by Ally Blake
Rafe tossed the napkin into the bin, damned delighted it didn’t miss. As if not appearing jarred meant he wasn’t. To push the point home, he lifted off his seat, pilfered a doughnut from the glass case on the bench, put the lid back into place. Took a bite. Chewed slowly.
And said nothing.
Bear, looking fit to burst, boomed, “It’s Sable freaking Sutton! You know—the Aussie photographer. Used to live around these parts, before my time. Dates what’s-his-name—the ice-cool chef from that TV show. Though, hang on, that all went kaboom a couple of months back. Affairs...plural. Can’t remember who strayed. Scandalous stuff though.”
Rafe didn’t as much as blink.
“Come on,” Bear protested. “You know who I mean, right? Even if you’re not a photography buff. Blonde? Wild-eyed? Bohemian beauty?”
Rafe poured in a dash of milk, cupped the black glass in his palms, took a long leisurely sip of the steaming hot brew and gave the guy nothing.
Bear muttered about the sincere lack of pop culture knowledge from the straight men in this town.
Leaving Rafe to brood over the fact he hadn’t known she was back. A scent on the wind, a rustle of leaves, a ripple in the space-time continuum—surely something ought to have alerted him.
Unless enough time had passed that ripples, where she was concerned, were no longer his to feel.
Bear cleaned the froth spout on his big coffee maker as he said, “Trudy saw her get off the bus from Melbourne not two hours ago, dragging a big fancy suitcase behind her. Story goes, she was heading towards your place.”
That had Rafe off the stool.
Janie was home.
Bear shot him a look that said, Got ya.
Rafe threw a ten-dollar note on the counter and gave in. “Towards her mother’s place, you mean.”
“Her mother?”
“Mercy.”
Bear’s eyebrows leapt. “You’re kidding.” He scratched his bearded chin. “So, is that how you and the younger Ms Sutton became a thing back in the day? ’Cause you lived next door?”
Rafe let a beat slink by. “Held onto that question pretty tight.”
Bear had the grace to blush. “Wanted to give you the chance to tell your side of the story before believing everyone else’s.”
Rafe breathed. And reminded himself that he liked Bear. And the guy was relatively new in town. So, while Rafe’s part in the Sable Sutton story was ancient history, to Bear—his friend—it was news.
Rafe ran a hand over the back of his neck. Then again. Harder. As if warming himself up for what he was about to say out loud. “Yes, she lived next door. Yes, we were a thing. She was seventeen when her photos got her a shot at an agent and a gallery show in New York. She went. The end.”
Bear lifted his chin towards Rafe, mouth down-turned: the manly man’s international sign for respect. “My ex was obsessed with her Broken Botanicals series—had these huge amazing prints of fallen trees, snapped stems, shredded leaves. Couldn’t afford the originals. He’d die to know she was here.”
Rafe wondered if Bear knew he was grinning at the vision of his ex dying.
Then Bear swished his black-and-white-checked apron aside and pulled his phone from the back pocket of his black jeans and held it out to Rafe. “Do you follow her?”
“Do I—?”
“Online. She’s got quite the following for someone who doesn’t post pictures of herself in a bikini. Or isn’t a reality TV star.”
Rafe kept his gaze on Bear’s face, refusing to look. Until Bear’s mouth kicked up in a knowing smile.
Fine, he’d look, then they could change the subject.
Rafe dropped his gaze to the phone.
And there she was. Sable Sutton. Staring right back at him.
Chin lifted, mouth slightly open, long hair, a hundred shades of blonde, a windswept halo around her face. The pose said, Take one step closer and I’ll burn you alive.
Notions Rafe believed he’d long since buried, began to simmer and shift. Ripples, after all. He shut them down fast. Well practised. From a time when reacting had meant the difference between dinner or a beating.
“You okay?” said Bear.
“Course I’m okay,” Rafe grumbled. “Just leave me out of the story the next time you tell it, okay?”
“Done,” Bear promised, his voice deep, and deadly serious. A good guy. A good friend. And there had been a time, in this town, when Rafe hadn’t had all that many of those. Having the last name Thorne meant having a target on your back. Not that Sable had ever cared about that. She’d only cared about him.
And then she was gone.
And now she was back.
And his head hurt.
Rafe rapped his knuckles on the counter as goodbye, then strolled out of the warm, hipster haven and into the chilly autumn day outside.
Sable. Despite his best efforts not to listen, her name whispered on the breeze. Sable Sutton.
Rafe glanced down Laurel Avenue, towards the outskirts of town. Not the showy bit, with the quaint shops, the faux vintage street lamps, the autumnal trees overhanging the neat footpaths, but the old section. Not that long ago—before the beautification tourist money had poured into the outskirts of the snow fields—people had been hanging on by their fingernails.
His phone chirped. A message from Janie, reading,
Hey bro, you’ll never guess who’s back!
He put his phone away. And when he next breathed in, he could taste it.
Change. A change was coming. And it had nothing to do with the weather.
He shoved his hands deep into the fleece-lined pockets of his coat, turned, and walked the opposite way.
* * *
Sable didn’t bother to knock, for her mother’s front door was open, letting the cold air seep inside. There was also no doorknob, just a hole where a doorknob should be.
Her place in LA—her ex’s place—had deadbolts, security cameras and an alarm. Not much help when the person doing you wrong was on the inside.
Sable lifted her heavy suitcase over the threshold and trundled down the dark hall.
She followed the sound of Bob Dylan to find her mother in the sunroom at the far end of the house, standing on an ancient wooden step stool, hanging bunches of vibrant, dried chillies upside-down by hooks on the ceiling.
“Mercy?”
Her mother’s hands paused, before she looked over her shoulder. “Sable,” Mercy drawled. “What on nature’s green earth are you doing here?”
Missed you too, Mum.
“I’m back. For a visit,” she added quickly, when her mother’s eyes narrowed, making her crow’s feet pop.
“Why?”
“You could at least try to look happy to see me.”
“Of course, I am. I’m just surprised.”
Right.
Mercy exhaled hard, wiping her hands in the length of her flowing skirt as she jumped down from the stool. Then she padded up to Sable, feet bare, ankle bracelets jangling, long auburn hair streaked with silver floating behind her like a fiery cloud.
She stopped a good metre away from her daughter. No hugs. Not even a pat on the arm. “Have you been next door?”
Round one, here we go. Sable nodded.
“Didn’t take you long to go sniffing around that place again.”
The urge to duck her head was potent. It took every bit of courage she had left to fight it. To look her mother in the eye.
Sensitive as a kid, Sable had always tended towards conciliation. Avoiding eye contact, making herself appear smaller than she was, in the effort not to make her mother sad. For she loved her mum, as hard as Mercy made it to do so.
But when it had hit her, a few months back, that she had fallen into the exact same pattern in her relationship with her ex—not rocking the boat, putting his needs, hi
s career first—that had been the real beginning of the end.
First time she’d stood up for herself, in a real way, he’d acted swiftly, brutally unburdening himself of all the secrets and lies she’d allowed herself to simply not see in order to keep the peace.
She was not going to make her own needs appear smaller for someone else’s sake ever again.
Sable lifted her chin a fraction. “I caught up with Janie. And kept any sniffing to a minimum.”
Mercy snorted her response, then slanted her daughter a rare look of respect. Maybe this “standing her ground” thing would work on more levels than she’d imagined.
On that score... “What on earth happened to the old Thorne shack?”
Mercy’s inner battle was written all over her face before she admitted, “He knocked it down.”
“Mr Thorne?”
Mercy shook her head.
“Then who?” Say it, Sable thought. Say his name.
“Rafe Thorne.”
Never one name, always both. Like a serial killer.
“The father finally drank himself to death a few years back. Day after the funeral I woke up to a god-awful racket. Found your boy tearing the place apart. He carried every single piece of the place away until there was nothing left but the footprint. Then he dug that up with an excavator and grassed the lot over.”
Oh. She hadn’t even known Rafe’s father had died, much less the rest. If she had, she would have sent word. Though which words? Sorry didn’t seem quite right. Neither did good riddance.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sable asked. “You know...when I rang and said, ‘Anything exciting happen in town?’”
“It mustn’t have seemed relevant at the time.”
Relevant? Hang on... “Did you think I’d come running home if I knew?”
The glint in her mother’s eyes said it all.
“I wouldn’t have.” Probably. “Just so you know. I wouldn’t have run back. I had a life over there. Just like you always wanted for me.”
Only, in the end, that life hadn’t been for her. And Sable was more than ready to curate one that was.
“Anyway, it’s been a very long couple of days. I’d love to crash, if it’s okay.”
Mercy waved a hand in the direction of the bedrooms. “There’s a couch in one of the rooms. You might have to move a few things.”
Super. Sable spun her suitcase over a knot in the floor before heading back down the hall.
One room was full of nothing but dust motes. Her mother was not a collector of things. Too hard to cut and run. In the front room her mother’s unmade bed with its slew of hand-woven blankets showed through the wide-open door.
The only room left was Sable’s old bedroom.
It was the first room she’d stayed in long enough to tack things on the walls: pictures torn from magazines, drawings, photos she’d shot as her interest in photography had taken off.
That room was why Radiance was the first place that had ever felt like home.
That room and the boy next door.
It took a nudge with her boot to encourage the door open as it caught on a rug that had not been there when she’d left. The desk under the window was a new addition too. And the faux suede couch with bottom-shaped dips in the seat cushions and an escaped spring in the back. In fact, not a single reminder of her had remained.
That was Mercy in a nutshell. Seeing sentimentality as a weakness. Leaving her daughter to feel as if she left pieces of herself behind every place they lived.
Sable sank into the couch with a groan and stared blankly at the bare walls long enough to make out the sun-stained echoes of the pictures that had been stuck there years before.
She imagined she knew how they felt.
CHAPTER TWO
SABLE WOKE WITH light burning into the backs of her eyelids. She didn’t even remember falling asleep.
Opening one eye, she found warm afternoon light streaming into the room, sharp, square and split into shades of white and gold, like something out of a Rembrandt painting.
Instinct had her reaching for her camera only to remember how long it had been since she’d held the thing. Long enough she hadn’t been able to find it when she’d madly packed everything she could fit into a single suitcase and moved into a hotel.
The impulse to capture the view dissolved away.
She checked her phone to see the time, only to find another message from Nancy in New York.
When do I get you back? Soon, I hope! I’ve a jaunty little Greek magazine super-keen to hire you. Summer spread. Rugged location.
In Nancy language, “keen” meant Nancy was hounding them. As for “jaunty little Greek magazine”, that was no doubt a far cry from her last gig with Italian Vogue. And light years from a show of her own.
She sent a quick message back.
Hey Nance. I’m alive. I’m fine. Off the grid for a bit. Taking a break from work. Talk soon.
Her phone rang immediately. She turned it on silent and slid it back onto the desk.
She listened to the sounds of the house. No music, meaning her mother was no longer home. And realised she was starving. Meaning she’d have to head into town. For her mother’s fridge would contain little in the way of edible food.
She slid her boots back onto her feet and swapped her man’s jacket for a faux fur coat. A tad over the top for downtown Radiance, but it had been a long time since she’d owned Ugg boots and flannel.
She checked the cupboard for a hat or scarf to cover the mess that was her hair only to find something else instead.
A vintage Kodak box Brownie—the first camera Sable had ever owned. Picked up at a yard sale when she was fourteen years old. A week before they’d arrived in Radiance.
She turned the camera over, ran fingertips over the leather casing.
She’d not taken photos of people back then, so much as old leaves piled up in their backyard, jasmine trailing over their broken fence, a flat tyre dumped in the pristine creek that ran behind their place.
Chaos and harmony. Death and rebirth. Themes that had helped her make sense of her nomadic reality had resonated with people far beyond the boundaries of their small town after entering a few online contests had brought her attention. Prizes. Money. Opportunities. Notoriety. And, ironically, a way out of the nomadic existence that had led to her interest in the first place.
She tilted the thing towards the window, around waist height, and looked down into the small viewfinder.
The first time she’d seen Rafe had been through that lens.
She’d been lying on the bank of the river, the camera to her eye, stones digging into her back, a hank of her long tatty hair floating in the water, trying to get the best angle on the crooked branches hanging overhead, when a face had suddenly blocked her view.
And a deep, male, teenaged voice had said, “What you lookin’ at?”
Sable moved the camera a fraction, until the angles were sharp. She held her breath as she waited for the waft of the gauzy white curtain hanging from her old bedroom window to hit the right spot and...
Click.
She blinked, pulled the camera away from her eye. A quick check of the gauge showed her a small black number eight. She turned the crank over, watched the word Kodak appear, then the number nine.
“Huh.” Would the film still be viable? Unlikely. Nevertheless, Sable slid the frayed rope attached to the camera around her neck, popped her phone case in her pocket, then headed out into the fray.
It must have rained while she dozed, the sky now a dome of pale grey cloud that refracted the weak light in such a way it made a person squint. Still, surrounded by towns with names such as Bright and Mount Beauty, it really was a pretty part of the world. And at its prettiest now, bolstered by the array of rich autumn colours.
Sable tucked her hands as dee
p as she could in the satin pockets of her coat. Her breath made white clouds in front of her as she walked. Her feet turned numb in boots made for form over function. Her belly rumbled.
When she spotted a sign that read The Coffee Shop she could have wept with relief.
She ducked inside, a small brass bell tinkling as the door sprang shut behind her. The place was warm and lovely. Retro black-and-white-tiled floor, recycled wooden bar, huge shiny coffee machine, ironic quotes hung in mismatched frames on the matt black walls—Radiance had gone hipster.
“Sable Sutton.”
Sable spun to find a huge, bearded man grinning at her from behind the counter.
“I’m Bear,” he said, banging a meaty paw against his puffed-out chest. “You don’t know me. New in town. But I know who you are.”
For a beat Sable felt that slight lift in her chest that came when people recognised her. Once upon a time it had felt like validation. For her work. Her tenacity. For the hard choices she’d made in order to make something of herself.
But nowadays she was far better known for being “that famous chef’s ex-girlfriend, the one he cheated on”.
She looked to the door, regretting the fact she’d have to head back out into the cold, her stomach still empty.
When Bear called, “Sorry. That sounded creepy. Please stay. I make great coffee.”
Sable turned to see a face screwed up with chagrin, and beyond the gruff exterior a pair of kind eyes.
She moved to the counter. Sat. Unhooked the strap of her old camera from around her neck to lay it on the bench.
“There we go. What’ll it be?” asked Bear.
She glanced at the chalkboard, an order for cool, weak, green tea on the tip of her tongue. But the thing was, she didn’t much like tea, green or otherwise. The chef had his own line of them, so that was what they’d drunk in public. Like so much of her life, it had been easier to go with the flow.
No more.
“Double espresso, please,” she said. “Strong. Scorching hot.”
“Dark, strong, hot,” he repeated. “Just how I like my men.”
He held out a fist, she gave it a bump in solidarity.
