Adam’s Boys

by Anna Clifton

  “Did I faint?” she whispered warily.

  “Did you ever. You brought down half the tinned goods aisle.”

  “Damn it! How embarrassing,” she muttered as she drew her eyebrows together and turned her head to take in the hundreds of cans on the floor around her. “I don’t even like baked beans.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

  “I’ll take you to see a doctor.”

  Abbie turned her gaze upon him as though he’d just suggested open-heart surgery right there on the supermarket floor.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed in quick dismissal. “I skipped lunch and then tried to hold Henry for too long. I’m a wimp like that sometimes but it’s definitely nothing to fuss about.”

  “Of all the adjectives to describe you, Abbie, ‘wimp’ would not make the list. Now, do you want to try and get up?”

  She nodded and attempted to lift herself up onto one elbow as he slipped an arm around her shoulders. It was like gathering up a bunch of long stemmed roses—elegant and eye catching. But with the dressing-down she’d given him last night still fresh in his mind, he guessed prickly thorns would not be too far away.

  “I really don’t need your help,” she protested in swift confirmation of those thorns.

  He withdrew his arm and, leaning his elbow on his knee, watched her closely as she tentatively tried out vertical again, but she was still a very bad colour. He doubted she’d be able to walk anywhere any time soon.

  At that point the store manager appeared at his side. “Sir, there’s a taxi waiting at the rank outside if you think madam’s up to travelling. I’ll go and ask the driver to wait if you like.”

  “Travelling where?” Abbie interjected, her brows knitting together in fierce suspicion as she struggled to keep up with her surroundings.

  “The local medical centre. Pete and I are going to take you and Henry there.”

  “No, you’re not!” she replied in strident breathlessness as though trying to exert herself into good health again. “I’m absolutely fine. I’m going home. Henry and I can walk there on our own.”

  “Can’t we go in a taxi, Mum?” Henry pleaded. “I love taxis!”

  Adam watched on as Abbie’s gaze shifted from himself to Henry, and then back to himself again. Then her eyes lowered and she bit down hard on her bottom lip as though she was trying to absorb sudden pain.

  “Okay, that’s it!” Adam declared firmly, bolstered by the suspicion that his innate stubbornness could trump even Abbie’s steely determination. “You’re definitely not well enough to walk home. If you faint again on the way Henry won’t be able to manage—you know that. In fact, maybe I should call for an ambulance instead. You don’t …”

  “No! No ambulance!” she interjected quickly and cold eyes rose up to sweep across his face like a pair of switchblades. “And no doctor. But for Henry’s sake, I’ll take a taxi home. Could you please let the manager know I’ll come back tomorrow and pay for any damage?”

  With that Abbie drew her feet underneath herself. Holding onto a nearby shelf for support, she laboriously hoisted herself upwards as though she was climbing a rope in gym class.

  “There!” she declared triumphantly as she stood erect in front of him. “You see? I’m fine. You’re making a lot of fuss over nothing.”

  But then her hand was shooting out towards the nearby shelf for balance, snatching at air. In the next second he’d reacted instinctively to slip one arm around her waist and the other behind her legs, scooping her effortlessly off the ground before she could topple over again.

  “Woah! You’re strong!” Henry declared.

  “Put me down!” Abbie demanded.

  “Okay boys, time to take Abbie home!” Adam declared loudly, deliberately ignoring her protests. “You two hold hands and walk right next to me. And don’t even think about moving one inch from my side,” he added, concerned one of them might end up on the wrong side of the traffic outside in all the excitement of their afternoon.

  He watched on as the boys held hands obediently and Henry beamed at Pete. He was clearly thrilled his new friend was coming back to his house that day. Pete looked happy too. And Pete looking happy had been an all-too-rare event for longer than Adam cared to think about.

  It took only a few minutes to bundle a fuming Abbie and the boys into the taxi and drive the short distance to her home—just around the corner from his place. She insisted on getting out of the taxi and walking to the front door on her own. And although he was keeping an eye on her to catch her again if she fell, he was still able to take in the quaint facade of her Paddington home.

  He’d learnt from the voluble Henry during their short taxi ride that he and Abbie lived there with their Aunt Maeve—although how the three of them could squeeze into the tiny terrace in front of him he couldn’t imagine. Yet it was possible for a house to be too big. His current place was living proof of that; he and Pete were rattling around in it like pebbles in a tin can.

  “Thank you for your help,” Abbie mumbled at him, nervily avoiding his eyes as she opened her front door and bundled herself and Henry into her narrow hallway.

  He and Pete remained on the front path. Evidently they were not about to receive an invitation inside. Knowing he would soon be given his marching orders, Adam found himself trying to snatch glimpses of the interior of her home with its warm, personal touches: inviting lounge chairs, teeming book shelves and scattered occasional tables topped with lamps, photographs and trinkets.

  Adam couldn’t help comparing it again with his own home around the corner, hastily furnished by a property relocation business. Only he didn’t really like what they’d done. It looked fashionable and sophisticated for sure, but it was incredibly austere. And he hated the enormous television they’d mounted on the wall in his lounge room. What on earth had he been thinking when he’d agreed to that?

  “Well, I suppose Pete and I should be heading home,” Adam offered reluctantly, and for no reason other than to fill the fathomless crevice of treacherous silence Abbie was keeping firmly wedged between them.

  As if on cue, Henry swung around and gripping his mother’s arms pleaded, “Can Adam and Pete come in? Please Mum, please, can Adam and Pete stay? They can help me make the cakes.”

  Abbie looked flustered.

  Blind Freddy could see she didn’t feel well enough to have guests, least of all some guy from her past who was about as welcome in her home as a hole in a lifeboat.

  There was just one unexpected problem for Adam about leaving.

  The idea of venturing into Abbie’s home and staying a short while was appealing to him more and more with every passing second.

  It had something to do with the warm homeliness that was beckoning from within. And although an icy reception loomed from the hostess, he didn’t relish the thought of taking Pete back to that cold, cavernous house of theirs, particularly given his son’s shocker of a morning.

  But the strongest imperative for staying was his driving curiosity about the friendship—possibly Pete’s first ever—that seemed to be unfolding between their sons before Adam’s eyes. And who knew? If Pete could chill out and have fun with Henry that afternoon, it might make a world of difference to how his son felt about going to school the following Monday.

  “How about I come in and help the boys make these cakes?” Adam proposed before he could fully think through the sense or otherwise of what he was doing. “It will give you a chance to lie down, Abbie.”

  “Yeah, Dad! That would be great!” Pete agreed enthusiastically, tugging at the sleeve of his father’s suit jacket in enthusiastic encouragement.

  Adam dropped his eyes to take in Pete’s excited face. Again he was staggered to see a level of happiness in his little boy’s expression that seemed to have been missing forever.

  “But I didn’t end up buying the cake mix,” Abbie announced, shooting Adam a look of victorious satisfaction that she’d be able to
fast-track him out of her afternoon after all.

  “It’s okay, Mum. The nice man at the shop gave it to me for free,” Henry announced gleefully, swinging the shopping bag around his head in physical confirmation.

  “Oh … that was kind of him.” Abbie’s tone was laced with bitter disappointment. “But I’m sure Adam and Pete have somewhere else to be,” she rallied with vigour, raising her eyebrows at Adam and gaping in furious appeal for some backup to an exit strategy out of the boys’ plans for them both.

  “Actually, you need to lie down and we don’t have to be anywhere, do we, Pete?” Adam declared, deliberately avoiding Abbie’s horrified look.

  “Who needs to lie down?”

  A sprightly elderly woman with sharp green eyes and white hair piled and pinned on top of her head had just appeared at Abbie and Henry’s side in the doorway. She looked curiously at the man and the little boy standing on her front path.

  “Mum needs to lie down, Aunty Maeve!” Henry declared. “She fainted in the shop and knocked over a mountain of baked beans.”

  “Darling!” Maeve responded in horror, wrapping her arm around her niece’s narrow shoulders. “Are you all right? Come in and lie down. Did this nice man bring you home?”

  “Yes, but I’m absolutely fine, Maeve,” Abbie protested, turning to Adam with a warning look. “Tell her, Adam—please. I don’t need to lie down.”

  Adam didn’t answer right away, his head momentarily addled by Abbie’s gorgeous Kewpie doll eyes with their long, dark lashes—not to mention the dimples that had appeared out of nowhere as she set her mouth in that mulish way she sometimes did.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Ms McCarthy,” Adam began eventually, defiantly turning his gaze away from Abbie’s. He shot a grin in Maeve’s direction and then reached out to take her extended hand in greeting. “I’m one of Abbie’s UK partners at Griffen Murphy. This is my boy, Pete—he’s at school with Henry, as it turns out. And apparently I’m coming in to help Pete and Henry make cakes because Abbie’s not well and definitely needs to lie down.”

  “Well, hello to you both! Lovely to meet you!” Maeve responded with a musical Irish accent before beaming a greeting, oblivious to the fury building in Abbie’s eyes. “And what a lovely way to celebrate the boys’ first day at school,” she added with an approving smile. “So why don’t you three come in and start on the cooking, and I’ll tuck my niece into bed where she belongs. Come along with me, Abbie. You’re still very pale, my darling.”

  “Maeve, there’s really no need. I don’t …” Abbie began, but Adam couldn’t hear the rest of Abbie’s protests because her determined aunt was propelling her up the narrow staircase just inside the front door. And as she propelled, Adam could hear Maeve chastising her niece for various lifestyle choices, such as not eating enough and burning the candle at both ends.

  Adam couldn’t help his smile of satisfaction that Pete would be spending some more time with Henry in that warm and inviting home. Feeling a sudden spring in his step that took him completely by surprise, he headed purposefully towards Maeve and Abbie’s tiny kitchen, all the while listening to the muffled voices and footfalls from upstairs as Maeve fussed over her niece and bossed her into bed.

  As it turned out, his cake-making supervision wasn’t needed for long. In fact, it was soon clear that Henry was a very confident little cook. He knew where all the pots and pans were as well as the measuring cups. He knew about greasing the trays and could even read most of the words on the back of the cake mix packet. Once he’d relayed the instructions to Pete he announced authoritatively, “Okay, I’ve done the tray greasing, Pete, so now you can do the pouring and mixing.”

  Pete stared at Henry with a blank look as if his new friend had just broken out into a foreign language.

  “Come on,” Henry pressed when Pete failed to move a muscle. Then with a sweep of his arm, Henry pushed all the ingredients, bowls and utensils onto the bare section of bench space immediately in front of his new friend.

  Pete stared at the assortment of items in front of him, shrugged and shook his head quickly, the edges of his mouth turning down as though he’d just been offered a sour lolly.

  “Why not?” Henry asked perplexed.

  “I don’t really want to,” Pete replied as he shook his head again and looked uncertain.

  “But this is the fun part!” Henry declared. “Mum and Aunty Maeve always let me do it, so you can do it today.”

  And with that Adam felt an all too familiar sick feeling rising up within him. It was filling his mouth with an acrid taste as he watched Pete freeze with overwhelming timidity—his boy always did when life threw something up at him that he wasn’t expecting. Adam was about to interject and save Pete by hurriedly explaining to Henry that he was happy just to watch when Henry broke out with another protest.

  “Well I’m not doing it, Pete, so you’ll just have to—here you go.”

  Henry picked up the wooden stirring spoon and with a grin presented it to Pete. He then set his jaw in a way that suggested he would brook no further opposition—just as his mother did when she’d set her course over an issue.

  Adam took a seat on one of the kitchen stools and looked on in fascination as Pete tentatively poured the dry mixture into the bowl with some oil, cracked an egg into it and then stirred it all together, slowly and painstakingly.

  At first his hand movements were clumsy and hesitant, but within a minute or two they became more fluid. Then smiling a small smile of quiet contentment, Pete was soon transfixed as each of the ingredients combined to form a smooth, pearl-like lustre.

  Adam gazed at Pete in sheer wonder, uncharacteristically happy in the company of his new school friend. And what was there not to be happy about? For with every passing minute Adam was discovering that Henry McCarthy was a seriously great kid. Whatever Abbie had done in raising him, it was nothing short of magic.

  Had she had any help in parenting him though?

  There was Aunty Maeve of course. He suspected Abbie’s aunt would have played a big part in raising her grand-nephew. For Adam knew that Maeve had embraced her role as mother to her niece when Abbie’s mother had died and her father had abandoned her to that god-awful foster home when she was little more than six.

  As for Henry’s father, Justin had told him years ago that the guy who’d come into Abbie’s life soon after he’d gone home to the UK had shown no interest in the baby born out of their unplanned pregnancy. Yet despite the early setbacks, Henry was living proof that Abbie had tackled single parenthood with her usual zeal.

  “Henry’s pretty good at cooking, isn’t he, Dad?” Pete declared happily as Henry began to fill the patty-pans without spilling a drop.

  “He sure is,” Adam agreed readily. “Who taught you, Henry?”

  “My mum. She’s really good. Do you cook at home?” Henry asked, turning to Pete.

  Pete shook his head. “We have a cook.”

  “No way!” Henry shouted. “That’s so cool.”

  “I’m not sure you’d like Pete’s cook,” Adam offered reassuringly. “She makes him eat a lot of vegetables.”

  “Yes, and muesli with sultanas. I hate sultanas!” Pete declared.

  “Do you have other people working for you?”

  “At home with my grandparents—six.”

  “Six!” Henry echoed in wonder. “We couldn’t even fit six in this house.”

  “I like your house,” Pete said in a matter of fact tone. “And you’re lucky because you have a cool mum who teaches you how to cook.”

  “Where’s your mum?”

  “She died when I was a baby.”

  “Oh that’s bad,” Henry replied sincerely. “But you have a dad—I wish I had one of those.”

  “So what else does a cool mum do, Pete?” Adam asked, uncomfortable about Henry chatting about the lack of a father in his life when Abbie wasn’t around to put a check on her son’s forthcoming nature.

  “Cool mums do stuff like taking you fishing, te
aching you how to cook and telling funny jokes,” Pete offered decidedly.

  “Yeah, my mum does all that. But she does other stuff too,” Henry elaborated. “She’s really good at making up songs with silly words. They are so funny!” Henry then erupted into peals of laughter, clearly calling to mind one of his favourites.

  “Yep, that sounds like a cool mum,” Adam muttered, contemplating the lighthearted side to Abbie that Henry described with such jubilation—the side he’d never given her a chance to show him during their three short weeks together.

  The boys didn’t hear his response because they were now laughing uproariously at the fact Pete had managed to splatter cake mixture all over his shirt and tie. Adam was soon resigning himself to yet another load of washing in the next twelve hours.

  But as his thoughts drifted around those domestic duties that were a never-ending avalanche in his life, Adam watched the two boys interacting happily in their own little world. And as he watched them, he became steadily convinced that nurturing his son’s friendship with Henry McCarthy for the short time they’d be in Australia might turn out to be the healing medicine he’d been looking for to find Pete’s smile again.

  Yet how could he think Abbie would ever agree to it? Hadn’t she made it clear that afternoon she wanted as little to do with him as possible? And who would blame her, after the way he’d treated her? She owed him nothing—nothing at all.

  Despite Abbie’s looming resistance, Adam just couldn’t let go of the idea. Because nothing could be more important than Pete’s happiness. Not when he’d promised his wife he’d make sure their baby boy grew up strong and happy. After robbing Ellen of her last chance at life, Adam would never let anything stand in the way of that.

  Chapter Four

  Over a hundred and two degrees of unforgiving heat hummed in radiating, choking waves off every surface. It sucked the colour, the energy and every last drop of moisture out of everything.

  And yet one hundred and two degrees or not, it was business as usual in Sydney: kids played, teachers taught, builders laboured and office workers pulled on three-piece business suits.