Only We Know (36 page)

Calla hugged herself. ‘I don't know. Maybe. I don't know if I trust myself when it comes to men. Look what happened the last time.'

‘I know I just met the guy but something tells me he is everything Josh wasn't.'

Calla smiled. She knew her sister was right.

Rose slipped her arm through Calla's and they walked slowly back to the living room. ‘Put it this way. You're going to get it right sooner or later. And he looks like a pretty good candidate for Mr Right, to me.'

‘He just needs a friend tomorrow, that's all.'

‘Well, in that case, he's very lucky to have you.' Rose threw her arms around her sister and held on tight. ‘And so am I.'

It was past midnight. Sam was still awake, his mind racing in the darkness of his bedroom. It was raining, the pounding on the iron roof reminding him of Roo's Rest. Everything was organised for Charlie's funeral, thanks in large part to Ben, Uncle Clive and Auntie Ruth. Sam had done as much as he could by phone, but they'd taken care of all the last-minute details. Knowing it was done, he'd gone to bed early: he'd have to be up at the crack of dawn to pick up Calla and then drive the two hours to Cape Jervis where they'd catch the ferry.

He needed sleep but it wouldn't come. His sleep-anywhere-anytime habit was betraying him tonight.

His head was a spinning mess. And at the centre of the cyclone was Calla.

She was the first person he'd wanted to talk to when Ben had called him with the terrible news. He'd felt a sudden, desperate need to be with her, to hold her, to share his pain with her. She would understand, he knew, what he'd been through with Charlie, and how far he'd come since taking her advice.

Because of her, his last conversation with his old man hadn't been a fight. He'd spent hours listening; there'd been an honesty in their conversation he and Charlie had never shared. They were the two Hunter men. There was something they shared that no one else had. A bond had been forged that night because of Calla.

She was one of a kind.

She'd brought a ray of light to Charlie's last days too, had helped the old man believe that his only surviving son might be happy again, might make a new life for himself with a woman. After all the worrying he'd done about Sam's accident and his life, it must have been a comfort to Charlie.

He'd needed to tell Calla because she would understand the pain of him losing his last parent. How it felt to realise that, suddenly, he was an orphan. How, even as an adult, that realisation cut through him and made him think about his own mortality. It wasn't that Sam hadn't faced that before. Every damn day on the job, if he was honest. He'd come so close the day of the accident all those years before. Charlie's death had reawakened feelings he'd buried deep. Some people faced their own deaths with a renewed sense of their lives. They created bucket lists. Quit their jobs. Turned to religion. Sam had turned inwards, become more cautious. He'd found some bravado for the job, but in every other part of his life he'd become the glass-half-empty person he'd accused Calla of being.

That was his secret. He'd hidden his heart away from the world after his accident. It hadn't killed him, but it had broken his spirit and created a Berlin Wall around his heart, around his life. His parents had seen it and smothered him with love. Christina had run from it at a million miles an hour. What had Calla said?
I'll be there. I promise you that.

He remembered Charlie's words to him on the last day they'd spent together.

‘I reckon she thinks you're all right,' Charlie had said.

He thought she was all right too.

‘You should marry that girl,' Charlie had told him.

Pity he didn't believe in marriage any more. Sam chuckled and it surprised him. His old man would get a kick out of thinking he was still telling him what to do even when he was dead.

That thought pulled him up. Charlie was dead. His father was gone. Sam was all that was left of the Hunter family.

Which meant Roo's Rest would be his.

He just had to get through the next day. He'd just have to get through the funeral and the wake.

And he knew he could do it with Calla by his side.

Then he could think about what to do.

CHAPTER

45

Calla was ready when Sam pulled up out front of her cottage at six-thirty the next morning. Even though she was notoriously not a morning person, she'd been wide awake for an hour already, and had been ready, waiting in the hallway by her front door for ten long minutes when he arrived. She'd dressed simply and respectfully, black pants and a black jumper, with sturdy black boots. She had a vintage woollen coat with her, ready for the wind and the cold over on the island. Her suitcase was packed and standing upright by the front door, its handle extended and ready to roll.

If only she was.

She hated funerals. Had been to too many. Her mother's five years before, and her father's a couple of years ago. A colleague who'd died too young of breast cancer. A neighbour's husband, who'd been knocked off his bike and killed. A child from one of her art classes, who'd had a fatal asthma attack. Was it any surprise she was a glass-half-empty girl?

And now she was about to cross the water to a magical island and be there for Sam when he buried his father. If only she could conjure up some useful hints to stop the sobbing, for she knew she would be a mess. She wasn't made of strong stuff when it came to death. She felt the sadness of it, and the pain of the people left behind. But she had to hold it together, for Sam. For Charlie.

There was a quiet knock on her front door. She took a deep breath and opened it.

‘Hi.' Sam tried to smile and it cut her in two. He looked tired, the dark smudges under his eyes suggesting he hadn't slept. He was dressed in black too: a suit, with a white shirt and a dark-grey tie.

She opened her mouth to speak but stopped when he stepped forward. He reached out to her, held her shoulders with a firm grip and kissed her softly on the cheek. She closed her eyes as he pressed his cool lips to her skin.

‘Is this everything?' he asked.

‘Yes, just the suitcase.' She reached for the handle but he got there first. She lifted her coat off the case and draped it over her arm.

As Sam pulled it over the front step and down the front path, the wheels rumbling on the pavers, he looked back over his shoulder with a question on his face. ‘You know we're only staying for one night, right?'

‘Yes.' She let herself smile at him, taking his cue and going with the flow to lighten the mood. This was going to be a hard day for him, she knew, and a laugh might be just what he wanted from her right now.

‘So what's with the enormous suitcase?'

She wasn't ready to tell him the real reason, what was packed inside in layers of bubble wrap. So she fudged it. ‘Give me a break. I'm a girl.'

‘I noticed,' he said with a smile.

‘I need stuff. It's all my shoes and make-up and ball gowns.'

That got a laugh and Calla felt a little of the tension lift from her shoulders.

Sam walked ahead of her through the front gate, opened the back of his four-wheel drive and lifted the bag inside. Calla locked her front door and walked to the car. When she got there, he was standing beside the open passenger door. She climbed in to the cabin and he closed the door behind her.

Sam got in, started the car. The engine hummed to life and he turned to her. ‘I hope you've got some wine stashed in that suitcase.'

‘Sam,' she sighed. ‘You don't think we'll be able to buy wine on the island?'

Sam checked his rear-vision mirror with a grin and pulled his car into the street. As they hit South Road, the main highway that would take them all the way to Cape Jervis and the ferry terminal, he pointed to the stereo. ‘You can choose some music if you want. It'll take us a couple of hours to get to the boat.'

‘I don't need music,' Calla replied. ‘I'm fine.' She had what she needed. She had Sam all to herself. His voice in her head. His smile when he looked at her. She could now simply sit back and let him lead the way. And she could reach out and touch him any time she wanted.

They drove awhile in silence; the early morning traffic on the Southern Expressway was heading into the city rather than away from it.

‘Thanks for this,' he finally said. ‘For coming with me.'

Calla reached across the centre console to touch his arm. ‘Can't say it'll be the best date I've ever had but, you know, beggars can't be choosers.'

That made him laugh, his booming voice filling the cabin and reaching right inside her. That's what she'd wanted to do: make him laugh. She could do comic relief, and had the feeling it was exactly what he needed right now. She didn't want him to feel as if the whole day was a funeral procession.

‘Hey, I forgot something.' Sam checked the road ahead and then reached over her knees and pressed open the glove box. He rifled around inside.

‘Thought you might need this.' He pulled out a lollipop, a cellophane-wrapped sphere on a white stick, and handed it to Calla.

She took it from him, her fingers brushing against his as she did. Their eyes met. ‘You really are my hero, you know that?'

A couple of hours later, they were on the boat. Sam had driven his vehicle into the hold and found Calla at a table upstairs. He'd suggested she be as near as possible to the deck, just in case. Outside, the blue sky shone and the placid ocean was making for a settled crossing. Inside, the cabin was bustling with people. Islanders going home. Tourists, grey nomads. The truck drivers whose job it was to haul cargo back and forth to the mainland.

Sam studied her across the table. He was looking for signs of seasickness but got totally distracted by how beautiful she was. Instead of looking for pale skin, he saw softness and faint freckles under almost-there make-up. Her face wasn't clenched as if she were trying to block out the view; rather, she was looking at him with clear eyes and there was even a laugh in them. Her hands weren't clutched to her stomach, but she was holding her phone, studying a shot she'd just taken of him across the table. She'd snapped it so quickly he hadn't realised she'd done it until he saw her smile emerge as she lowered her smartphone.

Calla reached for the white stick of the lollipop she was sucking and pulled the round bauble out of her mouth. ‘I hope you don't mind.'

‘No,' he said. ‘I don't mind.' Sam rested his elbows on the table. ‘You feeling okay?'

Calla nodded reassuringly. ‘Sucking this thing really works. I don't feel sick at all,' she said before putting it back in her mouth.

Sam smiled to himself. He noticed her tongue was red. And her lips. He decided not to mention either. He liked the distraction of staring at them. ‘It's not that rough today.'

Calla glanced out the window. ‘Thank god,' she mumbled and the little white stick moved from one side of her lips to the other.

‘Don't worry, I was planning to be a little more sympathetic this time,' Sam said as he glanced out the windows to his right. ‘The first time we met, I thought you were a German backpacker. I wasn't even sure you spoke English.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah.' Had it really only been two weeks since they'd met? There was no way that could be true. How was it possible that they'd come this far, learnt so much about each other, come to lean on each other, in so little time? He knew who she was. And she seemed to know him. He'd let her in, bit by bit, secret by secret, until it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be travelling back to the island with her for Charlie's funeral.

Calla looked at him thoughtfully. Pulled the lollipop out of her mouth again. Her lips formed an ‘o' as she did it. ‘That explains a lot.'

Sam squirmed in his seat. His shirt collar suddenly felt tight on his throat and he jammed a finger inside it. ‘It does?'

‘Yeah. There I was, a damsel in distress, and you didn't even talk to me. I wondered why. You looked at me really strangely and just kind of shoved me out the door.' She nodded in the direction of the deck. ‘I thought you were kind of rude, to be honest.' Her warm smile undercut her words.

‘I was worried you were going to puke. Specifically, all over me.'

‘Wouldn't that be a story to tell?' Calla picked up her phone, held it to her ear and said, ‘Hey Rose, I met this great guy on the boat going over to Kangaroo Island. Yeah, very handsome. Tall. Uh huh. Did he ask for my number? No, not after I vomited all over him.'

Sam looked at her, amusement brightening his eyes. ‘That would definitely have killed the mood.'

‘You're telling me,' Calla said with a laugh.

Sam leant in closer. ‘You want to know a secret?'

‘What?' Calla's eyes widened.

He looked at her over the tops of his sunglasses. ‘Probably still would have asked for your number.'