by Lilly Mirren
She shook her head as she parked, then climbed out of the car. Mum seemed to have coped fine with the split, though you could never tell with her. She kept her emotions in check most of the time, only letting them show when they'd built up so much they exploded all over everyone. It was a trait Sarah found particularly galling in her otherwise genial and happy mother.
Mum answered the door before Sarah had even finished climbing the front steps, with a wide smile, then a breath-stealing hug.
"There you are! I was about to send out a search party," she said, stepping aside to let Sarah through the doorway. "Come on in, you must be starving."
The entryway was spacious, and Sarah stowed her overnight bag there for now. Suddenly a feeling of intense fatigue washed over her. She followed her mother down the hallway.
"And how do you like the cottage?" Mum asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
"Um…it's very rustic."
Mum chuckled. "Yes, it is. I had a look at it from the outside, couldn't get in without the keys of course, and I wondered if you'd really gotten the right impression over the internet. Still, it's got a wonderful view."
"That it does. It's worth it just for that view. Still, I think I'm going to have to get someone in to help me renovate the place pretty quickly. I can't live with it the way it is… I think I even saw mould. It's funny, a few months ago, I never would've considered the cottage. I wanted a house, kind of like this, I guess - something big, regal, spacious. The type of home that could host dinner parties and wow guests. But something's changed, I've changed. I don't want that anymore."
"It's too much, my darling, too big, too empty now… I'm not sure I want it either, truth be told. It seems hollow somehow to build the perfect home with someone who, it turns out, doesn't love you the way you thought he did."
Sarah shook her head, throat tight. She laid a hand on her mother's arm as they paused for a moment in the hall. She cleared her throat. "So, now I have an old cottage in desperate need of renovating. Maybe I can renovate my life while I'm at it." She laughed, a shrill sound that echoed with unshed tears.
Mum squeezed her hand. "Well, I have a number for a guy. He's one of the locals, in fact I think you probably went to school with him if I remember correctly. Anyway, he's very good at that sort of thing. I'll give you his details, don't let me forget."
"Great, thanks, Mum."
Sarah's eyes strayed to the photographs that lined the walls of the hall as they walked. Different shapes and sizes, some with black frames, others white. All with memories attached.
There was a photograph of her year twelve formal - she'd worn an off the shoulder black dress, her long, brown hair curled around her shoulders. Her skinny date stood uncomfortably beside her in a dinner suit, hair parted in the middle, hands clasped in front.
Next, a photograph of her with her brother and sister at Falls Creek ski resort. None of them were recognisable, since all wore beanies, goggles and scarves pulled up around their chins, along with thick, puffy jackets. Snow swirled around them, but even though their faces couldn't be seen, she remembered the wide smile - she'd always loved to ski. It was something she'd continued doing as an adult. Each winter, she travelled to Falls Creek, or to Queenstown in New Zealand, to ski. It was one of her favourite pastimes, and it'd all started here, with her family.
A lump formed in her throat.
Her family wasn't the same any longer. How could Dad walk away from what they shared together, the love they'd built over so many years? It didn't make sense.
How could he leave Mum like that?
"Have you heard from Dad?" Sarah asked as they stepped into the kitchen.
The scent of fresh bread filled her nostrils, and her stomach growled in anticipation.
Mum shook her head, opened the refrigerator. "No, I haven't."
"Don't you think that's strange?" she asked.
Mum pulled out a jug of lemonade and set it on the kitchen bench, then opened a cupboard to search for glasses.
"Strange? Yes, I suppose I do think it's strange. I think it's downright bizarre for a man in his sixties to run off with a woman half his age when he's finally retired and can do all the things he's promised his wife they'd do over the many years of our marriage." Mum's voice dripped with sarcasm as she set the glasses on the bench and poured lemonade into them.
Sarah grimaced. It wasn't fair on Mum to bring up Dad. Only, she hadn't heard from him in a while. She didn't intend on calling him again herself, since she was angry with him and he should know that. She’d hoped instead he might call, show that he actually cared, let them know he was okay, beg for forgiveness and ask to come back. Something like that, anyway.
Mum handed her a glass, then leaned against the bench to sip her own. "Why do you ask?"
"I'm sorry, Mum, I shouldn't have brought it up."
Mum sighed. "No, it's fine. I get it, you want to understand. But I'm not sure there's anything to understand other than your father has always been a selfish man. He does whatever feels good to him and doesn't think about the consequences for anyone else." Mum's mouth clamped shut, and her nostrils flared. "I shouldn't have said that, I know he's your father…but that's how I feel."
Sarah's eyes widened. She'd never heard her mother criticise her father before in her life. Was that how she'd always felt about him?
"I suppose you're right… I've never considered it quite like that before. He always did what he wanted and didn't ask any of us for our input, but I didn't think it'd come to something like this. In spite of everything, I believed he loved us."
Mum laid a hand on Sarah's arm. "Oh, honey, he does love you. This isn't about you, Adele or Ethan, it's about him. When parents get divorced, it's only because of their relationship with one another, nothing to do with the kids."
Sarah quirked an eyebrow. "I know, Mum. I'm not ten years old. It's okay, I get it. I didn't realise you were already on track for divorce though. Maybe he'll come back…"
"Let's sit in the lounge room, love. There's something I need to talk to you about, and I've set up some lovely antipasto for us in there."
The platter on the small, square coffee table took up almost the entirety of the table's surface. It was covered from one side to the other with rolls of ham, turkey, pastrami and salami, green and black olives, spoonsful of hummus and baba ganoush, water crackers and tiny breadsticks.
"This looks amazing, Mum. Thanks for throwing it together. I know you've probably had a long day at the cafe already, you must be tired."
Mum sat on the loveseat across from the armchair where Sarah's body slipped into the most familiar and comfortable position, with one elbow leaned on the armrest.
"Yes, well, I'm used to being on my feet at the cafe for most of the day. I've done it for as long as I can remember. I started helping out my parents when I was about five years old, taking orders from the customers. Mum always said the customers loved it, me standing there with my little notepad and pen, making markings on the paper that no one else could understand but me." Mum sighed, reached for a breadstick and took a bite. She continued around her mouthful. "It's a part of most of my life's memories, that place."
Sarah set down her lemonade on a side table and reached for a cracker. She dipped it in the hummus and chewed with contentment.
"You sound like you think you might lose the cafe, Mum. You told me on the phone it wasn't going well, that you were losing a lot of money… What's going on?"
Mum leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. The skirt of her floral dress fanned out around her, and she combed her almost silver hair back from her face with one hand.
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about, love." She inhaled a slow breath. "It seems your father accumulated some debts before he left me."
"What?" Sarah's brow furrowed.
Her parents never had financial problems, not in as long as she could remember.
"But Dad was a financial planner. That makes no sense. What were the debt
s for?"
"Yes, I had the same reaction. And I don't know why he took out the loans."
"Loans? There's more than one?"
Mum nodded. "There's a significant amount of credit card debt on a card which, unfortunately, is in my name."
"Oh no." Sarah's heart fell.
"Yes, and then there's the loan he took out against the cafe… I only just found out about that one. I haven't told anyone else… I can't seem to quite believe it. I put your father's name on the cafe when we were young and in love. He asked me to do it, so I did. Now, of course, I regret that choice. He seems to have racked up debt against the cafe, and since he's run off and I don't want to lose the place, I'm going to have to pay it back. At least that's what Byron down at the bank tells me."
Anger stirred in Sarah's gut. How could Dad do that to Mum? She knew he had his flaws, they all did. But to do something like that, she hadn't thought him capable. He'd taken Mum for granted; even she'd been able to see that. But to be so unconcerned about Mum's well-being - she hadn't expected that from him. She'd believed he loved her in his own way. He was the fun one, always up for a good time, and for his kids, that meant a lot of laughs and plenty of good memories, but now that she thought about it, he'd left Mum in the background cooking, cleaning, doing the dishes, running the cafe, managing the large, sweeping gardens that surrounded the house, taking care of everything while they had fun together.
"I'm so sorry, Mum."
Mum shook her head, patted Sarah's arm. "I know. I didn't want to say anything over the phone, I suppose I couldn't quite believe it myself. And I only found out about the loan yesterday when I got a bill in the mail. I've been checking the P.O. box, which is where your father had all his business mail sent over the years, and I suppose he never closed it after he retired. There was a bill from the bank, and it just about took the wind from my lungs. I had to go in to see if it was really what I thought it was."
"I'm here to help, so let me know what I can do." Sarah wasn't sure exactly how she could help, but she intended to do everything she could to save the cafe. She couldn't allow her father's selfishness to take the one thing her mother had left.
"I'm so grateful, my darling. Thank you for coming. I don't know if I've said that to you yet, but thank you. I didn't mean for you to move to the Cove, of course. I'd hoped you'd come and help me out for a few days…"
Sarah shook her head. "It sounds to me you need more than that. If you'd like me to, I can take a look at your finances and see if I can figure out a way forward."
"That would be wonderful. I'm hopeless with those things, I look at the numbers and my head gets all light and my thoughts spin around trying to figure it all out. I thought I might pass out at the bank. Byron had to sit me down and get me a glass of water." Mum shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then pushed a smile onto her face. "But I'm sure you'll figure it out and it'll all work out fine."
"You said the cafe was losing money. That might make things a little more difficult. What's going on?" Sarah's eyes narrowed. The cafe had always pulled its weight. It was the main reason the family had lived so well over the years.
"I don't know exactly. You know I always run the place within a budget. I'm careful about spending. I don't ever do anything too risky. But lately, we've been making a loss, and I can't figure out quite why."
Sarah dipped her head, reached for an olive. "No worries, Mum. We'll work it out. That's why I'm here."
Mum sipped her lemonade. "I've been meaning to ask you - is there another reason you moved back to the Cove?"
Sarah cocked her head to one side. "Other than to help you?"
Mum nodded. "I mean, you could've done that from Sydney. I didn't intend for you to uproot your entire life. You have a career to think of and a fiancé."
"Ex-fiancé," Sarah corrected, her stomach tightening into a knot. It was hard knowing how much everyone in her life loved Jeremy. He was perfect; she wasn't. He was a catch, and she was the lucky woman who'd somehow managed to reel him in. So, telling her family and friends she'd ended things had resulted in a lot of blank stares and arched eyebrows, not to mention clucking of tongues.
The clucking tongues had mostly come from Mum and her best friend, Diana Jones, the woman who owned the bed and breakfast next door. Still, Sarah had noticed the way the people in her life reacted to the news - they didn't understand, couldn't understand her reasons. And honestly, she didn't have the energy to explain it to them. Didn't want or need their sympathy. She hated that Jeremy had made her feel like a victim. That wasn't her. Sarah Flannigan wasn't about to be the jilted woman, the one waiting at home in the kitchen while her husband philandered about town, who was caught by surprise when he left her for a younger model thirty years from now.
She understood how Mum had let it happen; she'd almost followed her mother blindly down the same path. But when Dad left, when he destroyed their family and broke Mum's heart, he'd helped Sarah wake up to what her future could easily become - and bile had risen in her throat at the thought she could end up just like Mum.
"Sorry, ex-fiancé. Although why did the two of you break up? You never really told me what happened there."
"It's complicated," Sarah replied, pressing her lips together. What should she say? He cheated on her, more than once, and she'd finally figured it out? He didn't listen, didn't prioritise her, always had to have things his way. That she'd been too smitten to see it until her parents separated, when she realised she was following so closely in Mum's footsteps that she might smack into her the moment Mum stopped moving forward?
She couldn't say that. It'd hurt Mum's feelings. Mum wouldn't respond, would press her lips together, her eyes glistening, then leave the room to "tidy" the kitchen. But Sarah knew her well enough to see through the facade. It would break her mother's heart if she told her she'd ended things with Jeremy because Dad had walked out on her and Sarah was afraid she'd end up the same way.
"I'm sure it is…but I'm worried about you. That's all."
Sarah sighed. "There's nothing to worry about, Mum. I'm fine, I came here to help you. That's all there is to it. And yes, I suppose I needed a change in my life. My career is important to me, but it's not everything. The breakup helped me to see that there were some empty spaces in my life, things I'd been overlooking because of Jeremy. But we weren't right for each other."
"But you seemed so happy together," Mum objected.
"He was a lot more like Dad than you realise, Mum. I can see the patterns now, and at first, I loved that about him. He was fun, always the life of the party, but when it came to serious matters, he left them to me to deal with. I thought that was normal, just how couples operated. It's how you and Dad were. But when Dad left you, it made me think. I didn't want to spend my life with someone who wasn't able to put my needs first sometimes, who might run off with his assistant in his sixties and not give my happiness a second thought."
Mum's lips had formed a thin line as Sarah spoke. Her eyes bright, she spoke, her voice thick with emotion. "Well, if that's the case, you did the right thing. Marriage is forever, at least in my mind it is, and spending your life with someone who's fun but inconsiderate quickly becomes a strain."
"I had no idea…all these years…I didn't know Dad was like that. I saw him as the happy, life of the party, affectionate one. You were always serious, busy, getting things done, but Dad gave us his attention."
"I know, love. I know. He was great to spend time with, it's why I fell in love with him. I would've liked to have more fun with my kids as well, but I didn't have a partner to share the load. And now I realise he wasn't pulling his weight with our finances the way I thought he was either. It's very frustrating to look back on your life and realise so much of what you thought was true was actually a lie." Mum's voice thickened, and she let her eyes drift shut.
Sarah squeezed her arm. "Well, your kids weren't part of that, Mum. We love you, and we're here for you. At least, I am. I don't know what those other two s
lackers are doing."
Mum's eyes popped open, and she laughed. "I haven't told them yet. I don't know what to say… They love your father so much."
Sarah smiled. "It's fine, we can work this out together."
"Thank you, my sweet girl." Mum shook her head. "I never thought I'd find myself bankrupt and single in my sixties."
"Maybe you can look at this as your chance to start over. I mean, you've never tried Tinder before. Now you can. The entire world of online dating is out there, just waiting for you. See, silver linings." Sarah chuckled as she shook her head.
Mum laughed, her eyes glistening with tears. "Wonderful. Just what I've always wanted."
Chapter 7
Sarah
"No, I need the internet connected now. I can't wait two weeks, I have work to do." Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and pressed one hand to the top of her head, the other holding her mobile phone firmly against her ear.
On the other end of the line, an operator with a strong but unrecognisable accent assured her the internet should be connected within the next two to four weeks.
She sighed with exasperation. She stood on the deck, the cottage's back door open behind her. In front of her, the ocean stretched blue and sparkling, like jewels had been scattered over its surface. The setting sun still shone bright, even as a cool breeze lifted her hair from her neck. She shivered and tugged her jacket more tightly around her thin body.
