by Lilly Mirren
He was himself again.
Relief coursed through her veins, and her throat ached. She'd go home and cry into a pillow, but for now, she had to seem happy, at ease, see if she could get him talking.
They sat on the back veranda together. Sharon made them each another cup of tea and sliced the cake to set on two plates. So far, Meg hadn't touched hers. Brad ate his slice in two bites, then picked up the crumbs with the end of one thumb.
"I love cinnamon teacake, it's my favourite," he said.
She smiled. "I remember."
He grinned for a single moment, then the smile faded as though he remembered he wasn't supposed to show it to her. "Yeah, of course. So, what are you doing up here in Brisbane?"
She shrugged. "We've been writing to each other for a while, I thought we should see each other face-to-face."
He nodded, watching her closely. "Okay."
"It seems like your physiotherapy is going well."
"Yeah, I'm enjoying swimming again. It's different for me now, of course…but I can manage it, so I'm happy with that. Helps build my upper body strength too."
"That's great, Brad. You love the water, so I'm glad you're able to get back out in it."
He inhaled a slow breath. "I guess so." Then, his eyes lit up. "I've decided to go back to uni."
Meg's eyes widened. "Really? That's wonderful. Are you going to study business?”
"No. I've decided to change to engineering. I've always loved designing things, and I'm good at maths. I think it'll be a better option for me…now."
Meg wanted to reach for his hand, wanted to kiss his lips, do something to show him how excited she was, how happy it made her to hear he wasn't giving up on life. Instead, she pushed her hands under her thighs, sitting on them to keep them from straying over to his.
"That's a great idea. I'm so happy for you."
His eyes sparkled, and he seemed happy to chat for now. Meg was delighted and launched into a series of funny stories about hairdressing clients she'd had since he'd been gone. He laughed out loud, a sound she hadn't heard in so long it made her heart sing.
Finally, it was time to go. She had an afternoon shift at the salon, and it was a two-hour drive home.
"I wish I could stay longer," she said, standing and reaching for her purse.
He nodded, wheeled closer. "Thanks for coming. It was good to catch up."
She set a hand on his shoulder and on an impulse leaned down to press her lips to his. The kiss was warm, friendly and familiar. When her eyes blinked open, she found him staring at her with a tortured expression.
"Don't…"
"What? Why not? You're my husband."
"Not for much longer," he replied. "Don't start things up again between us. You're better off without me."
She straightened, pressing her hands to her hips as anger surged in her gut. "Better off? Is that what you're telling yourself? Because it's selfish, that's what it is."
His eyes narrowed. "Selfish?"
"Yes, selfish. Why do you get to decide what's best for me? It's not up to you. That's my call."
He huffed. "I don't know how many times I have to tell you the same thing before you finally get it - I don't want to be married to you! I don't love you anymore, not like that." Brad's mouth was set in a line, his eyes hard.
Meg gaped. She wouldn't let herself cry, not in front of him. How could he be so callous, so uncaring?
"Fine, I'm leaving. Have a nice life."
She stormed through the back door and passed by Sharon in the kitchen.
"Meg…? Meg, where are you going?" Sharon ran after her along the hall and pulled her by the arm before she reached the front door.
Meg spun on her, eyes flashing. "He is…he's just mean. He's mean!" She didn't know what to say, words wouldn't come. She sputtered with fury.
Tears threatened, but she swallowed them, instead pressing her lips together and breathing deep.
"What did he say, honey?" Sharon's eyebrows pulled low over her green eyes. Eyes just like Brad's.
"It doesn't matter. Thank you for having me, the cake was lovely. I'll call you later." She hugged Sharon, kissed her cheek.
"I love you, honey," Sharon whispered against her hair.
Meg's eyes flooded. She blinked hard.
With a nod, she fled, running down the driveway as fast as she could in her patent leather flats. She threw the car into drive and hit the accelerator, the back end fishtailing as she sped away from the curb. Tears blinded her, and so she let them fall, wetting her cheeks as she drove.
Chapter 40
Cindy
The jingle of the bell over the cafe's front door as the last of the staff left for the evening filled Cindy with relief. She sighed. Another night over, one more new staff member trained. Daniel still needed some help with this and that, but he was reasonably well versed in how to wait and bus tables now, giving Cindy back some of the space she needed to manage the place.
She expertly counted through the cash on hand, added up the credit card receipts, then got out her calculator to peck away at the numbers with one finger. Sarah wouldn't be pleased. She'd been banging on lately about transferring everything to the computer, but Cindy had told her she could only manage one massive change at a time. Replacing Thad and changing happy hour was about all she could deal with for the moment. Maybe when things settled down again, she could bring the cafe into the current century.
With a satisfied sigh, she leaned back in her chair. A smile flitted across her face. They'd made a profit. A decent-sized one too - with everything they'd brought in this week, they had enough to make the payment on the loan at the bank.
She wouldn't lose the cafe or her home. At least not this month, anyway.
Cindy packed up her things, grabbed her purse and locked the money in the safe before locking up the cafe. She turned to head towards her car, startled by a figure standing in the darkness.
"It's just me," Andrew said.
Her heart thudded back into place. "For heaven's sakes, you scared the blue out of my jeans."
He chuckled. "Sorry, I didn't think about that. I was waiting for you to lock up so we could talk."
She strode past him, her hand in her purse trying out every object it found as she searched for her keys. Hairbrush, no. Change purse, no. Reusable shopping bag, no.
Finally, her fingers closed around the set of keys, and they jangled in her purse. She pulled them free and held them tight.
"Wait, please, Cindy. Talk to me. Just for a moment. I didn't want to do this on the phone."
She spun to face him, her heart hammering against her rib cage. "The phone? The phone would've been nicer. You left without even talking to me. There was a note. That's it. A note. Do you know how that made me feel, Andrew? After so many years of marriage, you left a note to tell me you'd found someone else and weren't coming home."
He jammed his hands into the pockets of his pants. At least he had the decency to look sheepish, maybe even a little repentant. Although, she was certain that had more to do with the fact she was yelling at him than that he was actually sorry for what he'd done. She wasn't convinced he knew how to be sorry, since that would require him to think of someone else's feelings.
"I am sorry for that. I know you probably don't believe me, but I am."
He could always read her like a book.
She inhaled a slow breath, waited for her pulse to slow a little and pushed a smile onto her face. "Never mind. What's done is done."
"I want to see you. You and the kids. Maybe I could come over to the house sometime…"
Her eyes narrowed. "No. Definitely not."
"They're my kids too," he objected, his voice rising.
She huffed. "They're grown adults, Andrew. If you want to see them, you can call them. It has nothing to do with me."
"And it's my house…"
Her eyes flashed. "Not anymore, it's not. You gave up the right to call it your home when you walked out and left me with the bi
lls to pay all alone."
"I didn't know what else to do. And I was in love…"
She rolled her eyes. "In love?" She huffed. "You were in love. That's wonderful. To me, the worst of it is the debts. You didn't love me anymore? Fine, leave - run off with your secretary. I never liked the woman, and she deserves you. But why did you have to leave me with all this debt? That was a low blow, even for you, Andrew. I should be thinking about retirement, not working double shifts to pay for a mortgage I didn't even know about."
"I didn't mean for it to happen. It just did. I lost control…"
She leaned against her car door, crossed her legs at the ankle. "I'm listening - I'm ready for an explanation. You've hinted at a few things, but I think I deserve the whole story. Where did all our money go, Andrew? Did you buy yourself an island somewhere or maybe a secret yacht for you and your girlfriend? Huh? What did you do that required so much of our life savings?"
Cindy couldn't believe the way she was talking. She'd never spoken to anyone in her life with that kind of attitude. It was clear Andrew was as shocked as she was by her combination of confidence and anger as she lounged against the car.
"I…uh. Well, give me a minute to explain."
"I'm all ears," she said.
"The business was going downhill for years before I closed it for good."
"Why didn't you tell me?" she shrieked, her voice getting louder by the minute. "We could've done something about it."
He shrugged. "I was embarrassed. You've always been so successful at business, and you've never really respected me. But you thought I was good at my job, if nothing else, and so I stuck at it. I wanted to prove to myself, and to you, that I could do it. If I'd told you, you would've hated me."
She frowned. Was that really how he felt? He'd never let her know he cared at all what she thought.
"I wouldn't have hated you. Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Oh, it's nothing you did, really. I always knew I wasn't good enough for you. I tried to live up to your standards, but you're so perfect, Cindy - no one can be as perfect as you. No one."
Cindy's brow furrowed deeper still. "That's not fair. You can't put that on me. I didn't push you. I never criticised you."
"Yeah, but you judged me," he said with a sniff.
She couldn't argue with that. He'd given her so many reasons to judge, and she'd tried not to do it, but the anger had boiled up within every time he let her down, and she couldn't seem to help it. Maybe she had been too hard on him, but that was still no excuse.
"I thought I could fix it, that I could turn things around. So, I borrowed from the bank. It was a small loan at first, meant to float the business for a few months until I could turn a profit on an investment I made. But then, that didn't work, and it seemed wrong not to keep trying after I'd borrowed all that money, so I borrowed more…" His voice broke, and his head dropped until he was staring at the pavement. "I'm sorry I let you down, Cindy." His shoulders slumped.
She studied him, pity stirring in her heart. "Thank you for saying that."
"I wanted to pay it back, honestly I did. But nothing worked. I was getting in deeper and deeper, and soon it seemed like the best option would be for me to close the business entirely. So, that's what I did."
"And then you ran away from the mess you made," Cindy added.
He shrugged. "I didn't know what else to do."
"You could've faced it. We could've faced it together, the two of us."
"You'd have hated me," he repeated. "I couldn't take that on top of everything else."
She sighed, shook her head. "Well, you've made a right mess of everything now. Haven't you?"
His lips pursed. "Keisha hates it in Tweed Heads. She wants to move back to the Cove. Says her family's here and she's lonely."
Cindy's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying, Andrew?"
He sighed. "I'm telling you that Keisha and I are coming home. We’re moving to Emerald Cove."
Chapter 41
Sarah
Sunlight glinted off the pen poised between her fingers. Sarah glanced up as a cloud skidded into place, throwing shade across the porch. A wind kicked up in a burst, sending the top sheet of paper in her lap flying. It dipped and spun, soared then fell onto the newly stained hardwoods that made up the finished porch.
With a sigh, she stood from her comfortable white Adirondack chair and reached for the paper, then slid back into the seat. The scent of salt and freshly cut grass on the air tickled her nostrils, and she smiled as Oscar padded across the lawn in front of her with a stick wedged in his mouth. He lay on the grass, positioning himself so he could see Sarah, then set about gnawing at the stick, pulling the bark off it in strips.
"It doesn't get much better than this. Right, Oscar?" she called.
The dog's tail thumped on the ground, but he didn't look up.
She grinned, scanning the outlook with one hand shielding her eyes from the sun's glare where it reflected off the porch railing.
The cottage was finished. It was too pretty to live in. At least, that was what she'd told her mother. She almost hated to use the new porcelain sink in the bathroom or the gleaming stainless steel stove. She'd never owned a home before. The unit in Sydney had been rented, and before that, she'd been a student living in a dormitory. It was strangely exhilarating, knowing that the cottage belonged to her.
And now that Mick no longer worked for her, she was curious to see what their future might be. Not that his professional relationship was the cause of her reticence. It's what she'd said, what she'd tried to believe, but it wasn't true. Sure, it made sense to keep their connection professional, but her fears were more abstract than that. More grounded in the failures of her parents' marriage, a marriage she'd failed to truly understand for her entire life until the moment her father left her mother, left them all, really.
If she was being entirely honest with herself, she was angry at him for leaving her as well. She hadn't wanted to admit that, because it made no sense - she didn't live at home, wasn't a child any longer, but he’d abandoned them all when he left the way he did.
He hadn't talked to her about it. She didn't know how unhappy he was - of course she could look back now with the clarity of hindsight and glimpse the warning signs. But at the time, she'd thought of those things only as the quirks of a happy marriage between two very different people. They'd successfully shielded their children from the ugliness of open conflict, instead hiding their strife behind a veil of normalcy, polite exchanges and separate lives filled with the busyness of work, activities and friendships.
She'd seen her relationship with Jeremy through new eyes when her parents' carefully constructed ruse fell apart. Now she wasn't sure she could trust a man with her heart. What if she did it again - got deeply involved with someone who wasn't what he seemed? Mum had done it with Dad, Sarah had fallen for Jeremy - perhaps Mick wasn't the man she thought he was and she was simply unable to see it. Maybe it wasn't that she didn't trust Mick, but that she didn't trust herself.
Still, she'd miss having him around - climbing ladders, wielding hammers and play wrestling with the dog when he thought no one was looking.
The crackle of tyres on the freshly poured gravel driveway made Oscar's ears prick. He rushed around the side of the house barking, his tail held high.
She probably should rescue whoever that was. If it'd been Mick, her mother, Vicky or Meg, Oscar would've stopped barking by now. But the sound of his consternation rang out loud and clear across the lawn.
With a sigh, she set the manuscript on a small, round wicker table and pushed out of the chair. She strode to the front door and swung it open.
"Oscar! Come here, boy." She tented a hand over her eyes and peered into the blinding sunlight, her vision struggling to adjust after the relative shade of the porch.
She didn't recognise the vehicle. Some kind of sedan, a new one by the look of it - white, nondescript. A rental car company logo stuck on the back window.
&nbs
p; Oscar backed towards her but didn't stop barking. She grabbed him by the collar and held on while he strained against her hold.
The driver's side door swung open, and a head poked out, sunglasses pushed up high. "You got a dog?"
"Jeremy?" Sarah's heart skipped a beat. "What're you doing here?"
He climbed from the car, all long limbs and fashion labels. "I came to see you, sweetheart." He scanned the cottage. "This is nice."
Her stomach clenched at the term of endearment. "Thanks, I did some renovating. It was a little more rustic when I bought it."
"Aren't you full of surprises? Dog owner and house renovator…very impressive." He stepped closer, still a little leery of the dog attempting to leap at him, teeth bared. "Does it bite?"
"Who, Oscar?" she began, studying the dog's lurching head. "Actually, I'm not really sure. So far, I've never seen him bite anyone, but I haven't known him all that long. He kind of adopted me." She pushed Oscar into the cottage and shut the front door. "Let's walk around to the back porch. He's fine inside for a few minutes on his own."
He grabbed her hand and leaned forward to kiss her, but she turned her face just in time for him to connect with her cheek instead. He lingered there, his breath hot on her skin. "It's really good to see you, sweetheart."
She pushed a smile onto her face. "Yeah, you too."
He wasn't going to release her hand, so she tugged it free. While he followed her around the cottage, her mind raced. What was he doing here? What should she tell him? There was so much he didn't know, and he was acting like he'd stepped right back into her life without a moment's pause, calling her sweetheart, kissing her…or, at least, attempting it. What was he up to?
She showed him onto the porch and offered him one of a pair of white timber chairs. He sat, his eyes widening. "Phew! Will you look at that view. Wow. Now I get why you moved here. This is stunning, Sarah. Really, it is. I could give up the city life for a view like this. It's inspirational."
