Chapter 45
45
Hamish
Hamish came home after a satisfactory eighteen holes of golf to find an unknown bright-blue SUV parked in his driveway. Even on a grey day such as it was, the car glowed with the patina of a new vehicle. Irritated, he parked on the street and went to investigate. The interior was as pristine as the exterior and gave no clues as to who the owner was. The acrid smell of a cooling engine told him it hadn’t been parked there for long. He circled the house and thought it odd when he found no sign of anyone. He let himself in through the back door and was immediately assailed by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
‘Natalie,’ he said under his breath, much as he would a curse. And there she was sitting at his kitchen table, drinking his coffee and flicking through his Saturday Advertiser even before he’d had a chance to read it. Irritation morphed into indignation. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing in here?’
‘Hamish,’ she said. ‘And hello to you too.’ She stood, went to the coffee machine, selected two more pods and refilled her coffee mug. ‘Can I get you one?’
‘How did you get inside?’
‘I had a key. Mum and Dad had it cut for me way back.’
‘But this isn’t Mum and Dad’s house anymore. It belongs to me. You’ve had your share and I presume the vehicle blocking up my driveway was purchased with some of that share.’
‘You presumed right. She’s a beauty, isn’t she? I’ve never had a new car before. Pete’s spewing because I haven’t let him drive it yet. Where have you been?’
‘Golf.’ Hamish dropped his car keys onto the kitchen table and then poured himself a glass of water, drinking it down in one gulp.
Nat sipped her coffee and watched him. ‘When did you start playing golf, the game of the rich?’
‘What do you want, Nat?’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Who said I wanted anything? I’m allowed to take my new car for a spin, visit my brother, see what he’s done to our parents’ home. And you have been busy, but I would have chosen a different colour paint for the interior. Cate said you were in town recently and you met her for coffee.’
Hamish blinked at the abrupt change of subject. ‘I did and your name didn’t come up, not once.’
Nat’s mouth hardened. ‘Why did I even bother driving out here to see you?’
‘I give up. Why did you bother? You gave me the impression Cutlers Bay was the last place you’d ever visit voluntarily.’
‘I was curious. And I thought you might have been glad to see a familiar face, stuck out here in the sticks.’
‘I choose to be here, Nat. There’s a difference.’ He picked a banana out of the fruit bowl, peeled it and ate it in five bites, bracing himself for a comeback along the lines of, A pity you didn’t choose to be here more often when Mum and Dad were alive .
But she left him gaping when she said, in a more conciliatory tone, ‘The skylight looks great, makes a huge difference to the room. And thanks for delivering those boxes of Mum’s odds and ends. I wouldn’t have bothered with it otherwise.’
She moved away from where she’d been standing to gaze out the kitchen window, freeing up the coffee machine. The mug he’d used earlier for his first coffee of the day was upturned on the sink. He grabbed it and made himself coffee.
With her back to him, she said, ‘The backyard is huge. Have you ever considered extending? You could add a family room and update the wet areas. With a bit of money, the place could be turned into a more modern home, big enough for a family.’ Then she ruined it when she glanced over her shoulder and added, ‘And you’ve got the money,’ in the same snarky tone she used whenever she mentioned him and money in the same sentence. He’d been about to say that yes, he had considered it but after that salvo he ignored her.
Hamish sat down and swivelled the open newspaper so he could read it. Maybe she’d finish her coffee and go if he didn’t talk to her. But no, she sat down again.
‘How do you think life would have panned out for us if Jonathon hadn’t been killed that day?’ she said and he was grateful he was already seated. ‘Do you think we should talk about it, Hamish?’
The vulnerability in her voice and expression caught him totally off guard. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he said, not certain that he did.
She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms. ‘No, but that’s not the question. The question is, should we ? And why haven’t we talked about it ever before? It’s as if we never had a brother.’
‘You’ll get no contradiction from me,’ he said and mirrored her posture. ‘When I was sorting through stuff, I found a few photos of Jonathon in an old album on the bookshelf.’
‘Yeah, Mum used to take them out to look at them when Dad wasn’t around. She’d always end up crying and I wouldn’t know what to do except cry myself. Now that I’m a mother and a grandmother I understand that what I should have done was hug her and not aggravate her by telling Dad.’
‘You told Dad?’ he said in a hushed voice because he didn’t want to believe what she’d said.
Her silence was confirmation enough.
‘What did he do?’
‘He’d get angry, tell her that looking at the photos would only make her sad, wouldn’t bring him back. He said we had to move on, move past it. I’m sure if he could have found the photos in the early days he would have destroyed them, but she always hid them. And I know I was a bitch for telling him she looked at them but I would never have let on where they were.’
‘But they were just there, in the photo album with all the other photos of us as kids.’
‘She used to hide them, back then.’
‘Come to think of it, there aren’t many photos that were taken after Jonathon died and they’re only of you.’
‘You left,’ she said, an accusation not an observation.
‘Not for a year and what was there to stay for?’
‘Me. The place was like a morgue, but without the body because we weren’t allowed to mention him. I don’t remember hearing Mum ever laugh again, not until she began to lose her mind. And then she laughed at anything, funny or not.’
‘You always were Daddy’s girl, you didn’t need me around. My presence did nothing but remind him of the son he’d lost. Or so he told me, in a dozen different ways.’
‘He mellowed with age, Hamish. I won’t say he was ever easy, because he wasn’t. And after Mum’s dementia was diagnosed, it was a bit like a return to the bad old days. He was always angry.’
‘I know … I wasn’t around often, but often enough. I don’t think he knew how to deal with any of it, more so with Mum, because she was still alive and the loss was gradual, so he clung on to his anger.’ Hamish had thought often about what Mia had said his father’s reaction had been whenever she and Cody had brought his mum home from her wanderings. ‘Have you ever wondered if all the accumulated stress from losing Jonathon and then not being able to grieve the way she should have been allowed to contributed to her getting dementia?’
Nat didn’t answer.
Hamish glanced her way. She was frowning and picking at her fingernails. ‘No, is the honest answer,’ she said eventually. ‘But now that you’ve put it out there, I wonder if that’s what Dad thought? And if he did, imagine his guilt? No wonder he was always angry.’
‘So what he did, taking his own life, might not have been only about being diagnosed with an incurable disease. Is that what we’re saying here?’
Nat laughed, a hollow sound. ‘How could we ever know? Perhaps? He’s not here to ask. All I do know is that none of it is black and white, is it? And we should have talked about Jonathon a long time ago, Hamish. We should have insisted that as a family we talked openly about him and what happened. If we had, it might have saved what was left of the family and saved me a fortune in therapy sessions.’ She stood, took her mug to the sink and washed it. ‘I’ll go.’
‘Have lunch before you do,’ he said, much to his own surprise. ‘I can make a sandwich.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks. I’d probably choke on it. Plus I don’t know for how much longer I’ll be able to keep my bitchy self at bay.’
When he went to stand she put a firm hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out, via the loo. My house key is on the cupboard.’
He did as she said and stayed put. He waited for the sound of the toilet flushing. Then he listened for the slam of the front door, followed by the crunch of car tyres on the gravel driveway. He felt stunned and more than a little bit sad.