Outback Sunset (44 page)

How was she was going to face him, to look him in the eye? She didn’t know. Stopping halfway to the homestead she tried to decide whether she could. Her body gave a little shudder then her spine straightened. Sooner or later she would have to. Nova continued walking …

As she got close to the homestead’s verandah, a vague memory of something she had done last night filtered through her brain. What was it? Last night, after their confrontation, she had been full of spite, wanting to hurt him because he had hurt her. In the cool light of a cloudless Kimberley morning, she was having second thoughts. But … she had done
something
in her fit of pique, however, right now her brain was too fogged up to remember what it was. Desperate to gain some concentration she almost stumbled over one of two bikes propped near the verandah step as she went into the kitchen.

The kitchen was remarkably quiet, except for Fran banging pots and the frying pan around in the sink. She had glimpsed Regan and Kyle going off for
an early morning ride before School of the Air began. Vanessa was nowhere to be seen, nor was Curtis, and Bren sat staring at his plate, seemingly not interested in eating his usual breakfast of sausages, steak and eggs.

‘Fran, where’s Dad?’ Nova asked. She wasn’t overly interested in where her father was, it was just something to say to get a conversation going.

‘He and Warren and the new man, Bruce, have ridden towards Exeter Falls to check the herd. Reg said you’re welcome to lend a hand if you want to,’ Fran added tongue-in-cheek. She knew full well, as they all did, that Nova preferred to shadow Curtis on whatever work he was doing. ‘Curtis has taken the chopper to Cadogan’s Run. He said he’d be there till this afternoon.’

Nova absorbed that information with a nod of her head. So, she didn’t have to face him right now and … she had known he was going there. Why? She frowned, trying to remember. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a slice of toast, buttered it and nibbled at it. Can’t think.
I’m supposed to remember something, it’s important … What is it?
She drank a mouthful of scaldingly hot coffee. The hot liquid managed to jolt her memory. Plane. The Cessna. Yes! What had she done …?

She remembered. Panic began inside her, working its way into every nerve, muscle and tissue of her body until she recalled that she had seen the Cessna parked on the runway. Curtis must have put the new spark plugs in and taken the chopper. Relief washed over her and tears pricked at her eyelids. She blinked them away. Christ, was she crazy or something?
Covertly, she rubbed the moisture away, not wanting Fran or Bren to see it and ask questions. The twitch at the side of her mouth started to get worked up. Stop it. Oh, stop it, damn you. She put her finger against the erratically moving muscle in an attempt to disguise its flicker. What she needed was something to relax her. Her right hand dived into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a small round bottle. Prozac, that would calm her down quickly. Making sure no-one saw, she popped the tablet into her mouth and took another swallow of coffee.

Bren scraped his chair as he got up from the table. ‘I’m off,’ he said tersely. ‘If anyone wants me I’ll be in the stockyard, a couple of horses need new shoes.’

In a visual haze Nova watched Amaroo’s owner move towards the back door. As was his practice when going outdoors, he took his battered Akubra off one of the pegs on the wall. Half a dozen pegs were nailed onto a horizontal piece of timber for the express purpose of holding hats; that’s where everyone put their hats when they came inside. Her hat was on the end peg, Vanessa’s grey Akubra was usually in the middle — it was missing now — and Fran’s Longhorn Akubra hung at the other end to hers.

As Bren went to put his hat on, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground. He saw it, grunted, picked it up and unfolded the paper. Nova, watching, saw his frame stiffen as he read the message. His tanned face turned a noticeable red then white. A muscle flexed along his jawline and the muscles in his arms, because he was only wearing a singlet top and cut
off jeans so she could see them, tightened until the veins bulged like a weight-lifters.

‘Jesus … bloody … Christ,’ he growled, hoarsely. He turned on his heel and walked back across the vinyl floor of the kitchen, down the hall and banged the office door shut behind him.

F
ran threw Nova a questioning look. ‘What was that all about?’ When her step-daughter shrugged her shoulders carelessly and didn’t answer, Fran, after a more searching once-over, made no further comment. As she came to take away Bren’s half-eaten breakfast and put the remains in the scrap bucket beside the sink, she said to no-one in particular, ‘The hens are gonna eat well today.’

Vanessa, who’d been outside checking as Regan and Kyle saddled up, came in via the back verandah. She put her Akubra on the middle peg of the hat rack. ‘Morning, everyone.’ She went over to the percolator — Bren had insisted they have percolated coffee, not instant — and poured a cup for herself. She sat at the far end of the table, away from Nova, and buttered a freshly made piece of toast though she was still too upset emotionally — after her confrontation with Bren — to eat more than a bite. It was going to be awkward facing the man who’d been her husband for close to seven years and pretending that everything was normal between them. She grimaced into her coffee cup. Just as well she was an accomplished actress …

And then the noise began …

The three women in the kitchen could hear Bren shouting periodically from the office for close to five minutes. Fran, frowning, was mystified. Nova, zonked out, waiting for the Prozac to kick in, showed only moderate interest. Vanessa, curious about the racket, got up and stood unashamedly in the kitchen doorway, listening.

‘What’s wrong, what’s happened?’ Vanessa asked Fran. Was Bren venting his anger on someone because of their discussion or was it something else?

‘Beats me. He was pretty quiet this morning, didn’t eat much. Then he got his hat to go out to the stockyards but instead, he turned on his heel and stomped off to the office. He’s clearly unhappy about something,’ Fran grinned wryly, knowing she was understating things.

‘So it seems,’ Vanessa confirmed. She continued to listen to his muffled shouting.

The next thing they heard was the roar of one of the bikes as it took off from behind the kitchen.

Vanessa moved to the kitchen window to see Bren astride the bike, gunning the motor full throttle. His hat was rammed down on his head and he was heading towards the breaking-in yard and the smithy’s stall. He didn’t stop there, he kept on, past the machinery and storage sheds, riding towards the hangar. Her curiosity piqued by his shouting, she went into the office and her eyebrows lifted with surprise, then bewilderment at the state of the room.

Papers normally on the desk were everywhere. They’d been thrown haphazardly across its surface, they were on the floor too, as were books,
magazines, and the in-tray which contained the accounts and breeding program’s paperwork. A family photo — one of Bren and all the family members, including Stuart and Diane and his father — had been smashed and the glass lay scattered across the timber boards, all evidence of someone having been in a dreadful rage. The phone was off the hook too so she automatically returned it to its cradle.

What on earth has happened?
Vanessa stood at the front of the desk, studying everything closely, trying to work out what could have upset Bren so much. Was the broken photograph significant, she wondered? Then, by sheer chance her gaze settled on a screwed up piece of paper lying where it had been thrown onto a bookshelf. Later, when she thought back over the events, she could never understand why that scrap of paper more than anything else had stood out to her. Picking it up, she smoothed out the creases and began to read what was written on it.

The owner of Amaroo doesn’t truly own it. He sits on the throne but isn’t the rightful heir. A mother and an uncle are guilty parties. They have cheated the true heir of his birthright. Do you dare ask those who know the truth? H and S have all the answers …

What …? Vanessa read the ridiculously cryptic lines three times before she understood what the writer was trying to say. One didn’t need a genius IQ to work it out. The note claimed that Bren wasn’t
Amaroo’s true heir.
H and S
were obviously Hilary and Stuart and the ‘son’ who might be the true heir had to be Curtis. What was this all about? As she shook her head in puzzlement she recognised the handwriting of the person who’d written the note — Nova. About to confront her to find out what she knew about all this nonsense, the phone rang, startling her.

Hilary Selby was on the line.

‘Thank God. Bren hung up on me then purposely left the receiver off,’ she panted into the phone. ‘Is he all right?’

Vanessa’s expressive eyes would have answered her question had Hilary been able to see them. ‘I don’t think so. Was it you he was shouting at on the phone?’

‘Yes. I don’t know how he found out about …’ Long pause. ‘He said something about a note. It … Oh, dear, he was so furious. I could hardly understand what he said to me.’

‘Hilary, I have the note in my hand. Is it true?’ Vanessa asked the question with, almost, an absurd sense of calm. It would be several hours before the ramifications, true or otherwise, sank in.

It wasn’t hard to fill in the blanks. The note implied that Hilary and Stuart must have had some kind of relationship and Bren had resulted from that relationship, but because Hilary and Matthew were married — and Stuart was engaged to a pregnant Diane — Bren had been passed off as Matthew Selby’s son. If it were true then Curtis was Matthew’s only son and as such, the one entitled to inherit Amaroo. Vanessa rolled her eyes towards the
ceiling. Oh … this was a lovely mess. That’s why Bren had taken off in a fury and, who could blame him for being angry. To learn at the age of forty-one that the man he’d always thought of as his father, wasn’t, and that Stuart was, would make any man’s blood boil. Had everyone been hoodwinked by Hilary and Stuart? She had to wait a little while for Hilary’s answer. It came, finally.

‘Ummm.
Yes,’
came through the receiver in an emotionally choked tone. ‘I, I feel so bad. Stuart, Curtis and I, we never intended Bren to know. Curtis said he wouldn’t tell, and that he would make Nova promise not to tell either.’

Curtis knew,
Nova knew!
But how? The surprises just kept coming. Vanessa leant weakly against the desk as, minute by minute, the truth was unfolding like a nineteenth century melodrama. With an inward sigh, she said, ‘You’d better tell me everything …’

Several minutes later, reeling from Hilary’s embarrassing and awkward disclosure, Vanessa, the note firmly in her hand, headed for the kitchen where Nova sat, head in hands, her eyes glazed, staring at nothing in particular.

Angry almost beyond words because she believed Nova was the one who had initiated the problem, Vanessa threw the sheet of paper down on the table in front of her and said through clenched teeth, ‘That’s your writing, isn’t it? What’s your game, Nova? What mischief are you trying to cause?’

Nova blinked twice as she saw the note. She looked up at Vanessa. ‘W-where did you get that?’ She was frowning, trying to recall … Had she
written it after the fight with Curtis, and if she had, where had she put it? The answer came to her as she blinked for the third time. The hat. She had put it in the inside band of Bren’s hat, knowing it would fall out when he went to put it on. Ooohh … yes, it was all coming back to her now.

Through the drug-induced fog she made herself concentrate. She could remember everything: the fight with Curtis and what he had said to her. How she had reacted, wanting to hurt him, Vanessa, everyone, as she had been hurt. That was why she had written the note to Bren and put sand in the Cessna’s fuel tank last night. She’d wanted to give Curtis a fright when he was taxiing down the runway and the plane’s engine suddenly conked out.

Curtis has to suffer
, her internal voice had agreed with her. She knew the sand would do the job and frighten the living daylights out of him. The engine would work okay for a while then, as the fuel line clogged, it would splutter and fuel flowing to the engine would eventually stop, making the engine stall. Her eyes closed but that didn’t stop the thoughts … Why had she done that? Finally, the answer came — she had a petty need to give him a scare, that’s why.

‘Well …?’ Vanessa demanded, her anger growing as each second passed.

Vanessa’s voice cut through Nova’s thoughts. She sat up straight, ran a hand through her boyishly short, straight hair. But … it was all right, Curtis hadn’t taken the Cessna to Cadogan’s Run, he had flown off in the chopper. Thank God. Relief mingled with a growing sense of remorse made her eyes sting
with unshed tears. Shit a brick, what had she been thinking? She must be insane to have contemplated doing something … so extreme.
No
, the voice slid into her thoughts and she welcomed her friend,
you were justified in doing what you did because he had disappointed you and he deserved your anger.

‘Nova, are you listening to me?’ Vanessa asked, her tone more insistent.

Nova’s head jerked up, she had been listening to the voice. She looked into Vanessa’s eyes, as if she had only just heard what she’d said. ‘What did you say?’

Exasperated, Vanessa drew up a chair opposite Nova, and sat down. ‘This note. Why?’

Fran, who’d been watching the scene with interest, glanced out the kitchen window. She shook her head in consternation as she reported, ‘Bren’s a funny one. He must have changed his mind about shoeing the horses. He’s taking the Cessna up.’

Hearing that, Nova continued to ignore Vanessa. She jumped up and ran to the window to see for herself. ‘No. Oh, shit! No, he can’t …’ She began to hyperventilate. ‘He’ll die. Oh, God, no, I can’t let him.’
But … Nova, if Bren dies that will make it easier for Curtis to inherit.

‘No,’ Nova said, shaking her head vehemently as she answered out loud, ‘I have no argument with Bren.’