Meant-To-Be Mother

‘Anyone there?’ he asked, and Siena gave in.

‘Rick, it’s Siena.’

After a long pause he came back to her. ‘Well, well, well. Piccolo. It’s been some long while since I have heard your lovely voice.’

Rick’s passive aggressive comment was almost enough to have Siena switching off her phone and turning right around.

‘Una momento,’ Rick said, and she heard a crash of something kitcheny followed by the shouts of two young boys in the background. It gave her a moment to recollect herself.

‘Michael! Leo! Stop that,’ Rick’s voice cried somewhere near the phone. ‘Sit at the table and your mama will bring your cereal in a second. Sorry, Piccolo, breakfast is like a battle zone around here. So where are you today? Paris? London?’

Here goes… ‘I’m at the Cairns Airport.’

She was met with deathly silence. It seemed he was as shocked that she was back after all this time as she was.

‘Well, I’ll be…Our little bird has returned to the nest. Does this mean I get to see your pretty face for real, not just on those big posters near the airport?’

Siena closed her eyes and leant her forehead against her fist. ‘I’m here until Saturday evening, so, sure. Why not? I have a meeting with Maximillian tomorrow afternoon but, apart from that, this little bird is, well, as free as a bird.’

‘Great. Tell me which terminal and I’ll pick you up.’

‘No, it’s okay. I have a driver.’ She felt a mix of pride and stupidity in admitting as much and she cringed as she awaited Rick’s usual unimpressed laughter. But it never came.

‘But you are staying here,’ he said, not even a hint of a question in his commanding tone. ‘Tina can make up the spare room.’

She thought of the big king-sized bed and Egyptian cotton sheets that would be awaiting her at the suite Max had organised for her at the Novotel Resort in the beachside haven of Palm Cove, and imagined the chintz comforter, sagging single bed and recriminations no doubt awaiting her at the Capuletti home. Hmm, tough decision.

‘Come,’ he said, hearing her pause. ‘Stay with us. Please. I’m not asking the world of you, Siena, but it is more than time you met your nephews and niece.’

Siena used her spare hand to rub away her frown. It was the please that got her. She couldn’t remember a time when she had ever heard that word come from Rick. Ever. She was more used to: Do this. Be that. If you don’t, one of these days you’ll give poor Papa a heart attack…

‘Sure,’ she said, her throat tight with emotion. ‘But only for a couple of days. I’m in town on a purpose and this meeting tomorrow is really important—’

‘A couple of days would be wonderful, Piccolo.’

Siena nodded even though he couldn’t see her.

‘Do you have our new address?’ he asked.

Siena was embarrassed to realise she had no idea. She knew they had sold the family home a few years before. Her half of the money from its sale was still sitting untouched, unwelcome, gathering interest and dust, in a bank account. But she hadn’t a clue where they were living now.

‘You may as well give it to me again,’ she said, reaching into her handbag for her PDA.

Rick reeled off his suburban address in a new estate Siena hadn’t even heard of and she typed it in under his name. Well, it had been seven years since she’d lived there…

‘We’re heading off soon to take the kids to Tina’s mother’s for the day, then we both have to work, but we’ll leave you a key under the mat. Make yourself at home.’

Home. Again that small word clenched at deep dark places inside Siena’s chest as suppressed visions of the old family house took root in the corner of her mind.

‘I’ll see you later tonight?’ Rick asked.

‘See you then.’ She hung up and turned to find Rufus watching her quietly. He approached, making a dead-straight beeline through the departing crowd.

‘Straight to Palm Cove, then, Ms Capuletti?’

‘Change of plan, Rufus. Unfortunately Palm Cove is going to be a no go.’

‘But Maximillian—’

‘I can always catch a cab if it’s too much trouble,’ she said, staring him down. Siena could read people in a heartbeat and, though she figured this guy had secrets she didn’t even want to know about, she knew that pleasing Max’s guests was now priority number one.

He raised one thick silver eyebrow, as though asking if she was going to be this stubborn all weekend. She grinned back at him.

For Siena stubborn was a promise.

An hour later Siena made plans for Rufus to pick her up the next day for her interview, took his business card in case she needed him for anything—car trips, tourist outings, dinner reservations, hits on annoying family members—and let herself into Rick’s home.

It was just as she had expected. Within the freshly painted walls of the brand new house lived ancient mismatched furniture from the old family home mixed with assorted Ikea decor. And there was an inherent scent of tomato pasta on the air.

Family pictures littered the top of their old piano, its keys yellowed by time. Memories crowded in on her as she remembered Rick forcing her to practice at that very piano every single night. While her friends had been at the mall or going to movies, from the day he’d become her legal guardian she had been chained to her weekly routine like a prisoner serving out a sentence for a heinous crime.

Siena lumbered up the stairs, dragging her small case into the obvious spare bedroom where she found a set of keys and a note reading: ‘The keys are for the green car. Dinner’s at seven.’

After changing into a thankfully cola-free filmy sleeveless black top and skinny dark designer jeans, she searched the Yellow Pages for the name of a dry cleaner. Grabbing her grimy suit and the keys for the green car—not wanting to bother poor Rufus for a quick trip to town, especially since she wasn’t entirely sure if she was partial to him or if she was slightly scared of him—she headed out.

The innocuous sounding green car turned out to be a great, hulking, Kermit-green, eight-cylinder Ute which looked so neat and sparkly clean it couldn’t have been used to haul anything more gritty and cumbersome than plants for Tina’s garden.

She started up the monster, took a few moments to familiarise herself with the feel of the pedals as it was the first right-hand-drive car she had driven in months, then backed out of the driveway.

She had to admit it was a beautiful day. Hot and sunny, like every day in Cairns—a huge tourist destination, poised on the edge of the magnificent Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven wonders of the natural world. It really was paradise. For some. For others the hot air felt heavy, smothering, suffocating…

She switched on the air-conditioning, her breathing coming easier when the car smelt less like the past and more like the inside of a plane.

After about five minutes of driving Siena passed an intersection with an antique shop on one corner and an antiquated milk bar on the other and felt a massive wave of déjà vu.

Ignoring the map on the display of her PDA, she took a right turn down a familiar-feeling suburban street, shady with gigantic overhanging gum trees. The stillness of the place washed over her as she meandered deeper along the windy road past lovely large two-storey homes with gables and shutters and front porches and grassy front gardens. It was a picture postcard neighbourhood for a young family.

But familiarity soon morphed into prickly realisation.

This was her old street. The home she had lived in for the first eighteen years of her life. The home in which she had grown up as a late child with a bossy older brother and an absentee father…

She rumbled down the street in second gear. Piano music pealed from one house, making her feel giddy. She peered at numbers on letterboxes to draw her focus elsewhere.

And then she found it. Fourteen Apple Tree Drive. Even the street name was picture perfect. But she knew that the lives going on behind such façades weren’t anywhere near perfect.

A flash of movement loomed at the corner of her vision and she looked up from the letterbox to see a kid riding his bike out into the street.

Swearing loudly, she slammed on the brakes, the big car tugging and shuddering as she held on for all her might. But her unpractised arms couldn’t keep the car straight.