Chapter 8
Eight
‘Are we there yet?’ Poppy asked from the back seat for maybe the eight millionth time since leaving the Gold Coast.
‘Almost,’ Kenzie said, lifting her gaze to the rear-view mirror briefly.
Despite her exhaustion from having answered what felt like several thousand questions—everything from why Santa hadn’t brought her a real unicorn last Christmas to how ants poop—Kenzie’s heart swelled, almost painfully, with love for the gorgeous dark-haired munchkin in the back of her car.
Big hazel eyes held hers with a level gaze. ‘That’s what you said last time, and we’re still not at Nan’s place.’
Okay, so she got me there. ‘But this time, we really are almost there. As soon as we drive through town, we’re on the road where Nan’s house is.’ And I can turn off The Wiggles. As much as she loved them, if she heard about Emma’s bloody yellow bow one more time, she was going to scream.
Despite the ten more minutes it took to reach her mother’s driveway, there was still time for another dozen questions, and Kenzie had never in her life been more relieved to see a gate.
As she drove down the gravel driveway, she took the road that veered off to the left towards her mother’s new house.
The original house, empty at the moment with her grandparents away, sat nestled at the bottom of the drive, filled with happy childhood memories.
The new house was perched on a small hill overlooking the creek below and had panoramic views from the wide verandahs wrapped around it.
She was happy her mum, Sam, had found Jack and remarried only a handful of years earlier.
She deserved to be happy. When they were growing up, her mum had always been there for her and Brook, devoting her life to her kids.
Then, she’d suddenly made an announcement at the dinner table: she wanted to open a boutique.
Kenzie remembered her and Brook getting excited—Brook especially, as she had a love of fashion—but it was her dad’s reaction that had stuck with Kenzie.
Or, rather, lack of reaction. He’d been reading a text on his phone, and after her mother’s announcement, he’d glanced up, eyeing her doubtfully.
‘What do you know about running a business? You’ve been a housewife all your life. ’
Kenzie had caught the flash of hurt across her mother’s face. Her father had already gone back to his phone.
‘I’ll learn,’ Sam had said quietly, before Brook had cut in and prattled on with name suggestions for the store, and the moment was forgotten.
It wasn’t long after that her parents split up, and it was revealed that her father had been having an affair with a woman who was only five years older than Kenzie.
Her mother had learned how to run a business, and she was very good at it.
Her boutique thrived. But by the time Brook left home, two years after Kenzie had gone off to university, Sam seemed to have lost a bit of her former spark.
She’d come down to Burrumba to help her parents take care of their property and rekindled an old love affair with her high school boyfriend.
Not long after, she’d decided to sell up and move down here permanently.
It had been a shock at the time, her mum starting up a new life, but it was probably the best thing that had ever happened to her.
She was happy again—so much happier than Kenzie could recall her being before—and Jack loved her.
Really loved her. Kenzie noticed all of the little things Jack did for Sam.
If she was going on a trip, he checked the tyres and the oil.
He kissed her hello and goodbye every time he walked out the door.
He looked at her when she spoke—really looked at her, in a way that Kenzie had never seen her father do, not even when she talked to him.
Jack was like this with everyone, really. He had a way of making you feel like what you had to say was important, no matter what you were talking about.
The thing that always made her smile the most were the flowers.
Jack would always leave Sam a flower. Sometimes it would be randomly left on the kitchen bench or the seat of her car.
She’d watch her mother’s face light up as she picked them up.
It didn’t matter that they were often just plucked from the garden instead of a bunch of hot-house roses that cost a fortune.
What mattered was the way her mother smiled each time.
Kenzie wanted that. She’d never say it out loud, but she wanted a man who loved her like she was the only woman in the world.
But she didn’t believe she’d ever find it.
She didn’t have time, for starters, a single mother running a business.
She didn’t have time to find a man like that—or any other kind, for that matter.
She was jaded when it came to relationships. She hadn’t meant for it to happen but that one lapse in judgement had altered her life and changed everything. She’d sworn off ever putting herself in that same situation again.
Her mother was at the gate and opening the back door before she’d even had a chance to turn off the car.
‘There’s my precious girl.’ She smiled, unbuckling Poppy’s seatbelt and scooping her grandbaby up into her arms. ‘I’ve missed you so much!’
‘Oh, hi, Kenzie, you’re here too?’ Kenzie said dryly as she climbed out of the car.
‘And I’ve missed you too,’ Sam added, rolling her eyes.
‘Hi, Kenzie,’ Jack said, heading towards her with open arms.
‘Grandad!’ Poppy yelled excitedly, wriggling to be put down so she could run across to Jack.
‘Hey!’ her mother called after her indignantly. ‘Nan’s just as fun as Grandad.’
‘Welcome to my life,’ Kenzie quipped, hugging her mother tightly.
‘How’re you doing?’ Sam asked, holding her daughter’s face between her hands.
‘I’m fine.’ She smiled. ‘Better now I’m home.’
‘Let’s go and put the jug on,’ Sam said, tucking Kenzie under her arm and leading the way to the house.
A little while later, Kenzie settled on the verandah with a coffee and a plate of scones, the tension from the last few days slowly beginning to drain from her shoulders.
‘Any word from this fella yet?’ Jack asked when the conversation eventually turned to the huge elephant in the room.
‘No.’ Kenzie shook her head.
Jack made a low grunt and took a sip of his coffee. ‘Not much of a bloke if he hasn’t stepped up.’
‘In all fairness,’ Sam said, looking up from buttering Poppy a scone, ‘it must have come as a bit of a shock.’
‘Maybe he’s just decided it’s not worth the hassle,’ Kenzie said with a shrug.
‘Pretty sure it’s not as much as you had going on when you found out the news,’ Jack pointed out dryly. Kenzie thought back to those horrible few weeks when she’d tried to digest the fact she was pregnant and her entire life had to be suddenly rearranged, and had to agree.
‘Either way, we’ll be fine,’ she said with a determined smile. ‘I’m just happy to forget all the other stuff for a few days, and have a nice relaxing visit.’
‘This is not relaxing,’ Kenzie said, blowing a strand of hair out of her face as she glared at the stupid, grey-speckled guinea fowl hysterically running back and forth in front of the open gate.
Her mother muttered a few unladylike words under her breath that suggested she agreed with Kenzie before she stalked back towards the birds to force them forward.
Somehow, the gate to her gran’s chook pen had blown open and her garden had been invaded by birdlife—namely chooks and guinea fowl and the odd white duck.
The chooks and the ducks had been relatively easy to lure back with food.
The guinea fowl, on the other hand, were a whole other story.
‘I can’t believe how stupid they are,’ Kenzie said, watching as they ran right past the open gate. ‘It’s open!’ she shouted, throwing her arms in the air.
‘I can’t believe I’m wasting my time trying to save them from the foxes,’ Sam said.
‘Would Gran actually miss them if we just let nature take its course?’ Kenzie asked hopefully. ‘I mean, really?’
Her mother hesitated for a moment as though considering it, before shaking her head. ‘She named them all.’
It was getting darker, the sun low behind the tree line. Jack is no fool, Kenzie thought, trudging through the long grass, wishing she were anywhere but here. When the neighbour had called to let them know Gran’s guinea fowl were out on the road, he’d quickly volunteered to babysit Poppy.
‘Okay, one more try. You go wide around them and walk them back along the fence line, slowly,’ Sam said.
Stupid. Idiot. Birds. Kenzie stomped her way back through the open gate. ‘You go through there,’ Kenzie said out loud, waving her hand pointedly at the open gate. ‘You just walk through that.’ She circled behind them and moved them back towards where she wanted them to go.
‘Don’t make any sudden movements,’ her mother called, ‘or they’ll—’
Kenzie’s foot twisted on the uneven ground and she let out a startled yell, causing the flock of eight guinea fowl to shoot straight up into the air, into a tall tree.
‘—fly,’ her mother finished wearily.
‘Sorry!’ Kenzie yelled.
‘It’s all right. I give up. Let the foxes get them,’ Sam said, dragging the gate closed. ‘Let’s go home.’
Just then, there was a loud flutter and crash above them. Kenzie looked up to see the gangly creatures flap and bump their way out of the tree in the most ungraceful manner to land inside the chook pen that she and her mother had just spent the last forty minutes trying to herd them into.
‘All this time and they could have just flown in themselves?’ Kenzie asked, incredulously.
‘They do that,’ her mother said dryly.
‘Never ask me to look after these things on my own, Mum,’ Kenzie begged. ‘I don’t think I’m farm-girl enough to cope.’
Her mother put her arm around her shoulders as they followed the dirt road back to the house. ‘You’ll do,’ she said, confidently.