Perhaps he might have overreacted. Just a little. But, in his own defence, how was he expected to react seeing his mother lying underneath a fallen ladder?
Luke wasn’t proud of himself and he didn’t need a psychologist to explain his behaviour. Anyone who knew him would understand why he’d overreacted.
Not that it made him feel any better. In fact, it made him feel worse.
He regretted his harsh words to Harper. Those words, the last he’d said to her, kept coming back to haunt him—and not just because Shelia had torn strips off him for saying them.
At first, he’d been too angry, too afraid for his mother to listen, but as his customary calm returned he realised he’d totally lost it in the classroom. And in doing so had destroyed the slim thread of trust Harper had in him.
‘I blame myself in part,’ said Shelia, when he dropped her back home after the trip to the hospital. Her expression had been unusually earnest. ‘When your father died you were young but very determined to look after us. I could see how important it was to you so I let you. As you got older it was easier to continue that way than to make you see we didn’t need looking after.’
‘I wanted to look after you.’
‘I know, but you were a child. I shouldn’t have let you carry the burden of guilt. It was not your fault your father fell off that bloody scaffolding. Stupid, stubborn, irresistible man.’
‘I was meant to be helping him.’
‘Darling, you were twelve. If you’d been at the bottom when he fell, he’d have squashed you into the bricks too.’ Shelia reached out to him, pulling him towards her in a one-armed hug.
‘I never looked at it like that,’ said Luke. ‘It never occurred to me you and the girls didn’t need me. That you haven’t needed me for a while.’ Shelia patted him on the back and he waited for the familiar heavy feeling—the twist of fear—to hit his gut, but it didn’t come. Instead he and Shelia leaned together, rocking gently back and forth while he let the relief sink in.
He exhaled quietly, closing his eyes. ‘Now that you mention it, Harper told me several times that you could all look after yourselves. She wouldn’t be surprised to hear you’re making me redundant. She’d be thrilled, actually.’ If she ever spoke to him again. ‘I’ll try to back off. Though I’m not sure how to stand by and watch you all fend for yourselves,’ he said. ‘I might be rubbish at it to start with.’
‘We’ll work it out together. Once this arm’s better, I’m going to do more of Harper’s classes and then I’m going to wallpaper my bedroom.’
‘With crash pads around the ladder, I hope.’
‘Maybe—maybe not.’ She laughed, then grabbed his hand and dragged him out to her back patio.
The afternoon sun shone bright in the sky. Half the patio baked in heat, the other half was cooler, a dappled sunlight breaking through the leafy barricade of several tall trees. With an outdoor table and chairs placed in the centre of the patio and a barbecue off to the side there wasn’t a large amount of space. Shelia had reshuffled things, Luke noticed, to house a new piece of furniture—a piece perhaps not as smart as the others, but placed prominently to enjoy its corner in the sun.
A macrocarpa sleeper bench seat.
Luke walked over to the seat. ‘You got this home without me?’
Shelia bounced excitedly beside him. ‘You like it? Is it okay?’ Her face beamed with pride.
‘It’s great, Mum, you did a good job.’
And he meant it. Harper taught you well.
He avoided catching Shelia’s eye, swallowing against the thickness in his throat as he ran his hand over the macrocarpa, fingers testing the smoothness of sanded wood edges. Images of the classroom flooded his head. Harper standing up the front of the class, all faded denim and bouncing ponytail. The voice he’d fallen in love with issuing instructions. Her laughter. His eyes drinking her in. The hot, shabby community classroom with Harper at its centre, its heart.
His centre, his heart.
Luke walked around for a couple of days, mechanically doing tasks at home; half-heartedly cooking dinners for one he then didn’t eat. Time crawled, something he put down to the absence of Harper in his life and an inability to see where his future headed. He simply didn’t know what to do about her.
At the office he attended meetings, signed papers, made commercial decisions, all the while feeling there was something he’d missed. Distracted, he looked up from the wad of papers in his hands, searching the face of the man seated with him at the polished-oak meeting room table. Jock, his oldest, most trusted adviser had joined the company back in the early days of Colton Construction with Luke’s father. He’d remained to oversee things through the years until Luke was old enough to be involved. Jock had been Luke’s right-hand man during his own fledgling attempts to run the business.
Framed black and white photographs dating back thirty years lined the meeting room walls, telling the story of how far they’d come. Luke’s gaze traced the images, aware Jock had stopped talking and was watching him curiously.
‘Your father knew what he was doing when he started this business; he ignored everyone else and built the business his own way, from the ground up.’ Jock loved to tell stories—some of which were even roughly based on facts.
‘Yeah, I remember him being pretty single-minded,’ said Luke, with a smile. As family legend told it, his dad had come from nothing, with no resources and just a whole lot of determination to succeed.
Like Harper.
Bang. There it was.
Luke bolted from the room sparing time for only a brief apology. Head down, he avoided eye contact and focused on making his way out of the office building to the refuge of his truck. He climbed in, his hands holding the steering wheel as he stared blindly through the windscreen, needing the silence to recall that all-important, fleeting flash of insight. Eyes closed he dug into his brain, feeling the cogs ticking over, the thoughts taking form; little cells of thoughts, doubling rapidly, growing.
He’d already recognised Harper reminded him of his father, but at the time it had been more of a minus than a plus. But now, thanks to an old man’s comment, his mother’s honesty and a small epiphany, he saw the similarity in a new light.
He saw two people with a determination to make their way in business, two people prepared to put in the hard yards, refusing to be deterred by the others standing in their way. Two people defending their destinies and loving the path they’d chosen.
His father had hit the success jackpot but not lived long enough to reap the rewards. Harper was still trying to achieve success, doggedly believing it was within her power to do so.
And Luke believed it too. If anyone could do it, Harper could.
She still needed help, but he understood what she was up against now and why she wanted to do things her own way. He knew that she would make a success doing things her own way.
Bang! He loved her for it. And he wouldn’t want her to change.
He turned the key in the ignition and the truck roared to life. He couldn’t wait to tell her, to explain what an idiot he’d been. But the elation radiating through him cooled and instead of backing out he flicked the key off. His hands gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled as he fought an inner battle.
He’d done enough chasing Harper around. He’d pushed her to her limits, maybe even beyond, to protect her. She didn’t want those things from him and in pushing her so hard he’d pushed her away and broken her trust.
I can’t stop you making mistakes, but I can be there for you. Always.
The time had come for him to back off. All he could do now was hope she’d come to him when she was ready. Until then he could only sit and wait.
But for how long?