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‘I get that, but tell me, do you feel anything more than friendship between us, Sammie, and please, before you answer, be honest, with me, and yourself.’
He was the epitome of perfection, so why couldn’t she tell him the absolute truth? What in the hell was wrong with her? ‘Not enough to say I’m in love with you.’
‘But you do, love me, that is?’
‘Of course I do, Connor, we’re long-time friends.’
He drew in a breath, but remained silent, his gaze searching hers for any sign that she wasn’t telling him everything. Which she wasn’t. And with the uncanny ability he had, of getting to those parts of herself she kept under lock and key, well, she wasn’t going to risk him discovering her deepest feelings.
‘Sammie, please, talk to me.’
With anxiety filling her, her mood nosedived. ‘I already have.’ She turned away and looked to the star-studded sky before he witnessed the tears building in her eyes. ‘I think it’s time you dropped me back home.’
‘I’ll go get my keys.’ He heaved a huff, and then his footfalls began to make distance between them.
The slap of the screen door jolted her, and she used the few moments to gather what she could of herself before their journey back to the homestead. She really needed to stop spending so much time with him. She was giving him hope, where there was none. And she loved him way too much to do that to him. Tomorrow, it was time to stop running from her past, and to face it, head on.
CHAPTER
19
Looking to the sunny blue sky, Samantha questioned how it could be so bright and beautiful at a time such as this. Stinging tears threatened and a lump rose in her throat as she stood out the front of the Gum Tree Gully cemetery, very alone, very apprehensive, but also very determined. More so than she’d ever been. She wasn’t certain she was ready to cross the boundary she’d mentally created between her parents’ life and death, but would she ever be ready to revisit the grave of the two people who had meant the absolute world to her? The very two people who should have been at her side throughout every trial and triumph? Grief and anger choked her chest, and she almost turned around, but the drive to finally do what she feared the most out of anything in this world overcame her. Her parents were dead. Forever gone. She needed to see that and find a way to finally accept it. Then, and only then, she might be able to move into the life she was meant to be living, instead of constantly running away from Gum Tree Gully and living a lie.
Exhaling her held breath, she took that step, the one that would lead her down this proverbial trail. A few metres along, she met with the front gate. It looked tired and weather-beaten. She gave it a little nudge with her foot, but it didn’t move an inch. Griping it tightly, she yanked hard and it finally gave, as if acknowledging her fortitude. Head held high and shoulders back, she strode through. The iron gate clanged closed behind her, as if announcing her arrival to the dead. Running her fingertips along the weathered grey tops of the timber picket fence line, she travelled down the path on autopilot. She walked past old graves graced with tall headstones and the occasional statue. She walked past children’s graves, some cornered off with ornate fencing and little gates. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was to keep their innocent spirits in, or the evil spirits out?
Trailing a bend, she reached a ridgeline and the wind whipped up and over the rocky outcrop, feathering wisps of hair across her cheeks. Ghost gums began to crowd either side of the path, the landscape in this part of the cemetery older, more established. She tried to shake the eerie feeling of the dead all around her. Thankfully emerging from the dappled shade of the towering trees, she took a few more steps over a pebbled track, then stopped in her tracks as she came face to face with her parents’ graves. A shuddering breath resonated throughout her. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She gripped the strap of her handbag tightly. Tears threatened and momentarily blurred her vision, but she squared her shoulders once again and blinked faster. Their headstones sat proud and tall, just like her father had always been. Yet there were weeds trying to outrun his final stance of pride. Dropping to her knees on the grass, she snatched at the weeds with anger, and then plucking a packet of wet wipes from her handbag, she began cleaning each of the headstones. When that was done, she sat back on her haunches and read the verse that had been inscribed on both headstones.
Do not stand upon my grave and weep
Instead rejoice the many happy memories you keep
Live not a day, encumbered by sorrow
Instead rejoice my life, and look forward to every tomorrow
What was she meant to do? Rejoice in their deaths?
‘Why did you have to take them from me?’ she shouted skywards.
Folding forward, she brought her hands to the ground, one on her father’s grave and the other on her mother’s. It was then, in this hard-hitting, earth-shattering, moment, that the walls she’d been building for eleven long years, brick by brick, finally cracked and crumbled, and for a long while she sobbed her broken heart out, her tears soaking the earth her mother and father now called home. She wasn’t sure how long it was before she eventually turned over and lay on her back, arms splayed. The day was getting on, but she didn’t want to leave, not yet. Looking to the lacy white clouds drifting across the cornflower-blue sky, she watched each fleetingly shadow the sun, momentarily darkening the world around her, before the cottony softness floated onwards, and the harsh glare of the sun hit her again with force, as if slapping her cheeks in a bid to tell her to snap out of her lie, so she could see the life she could have – god willing.
And there it was.
The realisation she’d asked her parents for on the verandah of Shea’s hotel room.
Sitting up, she grabbed her phone and stabbed her message before she changed her mind.
***
For some strange reason, even after the way he and Samantha had parted on shaky ground, Connor had woken with the feeling that today was going to be a game changer. And then all day long, the hunch had remained deep down in his bones, and he hadn’t been able to shake the sensation. While still trying to make sense of it, all the while deciding if he should push the line further, seeing as he’d already stepped over the boundaries of their relationship, her text message had flashed up on his phone …
Connor, everything’s fine, and there’s nothing to worry about, but I need to see you ASAP.
So he’d dropped everything he was doing to get to her as quickly as he could. But he’d been out the back paddocks, fixing a broken water line, so it was almost an hour since he’d responded with See you at the homestead as soon as I can. Xx
In the past fifteen minutes, the sky had heaved with rolling black clouds and thunder had boomed. Just as he’d gotten into his LandCruiser a luminous snap of lightning had shot across the sky, and the heavens had opened up in wild monsoonal fashion. His windscreen wipers now swished back and forth on top speed, sweeping the pounding rain from his view. The droplets were heavy in his headlights, warning him to be wary, so he did his best not to drive like a bat out of hell to get to her. But by Christ he was hankering to see her, so he could find out if she was as desperate as he was to lay everything on the table.
Or was she about to tell him something he didn’t want to hear?
