House for All Seasons

by Jenn J. McLeod

‘On second thoughts.’ Elliott scooped her into his arms, carrying her, despite her many protests, all the way back to the house. She squealed when he pretended to struggle as he negotiated the steps, and again as he fumbled with the screen door. By the time he reached the bedroom, nudging the door with his knee, they were both laughing so hard Sara prayed he wouldn’t drop her for real.

  Their laughter petered out as he lowered her onto the bed, his arms still wrapped around her, Sara’s arms still around his neck, his lips a whisper away. He perched on the edge of the bed and held her hand, whipping up the flutter of attraction she’d experienced earlier into a butterfly storm in her stomach.

  She wasn’t brave enough for this.

  ‘Look, Elliott.’ Sara planted her hands firmly on his shoulders, pushing him away. ‘My life has been one crappy thing after another. I … I’ve been hurt. Joel hurt me in so many ways and at the worst possible time in my life. And before you say I’m over-analysing and give me another bull-ring analogy, let me say this. We’re very different, you and I. You don’t dwell on your survival or wonder how much the next bull is going to hurt, whereas my heart relives the hurt too easily, and no matter how lovely you are right now, it’s your friendship that I am enjoying and … Argh!’ She punched the mattress. ‘Tell me to shut up. I’m pathetic. Sorry. It’s just—’

  ‘Relax, Sara. It’s okay. I know,’ he said. ‘And please don’t be upset that I know.’

  ‘You know?’ Suspicion stiffened Sara’s tone and she yanked her hand away, clutching it to her chest and holding it there, while the other hand grasped the tiny pearl buttons on her shirt. She levered herself up, scooting backwards to prop herself against the bed’s headboard. ‘What do you know? Did you do something while I was passed out?’

  ‘Did I do something?’ Elliott drew back, a mix of surprise and hurt etched into the lines of his brow. ‘You think I’m some deviate who takes sneaky peeks at unconscious women? Not my style, Sara.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Hey, come on.’ He grasped the hand now strangling her buttons and slowly released each finger, lowering her hand to the bed. ‘I wanted to say this the other day. I understand why you got so mad when I wet your shirt down by the river, and why you always wear baggy tops. I see you. I see all of you. I do know your secret, Sara Fraser, and it’s not because I looked.’

  Sara’s chest pounded like timpani drums playing the final dramatic moments of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, each beat reverberating through the flimsy fabric of her shirt.

  She couldn’t look at him.

  She couldn’t admit it.

  She couldn’t say the words.

  Instead she said, ‘Then I guess it’s not a secret anymore.’

  ‘It is until you say it aloud. You can tell me. I won’t think any differently of you.’

  Without shedding a single tear, Sara somehow found the courage to say those dreaded words to a man, and not just any man—a hunky, young man in her bedroom, sitting on the side of her bed.

  ‘Okay, but as long as you don’t feel sorry for me. I’m a survivor. I survived breast cancer two years ago. That’s why, well, one boob’s mine and …’ She drew breath, set her stare at Elliott and said, ‘… the other one I call Betsy.’

  No reaction.

  Nothing.

  Elliott didn’t flinch, but just in case he was thinking about using some overused condolence, Sara continued.

  ‘Do not feel sorry for me. I don’t. This is a fight I’m planning to win, and so far, so good. I am a survivor. Okay? Whatever you do, do not get all soppy.’

  There! She’d done it.

  Item 8 on THE LIST: Say it aloud.

  Tick it off.

  She watched Elliott’s very serious face change, his mouth slowly, slowly turning at the corners to form a smile. ‘Betsy, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sara pushed the word out with a puff of air from her lungs and found herself smiling back.

  ‘Well done, Sara Survivor. Now …’ Elliott stood. ‘I’m going to leave you and let you sleep. But first let me say this … No bull either.’ He grinned. ‘You are beautiful and brave and while part of me wishes I was staying right now, my head tells me I’d be up against Will Travelli. And as I’ve already told you, last time I faced off with that bloke … Well, I’m not that brave.’

  ‘You’re too good to be true. Are you sure I haven’t dreamed you up?’

  He laughed. ‘I would hope the man of your dreams would be an improvement on me, and with a better name than Idiot McCabe. So go to sleep. Sweet dreams, Sara.’

  *

  Sara woke to the smell of bacon and the sound of clattering dishes. The sun was still low in the sky but already a warm breeze wafted through the open window. She staggered out of bed, dragged on a shirt, and shuffled into the kitchen all bleary-eyed and yawning.

  ‘Just in time.’ Elliott held out two glasses of orange juice.

  ‘You so can’t be real. I am dreaming. No one looks that good after the wine we put away last night.’

  ‘I’ve set the table on the veranda. I figured you’d need a decent brekkie to get you going. It’s what mates do, and we’re mates, right? Besides, I wanted a riding buddy this morning. I gathered you’d be working at the café later?’

  Sara groaned. Standing over a sink up to her elbows in dirty dishwater she could manage—almost—but her head ached just thinking about having to deal with Jennifer. The girl had such an attitude. Maybe they could do without Sara today.

  ‘You look good,’ Elliott said.

  ‘I look dreadful, but thanks. I do feel surprisingly good, though, given I had a major hypo last night on top of a few too many drinks.’

  He handed her some cutlery. ‘Take these and I’ll be right out. Then I want to hear all about Sara Survivor’s life back in Sydney.’

  ‘I could get used to this,’ she called back from the veranda, dropping the cutlery on the table still set with flowers from last night. ‘What a magic morning.’

  Arms outstretched, she planted both hands on the railing, closed her eyes, breathed in and filled her lungs with warm, dry air laced with eucalyptus.

  *

  After the meal, Elliott took his tea and sat on the top step in the sun, leaning against a post. He’d pulled off his belt and was polishing the big brass buckle with his handkerchief.

  ‘So tell me about you,’ he said. ‘Married? Children?’

  She drew a deep breath and let it rush out in a long sigh. ‘Married—tried and failed. Kids—also tried and also failed.’

  ‘Not all your failures, I’m sure.’

  He was right, of course. Sad it had taken her so long to figure that out. She’d thought her marriage to Joel had been real and he’d been happy. They’d had so much in common once. It had been a classic case of falling for the boss—well, the boss’s son—even though she was a couple of years his senior. It didn’t seem to matter. They moved in together and stayed that way for a few years until one day Joel popped the question. He wanted children, his parents wanted grandkids, and he was old-fashioned enough to put marriage first.

  ‘I got so tired of them dropping hints and buying baby clothes. Nothing happened for a while. I don’t think the constant pressure helped. Then I had two miscarriages in a row. Doctors seemed to think it was a combination of things; my diabetes didn’t help. Joel took the news hard.’

  ‘And you? You must have been devastated.’

  Sara shrugged the pain away as she always did. ‘It hurt, of course, being told you’re incapable of fulfilling a wife’s … a woman’s … most fundamental—’ She stopped. ‘Actually, once the initial shock and disappointment passed, I was surprisingly okay. Shame the same couldn’t be said about my mother-in-law. Joel was good to me, though. He looked after me. I know he loved me, but I think he loved the idea of children more. His mother lived in hope, forever bringing up the subject, buying toys and clothes. She used to call the camphor chest in her spare room the Gran
dbaby Box. My cancer was the final straw for Joel. All of a sudden I was too sick, too often, and too much work.’

  Her words snagged in her chest. Isn’t that the way she’d described Willow to Elliott last night? Too much work?

  ‘Where’s Joel now?’

  ‘Oh, he found someone healthy, someone younger, someone who could give him and his mother all the babies they so desperately craved. At least he had the decency to stick around and not tell me until after the surgery and chemo.’ Sara didn’t mention that she’d heard a post-divorce Joel was telling people, ‘My first wife had cancer,’ as if she’d already died. ‘So there you have it: Sara Fraser’s hard luck story.’ A little exasperation crept into her voice. ‘I guess you’ve figured out by now that she’s here in Calingarry Crossing to rid herself of guilt and make amends for a few other teenage transgressions in case all doesn’t go to plan and she pops off the planet in the next few years. Oh, and watch out when she starts talking in third person.’

  Elliott had stopped polishing and was now threading the belt through the loops on his jeans. He stood, his face surprisingly devoid of compassion, as if oblivious to her outpouring. ‘You glad to get that out of your system?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Sara said, matching his indifference.

  ‘Good,’ he said with a flash of white teeth. ‘Well, if you think I’m going to sit around here all day and mollycoddle you, think again, crazy girl. Come on. Let’s ride.’

  8

  ‘Are you okay, Sara?’ Will asked when she arrived the next day for work.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Sorry about yesterday.’

  Not turning up for work had been wrong and selfish. She’d let Will and Dom down; not like Sara at all. Helping out at the café was as much for her as it was anyone else. She needed money and this job was perfect. If she’d been running the business and one of her staff hadn’t turned up for a shift, she wouldn’t have been so cheery.

  ‘Hey, forget it.’ The casual shrug contradicted the eagerness of Will’s initial enquiry.

  Had he missed her? Sara thought, shoving her handbag and helmet in the staff cupboard before grabbing a fresh apron. Maybe he’d really needed her here and she’d selfishly spent the day with Elliott. She’d meant to call in before leaving the house yesterday for their ride.

  Blaming poor mobile reception crossed her mind, but how many times had a staff member used that line on Sara? Such an excuse was nothing more than a modern-day equivalent to ‘the dog ate my homework’.

  ‘I know you didn’t come all this way to work,’ Will said. ‘We’re lucky to have you when we can. But you did have us worried. We pictured you splattered on the road somewhere, a little melted mass and a pushbike.’

  ‘Sorry, Will.’ Sara fumbled with her apron ties. There was something about his tone. Will cares. Guilt grabbed a hold and Sara struggled to find the right words. ‘I should’ve thought of that.’

  Another shrug. ‘It ended up being pretty quiet anyway, bit like today. Not much happening.’

  Uh-oh, maybe he’s giving me the flick. One strike and I’m out.

  She’d make it easy for him. Better to quit than be fired. Wouldn’t be the first time. At least then she could stop trying to tie the darn apron behind her back.

  ‘Okay,’ she said calmly, despite the pulsating veins in the side of her neck. ‘So, maybe you don’t need me today either.’

  Will’s face flashed disappointment. ‘Look, Sara, if you have something you’d rather be doing, or if you’ve had a change of heart about working here, I understand.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t … I haven’t … I love working here. Truly. I actually feel … I dunno …’

  ‘Used?’ Will grinned, his gaze dropping to the apron Sara had been wringing into a scrunched ball.

  ‘Useful—and needed.’ She let the fabric unfurl. Say something else, Sara. ‘It’s just … You probably don’t remember … I’m a diabetic and I … Bloody hell! This apron has a mind of its own. Can you …?’ Will wheeled over, taking control of the wayward apron ties, and Sara turned her back to avoid seeing his face while she spun the lie. ‘Well, it was a rough episode the other night and I spent yesterday sleeping it off in bed.’

  ‘Oh.’ He seemed to dwell on what she’d said.

  Sara cringed. Had he recognised the lie? Of course. He was a father of two children, wasn’t he?

  ‘So does that make coffee a good thing or not? I was just about to make myself one.’

  ‘Definitely a good thing this morning.’

  Sara did love the brew’s many abilities: the way coffee could both relax and uplift, how it said both good morning and good night. Right now coffee was a bridge, reconnecting friends and saying, ‘Let’s start over.’

  The complexity of coffee! she mused

  Back behind his beloved Bertha, Will didn’t stop talking, his eyes barely leaving Sara, not even to flick the ground coffee into the filter handle before tamping it down and pressing the extraction button. The machine chugged and gurgled, coffee smells wafting over to where Sara wiped the milkshake maker with a damp cloth.

  ‘At one point they thought Jazzy might’ve been a diabetic,’ Will called out over the machine. ‘Turns out she suffers low blood sugar when she gets excited.’

  ‘Not easy to control in a seven-year-old, I imagine.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Especially with the end-of-school concert coming up. She gets excited just trying on her special costume.’

  ‘What’s the costume?’

  ‘No idea. Haven’t been allowed to see it. I went over to collect her from Caroline’s last night and they were in the middle of a fitting. You should’ve heard the squeal and the carry-on when I barged in unannounced. All I saw was my mother dressing my daughter in a green garbage bag.’

  ‘A garbage bag?’ Sara giggled.

  Now Will was yelling over the gurgle of steaming milk. ‘Yep! The concert theme is global warming. I think my daughter is waste. You were in a school concert, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, until they discovered I couldn’t sing to save myself. Speaking of garbage, that particular concert was a totally different load of rubbish.’

  ‘Godspell, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Until someone graffitied over the posters and made it DogSmell.’

  ‘Well, at least it was a regular concert with singing and proper costumes and stuff. My daughter’s wearing a garbage bag. Worse still, I’m not allowed to see the outfit until the night.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Sara sniffed the hot coffee Will handed her. ‘Consider it good practice.’

  ‘Practice? For what?’

  ‘Think white, think wedding dress, think twenty years from now.’

  ‘As long as it’s not a shotgun wedding.’

  Sara laughed at the strangled look on Will’s face and his exaggerated shudder.

  ‘Did Sara Fraser do the white wedding thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all. My dress was white and full-length but cheap. Being a big fluffy meringue was never my thing. All very—I guess you’d call it—minimalist.’

  In truth, she would have loved the all-frills version, and as Joel’s parents liked to demonstrate their considerable wealth every chance they got, she could have agreed to the whole shebang. But with no bride’s family to contribute, Sara had insisted on a simple affair:

  Friends.

  Joel’s.

  Business associates.

  Joel’s.

  And relatives.

  Joel’s. Three generations, none of whom knew—their honours degrees and share portfolios tucked in their filing cabinets—what it meant to make do or go without.

  ‘Simple sounds good. Mine was a circus.’ Will’s statement was edged with sadness. ‘Hey, how’s this for an idea? Come with me to the concert next week. Jazzy will love it. She’s all Sara this and Sara that ever since you made her that rainbow milkshake the other day with the hundreds and thousands.’

  ‘She’s a sweetie. They both are.’ Sara had fallen for Jasmine the first time
she laid eyes on the tiny, tutu-wearing girl. Jazzy was a little version of her larrikin father, but with her mother’s looks.

  ‘By the way, I’m putting Sara’s Rainbow Shake on the kids’ menu. Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘If you make hundreds and thousands from the idea I’ll be expecting my cut.’

  ‘Ha ha! Fifty-fifty it is.’ Will downed his coffee and pushed the mug to one side. ‘Now, one more thing. Jasper’s been at me to take him fishing so I’ve arranged for Dom and Jennifer to do an extra day every week during the holidays.’

  Uh-oh, is he about to ask me to work extra shifts?

  ‘Why don’t you come along?’

  ‘Fishing?’

  ‘No, dancing.’ Will’s eyes lit up. Sara was getting used to the warm glow they triggered in her, but as much as she liked the sensation, she fought it. ‘Yes, of course, fishing,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not sure, Will.’

  ‘Come on. Spend some time with me and the kids. Witness my life, my not-so-interesting life as a small-town dad.’

  ‘Fishing does sound good,’ she relented. Will’s pout helped. ‘I guess so does a day together with the kids, and the concert.’

  ‘Gotta love a trifecta.’ Will headed for the kitchen, yelling to Dom, ‘Get out your favourite fish recipes, we’re goin’ fishin’.’

  Her euphoria was surprisingly reminiscent of those early summers when her father would set up the garden sprinkler and her friends would cozzie-up in excited silence, then run and laugh and squeal across the lawn to slip and slide along lengths of wet plastic. Such simple pleasures that the drought—not to mention technology—would have stripped from today’s childhoods.

  Sara had seen Jasmine and Jasper at the café most afternoons after school. Sometimes they’d grab a milkshake and wait for their grandad or Caroline to collect them. Sometimes Will would leave work to take them home himself. There’d been little opportunity for Sara to talk to the kids, except to say hello and briefly ask about school. Jasper did little more than grunt, his face never leaving his Game Boy gizmo, while Jasmine in her pink ballet slippers and tulle skirt flitted about the café entertaining the customers.