Although Sam rose at dawn, plenty early enough for the cafe’s slightly later Saturday opening, Ma already had the washing strewn across the laundry floor by the time she’d showered and wandered through. Neat little mountains, sorted by colour.
Sam sighed. ‘Ma, I wish you’d let me get you an automatic machine.’ Not that she had the money. ‘Or, like Lucie said, access your home care package to buy one. No one uses twin tubs anymore. You can’t be hauling the wet clothes out of that and into the spinner all the time.’ Her grandmother was shrinking, so small now that she tottered as she reached into the bottom of the tub to lift the sopping clothes out.
‘I like doing it this way,’ Ma snipped back. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the machine, and you know what Pops says—’
‘Something astoundingly intelligent, I’m sure,’ Pops cut in as he banged through the back door, adjusting his braces. He’d evidently been across the garden to the outside loo—or his library, as he called it. He was happy to spend an hour there, the door wide open regardless of the weather, looking over the scruffy garden as he read his latest novel.
‘In your dreams,’ Ma said. ‘But if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it seems to fit this case.’
‘Your back will be broke if you keep hauling this lot,’ Sam muttered, trying to elbow in at the tub.
‘No, no.’ Ma stopped her. ‘I’m just doing this load then I need to put in fresh water to rinse. Go and pop the kettle on while I empty and refill the tub.’
With the laundry plumbed to rainwater, it would take fifteen minutes for sufficient water to trickle through. ‘That tank is running slower than ever,’ Sam said.
‘Rains are starting. Just need a decent shower, and we’ll be right.’
‘The next downpour will probably do the tank in,’ Pops said glumly. ‘It’s leaking like a sieve. That epoxy bonder they sold me at the hardware doesn’t work. Says the surface needs to be dry before I can apply it, but as it’s a leak I’m fixing, how’s it ever going to be dry?’
‘Is a new rainwater tank something you can get on your home care package?’ Sam asked, managing to snag the wooden spoon Ma used to hook clothes from the tub. She dug deep into the grey water, dragging sopping bed sheets across to the spin basket. ‘Ask Lucie, she’ll most likely know off the top of her head.’
‘This one will see us out,’ Ma said decisively.
‘Ma,’ Sam groaned, ‘don’t talk like that.’ She needed her grandparents more than she could ever express. While life was far better than it had been only a few months ago, still she felt … adrift. And even more so with the discovery yesterday that Pierce had bought her business. She had made an excuse about needing to get back to the farm, and left straight after he dropped that bombshell. But last night, when she should have been trying to get her head around what it would mean for her, all she had been able to think about was his insistence that the ball was in her court.
‘Samantha?’ Ma said sharply. ‘We’ve lost you in La La Land. Come on, into the kitchen with you. Let’s have that coffee.’
‘I’ve already got it on,’ Pops called through the open doorway.
Where Ma was a teaspoon of Nescafe in boiling water coffee-maker, Pops had a trick of making it with equal amounts of hot milk and water, and added a generous spoonful of raw honey, which Jack collected from wild hives. Sam often had Pops’ coffee in the place of a meal. Today, though, she picked up an old metal Quality Street chocolates tin she had left on the yellow Formica-topped kitchen counter the previous afternoon. ‘I tried something new,’ she said.
‘You’re always trying something new,’ Pops said. ‘I’m chuffed to see it. Though my diabetes, maybe not so much.’
‘And my waistline, not so much,’ Ma agreed. ‘But as we’ve all got to go, may as well go happy.’
‘Ma!’ Sam groaned again.
‘Samantha Schenscher,’ Ma said, dropping her married name, ‘since when have you not faced up to the truth?’
‘Well, took her a while to cotton on that the bastard was no good,’ Pops grumbled, setting the mugs on the table in a tidal wave of spillage.
God, she’d rather discuss her grandparents’ mortality than have the conversation take this turn. Sam prised the lid from the tin and clanged it onto the table, dropping into her seat in the same moment, as though the noise and movement would deflect her grandparents.
‘That’s not the same.’ Ma didn’t notice the interruption. ‘Sam thought she was doing the right thing by him; it just took her a little time to see the truth of who he was. Though I hear he outed himself on that score yesterday.’
Sam scowled at the chocolate tin lid, trying to recall which of the local tattletales had been in the cafe when Grant and Hayley came through. And had they also been there when she’d talked with Pierce? How much more had her grandmother heard?
‘What’s this?’ Pops asked, as though he and Ma didn’t spend all day discussing every little nuance of their grandkids’ lives.
‘That bugger—’ Ma never swore ‘—has knocked up some poor girl. Going to ruin her life now, I suppose.’
‘Someone should warn her what he’s like.’ Pops lowered creakily onto his vinyl-covered chair.
Sam flinched. She felt guilty enough without Pops putting her thoughts into words. ‘I can’t say anything to her,’ she said defensively. ‘Because maybe Grant was only a dick with me. Perhaps there’s something about me that sets him off.’ Or everything. She had lived with low-grade fear for so long, it was hard to pinpoint exactly how she managed to irritate, annoy and enrage her husband.
‘Nonsense,’ Ma said roundly. ‘He’s a piece of garbage, no two ways about it. Not that I’d mention it around your brother. He’s all for teaching your ex a lesson or two, and getting more worked up about it every time I see him.’
‘A lesson in what?’ Sam said warily. She clenched her hands beneath the table. She didn’t care about protecting Grant, but her grandparents didn’t need to know the depraved depths her relationship had plumbed. ‘People are allowed to simply get over each other, you know. No harm, no foul. It’s nothing to do with Jack.’
Ma shrugged, though her arthritic shoulder barely moved. ‘I suppose he just doesn’t like to see his big sister unhappy. And you shoot him down every time he tries to talk to you. Anyway—’ she dabbed up toast crumbs with her index finger and crumbled them back on to the table ‘—tell us more about this friend of Gabrielle’s.’
And there it was. Proof that Settlers Bridge kept only the secrets it chose. Her grandparents had been protected from the truth of Grant’s behaviour, but the grapevine had threaded them the news about Pierce in under twenty-four hours. Impressive, considering her grandparents hadn’t even been into town.
Sam folded back the greaseproof paper from the top of the chocolate tin. ‘Kourabiethes. Shortbread, Pops,’ she added, catching his uncertain look at the crescent-shaped biscuits dusted with powdered sugar. She placed one on each of the mismatched saucers Ma had laid on the table. Opening a ziplock bag, she garnished each biscuit with a slice of dried orange and candied lemon. Her grandparents wouldn’t appreciate the plating, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘Lemon flavoured?’ Pops mumbled, spraying crumbs.
‘This lot are, which is traditional. But I’ve experimented with orange, too, which I think is just as nice.’
‘Traditional where?’ Ma asked.
‘Greece,’ Sam replied, before realising she’d walked straight into the trap. She cast an imploring glance at her grandmother.
‘Ah.’ Ma inspected the biscuit far more closely than it needed, apparently oblivious to Sam’s mute appeal. ‘So Gabrielle’s friend gave you the recipe?’
‘He’s Italian.’
‘Hmm,’ Pops grumbled, starting to put the remainder of his biscuit down. He changed his mind, stuffing it into his mouth, instead. Obviously, that was exile enough to make his disapproval clear. ‘They’re all the same, aren’t they? Italian or Greek, same thing.’
‘Hush.’ Ma shot him the look that had worked on Sam and Jack for decades. ‘Let Samantha speak.’
‘Samantha wasn’t planning to,’ Sam said miserably.
‘Of course you were,’ Ma said, as though there was no option.
Really, Sam thought, much as she loved being back at the farm and making up for lost time with her grandparents, as soon as she got her finances sorted, she needed to look at renting somewhere.
Except, now the cafe had been sold, her finances were never going to be sorted.
The thoughts chased around in her head, a guinea pig on a wheel. And that mental image took her straight back to standing at Gabrielle’s bar, sipping cocktails, the silver streaks in Pierce’s hair glinting beneath the lights as his dark eyes fastened intently on hers.
Flustered, she waved her hands over the table, as though she could ward off the memories of what had come afterward. ‘The recipe is from the internet. Like all my recipes.’
‘I’m a big fan of the cobweb.’ Ma nodded comfortably. ‘I’d told Jack he could find a wife on there. Or on TV.’
‘That wasn’t where Lucie came from, though, was it?’ her grandfather said, his brow furrowed.
His confusion gave Sam more cause for concern than Ma’s scattiness, which she suspected was often deliberate. ‘No, Pops. Lucie and Jack met because of his property, remember? Nothing to do with the internet or TV.’
‘And that’s not how you met this friend of Gabrielle’s either, is it, Samantha?’ Ma neatly brought the conversation back.
‘That’s exactly my point,’ Sam said. ‘He’s a friend of Gabby’s. He also happens to be a chef, so we simply have some shared interests to discuss.’ Her cheeks flamed at the memory of yesterday’s shared interest. She stirred her coffee, letting the teaspoon clank loudly. ‘This honey is candied. Did Jack say where he got it? Lucie mentioned that if the bees are collecting from canola, the honey candies straight away.’
‘We’re not interested in discussing bees’ bums,’ Ma said. ‘Tell us more about this chef.’
She said it almost as though they had a right to vet her interests. Which, Sam realised, might not be such a bad idea. She sighed, keeping her gaze on her coffee. ‘He’s just … different. I was going to say educated, but he reckons he dropped out of high school, too.’
‘Hmm, the less we say about that, the better,’ Ma cut in. Apparently that decision was still going to come back to bite Sam even decades after the event.
‘But he’s got … street smarts. You know what I mean?’
‘Of course,’ Ma said. ‘That’s exactly what you have. Natural ability. You could be anything you want to be.’
‘No, I couldn’t.’ Sam sighed. Ma tended to wear rose-coloured glasses. ‘My grades were never much chop, and it’s not like there was much around here in the way of career options anyway.’ Besides, at sixteen, all she’d wanted was Grant. She hadn’t thought beyond the moment, to what it would take to create happiness for the future.
‘I wasn’t talking about the past.’ Ma seemed to read her thoughts. ‘You’re free now. You can do whatever you want. Anyway, what is it that makes this fellow so smart?’
Ma’s mention of freedom thrilled through Sam. Though the world wasn’t quite as open to her as Ma seemed to think, she felt much less restricted than she had for years. ‘He’s really passionate about cooking. And into history. And he, well, he listens.’
‘What’s that?’ Pops joked, cupping a hand behind his hearing aid.
Sam rolled her eyes, and Ma flapped at him to hush.
‘Listens because you’re saying what he wants to hear?’ Ma said. ‘They’ll all do that.’
Sam shook her head. ‘No. Just listens. Whatever I’m dribbling about. And, more surprisingly, he remembers what I’ve said. As though he’s actually interested.’ She took a swallow of coffee. She had to shut up, stop listing Pierce’s virtues.
Especially when she wasn’t interested in them.
Well, hadn’t entirely decided if she was interested. ‘Anyway,’ she finished up hurriedly. ‘Like I said, he’s Gabby’s friend, and we just have interests in common.’
‘And he’s nice?’ Ma said, helping herself to another kourabiethes.
Sam snorted. ‘You’re asking me?’
‘That so-and-so was just a hiccup,’ Ma said, powdered sugar floating in the air. ‘Forget about him.’
‘A twenty-year hiccup,’ Sam muttered.
‘Well—’ Ma licked her fingers ‘—drink a glass of water and hold your breath, then get back out there.’
Sam’s stomach tensed. Like a pelican, was she too large for the nest, and her grandparents were trying to push her out? ‘But I like it fine here.’
‘I know you do, love. But you’re only in your thirties, and Pops and I won’t be here forever. You’ll be lucky to get another fifteen years out of us.’
God, she hoped her grandparents had that long. She would be lost without them.
‘And you’re not going to stay on the farm. You need something more in your life.’ Ma patted a sugar-dusted hand on Sam’s. ‘It’s understandable that you’re nervous about getting back out there.’
Sam closed her eyes and blew out an unsteady breath. If her grandmother, without knowing the extent of the mess of her relationship, was confident Sam could start over, who was she to argue? ‘But the thing is, what if I find someone else exactly like Grant?’
‘Lightning never strikes twice,’ Pops put in.
‘Hush, you,’ Ma said irritably. ‘Eat another biscuit. You go on, Sam.’
‘Shouldn’t I be playing it safe? Swearing off men so I don’t make the same mistakes?’ She knew what she was asking: she wanted Ma to tell her to go ahead, to give Pierce a chance even though she was barely out of a relationship and hardly knew him.
Ma lifted an open hand in question. ‘They weren’t your mistakes though, were they? You’re not responsible for someone else’s personality, their character faults. Grant simply wasn’t destined to be your forever. Why shouldn’t you put that behind you and move right on?’
‘Because it’s not normal?’ she said, though her words held a hopeful, questioning inflection.
‘Who says it’s not normal? Trash gossip magazines? Dr Phil?’ Ma demanded.
‘Life is short, Samantha,’ Pops said, unusually solemn. ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt again. But I don’t want to see you hurt yourself, either. Marriage is important, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. Stop beating yourself up over it.’
Sam winced at his unfortunate choice of words, again grateful that they didn’t know the full story.
‘Besides,’ Pops continued, ‘if you lock yourself away like a nun, you’re letting that bas—’ he broke off with a look at Ma. ‘You’re letting that bugger win. Why should he be the only one having any fun?’
She might as well lay all her cards on the table, Ma and Pops would hear the news soon enough. ‘It’s not that simple. Pierce seems nice—’
‘Pierce? What sort of name is that?’ Pops grumbled, having apparently moved on from his wisdom-giving.
‘Paul,’ Ma said warningly.
‘But apparently he’s bought Ploughs and Pies. So that makes him my boss. Or … I don’t know what it makes him. He said he’s got time off from his business in Adelaide, so maybe he intends to run the cafe himself.’
‘Ah. Well, now, that is a pickle,’ Ma said, with far too much glee. ‘I read a story like that once. You know, a fling with the boss. An Annie Seaton, I think it was. I must get that book from the library again. But anyway, why would you sell Ploughs and Pies?’
‘Not me. Grant. And this is real life, Ma.’ Sam had never had time for stories. ‘Even if I thought I liked him, how would that work?’
‘Seems to me you’re more worried about figuring out whether you like him than you are about losing the cafe,’ Ma said.
‘Yeah, well, no point focusing on stuff I have no control over, is there?’ she snapped, stung by Ma’s accuracy.
‘Depends how much you like this Pierce,’ Pops chimed in. ‘Could be that you don’t have any control over either of those things.’
‘Pops!’ she groaned. ‘I barely know him.’ Not that she’d had any such reservations the previous day. ‘We’ve met a handful of times.’ And kissed. And it wasn’t her fault they hadn’t taken it any further than that.
‘Then time is a-wasting, girl. None of us are getting any younger. Nor are these biscuits getting any fresher.’ Pops tapped one on his plate, as though dusting off the excess powdered sugar would help his diabetes. ‘Might just have to eat them all now,’ he said with a wink. ‘Young Keeley’s coming over tomorrow, so perhaps you’d better get another lot on for her after work.’
Sam pushed up from the table, glad for both the excuse and the warning. She wasn’t about to let her brother corner her anywhere he could press for more information on Grant. Her almost ex was history now, and there was no reason for Jack to get involved. ‘I’ll do the chickens on my way out.’ She let the fowl out of the coop and scattered grain on the sheet of corrugated iron Ma used to keep the feed out of the dirt. Then she sloshed over to the layer boxes, the mud that caked her cracked Redbacks announcing that the rains had arrived overnight. Despite the fresh sawdust in the boxes, the eggs were filthy. She grimaced. Just occasionally, suburban life—and clean eggs in cartons—trumped country living. But she knew her cakes tasted better for the home produce. And Roni was bringing her duck eggs today, because the cafe menu was going American this week. She had brownies on the list, and duck eggs guaranteed a fudgier texture.
After this week, she’d switch to recipes that were light on eggs, because the birds were stopping laying for the winter.
Or she wouldn’t switch, because she wouldn’t have a job, she realised, shaking her head at the utter inconceivability of such a momentous shift in her life. Although, maybe Lucie was right, perhaps life was affected by full moons or planets aligning or some such voodoo, considering how everything seemed to be in such a state of flux. Her husband, her house, her job.
And Pierce.
The thought of having to change career now, of even trying to imagine what else she might do, should put her right off seeing Pierce, considering he was the cause of that particular chaos. Yet the turmoil she felt when she thought of him wasn’t related only to the business; instead of anger, her emotions were a wild rainbow mix of excitement, anticipation, nervousness and thrill at the idea of potential and challenge.
She fumbled in her pocket for a scrap of paper Lucie had given her a while back. She tended to ignore her sister-in-law’s hippie ramblings, but for some reason she’d hung onto this one: a mantra Lucie swore was the most powerful in the universe.
Sam read the words aloud, trying to invest them with a degree of certainty, rather than imploring. ‘I do not chase. I attract. What is meant for me will simply find me.’