THIRTY-SIX
Thirty-six
While Lottie’s love life was a crumbling ruin, the same could not be said for her mother’s. Hannah and Gordon looked like they’d been a couple for decades instead of mere months, and Lottie could see a noticeable difference in her mother. She’d always considered her mum pretty Zen, considering all the yoga and meditation work her lifestyle embraced, but then Gordon came along and she was suddenly a hundred times more laid-back and happy.
She really was happy for them, but she found herself sometimes making excuses not to go to her mother’s for dinner because it hurt to remember that she used to be happy like that not so long ago. Some days, she really couldn’t be bothered to hide behind a bright smile and fake how fine she was. She wasn’t fine. She wasn’t miserable exactly; she was just … lonely. She missed Damian. She missed the life they’d been excitedly planning and she was struggling to find the earlier peace she’d been more than happy with before Damian had rode into her life and swept her off her feet.
Almost six months had gone by and she was having a lot more better days than sad ones now, but the place where he’d been was still very much a healing wound.
She’d been sent a copy of the coroner’s report once Catherine’s remains had been examined. DNA testing had proven it was indeed her, and that she’d most likely died of complications from a gunshot wound, which they had been able to detect by matching a bullet groove that had been visible on the bones left behind. There was no evidence of child remains in the grave, however the hair in the locket was DNA tested and found to have a parental relation to the hair found on the traces of material and remnants of clothing in the grave. While this established that Catherine was buried with her child’s hair, the question remained as to what had become of the baby.
Lottie was happy that Catherine had been found and some of the questions had been answered. At the very least, she was no longer forgotten and alone in the bush.
Her mother had decided to trace Catherine’s family in order to restore the ring back to its rightful owners, and while Lottie had mixed feelings about the decision, ultimately it was her mother’s ring to do with as she wished. Now knowing the true origins of where it came from and how it got to be in her family, Lottie found herself in two minds about the whole thing. She had her own memories of the ring, which were linked to her gran, but then there was what she now knew had come before that, and she was struggling to hold on to her fond childhood memories.
But Catherine had lost her husband—the man she loved—and ultimately her own life over the ring. Part of Lottie agreed with her mum that maybe it should be returned to Catherine’s family. Although it was little consolation, after everything that had happened.
The one good thing that had come out of the last few months had been her book. Damian had been right; it had all worked itself out. She’d been walking to work one morning and the solution had hit her. She’d hurried into the shop and sat down at her computer, and her fingers had run across the keyboard in an excited frenzy. She’d thrown herself into finishing it, determined to see it through. The ring was always going to have its own special chapter, but after all the twists and turns in the story it had an even more important part to play in her family history and definitely stole the show.
Once she began writing, the story just seemed to pour through her fingertips onto the screen. She’d written from her heart the story of her family, the resilience of her ancestors and the strength each generation of women had needed to find in order to survive their heartache and bring up their children alone against the backdrop of war, hunger, the Depression and prejudice. Entwined in their history was the story of Banalla, which she’d followed through its early conception as a lawless, ramshackle gold-mining town to the thriving, ever-changing place it was now, proving that, to succeed, you had to be adaptable, resilient and accepting.
After she’d finished writing, she’d nervously given it to Cher and her mother to read and, under their insistence, she’d sent it off to a publisher.
It was never supposed to be anything other than a memoir for her family, but despite being sure it wouldn’t be something any publishing company would be interested in, they’d accepted it. She was still trying to get her head around that, but she had time as the book wasn’t due to be released until the following year.
The rev of a bike outside played havoc with her heartbeat the way it usually did, but even that was slowly beginning to fade. Bikes rode through town daily, and now she barely glanced up, no longer hoping against hope that he’d walk through her door like he had on the very first day they’d met.
The stomp of feet on the doormat did make her lift her eyes from the bookwork she was doing, a customer-ready smile on her lips that slowly faded when she connected with the gaze across the store.
For a moment, the whole world froze.
‘Hey, Lottie.’ His deep, familiar voice flowed over her like a cool morning breeze.
‘Hey,’ she managed to get out finally. There were a million questions racing through her mind, like What the hell are you doing here? And Are you actually better looking than you were before ?
‘I, uh …’ he said, passing a rolled-up paper or something he was carrying from one hand to the other before slapping it idly against one thigh, as he took a few more steps into the store. ‘I just got into town and thought I’d see if you were here.’
‘I’m always here,’ she replied, eyeing him warily. Did figments of your imagination act nervous?
‘The shop looks great. You’ve done some work.’
‘I painted out the front.’
‘Yeah, it looks good.’
Inwardly, Lottie rolled her eyes. This awkward small talk was not them. ‘What are you doing in town?’ she finally asked.
‘I came back to see you.’
‘Why?’ She hadn’t meant to sound so blunt, but shock had taken over.
‘I—’ he looked as though he wanted to say something but changed his mind at the last second ‘—thought you might be interested in something I found out. About Catherine.’
Damn him. He knew exactly how to get her attention. ‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. It’s about Catherine’s baby. They didn’t find any evidence of it in the grave.’
‘I remember.’ She nodded, wondering where he was going with this. His beard was a little longer than the closely shaved one he’d worn before but was still meticulously trimmed and tidy. She liked it, she thought absently, wondering what it would feel like to rub her fingers through it.
He put down the rolled papers on top of the counter. ‘Look at this.’ He pulled out a print of a family tree chart, and Lottie noticed it was the one that Cher had given him from her collection.
‘What am I looking at?’ she asked, studying the page he unrolled.
‘Cher’s family research checks out … except when we get back up to here,’ he said, running his finger up the diagram towards the top of the page. ‘I found Kate and the rest of Jack’s siblings, their parents from back in Ireland. All that pans out,’ he explained, and she almost smiled as she heard the familiar way excitement began to colour his voice. ‘Except for this one.’
Lottie followed to where his finger had stopped on one name. Finnegan. It fell in the line listing Kate’s children, next to an alarming number of siblings. Cher’s great-something grandfather.
‘There’s no record of his birth in any of the church registers.’
‘You said before that sometimes records weren’t always kept up to date.’
‘Which is true. Only we have all the births from Kate O’Ryan nee McNally registered in church records before and after this baby. So it struck me as strange that she’d completely miss recording one child. Even if he had died young, you’d expect there to be a death recorded, but there’s nothing. Then he appears years later, listed on birth certificates as the father of two children. And his grave is listed in the local cemetery.’
That was a little strange.
‘Also, on a curious note, Finnegan translates to “son of the fair-haired”,’ he said in a deceptively nonchalant tone. ‘Which is interesting, when all descriptions of Kate, along with the McNally and O’Ryan family, are of them being dark-haired .’
‘Yeah, but I don’t know anyone who names their child after the literal meaning behind a name,’ Lottie said, sending him an odd look.
‘This is a good point. It could just have been that Kate really liked the name Finnegan and as a baby he could have had fair hair. But we do have a hair sample found in Catherine’s grave from inside the locket, from a baby who was blond.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Lottie asked slowly.
‘I’m not thinking,’ he said with a smile. ‘The DNA tests came back positive. Finnegan O’Ryan was Catherine and Alexander’s baby.’