Home to Eden

by Margaret Way

  “I’m sorry.” She knew her voice sounded highly emotional. She bent and kissed his stubbled cheek, felt the rasp. “I was in such a mess.”

  “Don’t think I don’t blame myself for that!” He caught her hand and held it. “Between the two of us, your mother and me, we made a mess of being parents. One thing I’d like you to do for me…”

  “Anything.” Nicole was acutely aware just how much they’d all missed.

  “Bring McClelland to see me. He’s not taking you anywhere until the two of us have a long talk.”

  Nicole smiled through her tears, her heart twisting with pity for this strange flawed man. “I think that could be arranged.”

  “Good,” he said firmly, nodding his head. “Make it soon. I mightn’t have lived much of a life, but I know a man of substance when I see one.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “WHAT’S HE COMING here for?” Joel’s angry voice rang out. They were at dinner in the informal dining room off the kitchen the family used when not entertaining. Heath, for the first time in days, had made the effort to come to the table, although he ate very sparingly and allowed himself just one small glass of red wine.

  “I’ve invited him, Joel,” Nicole said, thoroughly exasperated. “My father wants to meet him. He hasn’t seen Drake in years.”

  Joel shook his blond head, not being in the least subtle with his objections. “What possible interest could he be to you, Heath?” He transferred his attention across the table. “He’s a bloody McClelland. His uncle was the bastard who stole your wife.”

  Nicole saw her grandmother wince, Siggy’s mouth tighten. Alan continued to eat slowly, apparently savoring every morsel of his beef Wellington. “Mind your language, would you?” she protested, not bothering to suppress her annoyance. Joel was becoming outrageous, or she was just starting to notice. “This is the dinner table, not the stockyards.”

  “I’m so sorry, Princess!” Joel jeered, tension in the taut muscles of his lean face. “Is there something going on here I don’t know about?”

  “What if I said yes? What would you do?” She tossed off the challenge, much as she’d defied him as a child.

  For a moment Joel looked as wild as a hawk. He might well have been about to answer, “Kill myself!” Instead, he made a visible effort to pull himself together. “I hope nothing would be happening you couldn’t tell me, Nikki.”

  Nicole responded by making her own tone quieter. “Joel, I’ve already told you our bitter feud with the McClellands is over. My father has made no objection, have you, Dad?”

  Such open acknowledgment after the long years of estrangement returned Heath Cavanagh his dignity. “None whatever,” he said, smiling back at her. “I’m interested in meeting the adult Drake. I understand he’s become quite an impressive character. I’d like to see that for myself.”

  “Won’t that upset you, Heath?” Siggy asked, looking genuinely concerned for him. There were such deep purple shadows beneath his eyes, hollows in his cheeks. He had lost so much weight.

  “It might,” Heath conceded. “I won’t find out until I actually lay eyes on him. Does he still have the look of David?”

  “We haven’t seen much of him, either, Heath.” Louise, seated at the head of the table, spoke in her gentle voice. “David was a handsome man.”

  “Yes, he looks like his bloody uncle,” Joel burst out, discharging a dark kind of energy. “Only, the uncle was a wax dummy to this guy. I remember that David was a bit too much on the soft side. The gentleman, the patrician. Drake’s as tough as nails. He plays the patrician when it suits him. Just like Granddad, arrogant bastard.”

  “Please do stop swearing, dear,” his grandmother pleaded, holding a hand to her temple. “You may have forgotten, but your grandfather never swore. He didn’t have to play at being anything, either. He was real.”

  “Clearly I don’t take after him,” Joel said, flushing. “It’s hard not to swear with what I’ve had to endure.”

  “Endure?” Siggy sat bolt upright. “How you exaggerate, Joel! What in the name of heaven have you actually suffered? Sometimes you sound damn neurotic. If you put your mind to it, you could have a really good life.”

  “What—like Dad?” Joel sneered, exposing his complete lack of respect for his father.

  His father, however, regarded him impassively across the immaculately set table with its lace-trimmed place mats. Siggy answered for him. “Kindly leave your father out of it. He’s never laid a finger on you, more’s the pity.”

  Joel laughed. “I’m sorry to tell you, Mum, but Dad is so thick-skinned you couldn’t wound him if you tried. There are givers and takers. He’s a born taker.”

  “Thank you, my boy,” Alan murmured suavely, picking up his wineglass, sniffing the fine bouquet.

  “Don’t mention it.” Joel’s face twisted with contempt.

  “Look on the positive side, Joel,” Siggy said, trying to appease her difficult son. “You can play an active role in life. Find your niche.”

  “Niche?” Joel cried as though someone had plunged a dinner fork into his arm. “Is this a setup?” he demanded, looking from one to the other. “First Nikki talks about getting in an overseer. Now you start talking about me finding my niche. Are you about to kick me out?”

  Alan stirred himself to give a piece of fatherly advice. “Do calm down, Joel, there’s a good fellow.”

  “What, if anything, would you know about good fellows?” Joel retorted. “Everything you bloody say is like an actor playing a part. It’s not you at all. You won’t let you out. No one tells you anything, either. You’re just a piece of furniture.”

  “Oh well,” Alan drawled, inclining his well-shaped fair head. “At least I don’t go around upsetting people and swearing at the dinner table, whereas you occasionally act quite insane.”

  “Insane, am I?” Joel shot to his feet, scraping back his chair. “I had to go into therapy because of having a father like you, a mother like her.” He paused to point at Siggy.

  “Go on,” his father invited calmly, assuming the patrician look he had long since perfected from watching the late Sir Giles. “Your grandmother has always been an angel. That just leaves Nicole. We can’t ignore Nicole. She figures very largely in your life. The question is, does that count as an upset.”

  Joel focused wild eyes on his cousin. “She gives my life meaning.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Joel, sit down.” Siggy’s strong resonant voice pinged off the walls. “You’re making an utter fool of yourself. You’ve hardly touched your meal.”

  Extraordinarily, given his abandon, Joel obeyed. “I’m very concerned about what’s happening here,” he said, breathing hard. “If McClelland ever crosses the line with Nicole, I’ll kill him.”

  A disbelieving laugh rose from his father’s throat, but Siggy spoke grimly. “Look, I’m sick of all this melodrama. It’s hell just having to listen to it.”

  “Besides, Drake McClelland would be far too difficult to kill.” Alan used a calm, cool analytical voice, one of his extensive range.

  Siggy, clearly not expecting him to say that, looked thoroughly disconcerted. “What the devil are you talking about, Alan? I don’t know what’s got into you all.”

  “Just having a little joke, my dear, to distract you. I’m as appalled by what Joel has been saying as you.”

  “Good God, you’re a worse dad than I am, Alan,” Heath rasped, then took a sip of wine. “What motivates you? I wonder. I never did find out.”

  “It wasn’t drink and gambling, dear boy.” Alan’s smile was cynical, touched with contempt. “You’re dying, but you brought it all on yourself.”

  Heath shook his head, as untroubled as ever by Alan’s opinion. “No, someone else did that. The person who killed my wife. Did you kill her, Alan?” he asked.

  “Lord God, Heath, what are you rabbiting on about now?” Siggy groaned, abandoning her own meal.

  “I’m much too gentle, too God-fearing, to kill, Heath,” Alan an
swered equably. “I always thought you did it.”

  “The hell you did!” Heath responded promptly, his black eyes burning. “You’re not an easy character to get to know—always slip sliding around, they seek him here, they seek him there—but I think I’ve finally got your measure.”

  Louise, at the head of the table, held up a trembling hand, her magnificent jeweled rings that never came off flashing brilliantly. “Must we have these dreadful discussions at the table? It’s a good thing Giles is dead. You’re all making me feel ill.”

  “Would you like to go to your room, Gran?” Nicole rose immediately to her feet, thinking this discussion, disturbing as it was, might have led to some answers.

  “I think that would be for the best, darling.”

  Joel, suddenly remembering himself, pulled his grandmother’s chair back, allowing her to stand. “I don’t believe my daughter was killed by anyone,” Louise announced, hovering between despair and continuing to hide her head in the sand. “It was an accident.”

  “No, it wasn’t!” Joel said unexpectedly, pulling them all up short.

  “You know something, Joel?” Alan was very still now, the sneer wiped clear of his mouth.

  “No more than the rest of you!” Now Joel’s voice sounded powerless, almost a whine. “All we can do is wait.”

  “Wait?” Nicole could keep silent no longer. “Wait for what?”

  “I’ll take you to your room, Mother.” Frowning ferociously, Siggy moved to her aging mother, throwing an arm protectively around her. “The truth is, this family is mad.”

  “Right on, Mum. I hope you’re including yourself,” Joel called after her.

  “You’re no comfort at all to your mother,” Alan chided.

  “Do shut up, Dad,” Joel said in disgust. “What sort of man are you? Your life is just one long pretense.”

  “My whole life actually,” his father answered mildly.

  “What are we waiting for, Joel?” Nicole asked in a surprisingly steely tone.

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten?” He stared back at her like a combatant. “There’s a killer out there.”

  “Or in here.” Heath brought the whole thing into the open. “Something in the back of my brain keeps telling me neither of you has told the truth,” he addressed father and son. “I was wrongly accused.”

  “That’s what they all say, old boy,” Alan drawled. “You had someone to place you elsewhere, didn’t you? That let you off the hook.” Alan spoke smoothly, but Nicole could see a vein beating away in his temple.

  “Exactly! But as it turned out, so did you. And Joel.” Heath’s black eyes glinted.

  Nicole drew in her breath sharply. “Dad, all we’re doing is taking stabs in the dark. Pointing at this one and that. No actual proof of anything. Joel was out driving. He was waiting to get his license, remember. He was sixteen years old.”

  Heath didn’t answer for a moment. “Every Outback kid can drive as soon as they can see over the wheel,” he said presently. “Joel regularly took one or other of the station vehicles out. No one knew where he went. Or where anyone went, for that matter. An Outback station offers unlimited freedom of movement. In all my years here no one ever checked on anyone.”

  Nicole’s thoughts were a chaotic mix. “Surely at least for that particular time everyone’s movements were checked?” Being a child at the time, she’d been terribly handicapped.

  “Pretty much like a city person saying I was at home all night, alone,” Heath offered wryly.

  “But Granddad would have investigated.”

  Heath considered awhile. “All these years later things seem clearer, especially when one is dying.”

  “Oh, great!” Joel gripped the sides of his chair. “Now we’re all suspects.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” Heath said in a very quiet voice. “It certainly wasn’t Nicole. It wasn’t the illustrious Giles. Nor saintly Louise.”

  “You haven’t commented on Mum yet,” Joel crowed sarcastically.

  “I’ve concluded Siggy had nothing to do with it, either, though I’ve speculated on that, as well. Siggy loved her sister, though she was horrendously jealous of her.”

  “There’s at least one thing you should tell us,” Alan said. “Didn’t you and she share a brief sexual encounter? Corrinne betrayed you, you betrayed her?”

  “Sure I did. Later.” Heath didn’t rise to Alan’s taunt. In fact, he looked quite unconcerned. “But never with poor old Siggy. Apart from the fact I didn’t want to add to her troubles, she never had the slightest appeal for me.”

  A thin foxy smile crossed Alan’s face. “Well, you conveyed that often enough. Constantly humiliating her.”

  “Maybe I was trying to put her off,” Heath suggested, which in fact might have been true, Nicole thought.

  “Oh, don’t let’s talk about Siggy like this,” she pleaded. “She’s always tried to do her best in a dreadfully complicated household.”

  “True!” Alan declared. “Don’t you think it’s high time we started on the McClellands? Exotic little Callista is a near basket case. Did she ever resolve her obsessive passion for her brother? The thing is, none of us knows what really happened.”

  “I won’t stop until I’m certain,” Nicole promised, the grimness of her expression offset by her beauty.

  “Well, then, you’d best mind your back,” Alan murmured.

  “The person who tries to harm Nicole will finish in hell,” Heath stated with astonishing vigor. “I’ll personally see to it if I have to. I’m not all used up yet.”

  FROM THE ANCIENT flat-topped mesa they had a grandstand view of Shadow Valley. It had been very difficult for Nicole to consent to coming here, but she knew the only person she could approach the valley with was Drake. Even then it was with a sense of great apprehension.

  Shadow Valley was a magnificent canvas even under drought. Eminently paintable. Color-saturated. A land beyond dimensions peopled on that scorching afternoon by thousands of little leaping stick figures the mirage threw up on the burning air. The great blood-red plain sprawled away in all directions; the far horizon, aglitter with the spectacular, jeweled gibber that littered certain parts of the desert.

  The eternal golden spinifex made a patchwork carpet, crisscrossed by innumerable interwoven water channels that gave the vast area its name. After heavy rains, when floodwaters broke the banks, the entire area was inundated. Billabongs ran fifty miles wide. The great plain turned into the inland sea of prehistory. It was one of the great sights of the Channel Country but no greater than when the floodwaters receded and wildflowers turned the arid Wild Heart impossibly glorious.

  Beautiful, blazing, blinding, mile after mile after mile of desert flora; the white and gold paper daisies, the blue lupin and dancing Sue, the pink parakeelya, the purple moola-moola, the Morgan flower and the parrot pea, spider lilies and tomato bush, the scarlet desert peas, the pink boronia and its cousin, the divinely scented brown and yellow. Another sight that station people lived for and stored in the memory for when times were hard.

  Drake drew the Land Cruiser to a halt. “Let’s get out,” Nicole said quickly in a voice that revealed her tension.

  “Are you okay?” He rested an arm on the wheel, looking intently at her pale profile. He knew she was upset. She couldn’t fail to be. He recognized the same upset in himself, but he felt comforted by the fact she had consented to come with him. That meant a lot.

  She nodded, shoving on her cream akubra and adjusting it low over her eyes. “I’ll know soon enough.”

  “Just remember, we’re trying to understand how the accident happened.”

  Out of the vehicle, Drake came around the hood with its strong bull bar to join her. He looked up at the opal-blue sky. Clouds were gathering on the horizon. It was very hot and still, and their voices were clear and loud in the isolation. “The first of the storm is coming up,” he commented. “I hope to God it amounts to something. The rest of the state has been blessed with good rains. It’s
got to be our turn.”

  “I pray every night.”

  “As do we all.”

  She glanced at him. His face with its aquiline nose was shadowed by the wide brim of his akubra. His eyes glittered, like jewels in a mask. He looked strong, balanced, whereas she felt an emotional mess.

  “Do you suppose this was the spot they stopped? Or farther over?” She stared around the escarpment. Thick green swathes of bush arched away to both sides, but the broad ledge was almost free of any kind of vegetation, worn smooth by vehicles and horses.

  “If we go a little nearer the edge, you might be able to pick out some landmarks.” He was observing her closely. He knew she was almost messianic in her desire to find out what had really happened. “The base is littered with huge boulders.”

  “Don’t I know it!” She shuddered. Her mother’s battered body had been resting on one, face upturned, eyes open. How she wished she could lose that horrible vision, but it was almost as if she were there on that tragic day watching her mother’s body be flung clear of the vehicle, bouncing from one rocky ledge to the other, until it finally reached its resting place.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said gently.

  “I’m all right. Just hold my hand.”

  “I was going to, anyway.” He laced her fingers through his.

  “All right, let’s do it.” She felt pressure akin to dread build in her chest.

  “You don’t suffer from vertigo, do you? You never used to.”

  Nicole gave a short laugh. “Lots of things I didn’t suffer from.”

  They approached the edge of the rugged escarpment, the hard-packed fiery earth bound by tussocks of grasses bleached silver. In Shadow Valley beneath them, the desert floor was littered with boulders of all shapes and sizes. Huge and small, their sides worn smooth as marbles by the abrasive action of the sand and wind. In common with all desert rocks, they changed color according to the time of day and the weather conditions. At midafternoon in the quivering golden heat, they blended with the ochre-stained earth, a rich orange-red.