What Rosie Found Next (19 page)

Owen stared out into the darkness beyond the lounge window. Strike two – not only was he ambitious like his biological father, but he liked a challenge.

‘Our lives were a total mess, Owen. I didn’t want your father to go to jail, but I told Carly the police should be told. She refused to go to them and said she’d deny it if anyone else tried to file a report. I think she was terrified she’d have to pay back the money, and by that time she’d spent a lot of it. She rented her own apartment – she didn’t get on with her parents at all – she bought clothes, went out all the time, all the extras she would never have been able to afford on her salary. I think she was one mixed up kid. I’ve often thought of her over the years, wondering whether she regrets what happened.’

‘Did you confront my father about it?’

‘I didn’t breathe a word. I wanted to bide my time, put everything together. I had the bank statements and the photograph …’ Jane looked at her son and this time she didn’t look away. ‘And two days later, just when I thought I couldn’t break any more, Natasha died.’

Owen scraped a hand across his jaw. His throat was dry and his jumper was making him itch around his neck. He left the room and came back with two large measures of gin and tonic from the drinks cabinet in the dining room.

Jane took the gin and swigged it as though it were water.

‘I saw the article about Auntie Natasha in the box,’ Owen told her. He welcomed the burning feeling of the gin in his throat.

‘A sailing accident.’ Jane shook her head and glugged back more of her drink.

‘You sound as though you doubt that.’

‘Nobody knows for sure what happened, and nobody will ever know. Maybe it’s my guilt making me think it wasn’t an accident. I always wondered if sailing, like abseiling and jumping off bridges, was another way for Natasha to obliterate what had happened with Gregory and how I’d refused to believe her. I’ve never forgiven myself for that, Owen. I was her older sister. I was supposed to look out for her just like you look out for Tom and Ben, and part of me thinks … part of me thinks she killed herself out there in the water.’

‘I don’t believe this.’ Owen shook his head, downed his drink and went back to the dining room. He returned with the entire bottle of gin this time.

Jane looked into the clear liquid when he’d topped up her glass. ‘She died never knowing that eventually I found out what a son of a bitch I’d married.’

The chime of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece silenced them as it sounded seven times. Owen’s flesh crawled at the thought of his biological father playing any part in ruining other people’s lives, at the thought of him taking advantage of a young girl, his duplicity within his own family and attack on his sister-in-law.

Jane’s eyes were red-rimmed, tired from her revelations. ‘After the funeral I told Gregory I had all the evidence I needed to see him imprisoned and lose everything. But the worst … the worst was when I confronted him again about Natasha and he didn’t even bother to try to deny it. He said she’d been all over him for months and she wanted it as much as he did. I saw red that night, flew at him scratching his face, kicking him. I slammed the door and I never wanted to see him again.’

Maybe it was selfish to ask, but Owen had to know. ‘Did he care that he’d lost me?’

Jane’s voice and face softened. ‘I’m sorry if this is hard to hear, Owen—’

‘I don’t care how much it’ll hurt.’ He did care, but he cared about the truth more.

‘Gregory was proud to have a son, a son who could one day follow in his footsteps and carry on his successful business, but I needed time to think about how to involve him in his son’s life without involving him in mine, and I wasn’t sorry when he upped and disappeared.

‘My dad died soon after. Natasha had always been a daddy’s girl, and I think a piece of him broke when she died. Amid the funeral arrangements and thoughts of family, I knew it was unfair to keep Gregory from you, so when Gregory turned up at the flat, I let him in, ready to talk. What a mistake that was.’ She shuddered. ‘Goodness only knows how he’d heard, but he knew Dad had passed away, and he must’ve remembered Dad was worth a bit of money. Split two ways it amounted to almost a million dollars for me and the same for Sarah. It would’ve been split three ways had Natasha still been alive.

‘Gregory’s business was suffering – something else he’d kept from me so well – and he threatened me. It was as though the past few years with him had never happened, as if the baby lying on the blanket in the corner of the room didn’t exist. I’m sorry, Owen.’

Owen bit down on his bottom lip, hard. ‘Don’t stop now.’

‘He shoved me against the wall, made his demands again and each time I said no. Then he went for you. He grabbed you, bundled you in the blanket and held you against his chest. Oh, I was so afraid he’d hurt you, that he’d squeeze you too hard.’ Her voice caught. ‘He said he’d take you away if I didn’t give him that money and the evidence I had against him. He’d called my bluff and he knew it. When he started making his way to the door, I screamed. I wanted you … I wanted you, Owen, in my arms, safe against me. I’m sorry.’

She left the room and Owen sat staring at the dip in the sofa cushion from where she’d been sitting. By the time she came back, the foam of the chair had reshaped itself.

‘That day was the worst day of my life, but also the best,’ she told him, a fresh tissue in her hand. ‘It was the first day I really spoke to Michael and we started to get to know one another.’ She smiled at the mention of Michael Harrison, the only dad Owen had ever known. ‘We’d met a handful of times. He lived upstairs and we’d pass in the corridor and say hello when I was on my way home or he was on his way to a shift at the hospital where he worked as a junior doctor.

‘When Michael heard me screaming, he flew in the door, snatched you away from Gregory and put you in my arms. He had Gregory against the wall before Gregory even knew what was happening. I remember screaming that I had all the evidence I needed to bury him: he’d lose his business, he’d never see you again and worse, he’d go to jail for what he’d done to Carly and Natasha. He pointed a finger at me and told me I hadn’t heard the last of it. Your dad stepped in then and saw him off, but Gregory’s face appeared in my nightmares for a long time afterwards.’

Owen thought about the two men, how one had put him first, how the other had used him as a pawn in his financial game. Biological ties meant very little to him right now.

‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’ he asked. ‘They would never have taken me away from you.’

‘I was scared, Owen. I knew what Gregory was capable of. He’d lied his way through life to get what he wanted and I couldn’t take the risk. We never even divorced. I knew it would be so messy and I’d had enough.’

‘So you and Dad…’

‘We’re not married.’ She looked away. ‘After that night Michael and I became closer and slowly our friendship blossomed into something more. At the start he’d come over after a shift, spend time with us both. Sometimes we would cook together, discuss his job, my dreams of a career. It was Michael who persuaded me to go into nursing and without his offer to babysit whenever he wasn’t working, I’m not sure I’d have ever been able to do it.

‘One night, when he was looking after you, I came home to find him asleep on the sofa. I covered him with a blanket and he woke up as I was tucking it around his neck so he wouldn’t get cold. We looked at each other and that was the moment I knew. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.’

‘But you were married to someone else?’

‘Only on paper. And your Dad knew my reasons why I couldn’t make contact with Gregory to ask for a divorce. Your Dad and I agreed to wear rings because to us we’re married together for life in more ways than could ever be expressed on a piece of paper.’

Owen paused, tried to take in what he was hearing. Eventually he spoke. ‘That’s not the end of the story though, is it?’

‘No, it’s not.’ Her lips pressed together, against her teeth. ‘Michael was offering me the world, but after we moved out of the city, everything that had happened hit me all over again. I felt wretched some days, worried Gregory would come back and take you from me, worried Carly’s life and perhaps others had been ruined by Gregory. I felt guilty about Natasha and how I’d dismissed her accusations, and I thought Michael deserved a hell of a lot more than the mess I was offering. I fell apart. One day, when Michael was at work, it was as though the walls were closing in all around me.’ Her face was pained as though she were back there now, unable to get free. ‘I took you to Bella and Rodney’s and I left you there. I left my baby. I couldn’t cope. I’ve felt guilty every day since, even after I came to my senses and returned home to Magnolia Creek.’

‘Where did you go, when you left?’

‘I went to Western Australia, back to the suburb where I grew up. I rented an apartment short-term using the money from my inheritance and every day I visited Natasha’s grave and my parents’ too.’

‘Did Dad know where you were?’

She nodded. ‘I called Bella every day and she passed him messages so he’d know I was safe. He took you back home and took leave of absence from work, and he only left you with Bella again when he flew to Perth to get me. When I saw him standing there outside the apartment I’d rented, he wrapped his arms around me without saying a word, and I knew I was going home.’

Owen raked a hand through his hair. ‘Bella’s always felt like a second mum to me.’ He shook his head. ‘She always looked out for me. She was never too busy to stop what she was doing and ask me how I was, what I was up to.’

‘She’s got a soft spot for you. Even after you were back with me, she loved to mind you if I needed to go shopping or run errands.’ Her words brought tears to his eyes as they sat staring across the room at one another. ‘She used to say you were—’

‘Bella’s little sweetheart,’ they said at the same time.

Jane smiled. ‘She’s my best friend, always will be.’

‘What I don’t understand is why you kept the box. Why didn’t you destroy it?’

‘It was my insurance policy. If Gregory came crawling back wanting his share of Mum and Dad’s inheritance, then I could use everything in the box to chase him away again.

‘When we renovated the house in Magnolia Creek, I threw myself into landscaping the garden. I hated having the box in the house, so I buried it outside. I wanted to bury that man as deep as I could, with Natasha getting the final say by piling her favourite flowers on top of him. The flowers were beautiful, just like her, with prickly thorns underneath, just like him.’

Owen thought about how, over the years, she’d spent so much time tending to those flowers, sometimes watching them as if she expected them to suddenly do anything different other than waver in the breeze.

‘When you said you were going into the property business, Owen, my heart constricted. I hated the reminder of your biological father, but it didn’t take long for me to realise that you are your own person. You’re twice the man he ever was, and I didn’t ever want you to know what your biological father was really like. I thought I could keep the secret and feel the pain for both of us, but I see now how that was wrong of me.’

‘You made me feel as though I was never good enough,’ said Owen as Jane refused to look at him.

‘I never meant to make you feel that way. It’s certainly not what I thought.’

‘But you let your fears come between us.’

Her voice shook when she said, ‘I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am.’

‘Is that why you wanted me to go into the medical profession, so I wouldn’t follow in Gregory Falmer’s footsteps?’

She let out a deep breath. ‘In some way I suppose it was. You know, you do get some of your genetic make-up from me. You never let me push you into anything, you were independent from a very early age and you’ve always followed your heart. I couldn’t be more proud.’

Owen paused for a moment. ‘My property business is, and always will be, above board. I’m nothing like him in business.’

Jane took Owen’s hand. ‘I decided very early on that I didn’t want you to know what kind of a man Gregory was. I didn’t want you to be confused, to feel ashamed, embarrassed. I wanted you to feel proud, and the way you looked up to Michael was all I’d ever wanted.’ She sat back again. ‘That article, the one you found hidden beneath the books in the lounge room, knocked the life out of me. I’d seen it that morning and shoved it there when I heard you come down the stairs. There he was with a new family. He’d changed his name to Declan Roberts, no doubt to cover his tracks, but even though I’d told him to keep the hell away from us, it hurt that he’d replaced you.’

‘I had a right to know.’

She nodded, unable to deny it. ‘I feared that if we told you, you’d try to contact him and he’d reject you, hurting you all over again. I felt there was no end to how much he could ruin our lives.’

Owen knocked back another glug of gin. ‘You know, sometimes I felt as though you loved those roses more than me.’

Tears glistened in her eyes. ‘You know, your dad never got angry at me, he was always so kind, but the day you came home with your tattoo, he was almost at the end of his tether. Oh, it wasn’t that he really minded, you were a grown man after all, but he wondered whether you’d got the tattoo to get my attention.’

‘I’m not sure why I got it really.’