In her flat on the outskirts of Alice Springs, Stella gripped the verandah rail and stared down at her work-roughened fingers and tried to bend steel. It wasn’t working.
Her fingers were white and ugly. She did not possess a sophisticated woman’s hand – like Lorenzo would be used to – with all her cracked, short nails torn in places from hard work. She eased the pressure and looked away from her offensive digits through the buildings across the street to the glimpse of desert beyond. She could just see the sand-crusted hill with saltbush and drew in a deep breath as if the freedom out there could settle her agitation.
‘Are you all right, Stella?’
She turned to see her mother poking her head out of the bedroom door onto the verandah, as if unsure whether it was safe to venture further. Considering Mim didn’t know the meaning of fear, her expression made Stella smile, if a little reluctantly.
‘My brain feels like an overfilled chaff bag ready to explode.’
‘I can tell that, dear.’
Oops. If her mother was calling her ‘dear’, she’d been difficult to live with.
‘Sorry, Mim.’ Stella gestured to the two chairs on the tiny balcony and Mim came out and sat down. Stella watched as Mim donned her listening pose with her hands settled demurely in her lap, and her smile grew a little. So many times her mother had settled herself in that pose.
Stella could remember her sitting like that with her father on the verandah at Setabilly while some weighty matter had needed to be discussed. After he’d died, Mim’s attention had focused on Stella and her children, and they were truly blessed. Mim the listener. And the sage, with her sometimes wickedly insightful comments that could make you blush or cry.
Stella made herself sit and blow out a breath. ‘Lorenzo’s arrival has thrown me.’ She threw up her hands with the agitation that rose just hearing herself say that. ‘I’m confused like a fifteen-year-old would be, not a woman of fifty. How could I make such an impression on a man in one afternoon a whole year ago?’
Mim raised her brows. ‘Men remember attractive women. And despite hiding it in those farm clothes, you’ve worn well.’
‘You said I looked like a cow pat.’
‘Got you with that one. I was trying to wake you up.’ Mim’s eyes danced with mischief.
Mim had been aware all along and never said a word? Maybe Mim did understand her fears. Stella lowered her voice. ‘I’m scared he’s going to ask me to marry him.’ And thought but didn’t say, I did so badly as a wife last time.
Mim surveyed her from head to foot and then her gaze softened. ‘What if he does ask you? It’d do you good to be looked after for a change. To have a strong man’s arms around you.’
Stella sighed. It was all very well to dream. ‘I can’t waltz off into the sunset with a European Casanova and leave you all.’
‘Why not?’ Mim’s question was placid, a gentle puff of amusement on the warm air. As if she had no idea what Stella was het-up about.
Stella rolled her eyes. ‘We’re all stressed to the max about the station. You know – the drought! Especially Jock, who is turning my hair grey with the way his spirits are sinking, and with Hana expecting the baby, and the bank’s grumbling about the improvements he’s overdrawn on. I need to be here to help and support them.’
Stella blew out another breath and looked at her mother. Then there was Mim’s advancing age, which she didn’t mention. ‘I have a mother and a daughter who need me as well,’ she said instead and shuddered at the memory of searching for her mother for almost a full day after she’d come off that horse. Someone needed to make sure Mim didn’t do anything else so stupidly dangerous.
Mim made a rude noise. ‘Don’t you put me in there as your responsibility. Young Hana has already invited me, very prettily, to live with them.’ She thought about that. ‘I’d enjoy having a baby about again.’
Stella blinked. ‘Are you all talking about the possibility of me leaving?’ Why was she the last to know anything?
‘Not all of us. Ava doesn’t know.’
Ava was one of the reasons her head was going to explode. Imagine if she’d left with Lorenzo. ‘And now Ava has almost been killed by an idiot in a campervan. Imagine if I had been in Italy when that happened.’
‘She’s fine. She’s tough like us. And you would fly home.’ Mim smiled beatifically. ‘I think Ava’s in love.’
Stella felt like the little balcony had just cracked off the side of the building, fallen to the ground twenty feet below them, and carried her with it. ‘Not with the city doctor? The one with amnesia?’
‘Just a suspicion,’ Mim said serenely.
Stella wanted to twist her hands together and cry. Or break something. Neither of which she ever did, but lately the feelings were bubbling inside and tearing to get out, and fifty was a stupid age to lose control.
This was all her fault. She waited a little until she could speak more calmly. ‘It’s a penance for the lies. I should have told them the truth. That love isn’t enough if that person is from another world …’
‘Stella May.’ Her mother’s voice broke in. ‘Stop it. Your father and I were from different worlds and that worked out very well, thank you. Hana and Jock are from different worlds.’
Stella said softly, ‘What about Noah? What about me? I deserted their father when he needed me and then he died.’
‘You got homesick. Tell your children now, be done with it. You were pregnant and lonely. He did something stupid and then he died. It’s time to let go of that volcano of bitterness you’ve carried for twenty years. It’s done enough damage. Don’t let it damage others.’
This was Mim at her most determined. But how could Stella confess she’d lied to the very children she’d promoted truth to after saying she’d been happy in Sydney, and very much in love?
Stella stood up as if to take a turn around the room, but the verandah was so small. So she sat down again and thought reluctantly of the painful past. Well, they had been happy for a while. But Ava in love with a man from the city? Her darling Ava, who’d been hit by that campervan and almost killed along with her companion, the amnesic companion her daughter wanted to bring back to Setabilly to convalesce? It all began to make horrible sense and her dread grew.
Three hours later, Mim and Stella had packed the car in preparation for returning to Setabilly and had driven back to the hospital for Ava.
Stella walked into Zac’s room to meet him, as requested by her daughter. The instant she saw the way her daughter looked at him, she knew. It took all of two seconds to confirm her mother’s suspicions were correct. Two seconds.
Oh, she was polite and said the right things, but inside her heart pounded with regret, and she had to force herself not to hope he never got his memory back, because she could also see that he wasn’t returning the affection. He really had forgotten Ava, and despite her misgivings, she could see it was causing her daughter pain.
Karma had come back to slap her for her dishonesty, because now her daughter had fallen in love with a man from the city like she had and the same struggles would be hers, and Stella hadn’t warned her. If Zac did get over this temporary memory loss, he’d remember he loved Ava, too, and then he’d want to take her back there with him and Ava would be miserable like Stella had been, and history would repeat itself.
Maybe she deserved it. Ava, however, did not. Stella could only hope this city stranger would decide not to come back to Setabilly.