The House On Burra Burra Lane (24 page)

Sammy saw a young woman, looking up to Ethan.

‘Don’t feel sorry for her,’ he said as though reading her thoughts. ‘She was in as much trouble with drugs as Robert was. She was a mess.’ He moistened his mouth, took his time before speaking again. ‘I forced her to marry me.’

Sammy’s throat was so swollen she couldn’t swallow.

‘I knew Robert wouldn’t come back for her, so I set out to fix it; marry her, to help her and the child that was my mother’s grandchild and my niece or nephew. But my values were misplaced. I think I did it for me, not for them.’

‘What do you mean?’ Had he intended to give up the rest of his life for a woman who didn’t want him?

He shook his head. ‘I thought I was bigger than my boots when I came home with a wife. Now they’d look up to me. Now they’d see the mistake they’d made about their assumptions of me. But it was my mother who shocked me more than the townspeople and their gossip. She cried when I told her what I’d done.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Told me she didn’t want that for me, that I’d made a mistake.’

‘Did you love Carla?’ Sammy asked in a whisper.

He turned to her, surprise in his gaze as he danced it over her face. ‘No.’

Relief washed through her so hard it trapped her breath. She blinked, forced her reaction not to show in her features. She had no right to relief. No right to any of him … didn’t want it.

‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘I’ll make this quick. Carla left me, ran back to Robert. I followed her, still holding the gallant flag above my head and wanting everyone to see how good I was. They were killed in a car crash, all three of them—Robert, Carla and their unborn child. A stupid drag race out bush that took their lives.’

‘Oh no.’ Sympathy for him, for them, for the baby.

‘I buried them in the city, couldn’t afford to bring their bodies back.’

She reached out, touched his thigh with her fingertips.

‘Then I came home to bury my mother.’

Sammy shuddered. ‘Oh, Ethan. I’m sorry.’

He moved his arm from her hand. ‘Don’t be. I’d left her alone. Didn’t know she was ill. It was wrong of me.’

‘But I am sorry.’ The story, and the sense of despair hung around him like a thick, dark cloud. ‘I can listen,’ she said softly. ‘If you want to talk more, I’ll listen.’ He’d done the same for her, she couldn’t find it in her heart or her head to shun him now.

He glanced at her, studied her with narrowed eyes. ‘You’re crying.’

She blinked the wet on her eyelashes, lifted a hand to wipe the tears away.

‘No.’ He took her hand, pushed it to her lap. ‘I put them there. Let me take them away.’

It was too much, the tears rolled down her cheeks. He caught them with his thumb. ‘I … ’

He looked at her mouth.

It was foolhardy and dangerous to feel anything other than emptiness but her heart was bouncing out of control.

‘Is there … Sammy, is there any way … ’ He took her hand, looked into her eyes. ‘I want to come back to you.’

‘No.’ She pulled her hand from his and stood. ‘You can’t do this, it’s not fair.’

‘It’s not fair, but I still want it.’

‘You left me.’ She’d walked into his trap, let the sympathy and empathy for him and his story overwhelm the reason and the calm it had taken so long to find. ‘I hadn’t even taken a breath and you walked away.’

‘I didn’t walk, I ran. What I feel for you scares the hell out of me. I never meant to hurt you, didn’t want to get close to you at all because I knew I’d hurt you.’

‘I’m sorry, Ethan, for your brother, and for Carla, but you weren’t to blame for it.’

‘I felt it, Sammy. I heard it … I heard my mother crying. I saw a picture of my father and I knew it might be me.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’ She tightened her body. ‘How can you let ghosts cry out to you when you’re making such tender love to a woman?’

‘They are ghosts, that’s true. Let me explain.’ He had a placating look in his eye, a
Let’s calm down
look. ‘All my life I did my own thing,’ he said. ‘I didn’t let anyone tag along, didn’t want them, they were in my way. When I got married, I thought I’d grown up. Thought I was tough and smart enough to handle anything. I could sort out people’s problems. But the people who mattered to me … ’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t fix it for my mother, Robert, or Carla. I don’t do that anymore, for anyone. I stay quiet, out of the way. I let people get on with things their own way.’

‘You didn’t drive the car. You didn’t make your brother take the drugs, or hit the girl.’

‘I know. I understand what you’re trying to say. But I left my mother alone for over three years while I had my fling in the city. She was ill and I didn’t know it. I have to live with that. I still live with it.’

‘But you moved away and grew up, in the only way you could. The hurt the world gave others and everything you tried to do for them—all of that made you who you are today. Who you always were.’

He leaned forwards. ‘Sammy, no matter how hard I worked to drag myself up to decency I still feel the eyes boring into my back. There are people in this town who I injured. I stole from them. I fought. I broke into Mrs Johnson’s house, for God’s sake—for a joke. I had no sense.’

‘You’re not prepared to listen to yourself. You did stray—but you came back to the path.’ She saw the lines of writing on the old letter, shocked that she’d reiterated what had been written:
Each has his own path to tread. They both took to the woods and it wasn’t your fault. It’s the one who came back you need to be worrying about.

She stepped away. ‘What happened in my bedroom?’

‘I told you, I felt something …. the past … it hit me.’

‘Why in my house?’ She moistened her lips. ‘What did my house do to you?’

He lifted the fleece from the ground where it had fallen and laid it across his thigh. ‘This is the house I grew up in.’

‘Damn you!’ She startled at the sound of her fury. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ Every time she’d shown him something in the house or in the grounds, she’d explained to him what it was she loved about it, and why she wanted it mended. Thinking it was new to him, as though he hadn’t seen it before. ‘You should have told me.’ The old letter was in the sideboard drawer. She’d been meaning to show it to Ethan, get some explanation, ask him to whom she could go to in town for answers without hurting anyone who might still be associated with the people in the story. All the while it had been Ethan, the boy who was a man. The man who needed someone to help him see beyond … ‘Tell me. I want to know everything.’

‘I lived in this house all my life, until my mother died.’

‘Did she die in the house?’

‘No, in the hospital—from cancer.’

‘Did you bring your wife to this house?’

‘Yes.’

Shock punched her in the stomach, though she’d known the answer before she asked the question. He’d been with his wife in the house—
her
house. ‘In my bedroom?’

He paused, looking into her face. ‘That was my bedroom as a kid. It had always been my bedroom.’

‘So where did you sleep with your wife?’

‘Sammy, don’t hurt yourself with that.’

‘Where?’

‘We didn’t—she didn’t—she wasn’t here long enough.’

Sammy stood trembling in front of him while he sat there with that goddamned patient look in his eyes. ‘Not long enough for you to do what? Take her to bed? Consummate your marriage?’ He had either liked the girl more than he was saying, or he had been hurt by her refusal of him. ‘Or were you angry about her not wanting you?’

‘I was angry, for lots of reasons.’

‘You think you’re like your father and Robert?’

‘I hurt you when I took hold of you that day.’

‘You kissed me, passionately, it didn’t hurt. What you’re doing now is hurting.’

‘I can’t take the chance of passing on anything abusive to my children.’

His children! Did he mean
their
children? The children they would never have? ‘You’re hurting yourself more, Ethan, and you’re making me angry now.’

‘Weren’t you already angry?’

The cold penetrated suddenly but she braced against the shiver.

‘I want to walk with you again, Sammy. I don’t want to lose you.’

‘We didn’t get very far on our last walk.’

‘I wasn’t trying hard enough. Now I am.’

‘What does that mean?’ She couldn’t hold back the bitterness in her tone.

‘That I want to spend time with you.’

Did he mean for them to have an affair? She’d wanted him, had understood in the last few hours she’d never have him, now here he was talking about the children he didn’t want and asking her to be with him. Separate houses, presumably. Separate lives apart from the time they spent in bed—getting cosy on a dark night. Sharing a moment between the sheets. Would he expect her to go to his house, or would he come to hers? And were they supposed to keep this relationship hidden from the town?

‘Will you marry me?’ she asked.

He stood sharply, the fleece falling to the ground. ‘Sammy, didn’t you hear me? I can’t do that. I won’t do it.’

It was the answer she had expected. It was good to hear it spoken. Better—a way forward, a way out of the mess. ‘I’ve lost you twice now, do you understand that? I lost my friend when I slept with you, now I’ve lost the man I fell in love with.’

His body swayed but he didn’t step to her. ‘I’d like to try and be both again. Let’s see what we can share for a while.’

She shook her head, tears burning in her eyes. ‘I didn’t hear you that first time. I only heard you say you wanted to walk with me. I thought you meant forever. I didn’t hear the part that tagged on the end—
awhile,
you said. And now you’re saying it again.’ She didn’t know whether to lash out at him or crawl away. Her mind and body weren’t her own. Neither could make a decision.

‘I have to live by the rules I’ve given myself, Sammy. I can’t let those slip from me.’

‘Because you’re frightened you’ll hit me, that you’ll take out all that subdued anger and aggressiveness on me and your children.’

He looked ashamed, then some kind of frustration flared with a darkened gleam in his gaze. ‘That’s unfair. I’m not intentionally an aggressive man.’

‘So what’s holding you back from loving me?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I never wanted to leave here.’ She shrugged; at fate, at misadventure. ‘I thought it was my new life, my new home.’

‘So don’t leave,’ he said, but Sammy only heard his refusal to admit to loving her. Maybe he really didn’t.

‘I didn’t care about how tough the jobs were,’ she said, although not to him, for herself. ‘I wanted to bring my house back to what it had been … ’

‘It will never be what it was to me,’ he said. ‘I won’t have that.’

‘You won’t be in it.’ She ignored the shocked look on his face. ‘I knew this man who could rebuild it. I was going to help him, I thought about doing a course so I knew what all the tools were for.’

‘I’ll help you with the house.’

‘I don’t want your help.’ She was pushing him now, and couldn’t stop. ‘I don’t need it.’

‘No, you can do it all yourself, can’t you?’

He’d echoed the very words she’d flung at him:
You don’t need anything from anyone, do you?

‘Yes. I can do it all myself.’ She turned for the house, sick of the evening moonlight and the anger they were both showing, and of the frustration in the pit of her stomach.

He took hold of her arm, turned her. ‘We can’t leave it like this. We have to find a way through it. Now, tonight.’

‘I’ve had enough of your company. I’m going inside.’

‘They’ll talk about you.’

She laughed, a brittle sound. ‘Is that what you’re worried about—how the people I’ve come to like and respect might view me? Because I let you between my bedsheets? Or is it yourself you’re concerned for?’

‘I don’t want anybody talking about you.’

‘I don’t care what they say, Ethan. They can make up any stories they’d like to. Let them run another bet—on how long Sammy Walker won’t speak to Ethan Granger. Let them wonder for years. They don’t scare me. You don’t scare me. Now let me go.’

‘I don’t want you leaving like this … I don’t want you leaving me at all.’

Her feet were pinned to the ground while her body shook with futile love and lost faith. Hope stood no chance of pushing through. ‘You ran out on me.’

His features fell. ‘I came running back. I’ve offered you what I can. I’ll do my damnedest to make you happy. Be with me.’

He hadn’t said he loved her. Love would conquer anything. If they loved each other, leaned on each other, they could fight the whole world—this one and the next.

‘Not enough, Ethan. That will never be enough.’

S
ammy Walker had had a violent disagreement with Ethan Granger and they were no longer talking.

That’s the way the townspeople would view it, and Sammy wouldn’t disagree.

She knelt on her bedroom floor, and put a tentative hand onto Duke’s back. He was half under her bed and wouldn’t move. He’d slunk home at 6 am, tired, bruised and battered. His fur wet and clinging to him. There were traces of dark brown blood like stains on his underbelly, but she hadn’t found any cuts on him. More likely he’d been so frightened by the outrage from the sky that he’d soiled himself. Poor Duke.

He was quiet now. Happy to be home, and content to sit under her bed regaining his strength.

Her hand stilled on his soft fur, relief and love for her burly ginger-striped companion swamping her, which made her immediately fearful because it renewed her love in mankind and nature, and left her feeling empty and unloved.

It was a difference of opinion, she would say when someone raised the subject of the supposed argument. Ethan was too meticulous, a little dogmatic for her taste. Then she’d shrug apologetically. Things didn’t work out sometimes, between builder and house owner. His opinions were different to hers, and yes, she’d acknowledge, nodding and accepting her own wrongs, she was careless sometimes.

She looked up at the bare mattress. She’d stripped the bed and used the sheets to mop the flood water in the kitchen. Now she had a mess of different kind to sweep away.