Holding Out for a Hero (23 page)

Ella’s face crumpled again as she remembered the garnet glow in her mother’s room, the choc-chip muffins that had been such a staple of her childhood. When she’d cried in his office that night after the Roger Hillman debacle, she’d been crying for herself, for the sucky hand that life had dealt her. But now she was crying for her mother, mourning the person Rachel was beneath the label Huntley had given her. The real person that no one, including her, had bothered to see.

Ella sat up, wiping her eyes. “Better?” he asked.

She lowered her head and kissed him. “I love you.”

Jake smiled. “I love you too.”

Ella felt her heart skip a beat at his admission. “So this isn’t just sex?”

Jake shook his head. “Nope. This is the real thing.”

Ella grinned. Then she laughed and hugged him. “Thank you, Jake.”

Jake shut his eyes and squeezed her tight. “Come on then, let me go find Cam.” He helped Ella off and rose to his feet.

“I don’t know where he’ll be,” Ella said, worrying her bottom lip.

“I think I do.” Jake dropped a kiss on her mouth. “Sit tight.”

*

Jake pulled up at the Hanniford Oval fifteen minutes later. In the glow cast by a nearby street light he could see a human shape sitting in the stands; he’d bet the pub it was Cameron. He’d always gone to the field when he’d needed to think. He unbuckled and got out of his car, jumping the fence with ease, and headed toward his target. It was evident as he drew close from the waft of rum that greeted him that Cameron was drinking.

“Cam.”

Cameron took another swig out of the bottle. “I suppose my sister sent you?”

“She’s worried about you.”

“Probably shit scared I’m going to dob her into the child protection agency for abuse.”

Jake ignored the jibe. He could hear the bitterness in the teenager’s voice and tried to remember that they weren’t that different, Cam and he. He took the wooden steps two at a time and sat down next to Cameron. “Getting drunk?”

Cameron shrugged. “You gonna dob?”

“Is it helping?”

Cameron held the bottle up to the light, inspecting the line of amber fluid sloshing against the glass. “Give it another ten minutes.”

“So, what? You’re just going to drink that till you pass out? Is that your way of getting back at her?”

“Got a problem with that?”

Jake held onto his temper, forcing an air of nonchalance. “Well, it’s not particularly smart.”

“Oh, right,” Cameron sneered. “You telling me that you’ve never drowned your sorrows before?”

“Nope. I’m telling you as someone who’s drowned his sorrows a little too often that it’s a dumbass thing to do.”

Cameron glared at him. “I’m the laughing stock of the school. I thought I’d gotten away from all that crap when she took me away from Huntley. She should have just left me there.”

Jake nodded and stayed silent for a few minutes. “You know what I learnt a long time ago, Cameron? You can’t control what people say about you. You can only control how you react to it. Now, you can get mad, hell, you can even get drunk, or you do what I do.”

Cameron eyed him with suspicion. “What’s that?”

Jake held his hand out for the bottle. “You get even.”

Cameron regarded his open hand for a moment. He took one last swallow then handed it to Jake. “I choose even.”

Jake grinned. “Good choice.” He tipped the bottle upside down until the last drop of amber fluid had drained away and soaked into the grass beneath the stand.

“Now let’s go win this comp.”

Ella stood in front of the glass door simply labeled
LAWYER
, conscious that Huntley was, as always, watching her. She couldn’t believe she was back. She almost turned around and told Jake to forget it.

Jake squeezed her shoulder and the urge to flee subsided. He was right. She needed to find some peace. She took a deep, fortifying breath. It didn’t stop her hand trembling, though, as she pushed the door open, the blinds swinging slightly from side to side with the movement. The door shut behind them and she was aware of the rattling as their momentum settled.

Ella blinked as her pupils adjusted to the low light inside Mr. Levy’s wood-paneled office, unchanged in forty years. There was no pretentiousness in here—no highfalutin’ secretary, no gilt-framed art, no leather Chesterfields. Just Sol in his three-piece suit sitting at his big old mahogany desk with real leather inlay, framed by a bank of mahogany bookshelves crammed full of leather-bound texts, as he always had.

“Ah, Ella, how lovely to see you my dear.”

Jake’s warmth behind her was welcome as the elderly lawyer peered at her over the top of his bifocals and half stood, acknowledging Jake with a nod of his head. “Please, sit, both of you,” he said, indicating the chairs opposite him.

They sat. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Levy,” Ella said.

Sol smiled at her. “I’m pleased you decided to come.” He reached down beside him, opened a draw and extracted a thick, cream-colored envelope. “I believe you’re after this.” He handed it to her.

Ella took the envelope she’d refused two years ago. Back then, she’d instructed Sol to shred it—she was grateful he hadn’t. She sat looking at it for a moment or two. What did it say? Did she want to know? Would it help?

“Your mother came to me about a year before she died,” Sol said, finally giving voice to the words Ella hadn’t wanted to hear two years ago. He watched Ella finger the envelope. “She’d had a premonition she wasn’t going to be around for much longer.”

Ella glanced at him sharply. She hadn’t known that. Of course, blind Freddy could have seen that Rachel was walking a dangerous line and the good folk of Huntley had had a few premonitions of their own. None of them had involved the rather pedestrian heart attack that had killed Rachel at fifty-three. Ella was pretty sure Huntley had been waiting for a much stickier end for Rachel. Lord knew there were any number of scorned women who hadn’t shed a tear when the town tramp had collapsed in her front yard and not been able to be revived. Ella certainly wouldn’t have put it past a bitter wife or an angry girlfriend to extract revenge.

Sol steepled his fingers and pursed his lips. “There are things in there she desperately wanted you to know.”

Ella nodded, coming out of her reverie. She slipped it into her handbag. “Thank you.”

Silence descended upon them, broken only by the tick of a clock. It reminded Ella of the clocks at home and she stood, wanting to be gone, wanting to be back in Brisbane with Iris and Daisy. With Rosie.

Sol and Jake stood too. She held out her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Levy.”

Sol shook it. “Your mother was a good woman, Ella,” he said gently, releasing Ella’s hand. “She always had the time of day for me. People tolerate me here because I’m the only lawyer. But even after forty years, none of them really go out of their way. Rachel wasn’t like that.”

Ella heard the affection in the older man’s voice and was reminded that despite the way the town had painted her, her mother had always possessed an innate kindness. It had been an easy fact to forget growing up in a community that hadn’t cared about the finer points of Rachel’s character. But Jake obviously hadn’t forgotten and neither had Sol Levy.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

Jake waited for Ella to say something more but she just stood there looking awkward. He placed his palm on the small of her back. “I think we’ll be on our way now,” he said to Sol.

The lawyer nodded. “Of course. Nice seeing you both.”

*

Ella stood in front of the non-descript tombstone. Just a name and two dates. No lament. No words to usher Rachel’s spirit into the afterlife. No flowers either. All around them, neatly kept graves boasted vases of freshly cut blooms. Only weeds grew where Rachel lay. Huntley would probably think that was fitting. In fact Ella wouldn’t have put it past the town to deliberately infect her mother’s final resting place with such ugliness.

Rachel, who’d always had an eye for beauty, would have hated it.

Ella fell to her knees and started yanking at the scrawny weeds, her movements agitated as she clamped down hard on the rising block of emotion threatening to blind and choke her. Her hands were cold despite the bite of the sun at her neck.

“Hey,” Jake murmured, kneeling beside her, one hand on her back. He placed his other hand over hers, stilling the frantic movements. “Let me do this. Why don’t you read the letter?”

Ella rested back on her haunches and looked at him. “She’d hate them,” she said.

Jake nodded. “I know.” And he took over where she left off.

Ella watched him for a moment or two before she slowly opened her bag and located the cream envelope Sol Levy had given her. She turned it over a few times before summoning the courage to open it.

The paper was beautiful—expensive and delicately perfumed—so very, very Rachel. But the shock of seeing her mother’s flowery handwriting again rocked Ella and she was gripped with a sudden sense of foreboding.

“You’re never going to know unless you read it.”

Ella looked up at Jake, who had stopped weeding and was looking at her with his calm green eyes.

“Read it,” he murmured. “I’m right here.” And then he returned to his job, throwing another weed in the pile near his right knee.

Ella settled cross-legged on the grass, took a deep breath and started to read:

Ella wasn’t sure how long she stared at the letter after she finished. She was angry and confused and sad. So very sad.

“Hey.” Jake had finished weeding and plonked himself down next to Ella. “You okay?”

Ella shook her head as the sadness overwhelmed her. She handed him the letter and he read it without comment. When he finished, he folded it up. “Pragmatic to the end,” he said gently, tugging her close.

Ella nodded and they sat in the blazing sun for a while longer, lost in the tranquility of a late spring afternoon.

“Back to Brisbane?” Jake asked eventually. Ella had done what she’d needed to do and he’d dropped in and seen his old man. They were square with Huntley.

Ella shook her head. “Back to Levy’s.”

*

“Ella?” Sol rose to his feet, surprise at seeing her again so soon written across his face. “Is everything alright, dear?”

Ella nodded. “I’d like to set up a Rachel Lucas University Scholarship for disadvantaged students at the high school.”

Ella couldn’t change the past but she could see to it that her mother wouldn’t slip from this life without anyone knowing she’d existed. Huntley may want to forget Rachel Lucas—but they could all go to hell. She wasn’t rich but she could factor a couple of thousand dollars every year into her budget.

Sol smiled. “Good for you, Ella. Good for you.”

*

Iris dragged the smoke deep into her lungs and held it until her chest burned. The anxiety seemed to have increased, not lessened, since things had turned around, and she was taking Daisy’s advice to practice some deep breathing. The girls would probably have preferred she did it without the aid of nicotine but if she ever needed to smoke, the time was now. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something ugly loomed in the future.

And then of course there was the money situation.

Application for heritage status was all well and good; it had given them a stay of execution but an inspection would be part of the process and she knew that they would insist on some major repairs just to make the place safe. Those would take serious cash, especially with the hoops they’d have to jump through now a heritage listing was on the cards—cash that they just didn’t have. Not being flush with money wasn’t something that had ever bothered her or Daisy. They got by. The girls covered the mortgage and the bills, they had clothes on their backs and three squares a day with enough left over for dog food, sherry and tobacco.

She looked out over the yard. Despite the encroaching shadows of steel and glass, impinging on their space, she loved this house. It may be sagging in the middle and listing a little to the side but owning something after the transience of circus life had meant a lot to them.

Coming to the city, starting anew, had been daunting, but they’d seen the writing on the wall for traditional circus life and had gone with their dignity still intact.

“Here it is,” Daisy announced as she plonked herself down at the table, brandishing a full packet of tobacco. She shook her head and let out a loud hoot. “They think I don’t know where they hide our supply.”

Iris gave her sister a half smile before fanning her anxious gaze back to the yard, her fingers stroking her cards. The middle wattle was finally giving in to the dictates of the season, its yellow flowers turning brown, hardening into little balls and littering the ground beneath where Cerberus was once again digging.

“Cerberus!” Iris called. “Stop that damn digging!” Cerberus looked at them guiltily and collapsed atop his latest hole. Iris shook her head at Daisy. “Honestly, I don’t know how many times I’ve filled up holes under that tree.”

Daisy shrugged. “At least he’s confined it to one spot. Remember when Genghis was a puppy? Bloody holes everywhere.”

Iris nodded. “Nearly broke my ankle falling into one. Laid me up for weeks.”

Daisy chuckled, remembering. Good memories here—every one. She opened the pouch and they both rolled cigarettes for a while without speaking.

Daisy eventually broke the silence. “Iris, why don’t you say what’s bothering you? Reading minds is your forté, not mine.”

Iris looked at her sister. “Daisy, how are we going to pay for the building repairs?”

Daisy licked the edge of a fully stuffed paper. “Something will come along.”

Iris shot her sister an exasperated look. “How can you possibly know that?”

Daisy raised an eyebrow at Iris’s tone but kept on with her job. “It always does,” she said mildly.

Iris sighed, instantly contrite. “I’m sorry. I’m not getting much sleep lately.”

“Still dreaming about yellow gold?”

Iris nodded. “I can’t even remember what the dream is about but I wake up with those two damn words in my head and I know they’re our salvation. I just don’t know how.”

“You will. It’ll come. Eventually.”

Daisy was a great believer in the universe providing. Iris was too connected with it to be assured. She shook her head. “We’re running out of time, Dais.”

Daisy put the cigarette down and looked at her sister. She was scrunching a paper into a tiny ball. She’d lost weight the last little while, there were cheekbones, collar bones. “Let me pick a card.”