‘GIVE me the letter,’ he said. ‘I’ll read it to you.’
She handed him the letter and turned so she could watch his face as he read it.
Flynn opened it carefully, pulling open the old seal, then unfolding the two sheets of paper, lifting the top one to check the bottom of the second page.
‘Mary Elizabeth Goldsworth,’ he said, reading out the signature. ‘Your mother’s name?’
Majella’s smile was forced.
‘I only know that because the teachers at the school often called me Mary Elizabeth, mistaking me for my mother. Grandfather always called her “your mother” as if actually pronouncing her name might burn his mouth or sentence him to eternal damnation or something.’
Flynn wrapped his arms around the woman on his lap and hugged her tightly, nuzzling his lips into her hair so she wouldn’t notice his eyes had gone misty at this information and call him a girl again.
‘If you don’t want to read it, I will,’ she said, just in time to stop Flynn’s body getting over-excited enough to take the nuzzling further.
‘No, I’ll do it,’ he said, removing his arms and returning his attention to the letter.
He read it silently, shaking his head all the while, slipping the first page behind the second while he took in the rest of it, before carefully folding it and setting it down on the table.
Then he swallowed the enormous lump that had swelled in his throat, took Majella’s face between the palms of his hands and kissed her on the lips.
‘I can’t read it to you,’ he said, ‘because I’d howl like a baby while I did it and you wouldn’t understand a word of it, but the gist of it is—’ He paused and kissed the softness of her lips once again. ‘Your mother found out too late that she had a problem with her pregnancy and that it was probably genetic. She doesn’t say what it was but pre-eclampsia and eclampsia are the most likely, I would say. They aren’t genetic but can be familial, although these days—even twenty-seven years ago—they can be managed. Women don’t have to die from these conditions.’
‘We have to remember she was only fifteen—maybe sixteen—little more than a kid. What did she know about pregnancy?’ Majella whispered.
Flynn nodded his agreement, his mind off medicine now and back on the contents of the letter.
‘Anyway, the doctor she must eventually have seen apparently told her that not only might she die but that you might also not survive. But if you did, she said, she wanted you to be named Majella—she must have had an amniocentesis and known you were a girl—after a guy called Gerard Majella, who, she says, is the patron saint of difficult births and mothers and various other family folk in trouble. Because, your mother said, your living would mean he’d listened to her prayers.’
Too choked up to continue, Flynn drew Majella close again, cuddling her against his body, holding her while she, too, spent some grief through tears.
Eventually she drew away again, but the tear stains on her cheeks proved his undoing and he had to find his handkerchief—no easy feat with a woman on his lap—and dry them all away. Then he had to kiss her once again, before he got back to the story.
Tender, gentle kisses—loving kisses…
‘She also apologises for leaving you with only your grandfather to bring you up. As well she might, considering how he treated you,’ Flynn muttered, but this time Majella stopped his lips with a kiss.
‘He didn’t hit my mother, so she wouldn’t have known,’ she whispered. ‘I know because he always said, even as he beat me, that with her he’d spared the rod and spoiled the child and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.’
Flynn could only hold her tight against his body, unable to speak for the pain that ricocheted through him—for the huge lump in his throat.
So it took Majella’s quiet prompt, ‘Go on,’ for him to pick up the letter again, this time reading directly from it.
‘She says you should understand that he is driven by this one rule, “doing the right thing”, but the problem is his heart died with my mother, your grandmother. If he ever had a heart! So love will never be allowed to cloud what he sees as his duty.’ And she finishes, “I am sorry, Majella, but he’s all there is left to look after you. With any luck he’ll give you to an adoption agency and you’ll end up with normal parents but if not, be brave and hang in there. At least you’ll have the horses. He always let me ride—it was the only thing he ever encouraged me to do. I love the horses—they are my friends. Them and Bill. I hope he hasn’t sacked Bill for giving me the money to get away. I hoped by running away he need never know about you, but now I’ve mucked things up because I’m probably going to die and leave a baby behind. I hope I leave a baby behind.” And she says goodbye.’
Majella took a deep breath to stem further tears before they fell, then she rubbed her fingers across the pages of the letter, touching paper, but touching her mother as well.
‘Old Bill helped her. I’m sorry I didn’t know that,’ she whispered. ‘He might have helped me, too.’
‘I would have helped you,’ Flynn told her. ‘I get so angry thinking of what your grandfather did to you, then even angrier with you for not saying anything.’
She turned on his lap and took his face between the palms of her hands, holding it as he had held hers earlier.
‘You were the last person I could tell, Flynn,’ she said, and she leant forward and kissed him on the lips. ‘Do you know why I ran away?’
‘Because your grandfather beat you?’ Flynn offered.
‘He’d been doing that for as long as I could remember,’ she muttered, straightening up and touching the scar by her eye. ‘But that night—that was different. Do you remember where I’d been that night?’
‘Majella,’ Flynn said, feeling the tension in her body as he wrapped his arms around her. ‘Sweetheart, we didn’t even know you’d gone—let alone that you’d run away. I saw you at the stables one night, we’d arranged to ride the following day, you didn’t come, then a couple of days later there’s your grandfather telling me to put your riding tack away. As I told you earlier, he said you’d decided to go back to school because some of your friends were returning early. Naturally I believed him.’
‘Believed I’d go back to school without saying goodbye to you? After you’d kissed me? After I’d told you I loved you?’
Flynn shook his head.
‘You were fifteen, love. My sisters were in love with someone different every week. And it never occurred to me that he might tell a lie. I mean, why would he?’
‘Because I’d run away,’ Majella whispered, in a voice that suggested she’d expected more of him.
Or had expected more of the youth he’d been…
‘But I didn’t know that—none of us did. So, tell me, what happened?’
‘He caught me that night when I came back to the house after sneaking out to meet you at the stables. He wanted to know where I’d been and who I’d been with and when I wouldn’t tell him, he hit me across the face for the first time ever and said he’d beat it out of me.’
‘You should have told him you’d been meeting me,’ Flynn managed to say, while his mind rattled through all the ramifications of this new knowledge, and useless fury built inside him. ‘Why did you make him angrier by not telling him?’
Majella lifted her head to look into his eyes, giving him a funny little smile.
‘How could I tell him when I knew what it would mean?’
‘The money for me to go to university!’ Flynn said bitterly. ‘I can’t believe you let that count. Do you think I’d have minded, if I’d known? Do you think I’d have taken his money if I’d even suspected how he treated you?’
She kissed him again, gently cutting off his anger.
‘Of course you wouldn’t have minded, neither would you have taken his money—that’s why I had to go, Flynn. I didn’t care what he did to me, but if he’d hurt you—killed your dream of becoming a doctor—I couldn’t have stood that.’
Flynn tightened his arms around her body and rocked her on his knee, trying to absorb all that he’d just learnt—the knowledge that it had been he who had prompted Majella’s flight eating into him like a cancer.
‘Look!’
He fought his inner demons, turning to see what Majella held.
A tiny dress, once white but now cream with age, and bootees and a bonnet, each one lifted carefully out of the little chest and set on the table.
‘She must have loved me, mustn’t she?’ she whispered, as she ran her fingers over the little garments. ‘To have got these things ready?’
Three small singlets, all embroidered, rather unevenly, with pink rosebuds, joined the other clothes on the table, Majella’s fingers trembling now as she unpacked this unexpected treasure. Then, right at the bottom of the chest, she found a small, leather-bound book.
‘You’ll have to lift it out,’ she said to Flynn. ‘My hands are shaking too much.’
He reached around her and pulled it out, then set it on the table, opening the cover—not a book but a photo folder, on one side a photo of a young girl so like Majella it had to be her mother, and on the other side a photo of a young man—barely more than a boy—dark haired and dark eyed—unidentified but presumably Majella’s father.
‘Parents—I’ve got parents,’ Majella whispered, and Flynn realised she was close to breaking point, the emotion of the chest’s revelations almost too much to bear.
A demanding yell from some back room prevented any further explanation, and as Majella went to rescue Grace from her cot, Flynn studied the photos. Would photos help Majella feel closer to her parents? Would they go at least some way towards making up for all she’d lost in her youth?
Flynn hoped so and with the hope came a determination to make up to her himself.
Not that he could suggest such a thing to her—not to a woman determined to prove her independence.
Grace’s presence prevented further discussion although Majella did make the coffee promised earlier and they sat outside at a table beneath the gum trees, Grace feeding grass through the fence to a young wallaby, Flynn asking Majella more about the rescue service, learning about similar services operated overseas—but mainly learning more about this adult Majella, who spoke so passionately about her work, who bent so wonderingly over the treasures her little daughter, now bored with the wallaby, found and brought for her inspection.
‘Stone,’ she said to Grace, when she plopped a polished pebble on the table. ‘What colour is it?’
‘Red!’ Grace announced, so proudly Flynn couldn’t have corrected her.
But Majella had no such inhibitions. ‘I think it’s more like brown, pet,’ she said easily, and Grace repeated the word a couple of times then went off again.
‘She looks well,’ Flynn said, and Majella’s eyes shone as she turned towards him.
‘She does, doesn’t she? I keep reading of children who’ve been really sick with that disease who’ve lost limbs or parts of limbs. Worst of all was that I should have had her vaccinated against it, but I was away when she was old enough, then somehow it just got pushed aside.’
Flynn took her hand across the table.
‘We can’t vaccinate kids against everything that might happen to them in their lives,’ he reminded her. ‘Much as we might wish we could.’
Majella smiled at him. This was so easy and natural, sitting here with Flynn, Grace playing at their feet. They could almost be a family.
‘I’ve got someone covering for me tonight,’ Flynn said, interrupting a pleasant little daydream she was having about a family. ‘Would you be free for dinner? There’s a new place not far down the road—a new B and B that has a restaurant attached. I thought I might book in there for the night. We could have dinner and I could come back and see you again tomorrow.’
He frowned at her.
‘Why what?’
‘Why come back and see me in the morning? You’ve given me the things Grandfather left. Was there something else?’
He tried to smile but the effort was so pitiful she felt her heart flinch.
‘Wanting to see you again?’ he said. ‘Is that not enough of a reason?’
Majella would have loved to ask why again, but something held her back.
Although if they were having dinner…
‘If we’re having dinner?’
This time Flynn’s smile was far more healthy.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I give in.’
He held up his arms in surrender, and Grace, catching the gesture, thought it meant something different and came over to scramble onto his knee.
He put his arms around her, relishing her warmth, and looked at Majella over Grace’s head.
‘I want to see you at dinner, and again tomorrow, and in whatever free time you and I might be able to manage together—possibly for the rest of our lives?’
Majella stared at him, trying to process the words, repeating the last phrase in helpless confusion.
‘Rest of our lives?’
His answer was a smile like none she’d seen before—a smile that teased and tempted, was full of hope, yet held a little dread in it as well. Gracie was squirming on his knee, turning to pat his cheek and clutch his ear, but though his arms encircled her to keep her safe, his blue eyes never left Majella’s face, the same hope and dread she’d read in the smile lingering in them.
‘I thought, if you agreed, we could get married on the second of October?’
‘You’ve lost me!’ she said, dragging her thoughts away from love and hopeful eyes. ‘Get married? Second of October? We haven’t been to dinner yet!’
‘I’ve blown it, haven’t I?’ Flynn muttered. ‘Honest to goodness, I was going to do this properly—to ask you tonight—to go down on bended knee and all. I’d even thought I might have time to buy a ring this afternoon, but then thought it was better if you chose.’
Majella was staring at him as if he was a total stranger and no wonder, he was babbling—had lost the plot completely.
‘Why?’ she said again, and Flynn’s mind scrabbled for a reason for the why.
His blowing it?
Surely not.
‘Why were you going to ask?’
‘Why was I going to ask?’ Addled, that’s what he was, though now Grace had scrambled off his knee, things might be easier. ‘Why was I going to ask you to marry me?’
Majella nodded.
‘Because you said to,’ Flynn told her. ‘That morning at the hospital. You said to ask you for love, not for a house. And if we get married on the second of October, the day after the deadline, then you’ll know for sure it’s not for the house. We’ll get a few acres somewhere just out of town, and build the runs you need, and I can help you with the operations, maybe even learn to do the ops on the koala’s eyes.’
She could feel excitement shimmering through her body, and ached to throw herself into his arms, but she wasn’t quite there yet.
‘I know it’s becoming a little repetitive,’ she said, teasing him gently, ‘but again I have to ask why.’
‘Why?’ Grace repeated the word and this time climbed onto Majella’s knee.
He didn’t answer for a very long time, then before he did, he reached across the table and took her hand.
‘Because I love you,’ he whispered. ‘Surely you must know that, although it took me far too long to work out that the panic I felt when I saw you crawl into that cave, and the pain I felt when Gracie was so sick, and the sleepless nights I’ve suffered since you went away all added up to love.’
Majella squeezed his fingers.
‘It doesn’t sound very comfortable,’ she said, smiling at him, hoping all the love she felt was shining in her eyes.
‘It’s not,’ he said, ‘although it could be eased if you’d just say something other than “Why?”’
‘Like what?’ She squeezed his fingers. ‘Like “I love you, Flynn”? Would that do?’
Flynn felt as if his heart would burst, yet suddenly it all seemed too easy.
‘You’re sure?’ he asked, and Majella set Grace down on the ground, pulled up a tuft of grass and gave it to the little girl to feed the wallaby.
‘Would this convince you?’ she said, coming around the table and reaching out her hand to Flynn, drawing him to his feet, then stepping into his arms, folding his body close to hers, before kissing him full on the lips.
It began as a confirmation of her love but turned into something very different. It scorched its way through her body, making it throb in places she doubted had ever felt sensation. She pressed her pelvis forward, wanting to feel him against her, while her heart raced and her nerves tingled and the little hairs on her arms stood to attention.
‘Flynn!’ she murmured, not knowing words to tell him what she felt.
‘Hush!’ he whispered, letting his mouth tell her what she needed to know, accepting this silent confirmation of her love.
Then Grace was there, wedging her little body between their legs, demanding attention from one of them. Majella responded first, lifting her daughter into her arms and looking at Flynn with new questions in her eyes.
‘There’s Grace,’ she reminded him quietly.
‘Do you think I haven’t considered her?’ he said, reaching out to tweak one of Grace’s curls. ‘Haven’t wondered if I can be a father to her—do right by her? Loving her is easy, but the rest? I’ll try, Majella, that I promise you. I know she’s Jeff’s daughter, just as I know Jeff will always own a little piece of your heart, but I’ll do my utmost to be the best replacement father she could have.’
Majella smiled at him over Grace’s head.
‘Loving her will be enough,’ she said, then turned as a car drove into the yard.
‘Dinner?’ Flynn asked, and Majella nodded.
‘I’ll pick you up,’ he said. ‘Eight?’
She nodded again, too full of love and hope and joy to speak, hugging Grace so tightly the little girl squirmed in her arms.
He brushed a kiss across both their heads then left.
‘You going?’ Helen said when he passed her in the carport.
‘Just up the road. I’ll book in at that B and B, and come back to take Majella out to dinner. Is that all right with you? Do you mind babysitting yet again?’
Helen looked from him to Majella, who’d followed him more slowly through the house.
‘I don’t mind at all,’ Helen told him, then she smiled. ‘Especially as it looks as if this might be a special occasion.’
Then she turned back to Flynn.
‘But you don’t have to book in down the road. We’ve a guest bedroom.’
She didn’t add, ‘Or you could share Majella’s room,’ although there was a speculative gleam in her eyes.
Would he?
He glanced at Majella and knew the answer immediately. This was her home but it was also her mother-in-law’s house. There’s no way she’d share a bed with Flynn under this roof.
But…
‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ he said to Helen. She assured him they’d be happy to have him, adding, ‘Go get your things and I’ll show you the room and where the bathroom is, and basic directions so you don’t get lost. The place rambles a bit.’
He got his overnight bag, then followed Helen into a room that was bright and airy, furnished with a three-quarter bed, bedside table, a comfortable chair, a polished wood dresser and built-in wardrobes. The bed boasted a patchwork quilt, and two clean fluffy towels were stacked on the dresser.
Flynn put down his bag, and let Helen guide him to the bathroom just down the hall.
‘We all share it,’ she explained, ‘having turned the other one into an operating theatre. ‘Majella’s down the end—Gracie sleeps in her room. I’m next and Sophie is next to you.’
So that’s the geography of the house, Flynn thought, returning to the room and considering it again—considering the family who had lived in it. Majella was probably in what had been a guest room, which meant…
He opened the wardrobe doors and knew he’d guessed correctly, old books and games stacked on the topmost shelf—a boy’s books and games.
Jeff’s books and games.
Flynn sank into the chair and rested his head in his hands.
Was he jealous?
He considered it carefully but knew it wasn’t jealousy he was feeling. More a kind of kinship with the boy who’d owned the games—or with the man he had become.
And inside his head he made a promise—to the boy and to the man—promised him he’d never be forgotten—that he’d share their lives—then he thanked him, still silently, still communing in some way with a man he hadn’t known, thanking him for watching over Majella when everyone she’d known had failed her.
She wore a dark red dress and looked so beautiful he couldn’t breathe, yet somehow he’d driven to the restaurant, responding to her conversation rationally. At least, he hoped he’d sounded rational.
But now they were there, seated across from each other at a table set, as his had been, with crystal and silver. A single red rosebud in a fine crystal vase stood between them, the velvety, almost black petals matching the colour of Majella’s dress.
‘I can’t sustain an entire evening’s conversation saying nothing but “I love you,”’ he said, ‘but that’s all I can think to say. That and “You’re beautiful”. Do you think if I keep repeating them you’ll get bored with me?’
‘Never,’ she assured him, ‘but you don’t have to carry the conversational burden all alone you know. I might have things to say.’
‘Like “I love you” and “You’re beautiful”?’ he said hopefully, and she chuckled and shook her head.
‘Not more important than those two things, but I do love you and you are, well, if not beautiful, very handsome, but I’ve been thinking.’
Dread began to filter into Flynn’s cocoon of happiness.
‘Not bad things,’ Majella assured him, reading his concern with ease.
Then she smiled, and reached out for his hands, needing to hold them while she talked.
They were interrupted by a waiter, offering a choice of drinks, then had to read the menus and make more choices. The entrees arrived far too quickly, meaning there was food to discuss and tastes to offer to each other, so all serious conversation was set aside until the meal ended.
Which meant it was some time later Majella again captured both his hands and looked at him across the table.
‘Do you think perhaps we could get married on the thirtieth of September?’
‘Before the deadline?’ Flynn said warily. ‘You’d be happy to do that? To take the house?’
‘Not exactly happy,’ she explained, ‘but honestly, Flynn, how stupid would it be for us to marry so as not to take it when I could do so much good with the money? I could build Helen the new lab she needs to expand her business, and she could afford to hire someone to do the marketing of the products, which would give her more time to try new recipes and experiment with different oils and essences. She has so much knowledge of native plants that she’s wasted just selling the products she’s already developed.’
‘You have been thinking about it,’ Flynn said, smiling at her enthusiasm.
She nodded, then continued.
‘There are your sisters, too. They’ll need houses if they don’t already have them, or we could pay off their mortgages if they do, and your mother—is she comfortable enough? We don’t have to throw the money away, but we could use it where it does most good.’
‘So, after all, you’re marrying me for the money?’
Majella smiled at him.
‘Have you paid the bill?’
‘Then come outside and we’ll find a quiet corner of the car park and I’ll show you again why I’m marrying you,’ she said, her heart racing as she thought of kissing Flynn again—remembering how good it always was—thinking that it could only get better as their relationship developed and their love grew stronger.
And as she kissed him she whispered things she hoped he wanted to hear, whispered her love for him that had begun when she’d been young, and how somehow a little kernel of it had stayed intact throughout the years until they’d met again, when it had burst open and blossomed into something so wondrous she had no words to describe it—no way to explain it.
Except to say, ‘I love you, Flynn!’