Chapter 45
PEGGY’S WEDDING
The next morning at the wedding venue the last empty parking spot was directly in front of the door.
Ronnie jogged down the lawn.
The stage was a Persian rug. Nev and Gunni sat on folding chairs. Nev fiddled with the sound system at her feet. Someone in a STAFF T-shirt miked Ronnie and explained where the stationary mikes were while she took her guitar out and tucked the case behind her chair.
Nev had dressed all in cream from head to toe to make a point; shirt, vest and slacks, with a black silk ribbon tie that made her look like a reenactor. Her mouth was symmetrical again.
“Where’s your straw hat?” Ronnie teased.
Nev pointed under her chair.
Ronnie ran a hand through her hair. She was wearing it down today. If it got sweaty and stuck to her neck she could always tie it up later.
“Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?”
“You’re on time,” Gunni said. “We were early.”
Nev held her guitar. “Can I show you the opening bars of Mairi’s wedding again?”
Ronnie propped her guitar on her knee, put her fingers on the strings. Nev played the opening. She copied it.
“Good.” Nev put her guitar behind her chair. “How’d you sleep last night?”
“Good.” The question touched something tender, but didn’t sting. “You?”
“Like a baby.”
“A baby who sleeps through the night or a colicky one?” Ronnie asked.
“Option one.”
They were learning the new shape of their friendship, figuring out where the boundaries would be. Her friends smelled like cigar smoke. Ronnie would win that battle, but not today.
Brad Collins was in the crowd, his face etched into her memory like a tattoo she would remove if she could. She almost pointed him out to Nev, but decided it wasn’t worth troubling her. All the Collinses were there.
Ronnie waved to Nonna, who waved back in a pale pink dress and matching hat, rosy like the inside of a seashell.
The officiant nodded to Nev, who nodded to Ronnie, who started playing the opening bars of the reel. In front of a crowd music came easier and faster—electric, alive—almost an out-of-body feeling, as if it was playing itself.
Nev sang more expressively in front of a crowd.
Now that Ronnie was in a flow state, she easily followed Nev’s pace. The moment the wedding party began walking down the aisle there was nothing outside the song, the lawn, and the crowd. The whole world was here. Everything else disappeared.
A wedding in motion had the inertia of a spherical stone rolling down a steep hill.
The show would go on until the last slice of cake was boxed in the freezer, the hall floor swept, and the lights turned off.
The processional was the carpet on which the wedding walked.
They walked because of the song, and she played because the people in pastel dresses and suits walked.
Strumming and harmonizing happened instinctually. Rehearsal did that. All the clumsy work they had put in transformed into something spontaneous and ecstatic, water tumbling over a rill. The song came without thought because she knew it by heart.
Peggy’s elderly fiancé Tom shuffled arm-in-arm with his daughter. A woman walking her father down the aisle—already not a dry eye in the crowd.
Everyone turned to watch Peggy. Peggy had answered the phone of the police department since before Ronnie was born.
She carried a long-haired dachshund and glowed, barefoot in one of her batik sundresses and a wide straw hat.
The crowd oohed and aahed, filming on their phones.
Peggy shimmied and danced her way down the aisle.
She deserved a good man like Tom. Her first husband had been a monster.
Peggy walked arm-in-arm with her son, the District Commissioner, Brad’s father, who was a real bastard. With any luck he would retire soon. Both were crying. Michael Collins sat down in the audience and Peggy took her place across from her fiancé Tom in front of the officiant.
The ring exchange drew a laugh from the crowd. The octogenarians hammed up the fact that their knuckles were too swollen and arthritic, until with the help of butter, both rings slipped on.
“About time,” Nev whispered in Ronnie’s ear. “I was about to fetch the lube from my glove box.”
The laugh relaxed Ronnie’s stomach, released the tension in her shoulders. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”
Peggy kissed Tom, and the white-haired couple were married.
Rainbow’s secret great-grandparents.
Nev stood with her guitar across her chest, then put her straw hat on. She walked behind the couple and played as they shuffled away down the aisle.
When Nev began to sing the recessional, Ronnie recognized the Robert Burns poem her mum used to sing to her on brisk nights camping in the Outback, staring up at stars thick as sand on a beach.
Careful not to make a sound, she slid her guitar back into its case.
It had been generous of Nev to let her play lead guitar on the processional.
Nev could have easily played and sang without her, like she was doing now.
But that was Nev in a nutshell: patient, understated, generous with those less skillful than herself.
Straightening, she noticed two late arrivals walking across the lawn.
Maude and Rainbow.
Ronnie raised a hand. They waved back.
She checked her phone. Two missed texts from Maude, saying that she was dropping Rainbow off.
Maude waved again and headed back towards the car park. Rainbow continued alone. Ronnie beckoned her closer.
Guests trapped in their seats until the closing music ended watched as the newlyweds shuffled up the aisle towards the country club, arm in arm, leaning on each other and giggling like kids.
Across the lawn, Ronnie saw the moment Rainbow decided to sit in the audience. Helpful neighbors pointed her toward the last empty seat.
Ronnie sat frozen as Rainbow squeezed between rows of knees to take the seat next to Brad Collins.
Carefully, Ronnie sipped from her water bottle and rose to her feet. Everyone else was still seated. The tacit cue to rise had not been given because Nev was still singing, but it would only be a few more bars now, and then everyone would make a run for the reception and the open bar.
Nev glanced at her, seemed to notice her standing there motionless and caught her eye. Ronnie stared back, clutching her water bottle. Nev turned to see what she had been looking at, while continuing the last verse.
Nev’s voice faltered. She stopped picking the guitar. She had seen what Ronnie had seen. It was impossible not to notice the resemblance between ten-year-old Rainbow and the man seated next to her.
Nev laughed. It was not a pleasant sound, like a branch breaking.
Nev played a closing chord on the guitar with a flourish. The crowd exhaled, released from the spell. A hundred warm bodies stood at the same time, stretched, turned to their neighbor and resumed chit-chatting.
Ronnie jogged over to Nev halfway up the aisle and put her arm around her. “It’s cool, babe. Be cool.”
Nev’s eyes were blank and her face was flushed. Ronnie swallowed. Nev handed her the guitar, then the straw hat. “Take Rainbow,” Nev ordered.
“Leave him alone,” Ronnie said.
“Like he left you alone?”
Ronnie had no response to that. “He’s a cop.”
“I didn’t hear that. Scram.”
This was spiraling out of control faster than Ronnie could think. She had to fix this before Nev did something she would regret, but her brain wasn’t working. Magic words to calm Nev down...
Rainbow appeared, clutching pink backpack straps.
Her converse trainers and lilac T-shirt with snapping turtles on it looked jarringly out of place.
“Hi,” Rainbow said. She blew a bubble with her gum, brown hair shiny on either side of a severe part made with the tip of a comb.
Ronnie used to wear her hair like that when she was ten. Long curly pigtails.
What would Rainbow think about herself if she knew Brad was her dad? Would she be ashamed? Would she feel less-than his ‘real’ daughters? He wasn’t her dad in any meaningful sense of the word.
“Run and jump in the ute.” Ronnie tossed her keys to Rainbow.
Rainbow caught them. “What’s wrong? Did someone die?”
Nev walked across the lawn in the direction of the pub where the reception was.
Ronnie handed Rainbow both guitars. “Put these in the ute, please. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”
She caught up with Nev behind the white tent at the back of the building. “Don’t make the mistake I did.”
Nev checked her phone. “This isn’t about you. I should have done this years ago.”
“Violence is never the answer. Believe me. Do I have to pick you up and throw you over my—"
“Go home, Dain’y!” Nev roared, red-faced. Guests in pastel sundresses turned to stare. Nev raised her hands. “You left the oven on!” Concerned onlookers relaxed, smiling, turned away.
Ronnie drew a shaky breath. Right. Nev needed to break something. This wasn’t about her. “Rings count as a weapon. In sentencing.”
Nev tucked her rings in her vest. Maybe that’s all life was, a series of small gestures of care or neglect. The worst sins were unassuming, forms of negligence.
“Neighbors will call about hay.” They called Nev because she would cut them a deal and Ronnie wouldn’t. “Don’t be a hard-arse.”
Nev had calmed down, as if someone had flipped a switch. Ronnie suspected her friend was doing that on purpose to reassure her. It was working.
“See you back at the farm.” Nev said.
Ronnie jogged to the carpark.
She tried to remember what was on Nev’s calendar for the next few days.
Rainbow sat waiting in the truck. Ronnie tugged open the door, swung into the driver’s seat. Key already in the ignition. She turned the key. The engine purred.
“Where’s Nev?”
“We drove separately.” Ronnie put the truck in reverse, backed out carefully. “There’s something she has to do.” When the truck was lined up with the road she put it in park and turned to Rainbow. “Would you mind sitting in the back seat?”
Rainbow looked suspicious. “Why?”
Ronnie blinked.
Her daughter frowned, then rolled her eyes and climbed into the back.
“Thanks, baby.” She waited until the girl buckled her seatbelt, then pulled out onto the road.
Was this subconsciously what she wanted? Had she manifested this?
She turned the track on the CD player to Stevie Nicks singing “Edge of Seventeen.”
She had no idea what Nev would do. She wanted to be that type of person, someone who wasn’t afraid.
Ronnie would go berserk if anyone messed with Rainbow the way people had messed with her.
Nev had a thing about protecting kids. Maybe Ronnie did, too.
Maybe that was called being a decent human being.
She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. By the time they turned east onto the Gillies Range road through the mountains her shirt was wet.
She should have fought Brad instead of Maude ten years ago. She had overreacted that night at Maude’s house because she had underreacted to him. Pent up energy will break free inappropriately in other situations.
No one had ever stood up for her before. No one had pressed charges against Maude or Brad. She hadn’t asked anyone to. Filing a report would have been her responsibility. She had been too embarrassed.
Her mother should have protected her. Even Reg, who would walk across broken glass for her, acted like he didn’t know Brad Collins used to rescue her from dangerous parties at night and take her to the Lake Barrine car park, down that long, dark road, kiss her gently, say he loved her, and keep the uniform on because she asked him to. Nothing to do about that now.
Nausea came in waves. Please don’t let Nev make a scene.
.. Today could still end the normal way.
Nev’s truck could roll up to Stone House and her friend could knock on her own door, hands jammed in pockets.
They could go back to this awkward phase of whatever they were doing, growing older side by side but not together.
Life would change now that Nev knew, but most things would stay the same.
She turned left onto Boar Pocket Road.
Her phone vibrated.
Like inside the strangler fig, the buzzing didn’t stop. Lump in her throat, she pulled over. This time it was all texts and calls from relatives and friends. She laughed.