THIRTY-THREE
Thirty-three
Banalla had a brief moment of notoriety with the news that a body had been discovered and forensics were on the scene. For the first few days, there was wild innuendo about who they’d discovered and what had happened, until eventually information trickled out that it was an old grave and no one had been brutally murdered in their sleep. There were a few journalists in town after the initial discovery, but they had soon packed up and left after they realised there was nothing interesting to report, and the town went back to its usual pace once more.
Damian had come back to town after the bones were removed and Lottie couldn’t help but notice the change in him. She understood that it would be quite a let-down that the coroner had decided to step in and exercise their right to take over an investigation, but they were doing it with good intentions. A proper police investigation made her feel as though, finally, people were seeing Catherine, after she had been wiped from the face of the earth for so long. Now there was a chance that the mystery surrounding her disappearance would be solved and history could be rectified to include her at last.
Lottie loved having Damian back home. She knew it was only for a few days, and there was still work to be done on the documentary and finishing up with the cave, so she made the most of it.
While for the first two nights, they stayed at home and just enjoyed time alone, on the third night, her mother invited them out to dinner. Upon arriving at the pub, where the table had been booked, Lottie was surprised to discover there was someone else joining them.
‘Gordon?’ Damian said, sounding confused but smiling at his friend, who stood to greet them.
‘Here’s the man of the hour,’ Gordon said heartily. ‘You’re the talk of the industry right now, you know? Everyone wants a piece of the action.’
‘Interesting, isn’t it? Used to be I could hardly get anyone to do anything all those years when I was begging for funding projects,’ Damian said wryly.
‘I reckon you could get pretty much anything you want out of them now,’ Gordon said. ‘The missing treasure of Jack McNally is pretty impressive.’
‘Technically, there hasn’t been a lot of treasure,’ Damian said. ‘But who knows? They’re going to continue up there for a bit longer and see what else turns up.’
So far, they’d only found a few pieces—great pieces that tied the robbery to Jack and his gang, but not the enormous amount of loot that historians had been searching for over the past century and a half. It remained a mystery as to where it had been hidden.
Lottie caught her mother’s eye during the exchange and raised an eyebrow, conveying an unspoken ‘What is Gordon doing here?’ question. Her mother sent her an infinitesimal shrug and a small smile. Lottie vowed she would get some answers later.
Over the meal, the four of them chatted about how much of a success the festival had been and the flow-on effect for the town months later, as well as her mother’s new business opportunities. She was excited to hear Hannah was considering hiring an extra person to help handle the online side of the business instead of shutting it down like she’d been hinting at last time they’d spoken about it. Now she’d have the chance to concentrate more of her time and energy on her workshops and meditation retreats.
There’d been lots of positive feedback from businesses who had used the market day to promote their products and since gained new customers. It made all the headaches the committee had gone through worthwhile … well, most of them.
But mostly, the conversation returned to Damian and his team’s discovery.
‘It truly is fascinating, Damian,’ Hannah said, shaking her head after listening to the story. ‘After all that searching, you’ve finally found her.’
‘Well, officially, we haven’t got any confirmation yet.’
‘Did you get a chance to make any assessments yourself?’ Gordon asked, sipping his beer.
‘The forensic expert did mention a few things. He believes the skeleton is female. He believes the age of the bones would be about right for how long Catherine would have been missing, and that there was evidence to suggest she’d died of an injury which he was fairly confident had been inflicted by a bullet. Which follows one of the theories we came up with,’ Damian said, glancing over at Lottie, ‘that Jack would likely not leave an injured woman alone in the bush. It simply didn’t fit with his known profile.’
‘So he takes Catherine up to the O’Ryan homestead, but she dies of her wounds?’ Gordon asked.
‘There was also the possibility that maybe she’d died in childbirth, but there was no evidence of any infant buried either with her, or still inside her in the grave.’
‘She was pregnant?’ Hannah asked, sounding troubled by the idea.
‘From what we’ve discovered in correspondence, it seems she was when she left for Australia. However, we have absolutely nothing on record to suggest she either still was once she arrived, or that she ever gave birth. Had she not lost the baby at any point on the arduous journey, it was entirely possible she would have almost been at full term by the time of the robbery.’
‘I can’t believe a woman would risk coming to a place like this to birth her child. Surely staying in Sydney would have been preferable to the bush?’
‘You would think so,’ Damian agreed. ‘But from letters and the evidence we’ve found about Catherine and Alexander, they were completely devoted to each other. Maybe she was just eager to start their new life. Who knows? But not finding any evidence of a child with her,’ Damian spread his hands out wide, ‘seems to dispute that theory.’
‘That’s the thing about theories,’ Gordon chuckled, ‘they don’t always pan out the way we want them too. Which is a shame.’
‘There’s a long way to go yet,’ Lottie said reaching for Damian’s hand. ‘The coroner’s report might still turn up something.’
After all, this case had the assistance of not only the coroner but also a forensic anthropologist as well as a forensic archaeologist and a historian, and a whole bunch of other disciplines the network used to put together one of Mike’s investigative documentaries.
When they eventually decided to call it a night, the two men went off to argue about who was paying the bill and Lottie finally got her chance to question her mother.
‘So … you decided to call Gordon after all?’
‘I was going to, but then he showed up at my door with a potted mugwort. The rare one I’ve been looking for to make my new tea,’ her mother said mildly. ‘How could I resist a man with mugwort?’
‘So you’re going to give it a go?’
‘We’ll see,’ Hannah said calmly, but Lottie caught the hint of a smile on her mother’s lips as the men came towards them, and she had a feeling Hannah Fairchild had maybe met her match at last.
‘I’m glad Mum’s decided to give Gordon another chance,’ she said later that night, once they were home.
‘They seem happy,’ Damian said, bending down to kiss her nose as he handed her a tea.
‘It’s funny, though. He’s not the kind of man I ever expected her to end up with.’
‘Why?’
‘They’re so … different. I mean, my mother believes in curses and tarot reading and Gordon’s an academic,’ she pointed out, feeling somewhat mystified.
‘Sometimes people complete each other in different ways. Gordon’s never been the type of guy who plays the field or anything, not that I know of anyway. I think if he’s decided he wants to get to know your mum, then he must be pretty certain she’s special.’
Lottie considered his words thoughtfully. ‘It’s so weird seeing Mum so … optimistic,’ she said, looking up at him confused by the whole thing. ‘She’s been terrified of relationships for so long. I’ve never seen her like she is around Gordon before. And she certainly never gets worked up over a man the way she has been over him. This is all new territory.’
‘Maybe she just hadn’t met the right man to show her there was nothing to be scared about,’ he said, sipping from his own mug.
‘True,’ she sighed, resting her head back against the lounge. ‘There’s been a lot of strange things happening lately; you finding Catherine and the hideout, and now my mother …’ Her words trailed off. She still wasn’t sure what was going on there. When Damian was quiet, she turned her head slightly and frowned at the troubled expression on his face. ‘What is it?’
‘It has all been strange. A little too strange.’
Lottie watched him quietly. ‘Sometimes that’s how things go. They just fall into place.’
‘Only finding the cave and then the grave … I think it was something more than just luck.’
‘What do you mean?’
He gave a small groan and shut his eyes briefly. ‘It sounds so stupid whenever I try and put it into words.’
‘Tell me,’ she said, gently sliding one of her hands into his larger one.
‘The day I found the cave … I was heading back to camp after talking to you and I was feeling so frustrated. We had nothing from the homestead and there was all this pressure to find something before we had to throw in the towel … And then there was this—’ He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat. ‘There was a wallaby.’
‘Okay,’ Lottie said encouragingly.
‘That’s it … a wallaby. I followed a wallaby into the bush and there was the cave.’
‘Well, that’s …’ Not too bad , she thought, wondering why he was looking so distressed. ‘It was just lucky.’
‘I was willing to put it down to stupid dumb luck, until it turned up later when I was sitting in the camp alone. I followed it again, and I found the gravesite. I can’t write off two different occasions where it was just down to luck that this wallaby would happen to lead me to two significant sites.’
Oh.
‘How do you know it was the same wallaby?’ she finally asked, then winced a little when he sent her a doubtful look.
‘You think maybe there’s a whole mob of wallabies out there who all know the locations of lost historical sites?’ he asked sarcastically.
Okay, put like that … ‘I don’t know. What explanation do you have?’
‘I’ve got nothing,’ he said with a frustrated sigh. ‘At least, nothing that doesn’t sound like I’ve lost my mind.’
Lottie paused as a thought struck her. ‘It’s kind of strange, but the day we found Kate’s hut, there was a wallaby there too. Maybe it’s some kind of sign.’
‘Catherine reincarnated as a wallaby?’ he scoffed.
‘Well, no. I mean that’s a bit … I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. Or maybe there’s no explanation. Maybe it’s just—’ She was about to say, ‘the universe working in mysterious ways’ but that sounded awfully like something her—
Oh, good grief. The day had finally come: she was turning into her mother.
‘Maybe you’re not supposed to think too hard about it. If something led you to those places for a reason, then I think you should probably just accept it and stop worrying about the hows and whys.’
‘Yeah, denial is the one I decided to go with too,’ he agreed dryly.
‘Mike must be over the moon. His documentary will be a winner.’
Damian nodded. ‘He’s like a kid at Christmas.’
‘It is pretty cool, though. I can’t wait to see it. You will be by far the star of the show.’
‘I doubt it. Most of the to-camera stuff is Mike. It’s his show.’
‘Yeah, but you’re the one who’s done all the work.’
‘He’s the one with the fan base and the money,’ Damian reasoned. ‘And I don’t care about that. I’m just glad I have the answers, and the book will be able to tell the whole story.’
‘As long as he remembers he wouldn’t even have a documentary without you. He better not cut any of your scenes from the final edit.’
Damian chuckled and pulled her close. ‘I hope you’ll be okay living with a mere author and not a famous filmmaker. Do you know he even puts on make-up before a shoot?’
Lottie giggled at his incredulous expression and cupped his lower face in her hands. She felt the rough hair of his trimmed beard under her fingers and her amusement soon turned into something else. His eyes looked into hers steadily, and something inside her shifted. She loved this man so much. In such a short time, he’d become one of the most important things in her life and she knew she didn’t want to spend a single day away from him again.
‘I’m more than okay with that. So, when are you moving in for real?’
‘For real?’ he asked, looking down at her curiously. ‘I’ve been moved in for a while now, I thought?’
‘Not exactly. You’ve been staying with me, moving in is making it your home too, but at the moment, you still have a home in Sydney.’
‘That’s been what’s bothering you?’ he asked, confusion colouring his tone.
‘Yeah, a bit,’ she replied honestly. ‘Every time I wanted to bring it up with you before, there was always something going on.’
‘As soon as this dig is wrapped up, I’ll pack up and give my notice on the apartment. Okay?’ he said gently, making her previous doubts feel almost stupid.
‘Okay.’ She beamed back at him.
Once this dig was over, he’d be all hers and they could finally start their life together.