A Father in the Making

Her mind went over all fuzzy, as her memories skipped and tumbled back through the years to the last time that name had been foremost in her mind…

She stood, sheltered, hidden by a weeping willow, a good twenty metres behind the congregation at the edge of the cemetery, feeling like Alice gone through the looking glass.

In her pale pink sundress and her borrowed tweed coat, her pink headband holding back her mass of curls, which had gone wild in the drizzly Melbourne weather, she felt out of her depth, like a kid playing dress-up, hoping the adults wouldn’t notice she didn’t really belong.

The hundred-odd people huddled together against the cold were a who’s who of the Australian social set. Even she, a girl from the bush, recognised the multitude of television personalities and politicians alike. They were all dressed up in glamorous black, in hats, in designer sunglasses. The only hat Laura had ever owned was a twenty-year-old Akubra of her father’s, bumped and bruised by years of wear while working the land.

Standing apart from the throng, she clutched a letter in her cold hand: a letter laboured over, cried over, written longhand, on stationery she had received a couple of years before on her sixteenth birthday. Fairies danced in the top corner of the page and hid behind toadstools along the bottom rim. She hadn’t really paid attention when writing on it; she had only given in to the burning need to get her despairing words onto paper.

She rested a protective arm across her flat belly. It would not be flat for much longer. Talk between the young mothers in Tandarah came back to her. Stretch marks. Bladder problems. Varicose veins. She was eighteen, for goodness’ sake! How had her life turned so completely in the last two months that she had ended up here?

But what choice did she have? What with both her parents gone, these people were the only family her child would know—this overwhelming, well-to-do, influential, formidable group of people standing watching over the casket of heavy wood that contained their son, their brother.

Through gaps between the sea of black coats, Laura watched as the casket slowly sank into the rain-drenched ground. From nowhere, the disturbing strains of a solo violin wafted over the gloomy scene, and her heart grew so heavy with sorrow she could barely breathe.

Will. Dear, sweet Will. He had been so unassuming. So gentle. So uncomplicated. One would never have guessed that he came from such a family. But in the last few days she had found out the truth of it. She had read the small notices of condolence in every newspaper in the country. Devoured them. Clipped them and kept them in a precious shoebox beneath her bed back home. Somehow it had helped her live outside of herself, outside of the poignant realisation that she was pregnant, and that the father of her unborn child had been killed before he even knew.

Laura made an effort to place as many of the mourners as she could—anything to take her mind off the weight in her heart. The violinist had to be one of the sisters—Jen. The younger of the sisters, Samantha, was very pregnant herself, and married to a television actor. Will’s parents, the elegant couple standing either side of the minister, were award-winning film-makers.

But where was the elusive elder brother? The one Will talked about more than the rest. Ryan. The workaholic perennial wanderer, the oft-published, world-renowned economist who travelled the world at the whim of foreign governments in order to advise them on economic policy. Will’s hero.

The family moved forward, each to throw a blood-red rose atop Will’s coffin, but no young man came forward with Will’s sisters and parents. As far as Laura could tell, illustrious big-brother Ryan was not there.

She had come this far, catching a bus, a train and a tram, alone, to get there, to be present when her young friend was lowered into the ground. Ryan Gasper had the means, the money, and the time. How could a man not move heaven and earth to be at his own brother’s funeral? And how could Laura bring her only child into a family such as that? So scattered. So civilised. So impenetrable.

Laura looked to the letter in her hand, now crunched into a tight ball in her shaking palm. She smoothed it out again and slipped it deep into the pocket of her borrowed coat. She would post the letter on the way back to Tandarah, and then it would be up to them to make the next move.

‘Until then,’ she whispered, her words forming a cloud of steam in the chill winter air. ‘I think it’s fair to say it’s just you and me, possum.’

Eighteen years old, and all alone in the world bar the tiny speck of life inside of her, Laura turned and walked away without looking back…

Ryan watched Laura’s warm, open face slowly crumble and turn paper-white. She didn’t move, didn’t blink, and didn’t even seem to notice when the pink overalls left her limp hand and fluttered to the dusty ground.

‘You’re Will’s brother?’ she whispered, her previously chirpy voice now thin and faraway. Wisps of dappled hair had fallen from their restraint and curled across her forehead. Without all the bluster and noise she suddenly looked very frail. Delicate. And terribly young. He took a step her way, for fear she might swoon.

‘Ms Somervale?’

She made no move, as though she had not heard him.

‘Laura? Are you all right?’

When she swallowed, her lips trembled. Then her haunted gaze locked in on the letter in his still outstretched hand. Her hand flew to her mouth and her teeth clamped down on the length of her index finger. Ryan knew not if she was stopping herself from crying out or biting down hard to cover up a deeper pain elsewhere inside of her. And then, just when Ryan was about to reach out and gather her against him—anything to stop the unnerving trembling that he had caused—she did the incredible: she managed to muster up a smile.

‘You’re Will’s brother,’ she repeated, and this time it was a shaky statement, not a question. ‘Ryan. The economist, right? I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you. Will never did carry pictures of any of you. And you weren’t at his funeral.’

Did that mean she had been? He’d had no idea. His family must not have either. Astonishing. She had been in their midst all those years before, and none of them had known. ‘Ms Somervale, I’m not here to cause you or your…family any trouble. I’ve come because…’

Why had he come? To find the child she had written to the Gaspers about in her letter? Absolutely. But after that he was running on gut instinct alone.

He reached down slowly, so as not to startle her, and picked up the pink overalls. ‘I need to know, Ms Somervale.’ He handed them back to her and saw understanding dawn upon her face.

She took a great breath, as though gathering her scattered trains of thought, nodded, and her bottomless golden eyes fluttered back up to meet his. ‘The Upper Gum Tree,’ she said, coming out of some sort of trance. ‘The hotel in town where you met Jill Tucker. Six o’clock tonight.’

Before he even had the chance to ask her what made the Upper Gum Tree at six o’clock so special, a voice called out from deep within the cottage.

‘Mu-u-um!’

‘Coming, possum!’ she called back, her flashing eyes begging that he keep his attention on her and nowhere else. But it was a hopeless demand as suddenly the owner of the pink overalls and the shouting voice came skipping out of the cottage.

The crackling record, the whisper of the breeze, even the vibrant vision of a barefoot Laura Somervale slipped away as every ounce of Ryan’s being focused on the little girl. She had Laura’s oval face, healthy glow, and dishevelled curls. But the Gasper traits were unmistakable. The intelligent blue eyes. The square jaw. Even the way she bit at the inner corner of her mouth was a habit his sisters had never overcome.

There was no longer any doubt in Ryan’s mind. Laura Somervale had given life to his brother’s child.

The little girl was holding a crayon drawing in her hand, and she stopped short when she saw that her mother was not alone. ‘Mum?’ This time her voice was not so resolute.

Laura’s glance flicked towards the little girl, her voice neutral. ‘Go back inside, Chloe.’

Chloe. Ryan spun the name around his mind several times. Chloe Gasper. No, surely not. Chloe Somervale.

‘Get Chimp’s dinner ready. I won’t be long. Okay?’ No matter that she was trying desperately to sound all right, they heard the strain in her voice. Chloe nodded, and looked over at Ryan. He gave her his best effort at a friendly smile, but her face creased into an uncertain frown before she hustled back inside.

‘Please, Mr Gasper,’ Laura said, her own voice firming with each word. ‘Meet me at the Upper Gum Tree Hotel at six tonight. We can talk there.’

And then she turned and walked away, leaving Ryan with little choice but to do as she asked.

Feeling Ryan Gasper’s now staggeringly familiar gaze burning into her back, Laura picked up her washing basket, spun on her numb feet and hurried inside, the smile she had fashioned fast sliding into oblivion.

Will’s brother had come, and he had her letter. No wonder she’d thought she had seen him somewhere before. He didn’t look at all like Will, who had been barely nineteen, lean and lanky, with streaky blond hair when she had known him. But the something that had tugged at her subconscious was the fact that his deep, dark eyes were as vividly blue as her own daughter’s.

In the intervening years since Will’s funeral she had never heard back from his family, reasonably deducing that they either didn’t believe her, wanted nothing to do with her, or simply didn’t care. Truth be told, the more years that went by, the more that suited her just fine. But now here he was. The dashing, determined, older brother Will had yearned to equal, to emulate and, on the flipside, to disoblige as much as humanly possible. The brother who had not even deigned to show up at his funeral.

Laura shook her head to clear the returning fuzz. None of that mattered now. What mattered was that the time had come for Laura to share her darling little girl. He had said he wasn’t there to cause her any trouble. Maybe. Maybe not. If he thought for a second that he could take Chloe away…

Laura’s chest tightened as adrenalin kicked in. No matter how cool and self-assured Ryan Gasper’s voice was, no matter how bewitching his gaze, how tempting his smile, or how Will had worshipped him, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. This was too important. The way she handled this, the way she handled him, would be the most important situation of her life.

‘Mum!’ Chloe called again. She bundled into the room, her strawberry-blonde ringlets pulled back into messy pigtails. ‘Who was that man?’

‘A friend,’ Laura said, taking care how she approached the subject with Chloe. She instinctively chose not to create any sort of preconceived image of him. She had always taught Chloe to make up her own mind about people, not to listen to gossip.

She dumped the basket of wet clothes, with the dusty, dirty overalls splayed across the top, sat on the couch, tugged her daughter onto her lap, and held on tight. Too tight. Thankfully, Chloe didn’t struggle away as she sometimes did when Laura became mushy.

‘Now, what have you got there, possum?’ Laura asked, her voice running on back-up power.

‘I have to draw a picture of my family for school.’ Chloe held out her crayon drawing of a house, a couple of animals, and a trio of people. ‘I have you and me, Chimp and Irmela,’ she said, referring to their pet fox terrier and overweight jersey cow respectively. ‘And Jill is at the front gate. Is that enough?’

It always has been enough until now, Laura thought. ‘I don’t think you’ve missed anybody.’

‘Well, Tammy is putting in all of her cousins. Even the ones who live in Scotland.’ Chloe twisted on her lap to look her in the eye. ‘Do I have any cousins in Scotland?’

Laura opened her mouth to say no, of course she didn’t, but then she thought of the man in the black shiny car. Chloe might very easily have cousins all over the world, for all she knew.

From the moment Laura had posted her letter she had put the shoebox full of old clippings about Will under her bed, and had quite specifically not gone out of her way to hear about the Gasper family. But it seemed the time had come for her to peek at the world outside of her community, to find out about Chloe’s extended family—and she had until six o’clock to figure out how to go about it.

Well, she had until six o’clock to finish the laundry, cook dinner, check Chloe’s homework, finish the pies for the Country Women’s Association meeting that night, and to figure out how she was going to handle the arrival of Ryan Gasper. The too hot bubble bath was so far down the list it dropped and fell away.

Once Chloe was ensconced back at the desk in her bedroom, Laura picked up the phone and dialled the Upper Gum Tree Hotel. When Jill answered the phone she all but blubbed with relief. ‘Jill, it’s Laura. We have a problem. I need you to set aside a table for me, and I need it to be discreet.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE UPPER GUM TREE HOTEL bustled with activity. Barflies lounged at the bar. Families conversed at a smattering of snug round dining tables. Local teenagers played snooker. And Ryan sat all on his lonesome in a secluded high-walled booth at the back of the room.

By the time six o’clock came and went he was onto his second beer and a young boy at the next table had taken a liking to him. The kid continued to stare over the top of the booth, and Ryan had no idea how to get rid of him.

He’d never had much experience dealing with kids. He had been nine years old when Will was born, and in boarding school by the time Will was three. By the time Ryan had left for university and beyond, they had spent little time together; Will, so quiet and shy, and intensely studious, had been practically a stranger to him. And to Jen’s and Sam’s kids he was merely cool Uncle Ryan, who brought presents whenever he came back from overseas.

But now he had another niece—a walking, talking remembrance of his little brother—and for some reason he felt an obligation to get to know this one properly. Half of him was energised by the prospect, and the other half wanted to wring Laura Somervale’s pretty little neck for not trying harder to track his family down.

What reason could she possibly have for telling them about the little girl and then never contacting them again? It would have made more sense if she had never tried to contact them at all. It didn’t add up, and as a guy who worked with checks and balances he planned to stick around at least until it did.

Perhaps she had simply found herself a new father for her daughter in the meantime. A strange sort of uncomfortable heat formed in Ryan’s gut as he realised that she could even be married. Affianced. Living with someone. He hadn’t counted on having to get through another man as well as Ms Somervale. He dearly hoped that he still wouldn’t have to. Either way, if Laura Somervale didn’t show in the next five minutes he was heading back out to the little weatherboard worker’s cottage and he wasn’t leaving until he had his answers.

Ryan gave in and crossed his eyes back at the kid who was still staring him down. He poked his tongue out and even added a humped back for good measure.

‘So, did you find our Laura all right?’ a female voice asked. Ryan uncrossed his eyes to find a short, round lady with boyish grey hair and bright button eyes leaning against the edge of the booth, beaming down at him. Jill Tucker. He had a feeling the woman knew exactly how he had found Laura, and what had transpired word for word.

‘Yes, thanks,’ he assured her with an unadorned smile. ‘She was right where you told me she would be.’

‘Of course she was,’ she said, and her own smile grew larger. ‘She’s lived there since she was born. A dear girl, Laura. Would do anything to help any of us in a pickle, and if anyone ever dared to hurt her, or her little possum, they would have to deal with the rest of our town as well. Can I get you something to eat while you wait?’

Ryan blinked. It seemed Miss Somervale was not the only one who could so adeptly change tack mid-spiel. Perhaps the idiosyncrasy could even be considered part of the local dialect.

‘I’m happy with my beer,’ he said. ‘Thanks, anyway.’

Jill gave him a sympathetic smile before moving on to the next table. Before he even had the chance to take another sip, he was struck by the intoxicating scent of freshly baked apple pie. He had a famously sweet tooth, and the scent was so delicious he actually sniffed the air as a pair of cake boxes slid across his bench. In their wake came Laura Somervale. He was fairly sure it was her…

Gone were the messy curls, pulled back under a red bandana, and the graceful cotton dress had been replaced with an excessively frilly white shirt. She looked over her shoulder at the little boy peering over the next booth. ‘Liam, your dessert is getting cold.’

The little boy disappeared from sight. Just like that. Wow. He would have to remember that trick. As she sat, Ryan opened his mouth to ask why she had gone to such trouble to dress in disguise, but when their eyes met he was rendered speechless yet again by the most startling difference from her earlier appearance. The sexiest dark smudges of eyeliner framed her pale brown eyes, making them glitter like gold. A searing flash of awareness overcame him. Had the flash come from him or from her?

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, her voice as crisp and curt with him as it had been with the little boy, Liam, and he figured any sort of responsiveness had been his alone. ‘I had to get Chloe settled in at a friend’s place first.’

So she hadn’t left Chloe at home. She had sequestered her away somewhere unknown. No matter how promising her words, how valiant her smile, this woman was not as calm and trusting as she made out.

‘So there’s no one else at home who could have looked after her tonight? Your husband, perhaps?’

Laura coughed out a sorry laugh. ‘Hardly,’ she said, flapping a ring-free hand under his chin. ‘Chloe and I are perfectly happy on our own.’

And, just like that, the uncomfortable lump in Ryan’s mid-section faded away.

‘Where are you staying?’ she asked, shifting her weight on the soft leather seat.

‘I have a room upstairs.’

‘Nice?’ she asked, still not looking him in the eye.

‘Not sure. I haven’t seen it yet. I came straight here from your place.’

‘Oh, I just can’t stand this,’ she said suddenly, scrunching her eyes tight and banging her fists on the old wooden table.

Ryan’s hands zoomed out to catch his glass of beer and stop it from overturning.

‘I’m not bred for small talk,’ she said, her voice earnest, her expression pleading. ‘I’ll be honest. Your being here scares the living daylights out of me.’

Ryan tried to disregard the divine scent of apples and sugar, and something else—an unexpectedly exotic perfume wafting from the direction of the woman in the equally exotic costume. ‘You have no reason to fear me, Laura.’

‘I have every reason!’ She snapped her mouth shut, her fists closing tight atop the table. She seemed to collect herself, to temper her anguish. When she looked back at him from beneath her smoky lashes he knew she had found the calm in the eye of the storm.

‘I had no brothers or sisters,’ she continued, her voice now more controlled, though a tiny vibration gave her away. ‘I have no aunts or cousins, distant or otherwise. I understand that there are other people out there who are family to Chloe. You. You are her family. As such, you are the answer to her very dreams. And at least a very tiny, small but noisy part of me is relieved that you have finally come. But, at the same time, you also represent my very greatest fear. Losing her.’

Her anxious words brought about the image of tear stains on lavender paper, and he found it hard not to stare as he reconciled the heartfelt prose on that page with the plucky woman three feet from him now. Her honesty in that letter had amazed him, even while the news shocked him. Several years on, she was just as unwilling or unable to hold back her feelings as she had been then, and just as able to surprise him in person as she had been in print.

‘I need to know your intentions,’ she said. ‘I can take it. I might not like it, but I can take it.’

His intentions? It was such an old-fashioned term but, coming from this wide-eyed country girl, it fitted. Though it made him feel like a rogue, he gave her the only truth he could. ‘I don’t exactly know.’

Her golden eyes glinted back at him in the low light. ‘You’re going to have to give me more than that if you think we can take this matter further.’

‘What more do you want?’

‘Proof that you are as nervous as I am.’ She leaned forward, pinning him with her candid stare. ‘I am an even mix of morbid embarrassment and stiff terror right now. When you wandered up onto my property, in your clean shirt and your new jeans, you must know I didn’t for a second expect you to be…well, you. If you had, in fact, been a male stripper it would have shocked me less.’

‘A male what?’

Laura bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything else she oughtn’t. She filtered back through all the things she had mentally accused him of being, including an aluminium cladding salesman, but, no, the male stripper idea she had managed to keep to herself. Until now. She fluffed a hand over her face to try and divert him from her terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease.

She did want Chloe to meet her uncle. Really she did. For Chloe’s sake how could she not? She was trying to think outside of her own selfish desire to keep her contented little existence intact because the big picture of Chloe’s life meant so much more. Even though none of his superstar family had ever cared enough to write, to call, or to ask if Chloe was okay, she had to give him a chance. But, even so, there was a noisy little voice in her head that told her that he in particular was dangerous. Not cruel. Not insensitive to her fears. But somehow dangerous to her precariously balanced contentment. For a girl who felt as though a wonderful life was never quite within her grasp, she had no idea how to deal with a perpetual winner like the one seated before her.

‘Stick to the subject, Mr Gasper. Why now? Why after all this time have you come?’

‘Your letter brought me here, Ms Somervale.’

Her cheeks warmed as she thought of the words she had written in that letter. The words of a hormone-riddled, deeply sad, terrified, lonely and desperate teenager. But before she had a chance to ask to see the letter, which of course she would shovel into her mouth, chew and swallow so that no one else would ever know it existed, a shadow passed over the table. She looked up to find a man in dark trousers and a grey pullover smiling down at them.

‘Hi, there, Father Grant,’ she said, saving her request for when they were alone again. She glanced over at Ryan and had no idea how to introduce him. Friend? Hardly. Chloe’s uncle? She could barely believe it herself, much less say it aloud. Male stripper in the making? Now, that would probably cause less gossip in town than any of the other options on offer!

‘Dress rehearsal tonight, Laura?’ Father Grant asked.

Laura only then remembered her get-up. Oh, Lord! While Mr Perfect sat there looking so flawless, in his blue button-down shirt that did distracting things to his bluer than blue eyes, she was decked out in a mass of white frills and tight purple pants, with knee-high black boots jiggling skittishly below the table.

‘Pirates of Penzance,’ she blurted, for Ryan’s benefit, flicking at a ruffle. ‘The Country Women’s Association is putting on the musical and I am playing the Pirate King.’

Ryan must have thought she was utterly insane, coming to meet him in such a get-up. And for singing to magpies. And for batting her eyelids at a stranger while all on her own out in an isolated Outback property…If he were intent on finding reasons to take her daughter away, he would surely have the beginnings of a list already.