Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Brodie got in his car with a smile on his face.
In his rearview mirror, he watched Maeve’s silver Volvo reversing up the craggy slope to the main dirt track, Zoey strapped in the back, her window open and her hand waving.
The top was down on his Aston Martin and he sat looking sideways, waving back at intervals and occasionally pulling a silly face.
It reminded him of getting into a car on tour, girls screaming and waving.
He’d do something stupid like a cheesy double thumbs-up and stick his tongue out and they’d go even wilder.
He’d loved the adoration at the time, he was a teenage boy, who wouldn’t?
But it wasn’t something he craved any longer, it was a relief not to have to scour the bushes for paparazzi or hide behind a baseball cap every time he ventured downtown.
But with Zoey, the adoration was almost addictive.
The hero-worship. It made his chest puff and his ego inflate from the feeling that he’d got the whole parenting thing nailed.
He couldn’t see Maeve because of the sun reflecting on the windscreen, but he imagined her eyeroll if she could see inside his head to his thoughts.
Maeve. He recalled the moment by the river. He’d like to kill that darn spider. Although, he probably should be thanking it. Not a good idea to get mixed up in anything with the mother of his child. That would make things far too complicated for Brodie’s liking.
When the Volvo got to the main track, Zoey shouted, “See you later, alligator!”
Brodie cupped his hands and called, “See you on the moon, you big baboon!”
Zoey left cracking up and he was certain he saw a hint of a smile on Maeve’s face as they drove away, something that left him feeling more smug than it should.
He turned and looked back at the wooden cabin, the reflections of the pines on the river, the rolling clouds over the mountain, and felt a warmth suffuse his body that he wasn’t used to feeling.
It brought back more memories of being a kid, of coming here and messing about with his brothers—but also memories of being at home, of his mom making pancakes in school holidays.
Being on the couch in PJs when it was snowing outside.
Basketball in the sunshine. Days when he was too young to be any use on the ranch except for feeding the chickens.
It made Brodie pause, wrist resting on the steering wheel as he thought about the bits he had enjoyed as a kid.
He’d endured the bulk of the farm work, but there were bits he’d liked: the horses, playing polo with Logan—and he’d liked riding the quad bikes with Jack and the camaraderie of big events like branding or round-ups.
It was the bits between the work itself that he liked.
Lying down on the grass in the scorching heat when exhaustion set in and getting one of his brothers to chuck a bucket of water over him, talking about girls they fancied at school when riding back from some mundane task or another, cracking open an ice-cold Coke after cleaning out the stables.
All the bits once the job was done. Or maybe all the bits when his dad wasn’t there.
With a sigh, Brodie started the engine and drove away, cautious over the rocky ground with his car, but strangely less precious about it, as if the space in his head for worrying about such fripperies was getting smaller now that it was half consumed by the idea of a child’s life.
The thought made him shudder, fish around inside himself for the person who cared about the damage a rock might do to the chassis.
Then he hit the open road and it started to rain and he was distracted by trying to get the roof to close.
It was a good segue. Him now tucked up in the dark enclosure of his car, music blaring over the noise of the wipers, the sun making a rainbow in the rearview mirror, which, if he still wrote songs, might be something he’d add in as symbolic of something he couldn’t quite name.
And something that, if Ethan were around, he’d cut out as trite cliché.
The thought made Brodie smile sadly to himself.
Then he stopped and phoned his brother Noah to see if he wanted to go to the Firestone for a drink.
Noah convinced Brodie that he needed to put more time in at the ranch.
That their mom was really keen to show him her new Silver Pantry project.
Brodie had a cynical suspicion that this sudden new shop venture was actually Martha’s way of luring her children back to the ranch, give them something of hers to come and see that wasn’t so tied in to their father and the ranch.
Or perhaps that was unfair, and she did actually just want something that was hers. He was on the fence.
Either way, the following day, he went to visit. It was still raining on and off. Heavier through the night but summer drizzle in the day. He waited for it to stop, for the sun to burst out from behind the clouds before heading over.
The roads of Autumn Falls were still eyes-closed familiar to him, even after all those years away.
When he reached the turning for the Silver Sky Ranch, he slowed, looking down toward the big gates at the end of the track, trying to imagine the life behind them.
Visualizing himself coming down for breakfast as a kid, pouring out too much cereal as he was distracted chatting with his brothers, laughing, spilling the milk.
Getting a massive sigh from his dad. Maybe that was why he’d brought Zoey the marshmallow cereal and been more than happy for her to fill the bowl to the brim.
That sigh of Emmett’s still echoed in his mind.
He felt like he heard it every time he stumbled out of a club after a great night out, and so deliberately went for one more; when he pointed his skies over an off-piste sheer drop; when he flew to Hawaii because the waves were record-breaking, or held a party at his Malibu home for absolutely no reason other than that he could.
Everything felt like it had been a fight against that sigh.
Brodie parked at the far end of the drive closest to The Silver Pantry building, away from the view of the main ranch. He didn’t want to admit that this was to avoid his dad but that was most likely the truth.
The pantry was housed in what was once an old barn, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it now.
It had been pretty much rebuilt, with a porch over the large front door, galvanized buckets bursting with flowers outside, and huge picture windows.
The clapboard was painted a tasteful pale gray with The Silver Pantry scrolled straight on the wood in a darker tone above the door.
The moment his mom glimpsed him through the window, she pulled open the heavy door.
“Brodie! Hi, honey.” She wrapped her arms round his neck, smelt as she always did, of perfume and Mom.
Then she stood back and, looking down at her apron stained with summer fruits, said, “Sorry, I’m a mess, I’m making jam. ”
“You don’t look a mess,” he said, shaking his head at the very idea. “You look beautiful.”
She waved the compliment away in pretense at being embarrassed but he saw her smile at him endearingly.
“So, what do you think?” she asked, gesturing to the facade.
He took a step back, glanced up and said, “It looks incredible.” Then he frowned when he looked further up and saw his dad appear on the roof.
Martha saw Emmett at the same time and said, “There’s a leak that we didn’t discover till the rain came last night. Your dad’s fixing it. I’ve told him to call a roofer but he insists on doing it himself. He’s doing far too much at the moment.”
“Why is that?” Brodie stepped further back to get a better look at his dad scowling at the leaking roof.
His mom shrugged. “Doesn’t want to admit that he’s getting old?”
Brodie huffed. In his mind, his dad had always been old. Old and grumpy.
“I think maybe it’s because there’s been so much change,” Martha went on.
“Logan moving back, Noah more settled.” She looked pointedly at Brodie but didn’t elaborate—he knew his mom disapproved of his lifestyle.
“I guess it makes him think of what’s been lost.” She paused.
“Of Jack.” Her mouth tightened at the memory.
“Ethan being who-knows-where. He worries.”
Brodie looked up again at the profile of his father on the roof and wasn’t convinced by his mom’s argument.
But, whether from a feeling that perhaps things were intrinsically different now that he was a father himself, or just feeling a pang of unaccustomed sympathy if what she said was true, he shouted, “Need a hand?”
“Who’s offering?” His dad called back.
“Me.”
There was a pause. “No, I’m okay.”
Brodie frowned. Usually he’d just laugh and walk away, but today it felt different. He felt like he was someone different. He’d just navigated a weekend with his own kid. “I can help if you want help.”
His dad laughed to himself. “I’m fine as I am, thanks. Quicker on my own.”
Brodie stood with his hands in his pockets feeling stupidly ashamed at his dad’s dismissal, especially with his mom watching.
Not because of her judgment, but because—yes, there it was flitting across her face—of her pity.
He knew if he were anyone else—Noah, Logan, even Ethan probably—his dad would have said yes.
And usually he wouldn’t care. But today it seemed to accentuate feelings about himself that he didn’t want to acknowledge.
Enhanced the image of him being the kind of person someone wouldn’t want to be part of their child’s life.