When Stella walked back into the kitchen, she pulled Ava into her arms, one hand reaching up to pull Ava’s head down onto her shoulder.
It felt so good. Ava let herself relax, could smell the soap her mum used, always jasmine, and the slight aroma of cooking that hung around her. She breathed in the scent of the calm her mother was known for but had struggled to find lately. When her mum spoke, the words brushed over Ava’s skin like a caress. ‘I imagine it was very tense. You must have been under enormous pressure. And then there was Amelia’s birthday. You need to walk along the riverbed and heal a bit. Recharge. No work for you today, either.’
Ava let her mum’s arms hold her for a moment longer and let the strain go. She felt the tension draining like water into sand. Stella had her own medicine. It was called love, and on the rare occasions when she brought it out, they were all blinded by the strength of it. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
Stella stepped back but held onto Ava’s upper arms. She gave her a little shake as she searched her face. ‘You need to look after you as well. You’re too precious to burn out doing too much.’
Ava nodded. ‘I will.’
‘That Zac might help her,’ Mim said slyly.
Stella glared at her mother. ‘Don’t go putting ideas in his head. Or hers.’
‘Ha! I’m thinking the ideas are already there in her head. And he sounded protective to me.’ She hummed the wedding march as she left the room, much to Stella’s disgust.
‘That woman drives me mad,’ Stella huffed.
Ava laughed. ‘You’d be lost without her.’
They looked at each other and the smiles died. ‘Yes, I would. So much so that I don’t want to talk about it.’ She tried a joke. ‘Or about weddings.’ They both knew that comment fell flat.
Ava stepped back to try to explain. ‘We connected last week, Mum. Big time. I know there’s a chance Zac won’t ever remember and I’ll have lost something very special. So thank you for having him here.’ She drew in the air to calm herself. ‘He makes me feel so incredible, so … different.’ Her belly kicked as she thought of them tangled together and she glanced away as the heat rose in her cheeks. He made her feel sexy as hell. Like a desirable woman. Resolutely she went on. ‘I know that it’s probable, especially now, that he’ll go back to his high life, which I could never fit into. Even last week in Sydney at the course, the busyness of the place drove me mad.’
‘I think so, too.’ Stella nodded, and Ava couldn’t miss the relief that flashed across her mother’s face. And something that looked strangely like guilt. Why would her mother feel guilty about that?
‘Don’t celebrate too soon, because I have to believe Zac will remember me and then it will be our business. Then all you have to do is bless us. But at least my trust bone has healed after Jai. And maybe if there has to be a time “after Zac”, I will be more open to the idea of trusting someone else. Get married, have children.’ Her thoughts spiralled to a little white coffin. ‘Though that would be scary.’ The idea of losing another child made the sweat break out on her body. She couldn’t go through that again.
Stella nodded again. ‘I understand. It’s your life. I just don’t want you to set yourself up for disappointment like I did.’
‘What disappointment? You always said you loved Dad?’
‘I loved Noah, all right. Very much. But –’ her mother stepped back and lifted her chin – ‘I haven’t done everything right in my life.’
Ava didn’t understand where this was coming from. ‘You didn’t have much choice with Dad dying while you were in Sydney.’
Stella sighed. ‘Except I wasn’t in Sydney when your father died.’ Her eyes met Ava’s and there was a plea for understanding in them. ‘I’d already left him. The week before.’
Ava’s breath hitched. ‘Mum?’
Her mother went on, staring at nothing over Ava’s shoulder. ‘I’d run home to my mother, with you, from the homesickness. Missing my family.’ She shook her head. ‘It was his long, long hours at work, with my time in a horrible brick house and no friends. Not many people talk to their neighbours in the city, and when I tried they’d just look at me as if I was trying to steal their washing.’
‘You were lonely,’ Ava said very quietly.
‘Very. He was devastated, of course. I found out, a fair while after the funeral, that he went a little crazy and took stupid risks and continued to until that got him killed. I blame myself. I’ve always blamed myself for Noah’s death.’
Ava’s head was spinning. ‘But we were always told you came home after he died.’
‘I lied.’ The statement clattered in the kitchen like a dropped knife and her mother’s eyes filled. Ava’s throat closed in sympathy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother cry, and she slipped her hand into Stella’s and squeezed.
Her mum didn’t seem to notice as she hung suspended in another world and time. ‘I left him and he died. And the lie I told you has eaten me for all this time.’
Ava didn’t know if the tears were for her father or for the fact that her mother had carried the burden for such a long time.
‘Oh, Mum.’ Ava stepped up closer and returned the love her mother had given her. ‘You were young, alone, maybe even postnatally depressed, without your mother nearby. And pregnant again. What did Mim say when you came home?’
She half laughed and it was not a happy sound. ‘She said go back. Talk to him. That there was a place between the two worlds where we could find a solution and we needed to work on it together.’
That sounded like Mim.
Stella sighed. ‘But before I could go back, it was too late.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ she said again. ‘You poor thing. And you’ve carried that and worried about what we’d think all these years? That’s why you were worried I’d end up like you if I went with Zac? Why you looked worried when he arrived, with our obvious rapport?’
She nodded.
Ava reeled, but her mum needed this sorted. She could rearrange her own brain later. ‘Firstly, I love you. Jock loves you. Neither of us is going to judge you for something you thought was right twenty-four years ago. Dad should have seen it coming too.’ She squeezed her mum’s hand again.
‘Secondly, you couldn’t know he’d be killed. You didn’t know you’d never see him again. That’s a tragedy. Horrible. But that’s life. It’s capricious and doesn’t do what you expect, and we have to grow with it. We have to learn from it because that’s our journey.’
‘Like Amelia,’ her mum said sadly.
‘Yes, like Amelia. And like me taking risks with Zac if we want to go that far. But we’ll see what happens.’
Her mother reached up and dropped a kiss on her cheek. ‘How did you get so wise?’
Ava hugged her. ‘I picked it up from my mother and grandmother.’
‘Really?’ Her mother’s voice was uncertain and buried in the hug.
Ava gave her an extra squeeze. ‘Yes, really. Let it go, because your daughter thinks you’re amazing, and that you deserve happiness, and I hope you find it.’ They stepped back and eyed each other mistily.
Her mother looked at her for a moment and opened her mouth to say something, but Mim walked in chuckling. Ava watched her mother’s mouth shut with a snap. Now what? she wondered. Was there another secret her mother had been holding on to?
To fill the sudden gap in conversation, Ava said, ‘Just so you know, I intend to remain my own woman and I always will be.’
‘I can see that,’ her mum said.
Ava couldn’t suppress the smile. ‘And I have to acknowledge that no matter how things could pan out with Zac in the long run, having him here is wonderful. But we have a week at least, maybe two if we don’t drive him away, to see if there’s a chance we can find what we lost.’
She studied her mother, blonde and upright, a determined frown on her face as she tried not to tell her daughter what to do. She’d inherited a lot of her mother’s need to control and she understood what she was going through.
‘It’s okay, Mum. I know what I’m doing.’
Her mother smiled at that, very dryly. ‘Excellent’ was all she said.
Granny Mim, observer of these last statements, looked at them both and cackled like a madwoman. The two younger women shook their heads at her.