by Stella Quinn
He pulled his mask back over his face and set to work knocking out the rest of the burned wall with his sledgehammer. Three days to finish the refit, he reckoned. Less, if he could persuade Graeme to lend him a hand with the cabinetry.
He bashed out a splintered joist. So Poppy thought there was still something cooking between him and Vera, did she? He’d kind of thought it too. And so had everyone else in the damn town thanks to the Hanrahan Chatter. Everybody except Vera herself, apparently.
He kept bashing until the sound was hurting his ears as much as his thoughts were hurting his head. He needed a walk. If Vera was done with him, it was time he accepted it and focused on what he’d really come back to Hanrahan for: creating a home for himself and for Poppy to visit, a successful animal practice with Hannah, and restoring the Cody building to a Federation showpiece in the heart of Hanrahan.
He shucked off his toolbelt, gathered up his jacket and headed out the door.
CHAPTER
35
A suitcase, a shoebox of papers, and six cardboard cartons. Was that really all her aunt had left behind after sixty plus years on the earth?
The old photo albums Vera already had, a gift from Jill when she’d first moved out of her small home and into the dementia ward at Acacia View. Jill had given her books, pottery, trinkets, beaded earrings from Mongolia, fringed leather purses from Argentina.
She dragged all the cartons into the lounge room, the ones she’d dug through and the sealed ones, so she could tip out everything at once. This was a job she would put off no longer.
She should be ringing Graeme, too, and letting him know she was ready to reopen the café. To prep food, place an advert in the local paper announcing the summer menu, order more crockery and tableware.
Call Josh and apologise.
The look of hurt on his face earlier even as he was being kind enough to urge her to go indoors out of the rain, even when he’d seen that she’d not been honest with him, was searing her conscience like a third-degree burn.
Trust bloody Aaron to turn up just when she was about to tell Josh she didn’t want him to stop wanting her.
She closed her eyes. She’d made such a bumbling mess of everything. She needed a good night’s sleep and a clear head, and then she was going to make everything right. At least, she was going to try. But first, she was going to wallow in memory lane for a little while and unpack her aunt’s favourite things.
She grabbed a knife from the block in the kitchen and slit through the tape holding closed the mementoes from her aunt’s life. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, she just knew she needed to find it.
Clothes were in the first and second boxes. She folded them into piles on the sofa. The retro second-hand store in town might be interested in Jill’s paisley shirts and henna-dyed bandanas. Next came books, both fiction and reference, well read and dog eared. Life in the Cosmos, Mood Therapy, DIY plumbing … She’d keep some, ditch the others.
She slid back the flaps of the last box and found a jumble of small, wrapped parcels. A cardboard postal tube contained knitting needles of all thicknesses. Crochet hooks filled a mason jar, pale blue tissue paper peeled open to reveal metres of batik cotton, calico, some sort of fluffy wadding. Cotton reels clinked together when she opened a tiny wicker box, and mouse-shaped pin-cushions bristling with rusty pins stared up at her from down the bottom of the carton.
‘Grey cat?’ she called.
No answer. Not that the cat ever answered when she called. The only sound the cat regularly responded to was the whirr of her electric tin opener.
She started plucking pins from a mouse and discarding them in the rubbish pile. Surely all cats loved toys? There was bound to be a set of needles in amongst all this craft booty—even she should be able to stitch a length of elastic to a mouse.
She tipped the rest of the carton out over the floor and started gathering the bits and pieces into piles. Perhaps the craft group could find a use for all this stuff. She wouldn’t need it now. Hell, she didn’t even need to finish the blasted quilt she’d been working on at a snail’s pace for the last few months. Her aunt’s knees wouldn’t be needing to be kept warm this or any other winter.
Her eye fell on the half-finished rag quilt in its calico tote under the coffee table. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and lay it across the rug. The patchwork looked back at her as though it were alive. The blue plain material in one corner she recognised from one of Jill’s shirts. In the middle, a patch from a skirt. The new pieces had come from the odds-and-ends box at Marigold’s craft night. Remnants from children’s clothes and cushion projects and impulse buys, all lovingly stored in someone’s craft cupboard before being donated so they could be given a new life.
The cat materialised through the open window and stalked over to her. She ignored the mouse Vera dangled before her nose, to settle in the middle of the quilt.
‘That’s going in the toss pile, cat. Budge.’
The cat blinked at her, yawned, then stretched out full length on the quilt and began to purr.
She sighed. Maybe the cat was right. An afternoon snooze did seem like the perfect way to escape thinking about the funeral, her court case, the mess she’d made of things with Josh. She rose to her feet and looked down on the sleeping cat surrounded by a jumble of fabric.
A thought struck her.
Quilts began with a mess. Scraps of unwanted timeworn fabrics, bundled away for a rainy day. But with time and effort and patience, something beautiful emerged. A patchwork quilt that a wandering cat, or its sad, two-legged owner, could rest upon.
She’d come here to Hanrahan with one goal, to stay clear of involvement, to stay clear of opening herself up to being hurt, but Jill’s passing had left a hole where her goals had been.
She thought back to the warmth she’d found within the snug walls of The Billy Button Café. Involvement had given her that. People. Community. She needed to involve herself more, not less. Starting with this quilt.
She’d finish it, she decided. She’d gather more scraps from as many sources as she could, and she would finish Jill’s quilt then donate it to Marigold to raffle it off at one of those community hall functions she was always organising.
Order out of chaos.
If that wasn’t a metaphor for what she needed to do with her own life, she didn’t know what was.
A surge of energy cut through her apathy. Finishing the quilt was only the first part of her new plan.
The second part kind of sucked, but she was on a roll now. Picking up the phone, she scrolled through her short list of contacts until she landed on Marigold’s name. Send message, she selected, then paused, her thumbs raised over the onscreen keyboard.
Now or never. Okay, she texted. I’m giving in. I’m coming to dawn yoga next week. Don’t let me chicken out.
The answer flashed up on the screen a millisecond later.
FINALLY!!!
Josh was the third and final matter on her agenda, and the most important matter of all. No-one had been kinder to her than him.
That handsome devil had snuck right in under her defences and wrapped himself around her heart six ways from Sunday. And how had she repaid him? By being snarky. By letting him think she agreed with his understanding of their relationship and then shoving him away.
He was hurt, and he had a right to be. He’d been nothing but honest with her, nothing but kind, and she’d been so caught up in her own need for space that she had let him down.
Her shame at being charged with a crime was only one of the reasons she’d pushed him aside. Ironically, it was Aaron showing up at the funeral that had opened her eyes to what was really going on.
What had he said? I think you’re a wonderful person, Vera. This from the same guy who’d told Acacia View about the camera she’d placed in her aunt’s room.
Aaron Finch was a master manipulator, and it had taken her this long to figure it out. Self-absorbed, too, because he seemed to truly not understand that she
had no interest in seeing him again.
She poured herself a second cup of green tea from the pot squatting on the table under one of her aunt’s technicolour cosies.
There was only one way she could think of to make up for her behaviour, and if that meant letting go of the vow she’d made to herself when she moved up to Hanrahan, then so be it.
She got up and moved over to where her laptop was on its charger at the kitchen counter. She ran her finger along the space bar until the machine hummed itself back to life, then sat on the stool and flexed her fingers.
Okay. She could do this. Whoever was messing around with Josh Cody thinking they were safe behind corporate veils and nineteenth-century civic by-laws could think again. First stop, digital register of city records, she thought. If she had to blow a few hundred bucks on corporate searches, so be it. Paper records in the bowels of the town council building was next.
‘Remind me again,’ Vera said from her upside-down position on the scratched up yoga mat that Marigold had loaned her, ‘what this is supposed to achieve?’
She should be spending the early hours of her day in a ruthlessly pressed and starched apron, proving dough or caramelising butter and sugar. Instead, her pelvis felt like it was about to snap in two, her legs refused to bend in the right way, and from her head-down, bum-up position she could see she really ought to have worn a sports bra.
‘This is the Prasarita, just relax into it and stop your whingeing.’
‘Little secret, Marigold. I’m not feeling so relaxed.’
The older woman spun deftly, like a teenage gymnast, into an odd pose that resembled an inch worm. ‘Let the body relax into the position, Vera. Then let whatever it is you’ve got bottled up in that head of yours just float out.’
A bead of sweat dripped down her face and dangled from her chin. ‘If only it were that easy,’ she muttered.
‘Tell me one horrid thing that you’d like to be rid of. Let’s send it on its way together.’
She closed her eyes and tried to think of just one. ‘I was in a relationship before I came here. I was—tricked, I think—into thinking the man I was involved with was honest. There were aspects to his personality that I was blind to. I felt like a fool when I found out.’
‘What were you blind to?’
‘It was like he had different personalities. When I was with him, for the most part, he was like this benevolent figure. Wise, I thought. Really smart at work. Always happy to give advice out. But then there’d be times when he’d get angry. Not at me … not then … but he’d disparage people who had crossed him. Call them grubs, curl his lip, that sort of thing. I was naive not to see it for what it was. I just assumed he knew more about the situation than I did, and so these people he denigrated must have deserved it.’
‘Now what do you see it as?’
‘He was a bully. But he was manipulative about it, always making sure he hid it under this benevolent exterior.’
‘Sounds like Narcissism 101 to me, Vera.’
She snorted, then climbed to her feet so she could follow along with the next torture pose. ‘Marigold, come on. Florist, yoga guru, celebrant, committee diva, craft goddess … you cannot be a psychologist as well!’
‘Give me time,’ said Marigold. ‘I’m not done living yet. Who knows what else I can be if I put my mind to it? Now come on, stand here next to me, and look out over the lake. What do you see?’
She took in a breath. ‘Water. Fields of grass on the far side with rocky outcrops here and there.’ She looked, really looked. ‘Oh, there’s wildflowers blooming below the rocky scree on that steep part. The snow gums were just dark shadows when we started, but the sun’s starting to catch them now.’
‘Beautiful, aren’t they? Those shadows of silver along the scree are snow daisies. When I first came to Hanrahan with Kev, I wondered if there were new words I needed to invent for all those lovely alpine colours. Greens and greys and browns don’t seem profound enough to capture this beautiful patch of the world we call home.’
Vera bumped her shoulder into Marigold’s. ‘You’re a romantic, Marigold.’
‘And proud of it. Maybe you should try it some time.’
‘Maybe. I do like the look of those snow daisies.’
Marigold grinned. ‘I’ll pick you some, make you a bouquet so pretty you’ll wish you were getting married.’
Like that was ever going to happen.
‘Come on,’ said her friend. ‘Let’s whizz that bully-boyfriend thought off into the never-never. Wait for a breath of wind to stir across the lake, then whoosh.’ Marigold whisked her arms away like she was wafting smoke.
‘Just … whoosh?’
‘Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Here’s some breeze. You ready?’
As silly as it seemed, she was ready. ‘Whoosh,’ she said.
Marigold gave a chuckle. ‘Maybe we’ll practise that some more next time. Give it a bit of oomph.’
Walking home from yoga, Vera tried to remember what it had felt like the first time she’d walked these streets. She’d been nervous, and emotional. And her thoughts had been dominated by commercial lease provisions and food handling techniques and budgets.
Now, she could admire the neat square of park she’d learned was the beating heart of this town. The pretty buildings with their wrought-iron railings, the tubs of flowers that the council maintained on the footpaths. Lake Bogong shimmered beneath the mountains in the early morning sun, and the heavenly smell of coffee beans hung in the air.
Her coffee beans … being ground lovingly by Graeme and served up to a string of faithful customers.
She was ready, she thought. She was feeling, finally, a little of that peace and wholeness that Marigold had spoken of at Jill’s funeral.
She was ready, finally, to go see Josh.
CHAPTER
36
‘That end, up two inches,’ said Josh, standing back from the cabinetry he’d spent the last six hours constructing.
Sweat had pooled under Hannah’s armpits, and she looked cranky as a wombat who’d lost her burrow. ‘I’m going to drop this thing any second now, hotshot. Screw it in already, I don’t care if it’s lopsided.’
‘Think of the calories you’ll be able to consume afterwards, Hannah Banana.’
The counter looked good. Real good. And damn if it didn’t give him a little rush to see his own design for the clinic’s new reception coming to life. They’d be able to open the door again to their furred and feathered patients in a day or two … so long as that business renewal didn’t get botched up by another malicious complaint.
His building permit reassessment still hadn’t been resolved either, despite the objection he’d lodged and the letters of support he’d collected from the residents of Hanrahan he’d approached, and Maureen was taking her own sweet time with the renovation story he and Kev had drip-fed her.
Hannah was like a cat on a hot tin roof worrying about what council would or wouldn’t do for them, but at least he had a nail gun and an impressive set of hammers handy to help him work through his own angst.
He took pity on his sister and reached under the cabinet top she was holding to screw its bolts into the backboard.
‘You can let it go now.’
‘Thank god for that. You’re no fun to work for, Josh Cody, I can tell you that much.’
‘Step back and see what you think.’
Hannah moved back beside him and they both looked over the rebuilt interior of their business. Laminate wood flooring gleamed under their feet. The receptionist desk he’d lengthened, so files and charts could be kept below bench height in a series of sliding drawers, rather than stuffed in the old shelves in the back hall.
The cabinet doors he’d scrounged from the rubbish dump and pulled apart, sanded, remade. Tasmanian oak, he’d bet his toolbelt on it, and they looked a million bucks beneath the milk-white countertop Hannah had chosen.
Their practising certificates had survived the fire and w
ere back up on the new wall behind the counter, framed in thin copper frames. He rested his eyes on the other certificate hanging there and felt his jaw tighten. The renewal would come through. It just had to.
The police had minimal luck so far wresting answers out of Pamela Hogan. She’d claimed client confidentiality, which had totally sucked, and the council were equally unhelpful, refusing to name the complainant.
‘Put an orchid in a pot and we could be on the front cover of House Beautiful.’
He pushed their pressing array of problems aside and grinned at Hannah. ‘Is that admiration I’m hearing in your voice?’
She wrapped her arm around him and butted her head into his shoulder. ‘It was a lucky day for me when you decided to bring your new vet skills home to Hanrahan, Josh. I mean it.’
Well, shoot. ‘It was always my plan to come home, Han. Just took me a little longer to get it done than I’d first thought.’
‘You’re here now.’
Yeah. He was. He’d got it all, all he’d set out to get. A family, albeit a slightly lopsided one, settled back in Hanrahan. A vet practice, community, clean mountain air. Him, Poppy and—if Parker was onboard with Poppy’s puppy-switch plan—Jane Doe.
It was the dream he’d kept in his head all those years working construction in the city. Only, why did it seem unfinished?
The arsonist was still on the loose … yeah, that was a biggie. The local council had been as supportive as a wet tissue.
He sighed as his thoughts circled back to where they began each day. Vera.
When had she snuck her way into his dream for the future? Not that she wanted to be: she’d been like a thorn, poking and snarling holes into his golden-eyed view of what could have been.
He’d thought they’d found something together, but he’d been wrong. She hadn’t really shared herself with him at all; she hadn’t trusted him with the news her ex-boss was also her ex-boyfriend, or believed him when he tried to say her court case, win or lose, was not a dealbreaker for him.
