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CHAPTER 7

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The flight attendants had done with the tea sandwiches and lollies, and retreated with no further pretense of servitude to their seats to buckle in. The plane began its descent. Rose took the last opportunity to look out over the interfering wing that bobbed annoyingly up and down in front of her view of the snow-capped Southern Alps. Distant white peaks played at being masters of the world to the right, busy holding up the vivid blue sky all around them, while darker blue of the ocean sprawled out the left windows across the aisle, and if the plane held steady and one could squint over the slight sensation of the earth’s curvature, she could perceive the southern ocean. Somewhere many miles distant, lay the continent of Antarctica.

“Suppose there’s a kiosk there where you buy postcards? A photo-op for tourists: ‘Have Your Picture Taken at the South Pole’ and a candy-striped pole to pose with in a picture that would be later posted on a relative’s refrigerator.”

“There’s help for people like you, Rose. You’ve only to admit you’ve got a problem.”

The plane dipped again, and the stupid wing teased Rose, as she craned her neck to see in front of it and behind it to the earth below, to the patchwork of farmland and pasture, to what looked like a racecourse, and then the runway jumped in front of them and they hung for that ridiculous breath-holding, torturous moment of sailing about ten feet above the ground for what seemed like a decade. Then they touched, not as roughly as on some flights Rose had taken in her life, all of which were invariably recalled at these moments, and she mentally congratulated the pilot.

They retrieved the checked suitcases, and Nora rented a car. Rose’s only carry-on piece was the plastic shopping bag with both bundles of letters.

Nora took Rose on a brief tour of Christchurch, and Rose wondered if it was an excuse to delay their arrival at Edwin’s farm. Christmas decorations and ropes of green garland draped along the business district, against the backdrop of late spring.

“Christchurch is supposed to have the reputation of being the most English city you’ll find outside of the U.K.” Nora said, driving, “That’s the guidebook codswollop, anyway.”

“English? It looks like home,” Rose said, “Cod-swollop?”

“Does it?”

“The roses, the lilac. The coolness. The trees. The smell of the fresh cut grass. Cluster of shops. It looks like a New England college town or seaport town.”

Rose noticed another Internet shop in Cathedral square. She did not really need to communicate with Peter now as the South Island was off the track of her mother’s life, and he had told her all he could of the us Marines in New Zealand. There wasn’t any reason to chat. She thought that perhaps she really should have a reason, at least, to email him.

They drove past Hagley Park and out to the suburbs.

“We could be in New England right now, in May. I went to college in a couple towns away from where I live, a town called Amherst. One of my friends was an exchange student from England. She thought Amherst, and Northampton, and the just the whole general area where I live reminded her so much of England. So, here’s a riddle for you then. At what point does a place stop reminding you of home and start becoming home?”

“How long did it take your mother?”

“No, New England is nothing like the North Island. Ma was never reminded of home, never again.” Rose said. “Your mother, with her Christchurch roots, would have had an easier time of adjusting.”

“I doubt that very much. My mother did not make a habit of adjusting. She was firmly situated on an emotional island where everything had to be her way.”

***

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They drove past green and gold Canterbury farmland with sloping hills and rolls of hay like shaggy dormant animals that made Rose deeply nostalgic for both this place and for Western Massachusetts, like a double image on a photographic negative. The western horizon, however, reached for the sky in an awesome range of snow-capped Alps, and not the low, shaggy blue Berkshires.

“How can people go to work every day when there’s so much breathtaking scenery to look at? How can anything ever get done around here?” Rose said, mainly to herself. Nora beamed, but said nothing. It was not her part of the country, but she could still be proud of it.

They passed a roadside fire risk warning billboard that indicated “extreme.”

“It seems a bit early for that.” Nora muttered, “It’s not summer yet.”

They continued south towards Ashburton.

“Have you been down here before?” Rose asked.

“Oh, yes. We used to visit my uncle’s farm once a year every summer when we were children, and put right to work, I might add. Ed loved it, but I was not too keen on the country life. Except, I should say, that once I got over my initial fright, I actually enjoyed riding the horses. My uncle had almost entirely switched to motorized bikes and trucks to do the mustering by that time, but once he took us children along with his station hands for a short sheep mustering on horseback, so we could see how it was done in the old days.” She smiled, rolling her eyes. “Ed was in his element.”

“And your mother grew up there?”

“Yes. I think it was the only place she was happy, for short periods at least. On our holiday, the first week she was Miss Edith come home, but after a week of being in the country, which can be deadly dull if you don’t absolutely love it, she grew irritable and bored. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course. The point was that we see how superior her life had been before she married my father. My father, I might add, rarely came down with us. He would generally be starting a new job that he couldn’t leave. I can’t prove it, but I always had an idea he behaved himself while we were away. Always clean shaven, clear-eyed, happy to see us when we returned. A few weeks later the job would be lost, or quit, and conversation ceased.”

They pulled into a long, narrow drive, at the end of which stood a white house. A figure sat on a bench on the porch, and stood at their approach.

“There’s Edwin,” Nora said, oddly ominous.

His wife Susan came out the door. Edwin said to her quietly,

“You shouldn’t have done this.”

She patted his arm and gingerly shushed him, looking expectantly at the visitors.

Rose and Nora climbed out of the car, and Rose straggled behind Nora’s no-nonsense stride to the porch. Nora and Susan briskly kissed each other’s cheeks.

“Good to see you again, Ed.” Nora said as she pecked his cheek.

“You’ve come a long way for nothing, Nora. You should go home and leave us to ourselves.” Edwin said.

“Ed! Darling, that’s no way to...” Susan began.

“I know what you’re doing. You shouldn’t have done this. How are we to get any peace this way?! Aren’t things bad enough?!” he shouted at her, and began to walk along the porch to the far side of the house.

“Darling! Ed.”

“Edwin, this isn’t any good.”

Both Susan and Nora followed Edwin around the corner to the side of the house. Rose stood at the bottom of the steps and listened to the sounds of raised voices, voices shaky with panic, and tears.

She turned away. There were sheds and pens, and trees which she did not know were called bluegums, but she could identify the scent of eucalyptus. It reminded her of her mother, but not because of her connection with New Zealand or with eucalyptus trees, but because she used to smear Vick Vap-O-Rub on Rose’s chest when she was a little girl and had a cold. Rose began to walk across the yard, grateful to have a quiet moment to stretch her legs across the peaceful paddock, golden in the late afternoon sun. She walked toward the distant Alps, and the large barn in front of them blocking any other perspective.

Babci said her family had been farmers in the old country. When she and her husband came to America, he went to work in a factory, and in twenty-five years, his son followed him to same factory. Rose mused that her family had been people of the land, a place they only visited now. Babci would have liked it here. The sun hanging in the northern sky would have unnerved her, though. Orion upside down would have sent her running for her rosary.

Rose approached a barn, stood in the open doorway and looked around for source of the odd animal grunt. She stepped in and walked carefully over the floor sandpapered by years of hay and hooves. A horse was just barely visible in a stall at the end of the row. A man crouched by her.

“That’s my darling,” he said to her softly. She ready to foal.

“Right, then, sweetheart, here we are...here we are...” he said, as to give himself the pep talk as well as the mare. In an instant her baby was born, sliding almost into the hands of the man.

“Jeez-Louise!” Rose gasped, as riveted by the birth as she had been startled by it.

The man turned abruptly, looking Rose up and down, but shivering little colt drew his attention back to the delivery room.

The man wiped off the slimy, shaking colt with his hands, and picked him up, and placed him by his mother’s face. After a moment of indifference, she began to clean her baby. The man, kneeling all this time, sat back on his heels.

“That’s right, Mum. Good onya, darling.”

“You are a very kind and tender midwife.” Rose said. The man stood. He was all covered in hay, mud, slime, blood, gumboots, and shirtless, revealing a heavily muscled torso on which Rose’s observation lingered.

“G’day,” he said, making it sound more like a question.

“Hello. I’m Rose, I’m Edwin’s cousin. I’m here with his sister Nora.”

He nodded, and wiped his hands on his legs.

“You don’t have to shake my hand.” Rose said, “In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.”

He smiled, a wide but only momentary smile in a tanned and beautifully lined face, etched with all his experiences, memories and moods. Rose would have paid to see him smile again.

He said, “I wouldn’t want to shake my hand, either. Not ‘til I give it a wash. I’m Trevor John Ngaio. Ed’s my mate.”

“Hahda’ya do?” She nodded, smiling, Trevor John noticing, with a slight tilt to her head that seemed as if she were performing only the upper half of a curtsey. “I don’t understand much about the farm,” Rose said, “except that there’s a sale pending?”

“Lock, stock and barrel.”

“Including her?” she said, and nodded to the mare.

“No, not her. She belongs to Ed’s daughter. She’ll be going to friends, but we had to wait for her happy event,” he said. “They usually foal at some ungodly hour. She’s being bloody civil to me.”

They both heard Nora enter before they saw her. She had a city person’s impatient, pavement-pounding stride.

“Are you there, Rose? Ah, here you are.” Nora said, approaching them, “Well, I think Susan’s ready for us to...” She glanced at Trevor John, slowly recognizing him.

“Hullo, um...is it Trevor John?”

“Been a long time, hasn’t it, Nora?”

“Yes, indeed it has. I had no idea you were still with Ed.”

“Down to the bitter.”

“I’m glad. You’re looking well.”

“Ta, so are you. Not a day out of school.”

“Go on,” Nora scoffed, “My son is about to sit for his bursaries.” Rose noticed she said it with a note of pride that had not been expressed before this.

“Not really?” Trevor John smiled, “Luck to him. Excuse me, ladies.”

“It’s good to see you again, Trevor John.”

“And you, Nora.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Rose.

“And you,” he called over his shoulder and grabbed his shirt from where he had draped it over a rail and walked out of the barn.

Rose and Nora walked back across the sun-filled paddock toward the house, Rose throwing a look over her shoulder once or twice.

“Trevor John?” Rose smirked, “I thought every male in this country was just ‘Trev.’”

“None of your stereotypes, please. Oh, no, not our Trevor John. He’s been called that for as long as I can recall. Trevor John he stays. He’s a lot older than when I knew him, to be sure he always was older than the rest of us, and we thought more worldly.” Nora shook her head, smiling.

“What?”

“Oh, it was a long time ago.”

“What? Anything between you two?”

“Trevor John and me? Good God. No, though I and every girl were mad for him in those days. I certainly fancied him, but he would no more cast a glance my way than an Olympic god would court a mere mortal.”

“I think the Olympic gods did do some of that stuff.”

“Shut up, I’m trying to make an analogy.”

“Is that what that was? Go ahead.”

“Oh, he was only the golden boy, that’s all. First at all the school prizes, or at least it seemed that way at the time. Good at sport, captain of everything. It’s terrible to say, but I don’t know what he saw in Ed. Ed was never a prize taker, though I believe his friends considered him a good athlete. Ed was like the stammering squire to the heroic knight. How odd that their roles should be reversed now. Well, Trevor John’s descent happened a long time ago.”

“Why, what happened?”

“He was supposed to be off to uni and continue on to some glorious success or other, but suddenly it ended. He got married and left school. Never took his exams, now that I think of it.”

“That young?”

“He and his wife had a child straight off, that was why they married, and then, horribly, the wife and child were killed in a motor accident. Tragic.”

“Oh, no.”

“No uni, no family, soon no job. Suddenly, it seemed as if there were no future for him as well. Everybody felt terribly for him, naturally, and felt worse when it seemed to kill something inside him. He seemed to just give up. Lost himself, drinking mostly, probably drugs as well, I gather. He just wasn’t the same person at all. He did not a thing for a while, then lost himself in Australia. Quite some years ago Edwin, who was there himself working on a station, brought him back. I had no idea he was still with him. I guess Ed’s all Trevor John has now. Shame. Such a bright future we had thought, what might have been. Perhaps there was nothing so marvelous shining there, after all. People fool you sometimes. Or we just believe what we want.”

They stepped up to the porch. Edwin was not there, but their suitcases had been taken in.

Sue met them in side, and motioned for them to follow her upstairs.

“We’ve put you in the girls’ room. My two daughters,” Sue said to Rose, “are not at home. One’s in London, and the younger is in South Africa. My boys are gone, too. Andy’s with the Army in East Timor, and the baby of the family is working in Wellie. He’ll be down next week to help us through the auction and to move.”

Her daughter’s room had two twin beds, and a table between them, but nothing else. One could see the faded sections of the paint on the wall around where pictures or posters had been taken down.

“It’s a bit sparse, I know,” Sue said, “but we’re in the midst of putting some things in storage and sorting out what we’ll take with us.”

Rose looked out one of the windows onto the lawn below, a flower border, a massive tree, and beyond through its branches she could discern a field still with its winter grass, yet to be plowed over.

“What’s to be done, then?” Nora asked, in her customary, arms-folded stance.

“Trevor John will to see the auction and readying the property for transfer. I wondered if you could possibly do two things,” Sue said, “First, to look after Ed whilst I continue with arrangements to move the household, and second, to help me persuade him to see a doctor.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s wandered off to one of the sheds, I imagine. I seem to drive him mad, but Trevor John settles him down. I think he prefers a bloke’s company at this time, when things are so dodgy.”

“What kind of doctor?” Nora asked, “A GP for a sedative or something, and perhaps a referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist?”

“That’s the idea, I reckon,” Sue said, “He won’t have it from me, I think the whole idea panics him. He’s so depressed, but he won’t get help.”

“He’s a very stubborn bloke.”

“It’s more than that,” Sue said, “I don’t think he can make a decision. He’s all torn inside, and it’s made him angry.”

“Is there a concern he might harm himself, or you?”

“Me?” Sue said, as if the idea had never occurred to her, “No. Of course not.”

“To himself?”

“I don’t reckon he would.” Sue said, as if the idea was just beginning to occur to her.

“You’ve had a foul time of it, haven’t you?”

Sue hesitated, but eventually nodded. “How’s Edith doing?”

“Well looked after, and for once not by me.”

***

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Edwin did not come in to tea. Sue peered out the window and searched across the paddock, her brow lined with tension and troubled eyes that brooded over what she could not see. Nora stood up again and walked across the room, snorting oxygen and wanting to say something, but evidently having nothing in her arsenal as yet. Nora was by nature impatient and did not do well in situations requiring tactful waiting. Rose watched from her seat at the table and continued slowly eating, perfectly content right now not to speak until she was spoken to.

Nora deposited herself in her chair again, and rolled her eyes for Rose’s benefit. Rose smiled weakly.

“Right,” Nora said, rising suddenly again and with a much older person’s groan, “I’ll just get started.”

“Oh, Nora have a care,” Sue said, perhaps immediately regretting her idea of enlisting help.

“I’ll just talk to Trevor John, as long as he still with him, and ease my way into things a bit,” Nora said, “Don’t worry, Sue. I’m too knackered for a battle tonight.”

Sue nodded, looking only slightly less relieved, and watched Nora leave, and then followed her across the paddock through a slightly parted curtain.

Rose had been saving up things to say in case she were left alone with Sue, because she hated not being prepared. She forgot all of them.

“I’m sorry I came along so unexpectedly, and at such a bad time for you.” Rose said after struggling.

It was enough to draw Sue temporarily away from the curtain.

“Oh, that’s quite all right. Nora told me she asked had you when she rang,” Sue said. “Unexpected is right, but not unwelcome. How do you like New Zealand, then?”

“Very much, it’s a beautiful country,” Rose smiled, the stock answer to the stock question, and like a child in school who is asked the only answer she happens to know, beamed with relief.

“Nora said your mum was a Kiwi?”

“Indeed, she was.”

“How wonderful to look up her old haunts and make some contact with her heritage. That’s what you’re doing?”

“With only a little success, I’m afraid, except for a stack of letters from her Nora gave me. My mother wrote them to Nora’s father.”

“Our generation won’t have stacks of letters to leave to our children.” Sue said, “Unless people get into the habit of printing out all their email. Talking of which, we have two old computers besides the one we’re using. I wasn’t able to transfer all the data over to the new one. Outdated programs. Stuff relative to the farm, mostly. I shouldn’t cart all that nonsense with us.”

“Can I ask where you and Edwin are moving to?”

“My sister.” She brightened. “She owns a motel in Christchurch. We’re going to help her to operate it. Her husband died two years ago and she’s had a difficult time managing. She has young children as well. Ed will take care of the grounds, and the maintenance, and I will run the office with her and help with the housekeeping.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

“I’m quite chuffed...actually looking forward to it.” Sue said, “I wish Ed were. I think he’ll enjoy it once he starts. The trouble is, it’s such a different kind of life to what we’ve had.”

“I guess so.”

“But as I told Ed, farming was something neither of us were born to. He grew up in the city, and I grew up in Christchurch where my mum and dad ran a shop. We adjusted to the country and now we just have to adjust to something new entirely.”

“A new adventure.”

“Exactly,” Sue said, “and it would be nice to take some of the weight off our shoulders. Managing this place, I mean. As much as I’ve loved it here, the whole thing always weighed on me. So many commitments and contracts, and loans. So much work to do. It would be nice to have a life again where one has a day off without guilt.”

“Even so, a motel would keep you pretty busy, I imagine.”

“I hope so. That’s what Ed needs. That’s what I need, in a way that won’t make me feel like I’m being buried by it.”

“Good luck,” Rose said, “I’m sure your sister will be glad to have help.”

Sue turned back to the window and nudged aside the curtain with her fingertip.

“I sometimes worry that I’m doing it more for myself than for Ed.” She was quiet a moment, absorbed and subdued, and it suddenly occurred to Rose that this was not natural to Sue. Then Sue added, “We’ve missed the Canterbury Show this year. Trevor John had a flutter on the horseracing, but I don’t think he mentioned it to Ed. It seemed traitorous, I think, to him. We didn’t bring up entering the show this year, though I’m sure Ed must have thought about it. I didn’t say a word, hoping he’d forgotten. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to go again as spectators and enjoy ourselves, or would it be depressing?”

***

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Nora caught Trevor John’s eye before Edwin’s, even though Edwin sensed she was there beside him. He would not look at her. Trevor John had been about to update Edwin on what he had done to forward the transfer of property to the new owner. Nora’s interruption would have been welcome; Edwin was a careless, anxious listener these days, except that she was Nora. She had always been the hard, unblinking mortar that Edwin felt was his job, but she always beat him to it. He did not want her here.

Trevor John welcomed her by expression only, a lift of his chin and a grin from smiling eyes under the brim of his hat. He rested the end of his clipboard on his belt and shifted his weight to the other foot, pondering briefly if it were really worth pushing Ed to pay attention at this time.

“Ah, we can go over this tomorrow, mate,” Trevor John said, “nothing that won’t keep. You’ve got your company.”

Edwin’s deep breath and momentary flexing of his tense shoulders seemed to indicate that he was relieved by Trevor John’s first suggestion, and instantly ill-at-ease by his second. Trevor John noted his tension and briskly batted for him.

“How’s your mum, then, Nora?” Trevor John asked.

“She’s in hospital, but she’s stable and I’m trying to have her transferred to a rest home.”

“Ah, sorry she’s had a bad time,” Trevor John said, instantly floundering for a better topic.

“She’d like to hear from you Ed,” Nora said, “does it not occur to you that you have a mother who might miss you?”

Yes, a better topic would be good right now.

“Is that why you’ve come down here?!” Edwin said, “to start rowing with me? I have enough to do now. Go on, get out of here. Can’t you see we were discussing the farm?”

The weather? The Canterbury Crusaders? The telly? What was on last night?

“Did you read about that murder over in Wanganui?” Trevor John asked, with an impromptu squeak in his voice. Edwin and Nora looked blankly at him.

“Something about a chainsaw and a cat, and some poor bastard who got home invaded,” Trevor John continued, “which reminds me, Ed did you ever find the torch I lost?”

Edwin looked at him in utter confusion. Nora, however, took the hint in Trevor John’s clumsy diversion.

“Look Ed,” she said, “I didn’t come to row. I’ve started off wrong, you know me, no tact for the niceties and not much patience. It’s a wonder someone hasn’t murdered me with a chainsaw and a cat years ago.”

“Don’t leave, Trevor John,” she said, “you can stay and discuss your business with Ed. I’m going back to house. I’ll just say this, Ed, and be done with it. Sue asked me to help persuade you to see a doctor about your nerves and your depression.”

Edwin cursed and turned away.

“It won’t take much from you Ed,” she went on, “just a decision to get a hand with your troubles. Some medicine to help you sleep perhaps, or something to keep you calm while you sort things out, that’s all.”

“She had no bloody right!”

“Don’t blame her. She’s frightened. It’s not her fault the person she chose to urge you on this comes from a long line of no-nonsense people who don’t know the first thing about delicacy. That’s not for you and me, is it, Ed?”

Nora turned and left, without bothering to wait for Edwin’s reaction or some acknowledgment from Trevor John. She already guessed they would not discuss the scene between themselves, and Trevor John would go right on with his clipboard and his business.

He did not, however. Edwin walked to the far end of the building where another set of doors were open and looked out on the deepening twilight. Trevor John knew he had not lost Edwin’s attention because he never had it.

***

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August 14, 1975

Dear Rob,

Since I last wrote, we’ve been turned upside down by a sad event. My father-in-law died last month. He had a bad heart, and finally took sick with terrible angina. He was brought to hospital, but had a heart attack and died. It is hardest, of course on Genowefa, who wears black in mourning. But I think our wee Rose will have a hard time as well. She misses her grandfather, as he was a real playmate to her. Really, Franciszek doted on her.

The cemetery where he is buried is about two miles up a steep hill, but she has already ridden her bike there by herself several times to visit his grave. Hank told her not to, and I think he is irritated that she misses Granddad so much when he himself did not get on with his dad. But I think Hank will miss his dad, too, though in a way which will not bring comfort in time the way Genowefa’s and Rose’s grieving will. Of course Hank is also concerned that Rose will have an accident on that hill or get hit by a car, or taken by someone, but Rose is ten years old now, and she is oblivious to any danger.

Funny, I don’t remember ever being oblivious to danger, even as a child. But I reckon you were a brave little bloke. I can remember calling after you when you and Mel dared each other to jump from Mary’s window. You laughed and laughed at me, you cruel thing, and I envisioned tragedy at every step.

That’s something else that will make a big difference to Rose. Her granddad was her mate, she has no brother or sister her age to play with, only a few kids in the neighborhood, and school. I wouldn’t have liked being an only child, which for all purposes she is. Her older sisters are married and living away with children of their own, who call my ten-year-old daughter ‘Auntie.’ Can you imagine?”

Rose folded the letter. Uncle Rob would have only a few more months to live after having received this letter. Her mother did not know her brother would have a heart attack himself, after acute renal failure, after years of abusing alcohol, and that she would also be left with an unresolved relationship, as Rose’s father had with his father. She would also do her mourning privately, with as much resentment and anger over the loss of her brother as sorrow.

Rose could hear Nora downstairs, talking with Sue.

“Has Steve, at least, been told of any of this?”

“He won’t let me.”

Rose stepped lightly down the stairs, and out to the back of the house, where she quietly closed the door behind her and stood a moment on the back porch, watching the last, distant, thin rays of sunset on the awesome mountains, while the valleys below were already dark with brooding shadow. She turned to her left, about to stroll around the porch when she suddenly noticed Edwin sitting there, in a chair, glassy-eyed and glued to the darkening scene beyond. He did not know yet she was there, so intensely entangled in a web of his own anxiety, which had become a bigger problem than his problems.

She stepped back, and abruptly turned right instead. When safely around the corner of the house, she breathed deeply the warm, damp night air in relief. Away from the protection of its roof, the unfamiliar pattern of stars. She tried to find upside-down Orion on her own, and wondered if she could see the Southern Cross at this time of night, since the latitude was closer to the South Pole than Tristan’s back garden in Auckland, where he had found it for her until much later in the evening.

“Did you lose something up there?” a voice said.

Rose started, and blinked, adjusting her eyes from the starlit sky to the dark shadows of earth again. Trevor John belonged to the voice.

“Well, where did you come from?”

“I was born in Auckland,” he said, and waited until he was standing quite close to her before continuing to speak. “Are you running away?”

Rose said nothing for a moment, struck by what he had said.

“Would you care to go for a wee walk?” he asked.

“Where to?” she hesitated.

“You’re quite safe with me.”

Rose smiled ruefully.

“That was rather girlishly prudent of me, wasn’t it?” she said, “You know, you don’t have to herd me away from Edwin, I wasn’t going to intrude on his privacy. I didn’t know he was there.”

“I wasn’t going to herd you.”

“Okay.”

Trevor John considered her a moment, gestured to the wide expanse of paddock before them and shoved his hands into his pockets as they turned their backs on the sunset.

“I don’t really know all that’s going on with Edwin,” Rose said, “Do you think he’ll allow himself to be helped?”

Trevor John said nothing, and Rose duly considered herself rebuffed. They approached a fence, and Trevor John’s pace did not slow, but it seemed as if he would walk straight through the fence. When they reached it, he stopped, taking his hands from his pockets and placing them on the weathered wood. He looked straight ahead and beyond, in the distance where the highway was that the farm road led to, then he gave a deep, slow sigh and turned to Rose, who intently watched his face.

“Ed’ll find his way,” he said, sounding defensive.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

They stood quietly at the fence, the glow from the diminishing sun behind them casting its last light on half their faces.

“What does Nora think is wrong? What does she intend?” he asked, without looking at her.

“I think she had it from Sue that it was anxiety and depression.” Rose said, thinking once again she had found herself in an awkward situation where she was doomed to feel gullible and inept, “I think Nora and Sue want to encourage him to see a doctor.”

“He’ll not go.”

“That’s too bad.”

Trevor John looked at her. “What were you thinking of, when you were staring up at those stars with your mouth open?”

“My grandfather,” Rose said, smiling because of Trevor John, of how he sounded when he spoke, and how he looked like a cross between a cowboy movie sidekick and a romance novel cover. He thought instead she was smiling over a happy memory of her grandfather.

“Something funny?” he asked, smiling a little himself in anticipation.

“Oh...no, actually. My grandfather, actually underneath all his hard work and drive, and silly fun...he was really a very troubled man. I was also thinking of my father, who died so shockingly quickly of pancreatic cancer, like he was purposely retreating out of our lives, and almost entirely on his own terms. Well, obviously that can’t be true, but it sure seemed that way. In a way they and Edwin all have something in common. A guy thing?”

Trevor John did not reply, and she chided herself that this was an asinine conversation to start with a man in whom she knew she was already interested, and quite unexpectedly so. She doubted she had the ability, or even the will, to attempt to interest him. It could only end in disappointment; it always did.

He folded his arms and squinted into the sunset, back at the house, and yawned.

She couldn’t have driven him farther away than if she had used a number three wood.

“And you? Why are you here?” he asked without looking at her. She wished everyone would stop asking her that question. She did not want to struggle with another appropriate answer. She did not know the answer.