said something similar when I told him about Roger.”

  “Maybe we should introduce them to each other,” Gary said.

  “Maybe,” Becky said, nodding. “Did you know that Elise knew my mother?”

  Gary looked at her. “Really? I didn’t know that. Small world.” He tossed another stone.

  “So you’ve never heard Elise ever talking about my mother, Victoria?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. I wouldn’t be surprised if mum knows all about it, though. Those three are as thick as thieves, and as protective and as loyal as hell towards each other. I’ve never met anyone quite as determined or independent as those three women.”

  “All very admirable traits to have in a friend. Something I always thought I had up until just… recently.”

  “I know how you feel. I had a friend who went behind my back and pursued a girl that he knew I had just started dating. By the time I got back from holidays, they were an item. She ended up taking off with a friend of his. I guess what goes around comes around.” He skipped another stone across the water, as though he were tossing his regrets out across the lake, and then watched them, as they disappeared beneath the glassy surface.

  Becky changed the subject. “I can tell how proud your mum is of you, and rightly so.” She gave him a sideways glance. “You seem to have turned out alright.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I wasn’t always the easiest kid.” Gary leaned back into the water, his torso, then face, dipping below the waterline. He sat back up, water cascading down his face, his bare shoulders, arms and chest. He reached up and wiped the wet hair off his face with his hands. The sun glistened off his skin and somehow made his body look even more defined.

  Becky fought the urge to reach across and run her hand down his chest. Instead, she cupped her hands in the lake, then released the cool water on her shoulders.

  Gary skipped another stone across the water’s surface, more aggressively this time.

  Her mind drifted as she watched the stones skipping across the water. She wondered if Gary wanted her as much as she wanted him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted Roger in this take-me-now kind of way. She pictured Clive on the beach at St. Ives. How handsome he had looked. She wondered what Clive was doing, and calculated that it would be night right now in London. Was he out somewhere with Roger and Mandy? She would call him, say hello.

  “Earth to Becky,” Gary said, a frown furrowing his forehead.

  “Pardon?”

  “You looked like you were a million miles away, just now.”

  Becky shook her head. “I’m sorry. I was about to ask you if it’s just you. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Just me. I sometimes envied my friends who had a sister or a brother, until I saw them fighting over stupid things like the last can of Coke, or who had the largest piece of cake. The good thing about being an only child is that you don’t have anyone to dob you in. I remember sneaking out of my bedroom window at night to go sit out on the footpath, just so I could gaze up at the stars and think about how cool it would be to have a brother, or a sister, to share the whole experience with. I talked to myself a lot on those nights, staring up at those stars. It was like I needed someone else to say “Yes, this is all real”, because some things never really feel real, unless you can share them with somebody. I remember thinking how small, and how insignificant it made me feel. When I was older, I still snuck out of the house at night, but that time it was to catch up with school mates. We’d always have a stash of some kind. Ian, we called him Rambo, because he loved a good punch-up, would knock off booze from his parents’ booze cupboard. Paul would raid his mother’s cigarette packet. Andrew would sneak packets of chips, and lollies from the pantry, and Mark would tag along for the fun of just doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He never really smoked, or drank. He just didn’t get along with his stepdad, so if there was an opportunity to get out of the house, he went for it. You form a kind of kinship with your mates on nights like those. It was a form of rebelling, something you were supposed to do as a teenager. A rebellion against the rules, against authority. Like for those few precious hours, you were in control of your own life.”

  Gary tossed another stone across the water. “Mark basically lived on our couch on the weekends. We’d watch movies until daybreak, then sleep half the day.” Gary laughed. “Mark lost his virginity on our couch with the girl across the street. Sneaky bugga. I’m so glad I was asleep at the time, and didn’t find out about it until years later.” He laughed. “You know, I still sit out under the stars sometimes at night.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I kind of got swept up in the moment. Tell me about you. Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “Nope. It’s just me. I never snuck out of the house, though. I never really rebelled, either. I did sneak downstairs really early Christmas mornings, though, to carefully unwrap my presents. Then, after I saw what they were, I’d carefully wrap them up again. I couldn’t stand not knowing. Mum told me one day that she always knew. Apparently my wrapping skills were never as good as I thought they were. I sound so lame. My stories aren’t anywhere as exciting as yours.”

  “Well, we can soon change that,” he said, his eyes sparkling with mischief. He handed her one of the smooth stones. “Your turn.”

  Becky laughed. She positioned the stone carefully in her hand, pulled her arm back, and then brought it forward, releasing the stone. Plop. It sank like a brick. “What do you mean, change that?”

  “Sneak out of the house tonight. I’ll meet you down by the jetty at midnight, and we can stargaze together.”

  “We’re not kids anymore. It wouldn’t really be considered sneaking out of the house. I’m an adult. I’d just be going out. No one would stop me.”

  “Oh, come on. Where’s that little girl that used to sneak down the stairs, to peek at her Christmas presents? I want to know her; she sounds like my kind of girl. I might even teach you how to skip stones, because you’re shit at it and nobody should go through life not being able to skip stones. It’s a rite of passage.”

  Becky laughed. “A rite of passage? Is that so?”

  “Yes. It most certainly is.”

  Becky cupped her hand in the water and splashed him.

  “Right,” he said, standing up. “You asked for it.”

  “No I didn’t. I didn’t ask for it,” she said, trying to back away from him. “Please don’t.”

  “Too late. You started it.” He leaned down and scooped her up in his arms, as though she were as light as a feather, then walked deeper into the water until it was up to his chest.

  “No. Please don’t. I can’t swim.” Her arms flew around his neck, her legs kicking frantically in the water.

  He stopped. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It’s okay. I won’t let you go.”
He turned around and started walking back to the shallower water, then put her back down, the water coming up to her thighs. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, her head lowered. Then suddenly she leaned down, putting both hands in the water, then, heaving her cupped hands upward, she showered him with a deluge of water. Laughing, she quickly turned, then ran farther into the water, before diving in, her whole body disappearing beneath the surface of the water.

  “Oh, very funny,” he said, diving in after her.

  They surfaced at the same time, their faces only inches apart. Becky laughed, then ran her hands through her wet hair. “Now we’re even,” she said, her mouth breaking into a huge smile.

  “Even for what?” he replied, his eyes scanning her face, her lips.

  “For making me look like a complete idiot with the tool bag in front of Leon.”

  “Truce then,” he said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

  She held his gaze. “Truce,” she agreed, holding her breath. He looked at her so intensely, that if felt like a physical touch.

  A phone on the blanket beneath the tree began to ring, but his eyes did not stray from hers.

  She looked away first. “We should probably get going.”

  “Yeah, I should answer that. It’s probably a work call.”

  They waded through the water and back up towards the tree in silence.

  Gary plucked his t-shirt up off the blanket, then pulled it over his head, the fabric clinging to his damp skin. Dragging her eyes off him, Becky dabbed herself with a towel, then wriggled into her shorts.

  During the drive back to the retreat, Becky asked questions about the authors for her article. “I know most of the history about your mum, and her terrible misfit of a son,” she said, flashing Gary a playful smile.

  He kept his eyes on the winding road. “Yes, terrible,” he agreed. “Carry on. What else would you like to know?”

  “Well, I know that Elise never married. Plenty of casual relationships, from what I can gather, but nothing that ever stuck and, to my knowledge, there were no children, but what about Mallory? She doesn’t say much about her past. It’s almost as if the whole subject is taboo.”

  “Not taboo, just a very painful subject. Her husband, Philip, died in a car accident shortly after they were married, and she lost the baby she was carrying. From what mum tells me, she never got over the loss of either of them. She just shut down. And rather than go through anything like that ever again, she swore off the whole idea of getting remarried and having children.”

  “So let me get this straight. Your mum was open to finding love again, up until just a couple of years ago, but she had her heart broken, and decided that, at fifty, enough was enough. Elise had various relationships, but always shut them down before they could turn into anything real, because she was holding out for a guy she met when she was in her twenties. And Mallory is holding onto a dead husband who died about thirty years ago?”

  “Sounds about right.”

  Becky nodded. She thought about her conversation with Uncle Steve on Christmas Day, when she told him, “I’m so done with men.”

  Uncle Steve had said, “Love makes us vulnerable; it makes fools out of us all, at one time or another,” and “Let’s say you don’t give up on your happy ending just yet, hey? You’re way too young to be so cynical about love.” The words rang in her head.

  “Like you, you mean?” she’d said.

  Uncle Steve had shaken his head. “That’s different, love. I’m an old man, and anyway, who says I’ve given up? I’m just waiting for the right girl to come along.”

  Becky looked out of the car window, then rubbed her eyes. What if the right one never came along? How would you even know if the right one was really the right one?

  Polly had tried to find the right one, and now she had given up on the right one ever coming along. She had her son, her work and her friends, and for her, that was enough.

  Elise believed she had found the right one, but for her own reasons at the time, had let him go. Was she still waiting for him to come back to her? Was he happily married with a family of his own, while Elise sat around waiting for him?

  And then there was Mallory, the young bride who had lost her husband and child in a fatal car accident, but was still hanging onto Philip’s memory all these years later. Had Philip survived the accident, would they still even be together, or would time have corroded their love like it had so many others?

  Recent research for an article had shown Becky that forty-two percent of marriages in England and Wales had ended in divorce, and that the average marriage was expected to last thirty-two years. With those statistics, Mallory and her husband would most likely have divorced by now.

  Becky bit her bottom lip. If three successful women, like Polly, Elise and Mallory, had failed in finding love, how did she stand a chance? Then there was her father, who had loved her mother so dearly; he had still not given up on finding love again. She felt a pang of guilt towards her treatment of her father and his new wife, Felicity.

  “When love shows up, you’d be a fool to walk it to the door,” that’s what her mother had always said.

  Had Victoria given William her blessing to move on and find love again? She should give her father a call when she arrived back at the retreat, and apologize for her behaviour. Perhaps she would arrange a dinner party and welcome Felicity into her life. Felicity had, after all, given her father an opportunity to love again.

  If she had learned anything from Polly, Elise and Mallory, it was to never give up. You never knew when the right one might be standing right there, in front of you.

  What if Roger and Mandy were the right ones for each other, and she was the one fated to bring them together? Perhaps she should call Clive. Perhaps Roger and Mandy getting together was her stepping stone to Clive. She continued to stare out the as she grew increasingly frustrated with her internal conversation.

  “Have you forgotten about me?” Gary said in the seat beside her, jolting her from her thoughts.

  “What?” she asked, looking directly at him and shaking her head. As unforgettable as he was, she had to admit, for just the briefest of moments, she had.

  “You’ve gone awfully quiet. I thought you must have forgotten I was here.”

  “Sorry. Just lost in thought. I’ve got all of these crazy things going on in my head.” She shook her hands in front of her head.

  “So, how is the article going, anyway?”

  “Pretty good, actually. My time here been quite insightful.”

  Gary turned a bend, then drove along the road leading up to the retreat. “I’m glad to hear it. I’m here for you, you know, if you need to know anything.”

  “Thank you. I will keep that in mind,” she said, a questioning look spreading across her face. Gary lived thousands of miles away from her - a fathomless ocean separated them - but what if he was the right one for her?

  Jesus, how much sleep would that thought cost her? She would abandon that stupid idea straight away. A serious relationship with Gary was not even an idea worth contemplating. Long-distance relationships were a stupid idea right from the get-go.

  Still lost in her thoughts, Becky helped Gary unpack the Ute. Once everything was piled neatly by the car, she said, “Thanks for today. I really enjoyed it.” She slipped the backpack over her right shoulder, closed the door, and then stepped back from the car.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for me just to leave all this here with you?” he said, indicating the blanket and towels piled up on the eski.

  “Of course. You’ve got business to take care of. I’ll be fine with this. It’s nothing.”

  He gave her a dubious look. “At least let me take the eski inside.” He leaned down to pick it up.

  Becky smiled, then placed her hand on his arm. “Leave it. Go. Seriously, I can take care of this. I’m a big girl.”

  Gary looked bemused. “You’d think I would b
e used to independent women by now.”

  “Yes, you should be.” She let her hand fall away from his arm, still cool from their swim.

  “Right, then… Don’t forget,” he said, walking around to the driver’s side of the vehicle and sliding in behind the steering wheel. He turned the key in the ignition, and the engine growled into life. Monty, hearing the car engine fire up, took that as his cue and bolted out across the lawn, then up into the back of the Ute, his tail wagging gleefully.

  “Forget?” Becky asked, leaning down to peer through the passenger window.

  “Stargazing,” he said, winking. A moment later, he turned the vehicle around and headed towards the front gate, Monty barking his boisterous farewells from the rear of the Ute.

  Becky waved, then stood there for a long moment, waiting until the Ute was out of sight. She turned, lifted the towels and blanket off the top of the eski, and sat down. She reached into her backpack to retrieve the phone that Polly had given her. Tapping on the keypad, she composed a text message, then pushed send. As soon as the message was sent, she looked at the darkening sky.

  Ominous clouds rolled in overhead, quickly swallowing up the sun. A few sprinkles of rain splattered her cheeks. She frowned up the sky. What if it rained for the rest of the afternoon, and into the night? She couldn’t possibly sneak out of the house to stargaze with Gary if it was pouring with rain. And with a sky heavy with steel-grey clouds, there wouldn’t be any stars in the sky to look at.

  A second later, the phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked down to read the name on the screen. A smile spread across her face. She jumped up energetically, then strode towards the side door which led into the kitchen. The phone buzzed again. She stopped walking, read the second message, chewing on the inside of her mouth while she did so. What if she had feelings for two men? Even if she told herself one was impossible, would her heart listen to her? One clear thought dawned on her. Things were about to get even more complicated than they already were.