Belle's Secret

by Victoria Purman

  He turned to her, still smiling. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his reflective aviator sunglasses but she was sure they were crinkled up in a smile, too.

  “This is an incredible spot,” he said. “I love it.”

  “It’s my favourite place in all of Wirralong.”

  He turned his face to her. “You come up here a lot?”

  “I do.”

  Isabella had made a habit of driving up here when she needed to think, to decompress; when she’d had enough of happy married couples and troublesome parents-in-law and matrons of honour and groomsmen. She came up to smell the eucalypts. To watch over the town. And, yep, okay, she came up here to cry where no one else would see her. The crying was a big old secret. Not even Maggie knew about that.

  Today, she didn’t feel like crying.

  “There are so many vineyards around Wirralong. I had no idea,” Harry said.

  “The growers right throughout the region sell their grapes to Matthews and three other organic wineries in the district.”

  He tugged at his sunglasses and slipped them up on his head. The move spiked his hair and Isabella’s fingers tingled at the sudden desire to run them through it.

  His brown eyes shone. “These are all organic vineyards?”

  “Yep. Matthews is over there.” She pointed west and in the distance sat a speck of a stone building.

  “Their cellar door setup is really outstanding. And the wines aren’t half bad either.”

  Isabella moved her finger about twenty degrees to the northwest. “And next door to them? The Morgans. Lovely people. I married their daughter last November.”

  He chuckled. “You know everyone around these parts?”

  “God no. Well, some. Being a marriage celebrant in a small town sure does help grease the wheels of getting to know everyone super fast, but it’s not like I’m a local or anything like that. That’ll take at least another two generations. Small towns, right?” She needed to change the subject. “Shall we have something to eat? Why don’t we sit down?”

  “I’ll pour the wine.” Harry sat cross-legged on the rug and reached for the bottle. Isabella sat too and passed him one glass, then another. He poured each glass halfway, set the bottle back in the picnic basket and passed Isabella a glass. Then, he lifted his towards her.

  “To … Wirralong.”

  He hesitated and Isabella could have sworn he was about to say something else. He shook his head ruefully and looked down at the rug.

  “Here’s cheers, big ears.” When he laughed and looked up to the sky, she couldn’t help but join in. “Have you never heard that before?”

  “Must be an Aussie thing.”

  They sipped wine and sat silently for a while. Above them, magpies perched in the trees and warbled. Isabella nibbled some cheese and Harry got stuck into the olives. She kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the breeze. Isabella may not have been able to say it, but maybe he’d get the hint that all of this meant sorry. The least she could do was show him some local hospitality; that Australians really were nice people no matter what they might have done. That she was a nice person, despite what she had done.

  Harry interrupted the silence. “Do you miss the Coonawarra? Where you grew up?”

  Did she? In her mind, her memories of the beauty of the place, with its lush green vines, its pine plantations, its cool winters and mild summers, were never as evocative as the chaos of her childhood. Now, she might look at it differently, but then, it hadn’t felt like a refuge. It had felt like a trap.

  “Sometimes. It was nice to live in Melbourne. You know, the big city and all that. Wine bars and great food and bookshops and movies and nightclubs. But now, I like being here.”

  “Did you ever want to work in the wine industry?” Harry reached for an olive and popped it into his mouth. He hadn’t slipped his sunglasses back over his eyes and his direct stare unsettled her. Why did he want to know? And how much should she tell him? How much did she want to remember about the man she married—and divorced—when she was thirty-five? When she was on her deathbed, would she even remember him—or this moment—at all?

  She hoped she remembered his face, the way he was looking at her at this exact moment: his brown eyes curious and trained on her, his damn kissable lips parted just slightly, his head tilted to one side as if what she was about to say was the most interesting thing in the world. As if she was the most interesting thing in the world.

  Maybe it was the heat or maybe it was the wine, but Isabella felt something shimmer deep inside, a place she didn’t even know existed, deep in what might have been, up until now, an empty space somewhere in her heart.

  “Did I want to work in the wine industry?” She shook her head and raised her glass as if to emphasise her next point. “I like drinking it, obviously, and I worked on a vintage or two when I was young, but no. Our paths never crossed again. And what about you? Wine’s in your blood, right? You must have merlot in your DNA.” If Harry had noticed that she’d flipped the conversation right back around to his family, he didn’t mention it.

  “I don’t know about my DNA, but sure, I grew up around the winery. Me, my sisters and my brother. It’s what we’ve known all our lives.”

  “Must be nice to come from such a big family,” Isabella said and there was a wistfulness in her voice he hadn’t heard before.

  Harry grinned. “You see, this is the kind of stuff you normally find out about someone before you get married.”

  If he noticed her swallowing the lump in her throat he was polite enough not to mention it.

  “We lived right on the vineyard back then, in the days before all four of us went off to college. We’ve all been back to that house at various times, in between travelling—that was me. Dropping out of college—my brother, Everett. And a stint in New York—Amy and Tess.”

  “So you’re the second oldest?”

  “Yep. It goes, Amy, me, Everett then Tess.”

  The Harrison siblings had probably grown up with an adorable dog named Rover and feasted on milk and cookies every day when they got home from school on a yellow bus. Isabella felt more than a pang of envy. Would she have been better able to bear her childhood if she’d had someone to share it with? She hadn’t even had cousins that she knew of. Growing up for Isabella had been marked by constant change, new schools, and disruption.

  “That sounds lovely,” she said quietly.

  Harry reached for another olive, tossed it up in the air and caught it in his mouth. He threw her another smile. “Damn, but these olives are good. They’d be great in a martini.”

  She knew what he was doing. Keeping it light. Making this fun.

  “All four of us all live in Napa now, but my father stayed on the vineyard, even after Mom died five years ago this Christmas just gone.” His voice had grown quiet and he slipped his sunglasses back over his eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Harry.” If she was closer she would have reached for his hand and covered it with hers, but they were on opposite sides of the picnic basket. Best she stayed where she was, although the urge to comfort him was strong.

  “Thank you,” he said after a long moment. He shifted his gaze from Isabella and fell back on the rug, his face to the sky, his arms stretched up to cradle his head. “It was long and shitful. Breast cancer.”

  “Your dad took it pretty hard?”

  “He rattles around in the place now. It’s way too big for him, but he won’t leave the vineyard. He says he likes being able to walk across to the winery. He was born there, and I’m betting he’ll die there, too. Charles Harrison Does Not Like Change.”

  “Some people like things to be as they’ve always been,” Isabella said. “No surprises. Nothing to upset the apple cart. When things are the same day in, day out, you feel … safe.”

  “Her death kinda rocked my whole idea of what safe means, Belle. I always expected her to be there, you know? I thought she might cry at my wedding. Love her daughter-in-law. All that.” He went quie
t.

  Isabella knew what he meant. When had she ever felt this safe? When had she ever really felt, deep inside her, that her world was secure, that it wouldn’t shatter at any moment? She’d thought she had that here with Maggie at Wirralong, but that was before Harry had turned up.

  He turned on his side, dug his elbow into the rug and propped his cheek in his hand. “So that’s pretty much my life story.”

  “I think there’s a whole lot more to your story than that,” Isabella said.

  Now it was his turn to change the subject. “What about you, Belle? Why don’t you tell me all the deep dark secrets of your family that I should have known before I proposed?”

  She swallowed, focused on the disused wheat silos in the distance.

  “Nothing much to tell. I grew up with my mum. We moved around a lot when I was younger but our longest stretch was in the Coonawarra. But when she decided to move to Darwin, I went to Melbourne instead. I worked in hospitality for years, until I decided to become a marriage celebrant. And that’s my story.”

  It was a highly edited version of her story, that was for sure. Edited, scrubbed and polished.

  “It’s an unusual career for someone young. I thought marriage officiants were supposed to be little old ladies who needed something to do in their retirement or unemployed actors who liked performing to a crowd.”

  “You’ve been watching too many movies.”

  “Maybe. But I’d expect you’d have to really like weddings to do what you do.”

  “I have great faith in the institution of marriage.” She shot him a glance, despite herself. “For other people, you understand.”

  “Why not for you?”

  “You really need to ask me that?”

  “I mean, why don’t you deserve it, too?”

  “I absolutely adore helping people navigate those first steps on the journey of the rest of their lives together and then I get to step back before it all turns to crap.”

  A magpie landed on the picnic rug and made a lunging attempt at the cheese. Isabella shooed it off.

  When she looked back at Harry, he was gazing at her, his eyes narrowed, a frown on his face. “Not all marriages turn to shit, you know.”

  “Just 40 percent of them, according to the official statistics, at least in Australia. Which is, obviously, something I never mention to my clients when they come to me all loved-up and hopeful.”

  “Well, I’m used to the 60 percent. My parents were happy their whole lives. Dad made Mom breakfast every single morning until the day she died. Took it in to her on a tray with a flower in a vase. Whole wheat toast, two pieces, with marmalade on top. A white coffee. My mom didn’t move until she had her first cup of coffee.”

  Harry sounded wistful. She looked over at him. He’d turned his gaze to the sky. She wasn’t religious, but perhaps he was and he was thinking his mother might be up there somewhere looking down on him. What would a mother tell her son who’d done something so foolish as to marry a complete stranger? Isabella had no clue: she hadn’t told her own mother and wouldn’t have told her even if they were in touch. And Harry? He couldn’t tell his mother. There was too much sadness in both those scenarios and it brought tears to Isabella’s eyes.

  How lucky he was to have a father like that. The idea stuck in the back of her throat and thickened it so she couldn’t seem to swallow. She had felt like an abandoned child most of her life. She wondered if he knew how lucky he was.

  “Sounds like your mum deserved breakfast in bed. She bore him four children. The poor woman was probably exhausted.”

  Harry laughed suddenly. “She was one of a kind. She used to… she used to read to us when we were kids, all of us, every night without fail. That’s one of the things I remember most. Me tucked up in bed, her beside me reading. I swear she read me The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings probably three times over. Just because I begged her to.”

  It was a nice memory and Isabella couldn’t help but be jealous of it. She hadn’t been read to as a child. She’d been plonked in front of the television on her own while her mother was off living her own life. That’s why she knew so much about America. Happy Days and The Wonder Years re-runs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Beverly Hills 90210. Because, of course, all Americans lived in Milwaukee or were vampire slayers or were rich.

  “I’ve never read Tolkien.”

  Harry’s mouth was agape. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope.”

  “But you’ve seen the movies, right?”

  “Nope. Science fiction’s not my thing.”

  He sat up, rested his arms behind him. “It’s fantasy, Belle.”

  “Fantasy. Men with hairy feet and elves and hot burning volcanoes aren’t my idea of a fantasy.”

  And before she could block it, her fantasy came to life behind her closed eyes. Harry, naked, walking towards her in that Vegas hotel room, a shit-eating grin on his face, his chest bare, his cock hard. Harry, last night with a blue condom and a hot mouth. The fantasy of when he was all hers and they’d had something.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  She opened her eyes to the harsh Australian light in the hope it would burn the image and the longing away forever.

  “You see?” Harry said. “This is something else we might have known about each other if … So what about you? What’s your best childhood memory?”

  Isabella tried not to think too much about that part of her life. She’d sectioned off those memories and stored them away when she’d left the Coonawarra and moved to Melbourne. There were snatches. Her mother’s silver hoop earrings. Eating cold spaghetti from the tin. Buying her clothes from the local second-hand shop. Not having enough money to play basketball at school because they couldn’t afford the right sports shoes or the uniform. Loneliness. That was Isabella’s overwhelming memory of her childhood: the crushing, personality-destroying loneliness of being the only child of a woman who hadn’t wanted a child at all.

  Harry noted her silence and waited. And instead of asking again, or joking or pressing her for details, he simply said, quietly, “Come here.”

  And the sound of his voice was so tender that she went to him. She stood and stepped over the picnic basket and the food and the wine bottle. He spread his legs and patted the rug and she sat down there, her back to him. He wrapped his arms around her as he pressed his lips to her hair with a gentle kiss. She let herself feel everything about this moment: the strength of his arms around her, how enveloped she felt, the scent of his cologne, something crisp, and, when she was completely still, his heart beating against her back.

  As Harry held her, he said into the quiet of her hair, “My first dog was a blond Labrador called Duke, after John Wayne of course. That damned dog used to eat everything. I could never sneak candy or cookies into my bedroom ’cos Duke would sniff ’em out and tear everything to pieces to get to them. Sometimes he really did eat my homework, I swear. The brat always insisted that he loved her more than anyone, but the hound always seemed to be on my bed when I woke up in the mornings.”

  “The brat?”

  “That’s Tess.”

  Isabella relaxed a little more into his embrace. One arm was round her and she held it, and it felt like she was a ship rocking on the ocean waves and he was ballast. With a free hand, he stroked her hair as he continued.

  “I liked school. I played tennis and football. The American kind, not the Australian kind. My best friend all through high school was Sam Bullock who’s now in France making wine. I did pretty well in my SATs and got into my first choice of college to study viticulture. That’s where I met Simon. He was doing IT and we had absolutely nothing in common but we got drunk a lot and watched Star Wars I swear, like a million times in that dorm room. I had my heart broken for the first time in my second year at college. Samantha Benedetto.” He sighed and looked off into the distance, playing it up for her sake. “She was so hot. We dated for six months. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other until she left me for someone who loo
ked like Matthew McConaughey.”

  “Can’t say I blame her,” Isabella smiled and Harry gave her a quick, tight squeeze. “He’s hot.”

  “I know, right? So I got over Samantha Benedetto, came home after college and studied under Harrison’s chief winemaker. And then a couple years later, when Tess finished college, we got to run the show.”

  “So you and Tess are the winemakers?”

  “Amy is chief operating officer and Everett runs our marketing.”

  “And you can all work together? Don’t you ever fight?”

  “All the time. But we love each other and we suck it up if we’re wrong. Growing up in a family of four kids, you learn to compromise. If there are three on one side and you’re the only one left fighting the war, you learn pretty fast.”

  “That all sounds so … normal,” Isabella said.

  “On the surface, yeah. But you can never tell what’s going on in someone’s family from the outside. My mom … she left us for a while. When I was fifteen. She went to her sister’s in Colorado for six months. We didn’t know if she was ever going to come back. She did. Whatever had been going on between my folks … they never discussed it with us. I reckon it’s better we didn’t know, looking back now. Parents have problems they should never share with their kids. Some of that stuff is too much when you’re young. You don’t want to know that your mom and dad might hate each other or the reasons they need a break from each other. All you need to know is that it’s not your fault. And she made sure we knew that.”

  It’s not your fault. How important that was for a child to hear.

  It’s all your fault.

  That’s what she’d been told her whole life.

  There were some things kids should never be told. How could her mother have been so cruel? Her words blurted out in a rush. “My mum didn’t want me.”

  Harry was silent. She felt a huge intake of breath and he rested his chin on her head. She gripped his arm tighter, holding on to what felt safe.