Birthright

by Fiona Lowe

  ‘She says she was.’ He sighed. ‘I’d like to think that if a local was involved, they’d have stopped to help.’

  ‘Maybe it was a South Yarra skier. They tear through here as if the snow will melt before they get up the mountain. Did anyone see it happen?’

  ‘No one’s come forward yet but I’m asking around.’ He rubbed the back of his head as if he was trying to find the best way to tell her something. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie but because of the accident and the fact Margaret’s seventy-six, she needs to have a “fitness to drive” medical assessment.’

  Ellie wasn’t expecting that, especially as her mother’s driving record was impeccable and she held gold-class status with her insurance company—facts Margaret was forever reminding Sarah and Cameron of when they got pinged for speeding at least once a year. ‘Are you saying you don’t think she’s competent to drive any more?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. It’s up to the doc to determine her fitness. Mind you,’ he said dryly, ‘if her reflexes and eyesight are as good as the tongue lashing she’s just given me, she’ll pass with flying colours.’

  Ellie grimaced in sympathy. ‘You’re a very patient man, Graeme.’

  He gave a rueful shrug. ‘It gets tricky when you’re dealing with elderly people who’ve known you since you were a shitty kid throwing rocks on their roof. By the way, the car’s gone to Sorenson’s.’

  Despite herself, Ellie got a flash of a dimpled smile and the memory of a teasing laugh. Her heart rate sped up, but for the first time in years she couldn’t tell if it was protective anxiety or something less sinister. Not that it mattered when the reaction was identical. Surely that was a warning worth heeding? She swallowed and tried to sound not just normal but slightly uninterested. ‘Oh? Does Luke have a sideline in cars?’

  Graeme looked disconcerted. ‘Have you forgotten that Otto Sorenson owned the garage? He retired a few years ago and the boys took over. Luke’s the only brother who didn’t go into the business. Max and Henry still service cars but they’ve expanded to include a panel-beating workshop that’s always busy.’ He snapped his notebook closed. ‘They’re raking it in. I sometimes wonder if Luke regrets not joining them.’

  She thought of Sarah and Cameron. ‘I doubt working with family is easy.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. The Sorensons are a pretty tight family, much like yours. And working together hasn’t hurt Alex and Sarah. I read in the paper they just won some big cheese award.’

  Ellie didn’t disabuse Graeme of his presumption that she was ‘tight’ with her family and went instead to find her mother.

  Robyn, the nurse in charge of Urgent Care, met her at the nurses’ station. ‘Margaret’s fine. She’s adamant she didn’t black out and she passed the conscious state test except for naming the prime minister. But really, given the shenanigans in Canberra, that’s a bit of an unfair question, isn’t it? I’m hard-pressed to keep up myself.’ Robyn handed her a card. ‘We’ve made an appointment for her to see her GP tomorrow, but if she shows any signs of disorientation or complains of a headache, bring her straight back here.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘You can go in.’ Robyn waved her towards the cubicles.

  Ellie walked into the small Urgent Care department and stopped just outside the curtains. Right up to this point, she’d cheerfully avoided spending any one-on-one time with her mother since returning to the valley. Sucking in a deep breath, she parted the curtains and stepped inside.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’

  Her mother glanced up from a magazine, her expression perfectly schooled in what Ellie had long ago dubbed ‘Margaret’s polite face’. The small smile vanished and a combination of annoyance and disappointment rushed in to replace it.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  Ellie was simpatico with her mother’s reaction; she’d felt similarly when Sarah rang and delegated the collection task to her. She’d have preferred the jab of a rusty nail deep into the ball of her foot instead of taking her mother to Mill House. It seemed to Ellie that the only point of difference in their reactions was that Margaret didn’t appear to experience one iota of guilt about her dismay. Ellie didn’t want to feel guilt—after all, she’d spent years telling herself she had no reason to feel any guilt whatsoever. But despite her best efforts, the devious and manipulative emotion slithered in, flashed brightly and burned her like the sear of a brand.

  ‘I was expecting Sarah,’ Margaret said grumpily and dropped the magazine with dramatic flair.

  Ellie passed her mother her shoes. ‘She’s on the mountain so you’ve got me.’

  ‘Hmph.’ Margaret slipped on her shoes. ‘What’s she doing up there?’

  ‘No idea.’ She swung the wheelchair into position. ‘Do you need a hand?’

  Margaret did a very good impersonation of the Queen. ‘I’m perfectly capable of walking to the car, thank you very much.’

  ‘Hospital rules, Mrs J.’ Robyn breezed in, swishing back the curtains. ‘We have to escort you off the property.’

  Margaret cooperatively sat in the chair, giving a regal wave to everyone she met along the corridor between Urgent Care and the car.

  Fifteen minutes later, safely back at Mill House, Ellie placed a steaming cup of tea in front of her mother. ‘Here you go, Mum.’

  While she poured herself a cup, she took another look around the kitchen, trying to wrap her head around the unexpected changes. Granted, Ellie hadn’t been inside Mill House in a very long time, but some things stay the same no matter how many years pass. Her mother’s decorating passion had always been focused on the public rooms of the house and her bedroom. She kept these in immaculate condition and took great care to decorate them in the traditional plain features that suited the Georgian house. However, Margaret had little interest in cooking and the kitchen had never received much consideration other than the occasional lick of paint. Today it looked like something straight out of a photo shoot from Australian Country magazine.

  ‘Aren’t you going to drink your tea?’ she asked, noticing that Margaret was gazing at the cup and saucer as if they were a sad disappointment to her.

  ‘I’d prefer a Bloody Mary.’

  ‘It’s not quite noon.’

  Her mother frowned momentarily before quirking a well-maintained eyebrow. ‘For an organic vegetarian, free trade coffee– drinking lesbian, you’re such a stick-in-the-mud.’

  Ellie gaped slightly, not knowing whether to laugh or be offended. Although Margaret grumbled about her mostly vegetarian food preferences and her clothing choices—‘Goodness me, I’ve seen sacks with more style’—she’d never said the L word to her before; that was Cameron’s party piece. Then again, the last time she and her mother had discussed sex was nineteen years ago, and to be accurate, it hadn’t come close to a discussion.

  Ellie had been the one to raise the topic and she’d done all the talking. Margaret looked as if she was listening to the words but her interpretation of them had been so very different from Ellie’s that she may as well have been speaking a foreign language. Margaret’s eventual response of ‘You always have to make everything about you, don’t you?’ had effectively slammed the door shut on any future conversations. They had studiously avoided the topic ever since.

  Her mother, who always wore her social filter like armour, appeared to have let it slip and was suddenly dropping truth bombs.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t bump your head when you hit the pole?’

  ‘What?’ Margaret sounded distracted.

  The clink of a teaspoon against china sounded loudly in the room and Ellie realised with a jolt of surprise that her mother was stirring sugar into her tea. Margaret never took sugar. Growing up, Ellie was told sugar was the devil’s work, the root of all evil, and if she wanted to maintain the beautiful figure she’d inherited from her mother, she should forsake the sweet temptation. Sitting in the utterly unfamiliar kitchen with Margaret sipping sweetened tea without flinching, was utterly surreal. Had the minor prang rattled her mothe
r more than she was letting on?

  ‘Are you sure you’re feeling yourself, Mum?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’d be better if Sarah was here.’

  Don’t react. Do. Not. React. Ellie forced a smile. ‘What about having a bit of a lie down?’

  ‘Good heavens, Eleanor. I don’t have time for that. I need to freshen up before your father gets home and so do you. You know he likes it when we both dress up for him.’

  Despite the intervening decades since she’d last heard the old and dust-encrusted words, they were very familiar even if they were utterly out of place.

  ‘Mum,’ she said carefully, ‘Dad died when I was eight. Remember?’

  Margaret pursed her lips into the thin and disapproving line Ellie was all too familiar with, having been on the receiving end of that look for many years. ‘I could hardly forget that, now could I? And for his sins, the man left me virtually bankrupt.’

  Ellie blinked. This isn’t good. As a teenager, Ellie was often the recipient of Margaret’s contempt but not once had she ever heard it directed at her father. Usually when her mother talked about Kevin, her voice dropped in reverent tones imbued with sadness. He was the man she’d loved and death had snatched him from her far too early. If Margaret was taking a swipe at Kevin then something was seriously wrong. Perhaps she should take her mother back to hospital.

  ‘Thank God for good friends. Tonight’s party is all about celebrating that.’ Margaret rose to her feet and jabbed a finger at Ellie. ‘Go and get out of those disgusting clothes and put on the dress I bought you. When everyone arrives, you’re to be welcoming and polite. I won’t have you ruining the evening with any of your silly nonsense. Do I make myself clear?’

  The last time Ellie had heard those words was in 1997. This time they froze her to the chair and turned her boots into lead weights. Her heart rate escalated wildly and blood boomed in her ears, throbbing like the bass in a heavy metal band. Chaos spun her mind, thoughts leaping wildly, but amid the confusion, she was vaguely aware of her chest rising and falling far too quickly—like she’d just run up a hill and couldn’t catch her breath. She tried to speak. Tried to tell her mother today’s date and day, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Her skin burned unbearably hot and the temptation to rip at it, peel it off her body, sent her nails digging into her arms. Like an earthquake shaking the foundations of the house, the kitchen walls pressed in on her, threatening to bury and suffocate her. Get out. Get out, now!

  ‘Oh, there you both are.’ Sarah appeared in the kitchen along with the delicious doughy scent of freshly baked bread. She held up a green enviro bag. ‘I brought us some lunch.’

  ‘Can’t. Stay,’ Ellie managed to croak before standing on rubbery legs, grabbing her bag and flinging it over her shoulder.

  ‘Surely you can spare me five of your precious minutes to fill me in on what the hospital told you?’ Sarah’s tone was the same one Ellie heard her use when the kids or Alex stretched her patience to breaking point.

  Nothing would induce Ellie to stay in the house a second longer. Without a word, she half walked, half ran down the hall to the front door.

  ‘Ellie! Wait!’

  As she slammed the door shut behind her, she heard Sarah yelling, ‘Bitch!’

  Stumbling across the portico and down the worn bluestone steps, she fell into the garden bed and vomited all over the hellebores.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, just after Ellie drove across the bridge and officially left Mingunyah, she pulled onto the small patch of gravel where anglers fishing for trout parked their cars. She reached for her phone and was surprised her hand was steady when every other part of her was still soaked in tremble-inducing adrenaline. Bringing up Sarah’s number, she stared at the flashing cursor on the text box and pondered the best words to use when none would help.

  Mum acting very weird. Seems confused. Needs to go back to hospital. She wants you, not me. Ellie.

  She re-read it and worried her bottom lip as the word ‘bitch’ replayed in her head. Sarah had never exposed her opinion of Ellie with such bluntness before. Did it matter that rushing out of the house had only reinforced Sarah’s opinion of her? Wasn’t that a good thing? Ever since Ellie’s return to the valley, Sarah had been hell bent on trying to play happy families and Ellie constantly dodged and weaved to avoid the bulk of her invitations. Today’s meltdown might have done her a favour. Sarah and Anita now had every reason to kick back, drink wine and enjoy bitching about ‘the bitch’, free of any familial guilt. They could bask in their own superior commitment to the extended family. Ellie was finally off the hook.

  It was that easy.

  The tumble of conflicting emotions churning her gut mocked her. Crap. It was an unwelcome surprise to discover there was a big difference between her assumption that Sarah thought she was thoughtless and self-indulgent, and hearing herself actually being called a bitch.

  Come on. This is a get-out-of-jail-free card. A total gift. Accept it and move on.

  Only some things were much easier to say than to do. A motivation greater than her resistance moved her finger on the screen. She adjusted the cursor, placing it neatly between the words ‘me’ and ‘Ellie’, and tapped out ‘Sorry’. She immediately hit send. Regret was instant. She set the phone to silent.

  With her mouth acrid and disgusting after vomiting, she lifted her water bottle to her lips and sucked again. It was empty. She checked for a spare bottle in the door holder and inside the glove box. Nothing. Perhaps it had rolled under a seat. Hopping out of the car, she opened both rear doors and peered under the seats. God, she really should clean the car. She pulled out a library book, Noah’s plastic pterodactyl toy that he’d sworn he’d lost at school, a muesli-bar wrapper and bevy of parking receipts, but no water bottle.

  She heard the rumble of a diesel engine and backed out of the car before straightening up. This time she recognised the vehicle immediately and raised her hand in greeting. It occurred to her this was the third time she’d met Luke, and each time he’d driven up to her in his white ute. Knight on a white charger? Ellie scoffed at the thought. She was hardly a damsel in distress and if life had taught her anything it was that the only person she could depend upon to rescue her was herself.

  Luke hopped out of the ute and slammed the door shut. ‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this. You got car problems?’

  ‘Not today. I pulled over to send a text before I hit the dead zone.’

  A wistful look crossed his face. ‘I quite like that twenty-K stretch between Mingunyah and Valley View. The phone’s silent and it’s just me, the road and my thoughts.’

  She laughed. ‘That sounds very deep.’

  He speared her with his teasing smile. ‘That sounds like you think blokes can’t have deep thoughts.’

  Her head suddenly moved of its own accord, sending her hair swinging in an arc as she glanced playfully up at him. ‘Can they?’

  Panic hit. What the hell are you doing? You don’t flirt, remember?

  ‘I can only speak for myself.’ Luke’s vivid blue eyes were doing that disconcerting intense gaze again, only this time instead of studying her face or quickly grazing her chest, they were fixed on her knees. ‘Took a tumble, did you?’

  Her hands automatically and ineffectually brushed at her muddy jeans. She could spin him some line about tripping over but offthe-cuff lies had a way of coming back to bite her. ‘I threw up in a garden bed.’

  His light-hearted expression morphed into a frown. ‘You okay? Should you be driving?’

  She nodded, trying not to let his kindness slide under her skin and warm her. ‘It was a case of better out than in. I’m fine now, although I’d kill for some water.’

  ‘What about a cup of tea?’

  ‘For that I’d—’ She bit off the flirty and dangerous ‘be eternally grateful’. She went out of her way to avoid any sort of obligation to anyone. ‘A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you.’

  Luke opened one of the big silver
toolboxes on the back of the ute and grabbed a thermos, some enamel mugs and a cool pack like the one Noah took to school, except Luke’s wasn’t black and red with a superhero on the front. His had a broad blue and pink border.

  ‘Your daughter’s?’ she asked, taking the opportunity to find out some information about him as she followed him to the picnic table.

  He looked at her blankly. ‘I’m not married.’

  She almost laughed at his naiveté. ‘That doesn’t mean you can’t be a father.’

  ‘I s’pose not.’ His large hands gripped the top of the thermos and, with a flick of his wrist, he uncapped it and splashed hot water over the tea bags. ‘I guess it’s just not a scenario I’ve ever entertained.’

  She pointed at the bag. ‘In that case, I’m guessing you’re a Frozen fan.’

  Understanding dawned in his eyes, immediately followed by two pink spots that circled the dimples on his cheeks. ‘It belongs to my niece. Izzy’s six and we had a picnic lunch together yesterday. She was very worried I didn’t have a lunch bag to keep my food cold and she made me pinkie-promise her I’d use this one. I’ll be in serious trouble if I don’t.’ He handed her a mug of tea. ‘And for the record, I’m a total Frozen fan. I mean, what’s not to love about strong women?’

  She desperately wanted to quip something smart and dismissive but her body was melting in a way it hadn’t done in years and her mind was flashing the word ‘danger’ in bright red letters. Her hand jiggled the tea bag and she studied the action as if her life depended on it. ‘You’re up to speed with your Disney films then?’

  ‘Put it this way. It got me over the line at the footy trivia night.’

  She looked up quickly, not sure if he was teasing her or not, and he laughed at her expression.

  ‘Yeah, the boys won’t let me live that down for a while, but hell, there was a weekend for two up for grabs at a boutique B&B in Rutherglen. I wasn’t about to let that go even if I did have to admit to knowing the lyrics of “Let It Go”.’

  This plumber—this country bloke—wasn’t fitting into any of the boxes she usually slotted men into. ‘I hope your partner appreciates the hit you took for a minibreak.’