Happy Mother's Day!

by Sharon Kendrick

  She was a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants gal. She’d winged it her whole adult life, living day by day on ambition and gut instinct. Attachments were for those who had others in their life who needed to be considered in the mix. And she had nobody.

  James rubbed a hand over Kane’s head and joined Siena. There was no holding hands this time and she wasn’t sure if he was reading her signals or if, after his time with Kane, he was sending her some pretty strong ones of his own.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE drive home was quiet.

  James could have kicked himself for dragging Siena into such a domestic scene.

  Siena was a jetsetter, a big city girl; she had been offered a dream job living in Rome, for goodness’ sake, and there he was showing off the great bits of his life—Coronas in the sun, afternoon barbecues, the kind of relaxed suburban lifestyle that could be found nowhere else like they did it in the tropics.

  And, in his extended selfishness of not wanting to let her out of his sight, he had gone and dragged her into … well, real life.

  When they reached the house Matt’s little red car was still outside but the others had gone. Kane was out of the car and in the house using the spare key from his backpack before James had even closed his car door.

  Siena exited the car slowly as well. She shot him a straight smile.

  ‘Why don’t you come in and show Kane his new bike?’ he suggested before she had the chance to speak.

  ‘You show him,’ she said, flapping a hand across her face.

  He reached out and took her by the hand, having no intention of leaving their great day together on such an awkward note. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Uh-uh. It’s your gift. You have to give it to him.’

  Her hand curled inside his until it moulded into a perfect fit. She blinked up at him and he wondered if she thought it was too. Whatever she was thinking, behind her ocean-green eyes she smiled and with a short nod gave into his tug and followed him inside.

  ‘Kane, afternoon tea’s on now if you want it. Reheated barbecue sausages,’ he called once they were inside. ‘Reheated anything is his favourite meal so if he doesn’t come down within thirty seconds then I’ll know for sure he’s really ill.’

  He waved through the kitchen window to Matt, who was scooping leaves out of the pool.

  ‘You think he might be faking it?’ Siena asked, delicately extricating her hand from his so she could head around to the safe side of the kitchen island. She leant her chin on her upturned palms and stared decidedly at some spot on the granite bench top.

  Yep, she had definitely moved away from him again. Dammit.

  She had held up her end, chatting with Mandy, knowing when to leave him alone, and reintroducing herself to his son. But they had let her down. He and Kane and the melancholic schtick they’d had going on for so long he couldn’t remember what life was like before.

  Well, he would just have to reel her back in and fast. He reached in the fridge for a plate of sausages he knew Matt would have left for them. He put them in the microwave, pressed the reheat button—every single dad’s favourite technological advance—and pulled up a barstool.

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ he admitted. ‘He pulls stunts like this all the time, and I’ve let him. But today it just felt wrong, like I was giving into him rather than parenting him, and I told him as much at the school, hence the huff upstairs.’

  Siena smiled though it didn’t reach her eyes. Of course it didn’t. This woman was happiest spending her days with pilots and businessmen and first class travellers, not sick kids and their clueless fathers.

  ‘Were you a huffer?’ he asked, doing his best to include her, to remind her that they were at least of the same species even if not of the same life experience.

  ‘As a kid?’ she asked. And, when he nodded, ‘Sure. World class. I was born twelve years after Rick, so it was inevitable that I become a pampered princess or a huffer. There was no way on God’s green earth that Rick would have allowed the former, and Dad was so busy working, as he thought that was the best way to provide for us after Mum was gone, to sway the balance.’

  ‘Sounds like they both deserved all they got.’

  James had meant it as a joke, but the second the words left his mouth Siena’s face turned pale as paper. Then he remembered that her father had died when she was a teenager. Something in the way she had talked about it made him sure she thought herself to blame.

  He’d been there. Losing the person you love the most and knowing deep down that there must have been something you could have done to stop it.

  ‘Hey, I didn’t mean anything by that,’ he said, reaching for her hand, but she pulled it away.

  ‘I know. It’s okay. Really.’

  The microwave pinged, telling them the sausages were cooked. James got off his seat and rapped on the window to tell Matt food was on. Matt waved him outside.

  ‘I won’t be a sec,’ he told Siena, hesitating before leaving her with her thoughts.

  The moment James left the room, Siena let her head fall until it hit the kitchen bench. Oversensitive, much? While seated thus, she heard a shuffle of sneakers on tile as Kane skulked in.

  Excellent. Now, after their awkward meeting at the school, she had no idea what to say to the kid.

  Should she laugh along with him that he’d got out of school early? Heck, she’d done so enough times to know a pro when she saw one. Or ought she lean down on her knees like Mandy until she was at his eye level and ask if he was feeling better? Well, that just gave her the heebie-jeebies. If anyone had baby-talked to her at Kane’s age she would have thought them imbeciles.

  Kids were little people. They were no more stupid or ignorant than many adults she knew. So the only thing she could do with Kane was be herself.

  ‘So, do you want a sausage on bread or are you still feeling too rotten?’ she asked.

  Kane watched her from beneath long dark lashes, his mouth twisting as he thought about it. She wasn’t sweet like Mandy. She wasn’t laid-back like Matt. And she wasn’t blinded by love like his dad. She shot him two raised eyebrows to show she was not one to be messed with.

  ‘So, what’s it to be, Kane-o? Tea or sympathy? As I see it, you’ve worked yourself into a corner so you can’t have both.’

  He blinked, surprised at having been spoken to like that. Then he squared his small shoulders and moved around her to the bread box. He pulled out a loaf and a breadboard and set to plying a heap with tomato sauce and butter.

  Well, there you go, Siena thought, more shocked that her bluff had worked than Kane had been at being bluffed. A glimmer of hope sprang from deep within her, like a ray of light at the bottom of a well.

  ‘Do you like mayonnaise?’ Kane asked without looking at her. ‘I hate it but Dad always has mayonnaise on his sausages.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Siena said, moving to stand by Kane, bringing a spare knife from the cutlery drawer for use in the mayo jar. ‘Bread, butter and tomato sauce only for me. Anything else is just not Australian.’

  Kane looked up at her with a small smile. He still looked tired, his eyes were still pink, but there was definite attitude behind that smile. The attitude was definitely not James and she wondered if he had inherited that along with his brown eyes from his mother.

  ‘Do you want to see my room now?’ Kane asked and, buoyed by the hope radiating from within her, Siena actually said yes.

  Kane grabbed a rolled up sausage in bread for himself, took a hold of her right hand in his sticky one and dragged her upstairs.

  Halfway up the stairs Siena’s confidence failed her as memories swarmed in. Okay, so the demon she’d thought she’d kicked had been bruised, but it was still alive and kicking. She paid close attention to the differences since the last time she had been upstairs several years before.

  The stairs had been carpeted in her time; now they were polished wood. The stair rail had been replaced, the polish and grain reminding her of the work in James’s workshop. She let her left hand
trail along the wood, feeling the craftsmanship, imagining James putting long hours into the piece to make sure the quality was up to his exacting standards.

  But, even with James’s stamp all over it, it was still the same staircase. She could have traversed the walk with her eyes closed.

  The hairs on the back of Siena’s neck stood on end as she prepared herself to face the whisper of old ghosts she had been running from for years. The fights with her brother after her many teenage tantrums, the accusations that her behaviour was putting undue stress on her father’s poor heart, the day her father died.

  Kane turned left at the top of the stairs. Some of the anxiety subsided as she saw that Rick’s room had been turned into a kind of games area for Kane. She’d have to tell him that, to be sure.

  Kane continued dragging her into what had once been her old room. Her pink floral wallpaper, white lace curtains and posters of Nirvana and Pearl Jam had been replaced by plain yellow walls, heavy white curtains and Kane’s favourite toys, including a football signed by the North Queensland Cowboys. But even as Kane pointed out his computer, his stereo and other prized possessions, Siena’s eyes kept flickering to the half-open door at the other end of the hall.

  The master bedroom.

  No doubt now James’s bedroom.

  Her dad’s old bedroom …

  She hadn’t meant to be home.

  She had gone AWOL from school. It had been swimming that day and she had forgotten her togs, so rather than get in trouble she had forged a sick note from her dad and had played truant.

  After a day spent at the local video game arcade, she had bought herself an ice-block with her bus money and had spent an hour walking home.

  She’d let herself in just before one o’clock, She’d clomped up the stairs and headed into her dad’s room looking for any spare change he might have left on his chest of drawers.

  And she had found him there, on his bed, not breathing.

  Her mouth suddenly went dry. And it was only when Kane called out to her that she realised she was at the end of the hall with her hand on the doorknob.

  ‘Siena!’ James called out when he and Matt made it back into the kitchen. His voice grew more insistent when there was no response, ‘Kane?’

  ‘You check upstairs and I’ll check out front,’ Matt suggested.

  James took the stairs two at a time, hoping against hope he would find both of them there, though considering the way Siena had looked upon Kane like an alien the last time they had been together he wasn’t all that hopeful.

  Buying a new toy for Kane or teaching him a new trick each time she came over wouldn’t endear Kane to her for ever. And he wasn’t entirely sure she had a clue of any other way to make a connection with him. But he wanted her to know he was more than willing to help her if she was willing to learn.

  But was he only being selfish? Following his own desires with such blind abandon and not thinking through Kane’s wishes and welfare?

  Or did Kane long for a new mother as James longed for Siena? With a blind reaching hope that one day it would all work out for him?

  Please don’t be gone, he thought, please don’t be gone. If she’d done a runner … He didn’t even want to go there.

  He slowed when he heard a murmur of voices coming from inside his bedroom of all places.

  ‘My dad made this one before I was born,’ he heard Kane say.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he heard Siena say, and his knees all but collapsed beneath him. He was overwhelmed by the relief flowing through his veins.

  ‘Dad didn’t make this one. It was Mum’s. She liked things a little flashier than Dad and I like. We like the classics.’

  James leant back against the hallway wall and bit back a smile. What a funny kid.

  ‘What’s your mum like?’ Kane asked, out of the blue, and James’s smile slipped.

  He almost decided to burst in to save Siena from answering that question but he knew he had to let this play itself out. Kane had brought it up. Kane was the one asking questions and talking about Dinah. And Kane had never once done that off his own bat with anyone bar James in the year since his mother’s death.

  ‘I never knew my mother,’ Siena said, her voice now a little quieter so James had to strain his ears to hear. He listened so hard his head hurt. ‘She died when I was born.’

  ‘Bummer,’ Kane whispered in some kind of awe that someone else he knew had lost their mother too.

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ Siena said.

  James was disappointed to think that might be the end of it until she said, ‘I wish I could have known her. Even for just a little while.’

  Her voice was even, but he heard a creak of bed-springs and he knew she’d had to sit down. On his bed. Siena Capuletti was right now on his bed. How the heck had they ended up in his bedroom of all places? His mouth twitched as he pictured her snooping and Kane catching her out. If that was how it had happened, maybe he was in luck after all.

  ‘You’re lucky, Kane-o,’ she said. ‘I am?’ Kane asked. ‘But—’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ she said cutting him off. ‘No buts about it. You know what your mother looked like outside of photographs. How she laughed. What her favourite food was. What time she liked to get up in the morning. The type of furniture she liked, even. Right?’

  Kane sighed and said, ‘Yeah, I do.’

  ‘And, besides all of that, you have a truly great dad. A dad who loves you so much that he would leave a perfectly nice barbecue lunch with sausages, and steak even, to pick you up early from school.’

  ‘You think my dad’s great?’ Kane asked, and James held his breath for longer than was probably healthy.

  ‘I do, Kane.’ She paused, and then said, ‘I think your dad is the greatest man I have ever met.’

  James let out his breath nice and slowly. The greatest man. She hadn’t said the greatest dad, but the greatest man. Oh, boy.

  ‘Heck, Kane-o, I reckon to have a dad like that you are spoilt rotten.’

  There was a small silence before the bed-springs creaked a little more and James imagined his son climbing up on to his bed beside the woman who had so quickly moved into his own heart.

  Come on, Kane, he wished as hard as he could. Do right by the both of us, kiddo. Show her we Dillon boys are worth sticking around for.

  ‘She hated mornings,’ Kane finally said. ‘Dad was on morning patrol to get me ready for school but she was a night owl, so she always lay beside me on the bed until I fell asleep at night. I sometimes wake up thinking she’ll be there …’

  More squeaking bed-springs. What was going on? James risked a peek through the slit of the doorway but he could only make out their legs—Kane’s skinny with knobbly knees below his school shorts, and Siena’s shapely, tanned, barefoot with hot red toenails and crossed neatly at the knee.

  ‘The last thing our mums would want is for us to be sad, Kane. Don’t you think yours would want you to be doing well in your school projects? And making friends in class? And smiling all the time like you do when you’re on your trampoline?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘And I think your dad would want that for you too. You must know that’s what he wants most in the whole world, for you to be happy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So, be happy.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that. Wake up, whack a smile on your face and aim to have a good day every day. It’s that simple.’ After a pause she added, ‘Okay, so it’s not that simple. But it’s a good start, right? And I think we would both do well to remember that a little more.’

  Kane’s legs leant sideways, into Siena, and her legs instantly uncrossed and went knock-kneed and askew. James realised that Kane had hugged her. He put a hand against the wall to steady himself.

  ‘Right, okay,’ Siena said, her voice suddenly thick. ‘We’d better get downstairs or your dad will think we’ve run away and he might then eat all the sausages himself.’

  James pushed
himself away from the wall and ran down two stairs and waited for Kane to barrel out the door before taking a step back up.

  ‘Dad!’ Kane called, his eyes bright and lit by an inner fire that made James glow from the inside out.

  ‘Yes, buddy?’ he said, doing his best not to take the kid in his arms and hug him tight.

  ‘I left my hot dog in my room.’ And Kane ran off as if the wind was at his heels.

  Siena came out of his room, her mouth falling into a shocked ‘O’ as she saw him at the top of the stairs. She glanced back into the room behind her.

  ‘Don’t tell me, Kane was showing off the camphor blanket box. He loves that piece. When he was younger and loved playing hide and seek he could be found there nine times out of ten. He smelled like camphor until he was five.’

  She smiled at him, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink. ‘Yep. That was it. Now, where are those hot dogs? I’m starved.’

  She slid past him, leaving behind a trail of expensive perfume, heat and bashfulness as she jogged down the stairs.

  After the strangest afternoon tea date of her life, eating reheated sausages over the kitchen sink with a guy, a kid and an ageing hippy, Siena said her goodbyes.

  ‘Is that your bike at the front door?’ Kane asked, as they walked straight past it.

  ‘Oh, heck, I almost forgot! I bought it for you,’ Siena said. ‘Considering I squished your last one, I thought it was only fair. But you are only allowed to ride it if you tell your dad every time and you always wear your helmet and pads. And wake up every day how we talked about, deal?’

  ‘Wow! Sure. Thanks,’ Kane gushed, taking it in his hands and spinning the handle bars and testing the bell. ‘I promise!’

  ‘Say goodbye,’ James told his son.

  ‘Goodbye, Siena!’ Though Kane was gone to them now, running the bike round and round the lounge.

  ‘What was that all about?’ he asked, walking her to his car as she hadn’t been able to convince him he had no need to drive her home. ‘Waking up every day?’

  She leant against the passenger door of his dark sedan and crossed her arms. ‘Nothing important,’ she said, more than glad he hadn’t come looking for them any earlier than he had.