A Father in the Making

Ryan opened the car door and took in a deep breath of clean country air. Will had been right. There was nothing quite like the mix of scents bombarding him—sweet pollens, swirling dust, and hazy country heat that seemed to have a scent all of its own. The acrid smell of car fumes that he’d left behind in Melbourne faded to a memory.

‘Okay, Will,’ Ryan said aloud. ‘It’s charming here. I get it. But so charming as to shoulder out all other options in your life?’ Ryan shook his head.

Kardinyarr was meant to have been a brief stop on Will’s winter backpacking trek around the country. But from the chain of information Ryan had uncovered in the last few days he believed that if his brother had not been killed, he might never have left at all. All because of the girl in the crumpled lavender letter.

Ryan grabbed the offending document, folded it carefully, and placed it in the top pocket of his shirt. He hopped out of the car, instinct causing him to lock it. A wry smile tugged at his mouth. He hadn’t seen another living soul for five kilometres, bar the kangaroos and a half-dozen cattle standing under the shade of a wide-branched gum. You can take the boy out of the city…

The pleasant breeze tickling at his hair dropped suddenly, and he heard a noise coming from the other branch of the gravel drive. Opera. It had the sharp scratchy timbre of a record, and in the now still air it carried past him and beyond, echoing in the gullies either side of the hilltop. He swished a buzzing fly from his face and looked to the broken wooden gate that had long since been swallowed by lily pillies, climbing vines, and a lush Japanese maple.

On the other side of that gate he hoped to find the woman who had written that long-ago, tear-smudged letter. Perhaps she could tell him why his infuriating little brother had been offered the world, and refused it.

Laura’s head bounced up and down in time with the music.

She loved days like these: a little cloud cover to take the edge off the summer heat, but not enough to stop the differentiation of light and shadow playing across the Kardinyarr hills. Once she had hung the washing, and finished dinner, she had a slot in her evening for a too hot bubble bath. The very thought had her happy as a kookaburra!

The record player was turned up loud enough to create a hanging-out-the-washing soundtrack. She hummed along with the orchestra and sang aloud in makeshift Italian to the magpies lined up on her roof gutters, tragic operatic hand movements and breast-thumping included. Okay, so she was no Pavarotti, but what did the magpies know?

Enough, it seemed, as soon they skedaddled, flying off in muddled formation to land in a gum tree further along the hill. ‘Come on guys!’ she shouted. ‘You’ll usually put up with a great deal when you know there’s honeyed bread in it for you!’

The song finished, another began, and Laura went back to her chore. She grabbed a heavy white cotton sheet and lobbed it over the clothes-line, thinking she would teach them a lesson. ‘No honey on your bread today. So there!’

Ryan pushed his hands deep into his jeans pockets as he walked up the gravel drive.

Once, Will had e-mailed their sister, Sam.

I have never felt so alive. You guys have to come out here. You have to come and see what I mean. Only then will you understand why I plan to stay.

But they hadn’t come. They had all been too busy. His sister Jen as first violin of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Sam with her young family and her self-funded quilting magazine, with its monthly worldwide readership in hundreds of thousands. And his parents, wildlife documentary film-makers, who spent all their time in faraway jungles.

Within a fortnight of that e-mail having been sent, Will had been buried back in their home town of Melbourne. It had been a drizzly winter’s day, with a hundred people watching over him—or so Ryan had later been told.

Past the broken wooden gate and atop the short rise, a small transformed worker’s cottage came into view. Multi-coloured flowers bordered the full-length portico, trying desperately to cling to life in the dry conditions. A water tank sat rust-free against the near wall. The fence was neat and the grass was short, but in need of rain. And through the white sheets flapping on the old-fashioned circular clothesline, Ryan caught sight of an ambiguous female form. Laura Somervale.

What would she be like, the woman for whom Will had given up an Oxford scholarship? Would she be quiet and bookish? Would she be artistic and soulful? Or would she simply be a girl? A country girl who had caught the eye of a lonely, mixed-up, directionless city boy? Would life have worn her down, or would there still be a glimmer of the girl with the fairy stationery? What sort of woman could make a Gasper turn his back on all that?

Some kind of woman, Ryan thought sardonically, for here she was, doing it again. She had drawn him out of his perfectly civilised world of five-star hotels and nightly political debate over cocktails, and into her world of dirt and heat and flies, with a page of tear-smudged words written many years before.

The circular clothesline turned and Ryan glimpsed a flash of sun-kissed auburn curls.

She’s adorable. And sweet. She makes me laugh. She makes me feel ten feet tall. This is her home, and, as such, it feels like my home too.

A wry smile crossed Ryan’s mouth. Will must have known exactly the response his realist big brother would have given to such poetic musings; which was why he had never let Ryan in on the exact nature of his feelings about the girl he’d met at Kardinyarr. Will had saved the deep and meaningful outpourings for their sister.

‘Adorable’ Ryan didn’t need. Answers. Information. Reason. Those things he could tie off in a neat, contained system, once he’d closed the page on the question still buzzing in the back of his mind after all this time. Why here, Will? Why?

As Ryan neared, he realised that the woman behind the flapping white sheet was singing…almost. Occasionally the notes coming from her and the notes coming from the speakers matched, but due more to random luck than skill. It was unabashed, full-tilt, and indescribably terrible.

He slowed. Perhaps he ought to have called first. Meeting her like this would be like talking to someone with parsley caught in their teeth. Did you mention the fact and embarrass them? Or ignore it and pretend it wasn’t there? As Ryan tussled with his decision, the woman pulled herself around the heavy damp sheet until she was revealed fully to him, and he couldn’t have switched direction if a bushfire had sprung up between them.

Auburn curls twirled long and thick down her back, tied into a low loose ponytail with what looked like a pink shoelace. The setting sun shone straight through the cotton of her simple floral sundress, highlighting a long-limbed, youthful figure hidden beneath.

The wind picked up, whipping from out of the gully at the rear of the property and across the hilltop. It was enough to knock Ryan sideways, but the woman’s feet remained steadfastly planted as she reached up to peg a pillowcase to the line. The wind blew about her knees, the thin fabric of her dress clinging to her. Her curling ponytail flapped in a horizontal line before sinking into a thick wave down her back when the wind settled.

She bent down to gather another sheet, one bare foot kicking out behind her for balance. As she came back upright she returned to full voice, head thrown back, hips swaying as the music reached a blazing crescendo.

‘Now, how do you like that, Maggie?’ she called out, turning on the spot, arms outstretched, her dress spinning high revealing a pair of smooth, tanned legs.

This was Laura Somervale? This vivacious creature was brooding Will’s mystery dream girl? This happy-go-lucky woman had written words of honest, tear-drenched pain and longing to a family she had never met?

It was suddenly too much. What had he been thinking of, jumping in the car with nothing more than an overnight bag and cannon-balling out to the middle of nowhere to find her? He should have used her example and written.

He stepped backwards, but the crunch of his riding boots on the gravelly earth sounded loud in the now still air. Like a hiker who had stumbled upon a scorpion, Ryan stopped still with one foot cocked against the ground.

The woman spun from the hips and stared him down with eyes the colour of the creamy-gold grass at her feet. The afternoon sun shone into her face, casting a glow over her naturally bronzed skin. And, since his breath had long since escaped his lungs, Ryan said nothing as he returned her silent stare.

Laura held up a hand to shield her eyes from the setting sun as she looked over the stranger who had wandered unexpectedly onto her small patch of the world.

All thoughts of Pavarotti and too hot bubble baths slipped from her mind to make way for a pleasing combination of tight, dark curls and eyes as blue as the wide-open sky above. The stranger’s shoulders were broad enough to carry a bale of hay, his long legs were encased in taut new denim, and strong muscled forearms appeared below the rolled-up arms of a new chambray shirt. There was even something faintly familiar about his steady blue gaze but, considering all the other visual enticements on offer, she couldn’t put her finger on it. Either way, the gent was so nicely put together he could have been a poster boy for country living.

But parked under the banksia tree in front of big, beautiful, empty Kardinyarr House next door, was the gent’s car. She had been singing so loud she hadn’t even heard it arrive. The car was black, sporty and expensive, and covered in fresh dust. The dust made her smile. No matter that he wore the local uniform, and wore it extremely well, this guy was no local. Clothes too new. Car too flash. Haircut too neat. He had city boy written all over him. Laura was a born and bred country girl, so it was unlikely this guy had ever meandered through her life before.

So who is he? she wondered. Some lost tourist looking for directions? Or a strip-o-gram organised by Jill, her friend and resident busybody? Ha! If only!

Nah, he’s a salesman, she decided. In that flash car, with those trying-to-look-like-a-cowboy-clothes, he was equipped to charm his way into selling something to somebody. She then noticed the length of the stranger’s shadow. Whatever he was selling, the sooner he was gone the better. The tiny window she had later in her day, time in which to soak in that too hot bubble bath, relax, maybe even read a chapter of the thriller that had been collecting dust on her bedside table, was slipping away the longer she dilly-dallied.

‘Hello, there,’ she singsonged.

He gave her a short nod, tipping his hand to an imaginary hat as he did so. Ooh, too smooth.

‘Am I interrupting you?’ he asked. His voice fitted the rest of him to perfection. Persuasive, elegant, and deep as the gully slipping away behind him.

‘It’s probably best you have,’ she answered. ‘Or I would never have had all this washing on the line before the sun sets.’ Hint, hint. I’m a busy woman with no time for salesmen, devastatingly handsome or otherwise…

‘You weren’t talking to someone?’ he asked, missing her point as he looked past her to find the elusive Maggie.

Her grin turned to a grimace. To be caught singing was one thing. To be caught talking to the birds was quite another. Living atop her beloved hill, she had been without daily adult contact for far too long. ‘Only the magpies,’ she admitted with a shrug, but naturally they had not remained in sight to prove her tale.

His deep blue eyes crinkled at the edges, hinting that a decent smile played thereabouts on occasion, but no smile creased his handsome face just yet. ‘Do they talk back?’

‘Not in so many words,’ she said. ‘But we have an understanding. They listen to me sing and I thank them with food. Honeyed bread is their culinary preference.’

‘Ah, so you buy their affection?’

‘It seems to be the only way I can get any nowadays.’ Oh, Laura, did you seriously just say that? ‘Any audience willing to listen to me sing—Puccini in particular,’ she qualified. ‘Not affection. I get plenty of affection without having to pay for it.’

Just shoot me where I stand, please, she begged anyone listening in to her thoughts. The intent gleam in the stranger’s intense blue eyes had her gabbling. Or maybe it was the fact that most of the guys around those parts were wizened, bow-legged, and married, and this one seemed to be a very nice combination of anything but. Then again, perhaps it was the still distant possibility that the guy was a strip-o-gram that had her in a flap. What the heck? she thought. I have the music going if he has the moves!

Ryan was speechless. An in-demand public speaker, he modified the thinking of powerful people every day: politicians, special-interest groups, people a lot bigger and scarier than this auburn-haired spitfire.