Simmering Season Page 22

‘Okay, so, you and Tracy are … whatever. But, Dan, I’m married. It’s not perfect, but I’m hopeful …’

  ‘Hopeful?’ Dan looked expectant, like Achilles whenever Ethne opened the treat jar. It didn’t matter that the treat was a tiny sliver of dried liver. A smart dog knew, with the right moves, there would always be one more treat. ‘Hopeful of what?’

  ‘Don’t, Dan.’ Maggie stepped away. ‘Look, it’s starting to rain again. We should go back. You promised to be the doting husband tonight.’

  The skin on her shoulders burned under his hands.

  ‘But, Maggie—’

  ‘Shhh!’ A finger pressed to his mouth stopped him mid-sentence. ‘You need to keep your promises. I’ve enjoyed seeing you, Dan.’ More than you know. ‘But this stops here.’

  ‘This is crazy, Magg—’

  ‘Shhh!’ Maggie hushed him again and tilted her head towards the school.

  ‘What is it? What can you hear?’

  ‘What can’t I hear? Music. Can you?’ She waited for Dan to listen. ‘Everything’s gone quiet. Something’s not right.’

  ‘I can hear someone calling.’

  ‘Maggie? Maggie, are you out here?’ A voice, Sara’s maybe, carried easily through the stillness of the night and as Maggie realised how far they’d walked panic took hold.

  ‘I think that’s Sara looking for me. Wait here. Let me go first.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Dan snatched her hand, foiling Maggie’s escape. ‘We’re not bloody school kids sneaking out from behind the maintenance shed one at a time. I’m coming with you.’

  He sounded angry, or was it frustration? Maggie understood both.

  ‘No, we’re not, Dan. We’re all grown up.’ She turned to walk away, her stupid stilettos snagging in the grass, tripping her.

  ‘Maggie—’ Dan lunged forward.

  ‘I’m fine. Leave me.’ She fended him off with a hand, but he grabbed it anyway, pulling her to her feet. ‘We’re responsible adults and married—only not to each other.’

  ‘Because we allowed people to keep us apart. Didn’t you ever wonder, if only they’d let us choose?’

  He said us, but Maggie knew he meant her. The Rev was never going to let his daughter have anything to do with Dan after Michael’s accident and it wasn’t in her nature to go against her father. He’d suffered so much already. She was all he had left and the Rev had already latched on to Brian as a kind of surrogate son.

  Her head shook in exasperation and disbelief. ‘We can’t do this now, Dan. We can’t do this ever. Calingarry’s a small town, one I have to live in when you’ve gone back to your life.’

  ‘My life in the city is what I wanted once—’

  ‘Maggie? Are you out here?’ Sara’s voice was clear now.

  ‘I have to go, Dan. Goodnight and goodbye.’

  Maggie somehow managed to hurry without falling, both cursing and thanking Sara. In her head she listed all the possible reasons someone would be calling her name. The usual reason was that they’d run out of beer.

  At least she’d hoped it was about beer and not about Fiona.

  25

  No music. No party sounds. Nothing.

  There should have been noise, laughter. Instead, an eerie silence and her friend’s harried face greeted Maggie.

  ‘What happened to the party, Sara? Someone pull the plug?’ Maggie needed to make Sara smile. A smile would reassure her that things weren’t as serious as her friend’s face was suggesting. There’d been enough seriousness for one night.

  ‘Quick,’ was all Sara said, tugging on Maggie’s arm, leading her down the path to the school gate with its twinkling fairy lights, then across the road towards the main street.

  Sara was saying something, but her words evaporated before reaching Maggie’s ears. She wanted to tell Sara to slow down or speak louder. She was worried for her friend, worried for the new life she was carrying, the tiny life that would complete Sara’s fairytale.

  ‘Sara,’ Maggie pleaded, barely able to catch her breath. ‘Slow down.’

  ‘Gangway!’ Sara yelled and a sea of even more serious faces lining the road parted to allow the pair through.

  The first thing Maggie noticed was Fiona’s Saab parked at an odd angle near one of the massive fig trees. ‘Argh, Fiona,’ she grumbled. Did the girl not understand the basic nose-to-kerb parking rule? Then Maggie saw two deployed airbags and the Saab’s passenger door wide open.

  ‘Oh no. Where’s Fiona? Tell me she’s all right.’

  ‘Fiona’s fine. She’s over there.’ Sara pointed.

  Huddled under a blanket at one side of the Saab, her face covered in a strange white powder, was a sobbing Fiona, a partygoer’s arms wrapped around her, comforting her. Standing next to them was a man Maggie didn’t recognise. In shorts and a T-shirt, he was hardly attending the school reunion.

  Who was he? What had happened? And, more importantly, where was her son?

  ‘Let us through.’ Sara continued to guide Maggie, forcing her way through another, smaller crowd.

  Maggie’s legs buckled at the knees. She stumbled, cursing the ridiculous sandals as her ankle folded. Someone in the crowd caught her, stopped her from hitting the deck, got her moving again until her feet faltered and she was suddenly unable to place one foot in front of the other.

  ‘Noah!’ Maggie didn’t recognise her own shrill voice when she caught sight of her son lying motionless on the road. ‘Oh my God, Noah.’ Maggie dropped to her knees, oblivious to stones gouging flesh as she leaned over him, fingering the fringe to one side of his bleeding forehead and seeing her son’s blue eyes wide and staring. ‘Noah, can you hear me?’

  ‘Are you his mother?’ Someone’s hand squeezed her shoulder, their words meant to comfort. Instead, Maggie stiffened, bracing for bad news.

  ‘What happened? What are you doing?’ she asked the person leaning across Noah’s chest.

  ‘Breathe, Maggie,’ the same soothing voice above her said. ‘This is my mum and a doctor. You probably don’t remember me from school. I’m Rosie McDonald. My sister, Elizabeth, has gone to get her station wagon. We can get him to Saddleton Base Hospital that way. So, come on, try and relax. Breathe.’

  ‘Hospital. Yes. We have to get him to hospital.’ The closest ambulance station was Saddleton. For major incidents, the Air Ambulance had to be summoned. No one was talking about calling them for Noah. That had to be good. Didn’t it? ‘I can take him.’

  ‘It’s important that we keep him as still as possible,’ the doctor said.

  Rosie continued, ‘The backboard will fit just fine in the station wagon with the back seat folded down.’

  Car headlights shone into the crowd, illuminating the scene and Maggie saw grazes coloured her son’s legs and arms a dirty brown, one side of his face already showing signs of swelling and bruising.

  ‘I have a station wagon,’ Maggie said. This was her son. It was her job to protect him.

  ‘Maggie.’ Sara squatted beside her. ‘Your car is … Well, face it, that car should be on the scrap heap. You said yourself just the other day that the brakes aren’t good in the wet. Let these people help. We have a doctor here. And you’re in no state to drive.’

  ‘Noah? Noah, buddy, it’s Mum.’ No response, eyes fixed, wide and staring, but not at her. ‘Noah?’ Maggie heard the confusion in her voice. She looked up into the sympathetic face of the doctor. ‘I don’t understand. What’s wrong? How did he …? Was he run over?’ She had to know. Someone had to tell her so she could stop feeling as empty and useless as those bloody airbags hanging limply from the Saab.

  ‘Seems he fell out of the car,’ someone said.

  ‘He fell?’ Only slightly relieved, but still confused, Maggie sat back on her haunches and rubbed both knees.

  ‘His physical injuries from the fall appear superficial,’ the doctor interjected, standing now. ‘The backboard and the hospital are precautions. Best they keep an eye on him, given we don’t know what he’s taken. He’ll be f
ine, though, just very sore once he comes down from his high.’

  ‘His high? Taken?’ Maggie sprung up to eyeball the medico. ‘I’m sorry. What?’

  ‘I can’t be sure what,’ the doctor said, not understanding Maggie’s question. ‘He’s taken something, that’s all I can tell you right now. Until we have a clearer idea which drug—’

  ‘Drug? Oh no, he doesn’t … He wouldn’t. He …’ Maggie fought to keep a lid on the rage simmering inside as she zeroed in on the fair Fiona still cowering under a blanket and sobbing.

  She calmed herself, trying to breathe. Her first thought had been to lay the blame on someone else, but how small-town did that make Maggie? Only tonight she’d criticised the small town for accusing Dan, foisting the blame on one person to make themselves feel better. Did her son have a drug problem? Was that why he’d been so moody and distracted this past year or more? Had she been naïve to think Noah would never do drugs? For goodness sake, Michael smoked pot and Maggie never knew. As for Brian …

  There were hands clasping her shoulders, attempting to massage the knot of tension in her neck, only the effect it was having was far from relaxing. Over by Fiona, the local police officer, Callum, had moved the unknown male away from the crowd and was now standing over him, his police notebook in hand. Maggie could see the stranger’s bloodstained mouth moving, and while she couldn’t make out any words, smugness smeared his face like a dirty stain.

  Dan joined Callum, producing a small wallet from his trouser pocket. The Police ID badge glistened as Callum flicked his torch light over it before the policemen shook hands. Dan looked over his shoulder and across at Maggie with a smile that said ‘It’s okay, I’m here’ and she let herself imagine, ever so briefly, that for once someone was helping her carry the parenting responsibility, protecting her, rather than her protecting everyone else.

  A sprinkling of rain cleared the crowd—thank goodness—while a blur of bodies moved around her son. The backboard, usually kept in the SES storage sheds behind Mick’s garage, lay alongside Noah, and Maggie’s heart ached as, right in front of her, six men first rolled and then slid the suddenly small frame of her son onto the board in one seamless movement.

  ‘Just another precaution,’ someone reassured her as all six transported him to the flashy Volvo station wagon that would take her son to hospital.

  For the first time in years, Maggie’s usual coping mechanisms were close to failing. She raced across to Dan, dragging him by the arm, finding it impossible to whisper when all she wanted to do was scream.

  ‘Dan, they’re trying to tell me Noah’s taken drugs. Do you know anything? What’s Fiona said? Who is that man? What’s he done?’ Maggie heard the hysterical tone in her voice.

  ‘Maggie, you need to stay calm.’

  ‘Do not tell me to stay calm.’ Twenty minutes ago she was loving the soothing touch of Dan’s hand on her shoulder. Now she couldn’t stand it. ‘My son has just been run over.’

  ‘He wasn’t run over. He … he was in the car. He fell out.’

  ‘For goodness sake!’ The noise she heard erupt from her mouth was a crazy woman’s cackle. ‘That’s ridiculous, Dan. How does a person fall out of a car?’ She looked over at the Saab. ‘Don’t fancy convertibles have fancy seatbelts?’

  ‘Yes, but you have to be sitting in the car, not up on the back of the seat.’ Dan tried to grasp her arm, but again she shook him away.

  ‘I see. So which one of them was driving while my son was … Oh, I don’t know …’ Maggie’s voice hardened, infused with contempt, anger and fear. ‘What do you call reckless behaviour these days, Dan? Is it Saab surfing now? The good ol’ ute surfing with a belly full of beer not stylish enough for city idiots?’

  A rumble and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky around them as if Maggie’s wrath wasn’t enough. Her words had been a stinging slap to Dan’s face, his hurt plain to see with the next thunderous flash of light. Big, plopping drops of rain hit the ground, each one a prod to her conscience. Maggie was drowning under the weight of responsibility and she needed to offload on somebody.

  Dan Ireland was closest right now.

  And then, as venomous as the accusation had been, her anger recoiled, snaking away to that dark corner of her heart where it would hibernate again. She wasn’t comparing this to Dan’s role in Michael’s accident, was she? Surely not, after defending him in her head for years. Maybe it meant she really did blame Dan. Maybe she could blame that incident for everything. For the whole bloody screw-up that was her life. If he and Michael hadn’t been hooning around that night, if Michael hadn’t died, if her father hadn’t banned her from seeing Dan, if Dan hadn’t given up and left town on the back of blame …

  ‘So Michael was stoned that night, Dan? And so were you when you decided to clown around in a ute. It was okay to smoke pot with my brother then kill him, but not to corrupt his little sister.’

  ‘Maggie, I know you don’t mean that,’ Dan said. ‘You’re upset.’

  Maggie huffed, deep, loud and purposeful. Then she shoved him away with a final look that clearly hurt more than any words. But she couldn’t deal with Dan’s pain. Her son needed her. She rushed over to Noah’s side knowing that if her life had been different, as she’d wished so many times—and as recently as two seconds ago—there would be no Noah, the one person she could rely on to never abandon her, hurt her, or lie to her.

  How much more would she have to endure?

  How much more could she endure?

  The convergence of a lifetime of disappointments, fears and failures was Maggie’s perfect storm. She needed someone to blame, someone to hang on to, someone to rescue her, but it couldn’t be Dan Ireland. Maggie knew that much even before she saw his wife sidle up next to him and slip a possessive hand into the crook of her husband’s arm before casting a sympathetic smile in Maggie’s direction.

  A scream bubbled up from deep inside, building as it travelled from the pit of her gut, feeding on the air from her lungs and scraping up her throat and into her mouth. The eyes of the town were upon Maggie. All she could do was press her lips tight and let it implode.

  I never wanted your sympathy, Tracy, Maggie cried inside. I wanted your husband.

  ‘Maggie, sweetie.’ Sara’s hug came from behind. ‘You doing okay?’

  ‘Sara.’ She breathed her friend’s name. That’s what she needed right now, a friend—and to breathe.

  Sara was her reality check, reminding Maggie what tragedies life could have thrown at her, but hadn’t. Not yet, at least. Breathe, she told herself, drawing in a lungful of air and counting—one, two, three—before exhaling and doing it again.

  ‘They’ve made room in the car so you can go with Noah.’ Sara’s guiding hands directed Maggie into the skinny split-fold seat where she’d be able to sit and stroke her son’s forehead all the way to Saddleton, an impossible hour away. ‘I’ll follow in our car and bring you back. I’m the only one sober.’ She tried a smile.

  ‘No, Sara.’ Maggie reached out and took her friend’s hand. ‘I don’t want you doing that. You have to look after yourself.’

  ‘Stop protecting everyone else, Maggie. Think about what you need.’

  ‘I am and I don’t need the responsibility of you driving at night, okay? I’ll be fine. I won’t be coming home until Noah’s all right, and I’ll worry about how I do that later.’

  26

  Rain had bucketed down all night and throughout the drive back from Saddleton in the early hours of the morning. With no sleep other than a few naps at Noah’s bedside, Maggie now tried rubbing the heaviness from her eyes with the heels of her hands, but all that did was make her eyeballs burn. They probably looked like the red message alert blinking with riling regularity as Maggie replayed Dan’s voicemail recording for the third time. Why not delete the damn message? How many more times would she listen before erasing the words? Before erasing the night from her own memory bank.

  A loud knock at the door to the residence catapulted Ma
ggie off the edge of her bed and across the room.

  ‘Hello, Maggie.’ Tracy, of all people, stood on the other side of the front door. ‘I heard you were back from the hospital and that Noah’s going to be okay. I’m so glad.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maggie prayed her face would not betray her as a flicker-fest of images with Dan last night flashed in front of her eyes. Had Tracy heard Maggie’s rant? Hadn’t the entire main street heard?

  ‘I understand that I’m probably the last person you expected to come knocking this morning, Maggie, but here I am and, well, here you are. We should talk, don’t you think?’

  ‘Talk?’ Oh, bugger! What did she say? Where did she start? An apology for drooling over the woman’s husband was probably appropriate. It just seemed utterly inadequate—laughable even. Maggie had flirted unashamedly. Goodness knows how far she might have let things go had it not been for Sara’s calling out. Making matters worse, she’d blamed Dan for her own lot in life. ‘Um, okay. We can talk, I guess.’

  As desperate as she was to get back to Noah at the hospital, first she had to face the music with Tracy. Maggie instinctively looked at her wristwatch.

  ‘I know you’ll want to get back to the hospital. I won’t stay long.’

  ‘Ah, no, no, no. It’s okay.’ It’s the least I can do, she said to herself, as her brain turned to pulp and her tongue to jelly.

  ‘I know we haven’t kept in touch, but we were good friends at school and this was a school reunion. I meant to catch up last night, but you know me … Chat, chat, chat.’ She smiled. ‘Actually, I need to apologise.’

  ‘Apologise? To me?’

  ‘For not rescuing you from Dan right at the start, or at least warning you. He’s never been Mr Sociable and he tends to grab hold of the first person who’ll give him an ear. I looked for you at one stage, but then I got caught up with one person after the other, totally losing track of time and Dan in the process. Forgive me?’ She stopped talking long enough to laugh. ‘That’s why I had to catch up before leaving town. Flying visit. Kids, you know?’