by Julie Mac
She turned away from him once more, hugging her arms about her. ‘You say you don’t want the business—’ she was surprised at how steady her voice sounded, ‘—you say you don’t want revenge. So what do you want?’
He didn’t answer for a long time, and Kate thought he must have walked away. But then she heard his voice. It was quiet; so quiet she had to strain to hear his words.
‘I want to marry you.’
‘What?’ The tears began to flow, silently. They flowed down her cheeks and dripped against her folded arms.
‘I want you to be my wife.’
She began to sob. ‘But—I—can’t. Are you—mad? I’m—your—cousin.’
‘Cousins marry. It’s neither illegal nor immoral.’
The icing on the cake. As the prodigal nephew, he could expect a warm welcome into the McPherson family bosom—and the business. But as Kate’s husband, his gold-plated future was doubly guaranteed! Why else would he want to marry her?
He hadn’t mentioned love. Of course he hadn’t mentioned love. Justine owned his love.
Kate turned, pushed past him, ran through the kitchen, up the stairs and into the only haven she could think of for now—Grandma Doris’s sewing room.
She slammed the door and sank down behind it. She dropped her head into her hands and cried in racking sobs. Presently her body stilled, and she sat for a long time, watching the rain run down the windowpanes. The house is weeping, too, she thought.
She heard his footsteps on the stairs and tensed when he knocked on the door. She stood up, stepped back and said, ‘Come in.’
He opened the door but didn’t come in.
‘I brought you some coffee,’ he said, handing her a cup, and looking at her with concern.
‘Thank you.’ Of course my eyes are red. I’ve been crying for half an hour.
He didn’t turn to leave, and his eyes stayed fixed to hers. He said nothing. She too, held her silence. There was, after all, nothing more to say.
At last he spoke: ‘I’m sorry Kate, I really am.’
‘What for?’ Her weeping had made her voice husky. ‘What are you sorry for? Making love to me? Trying to make sure I don’t get to be head of McPherson’s? Coming back to find justice for your mother, for yourself?’
‘I’m not sorry for making love to you, Kate. And I’m not sorry for wanting to make sure my mother has what she deserves. And I’ll say it again, yes, I did have revenge in mind, but like I said, those ideas disappeared when I met you. I don’t need revenge. My mother doesn’t need revenge. McPherson’s is a great company, and you’ll make a great CEO, Kate. Sure, I’d like to do work for the company, but I don’t need to contest the job simply to prove a point. And I won’t.’
He shook his head then and stepped forward, reaching for her hands.
‘What I am sorry for is creating pain for you. I was wrong—I didn’t need to come over to New Zealand right now, didn’t need to push the issues. I could have waited until your dad had been able to talk to you, prepare you for the knowledge that there’s other family members around. He had plans for a family reunion, a happy family reunion, when he gets back from his honeymoon.’ He dragged in a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry that I’ve upset you, hurt you, caused unnecessary stress. Please believe me, Kate. Please forgive me.’
‘No, it should be me saying I’m sorry, Sam, for … everything.’ She closed her eyes momentarily and stifled a lingering sob. ‘I’m sorry that my grandfather was so stubborn. I’m sorry your mum and you suffered because of it.’ She thought again of the little boy, long ago, learning his daddy was dead. And she thought of the young mum, all alone, giving up her baby girl. She felt their pain, deep, sharp and searing, as if it were her own.
‘Oh, God, what a mess …’ She pulled her hands from Sam’s, reached up and ran her fingers down his face. ‘Things should have been different then for your mother. And you. And I think my—our—grandfather, if he was alive today, would have wanted to … to … say sorry. He missed her, Sam—your mum—at the end, he called out for her.’
Sam took hold of her hands again, and she saw the brightness of unshed tears in his eyes.
‘We’ll talk more,’ he said, ‘later. We need to talk, about you and me. Right now, I have to go out for a while. Bob who grazes the cattle here just phoned. A couple of the fishing boats down at Waikauri Harbour slipped their moorings in the storm. They need all the manpower they can get to stop them washing up onto the rocks. Will you be all right until I get back?’
She nodded.
‘Then we’ll talk.’ He paused. ‘Where will your father be right now?’
‘My father? What’s he got to do with this?’
‘Everything. Do you remember where he’ll be?’
She shook her head and closed her eyes. ‘I can’t … can’t remember, exactly. Perth I think.’
***
She heard the Range Rover drive away, then she began searching. The room was just as it had been on the day Grandma’s heart had given up. May Symes had tidied it, and each week it was dusted—but Grandma’s boxes of threads and thimbles, her drawers full of patterns, materials and tapestries were just as Kate remembered.
She found what she was looking for stacked away under a pile of half-finished tapestries. It was an old biscuit tin. Early on in her childhood, she remembered Grandma telling her the tin was private and she was never to open it. Now she understood why. The lid showed a faded picture of a thatched English cottage surrounded by roses, and a little slip of paper, stuck to the lid with Sellotape, bore the word ‘Rose’. It wasn’t tied or locked in any way. But then, her grandfather had never had any reason to enter this room. Grandma’s secrets were safe here.
‘Sorry, Grandma, sorry, Rose,’ she whispered as she prised the lid from the tin. A collection of snapshots, along with a few faded letters, birthday and Christmas cards, added flesh to the story Kate already knew. A bundle of old photos, held together with a rubber band, and showing a boy, then a teenager, then a young man atop or beside a succession of horses confirmed that Sam Shanahan, her recent lover, was indeed the son of her Aunt Rose. She skimmed the letters and cards, suppressing her guilt at doing so, and read of her aunt’s joys and sorrows. With a pain in her heart, she read of the pride—and occasional frustrations—of a woman with an only son. The letters, cards and photos had been stored so the most recent were on the top. As she sifted through the snippets of life a daughter had shared with her mother for over thirty years, she sometimes came across her own name. ‘How’s Kate getting on at university?’ or, ‘Glad to hear Kate made the school hockey team.’
Presently, Kate came across a reference to her mother’s death, and she held the letter against her chest and wept quietly for a few minutes.
Then she picked up a letter near the bottom of the tin and began scanning the neat, rounded handwriting that was by now so familiar. Shock at the words she read hit her like a physical blow.
Chapter 11
‘Kate. If you’re there, pick up the phone. For God’s sake.’ His voice was rough. She stood frozen, just inside her apartment door, listening to the laden silence. Then the answer machine beeped when he put down the phone, and she breathed again. He’d left messages on her phone, and texted several times, before she’d turned it off.
She was exhausted, wet and cold; the journey home had been hell. She’d stuffed the photos and letters back into the tin and run down the long drive and back to the beach cottage in pouring rain. Even dressed in her grandmother’s gumboots and an old oilskin raincoat, she was soaked. She’d hastily locked the beach cottage and thrown her bag into the ute, not stopping to change. The company Cessna was still at the airstrip, but she knew she was not in the right frame of mind to fly the small plane back to Auckland safely, especially in this weather. The forest manager up here had his pilot’s licence and would happily fly it south in the next couple of days.
She gunned the ute down the winding Waikauri road far too fast for the horrendous condition
s, thankful when at last she reached the turnoff for State Highway One. At least then she wouldn’t pass Sam on his way home. But her problems weren’t over. She had to force the ute through several flooded culverts on the road, praying the water wouldn’t effect the engine or brakes.
She’d made it to the state highway safely, but had to contend with torrential rain all the way back to Auckland.
Now, as she shrugged out of her wet clothes in her bathroom, she realised her neck and shoulders were aching from hunching forward to peer at the road ahead. For most of the journey, the window wipers hadn’t been able to cope with the heavy rain.
She showered, then made herself a cup of tea. She felt sick and remembered she hadn’t eaten all day: she toasted some bread and added peanut butter, but most of it sat uneaten on the plate.
She crossed to her telephone and pressed the button on the answering machine. There were three other messages from Sam. They all said more or less the same thing: ‘Kate, call me, please. This is important.’ She stifled a sob. He sounded desperate, but he could never be as desperate as she felt right at this moment.
He didn’t know. But she did.
She clutched her hands to her stomach. The second time they’d made love, she’d found the fresh packet of protection that was always left at the beach house for visitors caught short.
But the first time … the first time their loving had been unprotected. And if she were to become pregnant …
She fell onto her bed and cried herself to sleep. In the minutes before sleep finally claimed her, she whispered into her pillow, over and over, ‘Who am I?’
***
On Monday morning she woke feeling worse. She stood in front of her bathroom mirror, examining the dark, cavernous hollows around her eyes, and decided the office could do without her today. She phoned Christina and told her she wasn’t feeling well.
‘Another bad headache,’ she lied expediently. She spent the day pacing the apartment, her brain aching with trying to make sense of what had happened.
‘Too many family secrets,’ she cried out loud, thumping the wall at one stage. In her mind, she went over and over her childhood—especially the time when Mummy was still alive. But there had been no clues, of that she was sure.
Sam left one more message on her answer machine, and later Christina left a message: ‘Sorry to bother you when you’re not well, but I thought you should know I’ve had several calls from Sam Shanahan. He wanted to know your address, but I didn’t give it to him.’ She paused. ‘Ring me if you need me.’
Kate played Sam’s latest message again and cried. She had loved him. Really, truly loved him, and for a brief time, she thought maybe, just maybe he loved her back. Their lovemaking had been just that—lovemaking. Not sex, but a giving and receiving of love.
But their loving was wrong, and now she must find a way to make sure it never happened again, ever. They were cousins in a newly reunited family. Avoiding him for the rest of her life might be difficult, but by God, she’d try.
She made a quick decision. She’d go away somewhere for a couple of weeks. Bali maybe, or Fiji. By then, with a bit of luck, he’d be gone.
***
Her father arrived early on Wednesday, the morning of the day she was to fly to Fiji. She let him into her apartment and felt the bitterness seep into her heart. She’d trusted her dad to care for her, protect her. And look what had happened.
He appeared strained. She made him a flat white on her espresso machine and he fiddled nervously with his cup.
‘There’s something I have to tell you, Kate. Something I should have told you years ago—many years ago, when you were a little girl.’
He shifted uneasily in his chair. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me.’ He got up from his chair and poured a shot of whisky from the decanter on Kate’s sideboard.
It had to be bad, thought Kate. Dad never drank alcohol before five in the afternoon.
He sat down again and took a sip of the amber liquid. ‘This is very difficult.’
‘I know,’ she said flatly.
‘What?’
‘I know, Dad. I know I’m adopted.’
He paled, his face crumpling in sorrow. ‘You’ve found out somehow? Oh, Kate, my dear, I’m so sorry I wasn’t the one to tell you.’
He banged his fist on his knee. ‘Your mother and I had decided to tell you when you were six. But then, she died, and I just couldn’t bring myself to cause you more trauma. You were such a little thing, and you were grief-stricken over losing your mother. As the years went on, it became harder to tell you. I was a coward, Kate. Maude told me so.’
She smiled, just a little, picturing bossy Maude telling off her new husband. Then her smile was gone, and her mouth twisted as she fought tears.
‘You should have told me, Dad.’ The tears began to fall. ‘Then I wouldn’t have … got involved … with Sam.’
‘I know Sam wants to marry you. And don’t you see—this makes it easier. You’re not blood cousins.’
She looked at her father in horror. He didn’t know the horrible, horrible truth.
‘Dad, he’s my brother.’ She fell on her knees by his chair and rocked back and forth, weeping into her hands.
‘I read it in a letter Rose had written to Grandma.’
‘Hey, calm down Katy darling, I think you’ve got your wires crossed somewhere.’ He rubbed her shoulders.
‘No, Dad, no.’ She could see the letter, remember the hateful words perfectly. ‘My heart is broken when I think of the little girl I gave away,’ Rose had written to her mother, ‘but I gain some comfort from the knowledge that Rob and Marina now have the child they’ve always wanted. I know she will have a good upbringing.’ Kate had checked the dates on the letter: the match was perfect.
Rose knew and her grandmother knew, perhaps her mother had known, but she knew now her father hadn’t. Grandma Doris would certainly have been capable of arranging the adoption—an emergency call from her daughter telling her the authorities were recommending adoption, then some fast string-pulling on both sides of the Tasman would have done it. Oh yes, her grandmother was a woman of some influence, matriarch of a wealthy family—she could have pulled it off.
Only it was a family secret that had terrible consequences.
Between sobs, in jerky, hardly coherent words, she told her father what she’d learned from the letter, up there in Grandma Doris’s sewing room.
At first, she didn’t realise what her father was saying. She swallowed a sob and sniffed. Then she heard something about Spain.
‘You’ve got it wrong, darling, very wrong. Do you understand?’ He squeezed her shoulder.
She looked at him, her eyes wide. ‘Tell me. Please,’ she whispered.
‘You’re not Rose’s child. I know about the daughter she adopted out, and she’s not you. I’ve met her.’
Kate felt a painful lurch of hope, deep in her heart.
‘Then who am I?’ She lifted her hand to touch the gold chain at her neck, and a picture of her mother—the only mother she’d known—filled her mind. Her mother, her beautiful mother Marina, was smiling at her.
‘You’re the daughter of a young Spanish girl your mother and I met when we went to Europe,’ her dad said quietly. ‘She was a waitress in a little hotel we were staying in.’
Kate stared at her father. She shook her head slowly. ‘So I’m not a McPherson?’
‘Not in blood, no. But in every other way.’
‘And I’m not Sam’s sister.’ She brushed at her wet cheeks, and dragged in a jerky breath. ‘Please … please tell me about my … my mother.’
Her dad nodded, and a hint of a smile lifted his lips. ‘She was very heavily pregnant. The father was a married man and her family had thrown her out their home. She was very beautiful—like you, darling—with typical Spanish looks. Your mother and I took an instant liking to her.
‘We’d been married six years then, and your mother was desperate for a baby. She’d had three miscarria
ges. When she heard Francesca’s story, she started thinking. To cut a long story short, we arranged with Francesca to adopt her baby. You were born early … Francesca was very ill. They nursed her at the hotel, and we looked after you. You were ours, Kate, from the very moment of your birth. Nothing can ever change that.’
He pulled her up from the floor, and held her for a long time.
‘We had been in Europe for two years,’ he said presently. ‘When we came back, your mother felt it unnecessary to tell anyone you were adopted—apart from the two sets of grandparents. And they were sworn to secrecy.’
‘But I don’t have your blood in my veins.’ Kate looked up at her father.
‘It doesn’t matter what’s in your veins. You’re mine, and your mother and I couldn’t have loved you more. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you years and years ago. It was wrong of me. I can see that now.’
He handed her a tissue from the box on the coffee table and she wiped her eyes. ‘Now,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘we’ve got some people to see, including a young man who’s very anxious to talk to you.’
‘Sam?’ She shivered.
‘The very one.’
‘He’s got someone else, Dad,’ she said sadly.
He smiled, a wide, happy smile. ‘I don’t think so, darling.’
***
She cancelled her flight, and brought the suitcase she’d packed for Fiji. They drove to the airfield at Dairy Flat, and her father guided her to a hired Cessna.
‘Someone left the company plane up north,’ he confided with a wink.
***
She closed her eyes when her father approached Grandad’s airstrip, and kept them closed until they’d taxied to the top of the strip. When she opened them, Sam was there, by the gate.
‘You and Sam have something to discuss, I believe,’ her father said with a conspiratorial grin as he left the plane. ‘We’ll see you in the house in a little while.’
She sat in the plane and watched her father walk across the airstrip towards Sam. He patted the younger man on the arm as they passed, and then Sam began walking towards the plane.
