‘There, there, sweetheart, sit down.’ Tracy took several napkins from the metal dispenser on the table and handed them to Fiona in one thick wad. ‘Blow your nose, wipe your eyes, and I’ll sit with you for a bit.’
‘I only wanted to apologise,’ Fiona spluttered.
‘Maggie’s upset, that’s all. You have to understand what it’s like for a mother. Children always come first.’
‘Not always,’ Fiona mumbled. ‘Mine never knew or cared if I scraped a knee.’
‘You’re Amber Bailey’s daughter, aren’t you?’
Fiona nodded. ‘How did you know?’
‘Not hard to tell. I knew your mother. We were all friends at school at one time or another. Some of us better friends than others. Hang on and I’ll grab you a glass of water.’
Tracy was back in a flash with two glasses.
‘Small-town schooling had its down side. We all knew each other’s business. Who liked who. Who didn’t like who. Who liked you only because they’d been thrust upon you by families with property values in their eyes. You know what I mean?’
‘I guess. Thank you for the water,’ she said, taking a few long sips. ‘The way my grandfather tells it, everyone liked my mother, especially the boys. Only sometimes a little too much. Do you know what I mean?’
Tracy appeared shocked. ‘Your grandfather said a thing like that about your mother?’
‘He said I was all the good things that she wasn’t. A genuine Bailey girl,’ she snorted cynically. ‘Nothing genuine about me at all, though.’
‘Your mother sure was a beauty. I bet you have young men fighting for your attention all the time, just like she did. All the boys fell for Amber. Maybe to your grandfather it looked like she dated a lot, or he heard the school rumour mill. There were always lots of rumours and even more bragging. Everyone wanted to date Amber. Come to think of it,’ Tracy laughed, ‘even my adorable husband, Dan, went out with your mother at one stage. We were all around the same age, give or take a few years. Dan was a little older and quite the spunk.’ Tracy sighed, or was she stopping for air? ‘And I’ll let you in on a little secret, too. While our present-day Detective Dan was the most loyal and devoted husband and father on the planet, back then he was Calingarry Crossing’s bad boy. He and his mates got themselves into all kinds of trouble. I think that if he hadn’t been such a lout, Maggie and Dan might have ended up together. She had a huge crush, only her father wouldn’t have a bar of him—even before the unfortunate thing with Maggie’s brother. Dan left town and went to Sydney. A few years later we ran into each other, on campus, and it was love at first sight. I’ve always been a sucker for a man in a uniform. I even remember us falling in love.’ Tracy smiled, sighing. ‘Young love is wonderful. Are you in love?’
Fiona held out a shaky left hand to let motor-mouth ooh and ah over her engagement ring.
‘Then you’d know the euphoria of being adored.’ Tracy giggled and sipped her water. ‘I remember as if it were yesterday. I was so enamoured when Dan asked me for coffee that first day I didn’t think to mind him asking me if I knew how Maggie and her dad were doing. It was only later that I realised he was still punishing himself for what happened to Maggie’s brother. He was still holding a candle for Maggie, too.’
‘You married him though.’
‘Hell, yes! I told you; he was a spunk,’ Tracy chortled. ‘Still is, I reckon. People’s lives go in different directions for different reasons. Dan and I had a good life together. Now I have a new direction and a new guy, and Dan is happy for me.’
‘You’re not together any more?’ Fiona was trying to work out how to keep this woman talking. This was more information about the past than she’d been able to glean since arriving in the tight-lipped town.
Tracy was shaking her head and gulping the last of her water. ‘Heavens, would you listen to me. You probably should erase half of everything I just told you. I’m probably talking out of school—pardon the pun. And would you look at the time?’
Tracy handed Fiona another napkin before standing, but there were no more tears for Fiona to wipe. The whirlpool of possibilities inside her head had siphoned them away.
‘Are you sure you have to go?’
‘I’m sure I’ve said more than I should have here, Fiona dear. I hope my rabbiting on has made you feel better.’
‘Oh, it has. Thanks.’
‘Fiona, if I can say one more thing.’ Tracy stopped, both the perpetual smile and earlier unbridled banter reined in. ‘It’s been my experience that the past is best left in the past. Choose carefully and wisely. Make your own memories, ones you’ll always be able to call on. Dan and I loved each other because I chose to make us happen. If I’d let Dan’s past with Maggie—or the fact that he’d dated your mother—get in the way, I would not have enjoyed so many wonderful years with him. And I wouldn’t have two wonderful children waiting at home right now to see their parents. Oh, and one more thing. If I were you, I’d act scarce after Maggie brings Noah home. You know her nickname at school was Magpie. She’s fiercely protective as a friend. I suspect even more so as a mother. You know how mothers are? I’d best get home to my own fledglings. Bye-ee.’
So, Dan Ireland, the man with the police badge and the big blue eyes who had comforted Maggie briefly last night once had a thing for her. Not only that, the woman said he’d dated Amber. The notion that Fiona had been looking in the wrong place for her real father crossed her mind. She’d tended to be swayed by what her grandfather had said: that it was a boy from the school footy team. And while Luke had desperately wanted ex-football hero Will Travelli to be the one, the more Fiona saw Will and Sara the more she discarded the possibility. Will was short and stocky, blond, and with sort of nondescript greenish-brown eyes.
Luke had talked Fiona into coming out to this fly-filled freaking town to look for her father, but there was nothing to say the man—whoever he was—would still be in Calingarry Crossing. Dan Ireland could easily be a new contender for the title and he lived in Sydney.
‘How very accommodating of the local constabulary to give me board and lodgings for the night.’ Luke had found Fiona still sitting in the dining room. With breakfast long over, everyone was at the fair day, now in full swing along the main street. The last thing Fiona wanted to do was show her face. ‘This is one hell of a town, Fi.’
‘They should have locked you up and thrown away the key, if you ask me. What’s wrong with you? Are you a moron? Why would you do that to Noah?’
Luke smirked and straddled the seat backwards, resting his chin on his hands and feigning innocence. ‘I didn’t do anything to your boy, Fi.’
‘You gave him something. What was it?’
‘He needed loosening up, that’s all. Not as if I forced it down his throat. I simply suggested I had just the thing to have him feeling like the king of the worrrrrrrld!’ Luke threw his arms wide and laughed through a lousy impersonation of Leonardo de Caprio on the bow of the Titanic. ‘Or maybe that should be queen of the world.’
‘Don’t,’ Fiona snapped.
‘It was a joke, Fifi. Maybe you need to loosen up a little, too. Lucky I had these stashed in my car.’
‘Put those away,’ she whispered, taking a swipe at his hand before someone could walk in and see the little pink pills. ‘You’re lucky the copper didn’t find them. I think you need to get out of Calingarry.’
‘I agree. Funnily enough so did Officer Officious when he’d done processing me—after he got pissed off that I came in under the limit. Dumb-arse copper. Come on, get your gear. I’ve checked the Saab’s good to go, but I’ll drive it. Here, take my keys.’ He dangled a key-ring in her face. ‘You can follow and we’ll have ourselves a little country convoy back to Sydney.’
‘You’re going, Luke, not me.’ She snatched at the key-ring and sauntered away from the table leaving Luke to trail behind like a puppy. She exited the dining room via the beer garden, stopping in the small, dirt parking area out the back.
‘What the fuck’s going on, Fi?’
‘Oooh, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Lukey!’ Fiona mimicked, ending with her best smart alec smirk.
‘Don’t you piss me off now.’ There was nothing playful in the next tug on her arm. ‘Get your gear and let’s get out of this dump.’
‘No,’ she said defiantly. ‘Get your hands off me.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’m not going, Luke. Can’t you understand a simple word, or has my grandfather programmed “no” from your vocabulary. He doesn’t much like the word, Mum told me, only I didn’t believe her then.’ Fiona felt a choking sob rise from her gut, somehow passing through her heart, making her clutch at her chest as if she had to dislodge it before she could take her next breath.
Her mother had tried to tell Fiona so many things, trying to explain her absence in Fiona’s life, while in her other ear was the grandfather who’d been there for her all those years that Amber wasn’t. Who could she trust? Who had told her the truth? Who really loved her consistently and unconditionally? She had thought Luke did.
‘Fi, are you hearing me?’ Luke goaded. ‘I asked if hanging around this place is about your mother. Are you waiting for some great epiphany to change your life? Fiona, babe, you don’t need to change. You fit into my life just the way you are. You sure as hell don’t owe these people anything.’
The anger and hurt she’d dumped on her mother and Phillip was shifting, first to Jack Bailey, now Luke.
‘I owe Noah.’
Fiona couldn’t leave town without seeing him. With staying at the hotel no longer an option, she’d go to her grandmother’s. Cheryl was nice. A little distant—hurt, Fiona suspected. Being hurt by Amber at least gave them something in common. Cheryl would make her new granddaughter welcome, certainly more welcome than Maggie when she returned from the hospital with Noah.
Fiona snatched the Saab keys out of Luke’s hands and jammed them into her jeans pocket. Then she walked over to his car and threw his keys on the driver’s seat. ‘Just go.’
‘And what exactly do I tell your grandfather? He won’t be too happy about you staying here.’
‘Tell your boss whatever you like.’ Fiona wrangled the diamond ring off her finger and forced it into Luke’s palm. ‘And you can take this too. We’re over.’