Chapter 6 #4
mention the storeroom after the conversation we just had, but then she raises her chin. “Letters to his author friends are
in the boxes on the shelves at the back, near the window. There’s only a handful of those boxes. Shouldn’t be too hard to
find letters from this author, if they exist.” The oven timer sounds, and she slips off the stool and pulls on oven mitts,
before she slides three trays with fat scones up onto the cooktop. She pauses with her back to me, and then says, very quietly,
“Fiona, do be careful. I can tell you think I’m silly worrying about you in that house but I have good reason.”
“We had sixteen happy years there, Mum,” I say carefully. She glances back at me, then fusses with the scones some more.
“You had sixteen happy years there. Of course you did. You were caught up in Tad’s fantasy world.”
“You weren’t happy when we lived with him?”
“He was the best man I’ve ever known. More generous than you can imagine. But that house—” She breaks off, then clears her
throat. “Just don’t change too much. Don’t go . . . Please don’t go digging around over there.”
“I have no intention of making drastic changes. It’ll be a restoration, not some grand renovation.”
“Good. But that’s not even what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
She shakes her head as if she’s said too much, and it’s maddening how she does this—like she teases me by cracking open the door just a little, then slams it shut in my face. After Tad died I tried so hard to be here for her, and I know she was heartbroken, but she never even let me see her pain.
“Mum,” I say, and my frustration is building, leaving my tone shorter than I intended. “I’m not going to play games with you.
If there’s something about the house I should be afraid of, you’re going to have to tell me what it is. Otherwise I am going to make it my home again. I’m going to change what needs to be changed and I’m going to
find a way to be happy there again.”
“I just don’t want you to make rash decisions because things with Lucas haven’t worked out,” she says stiffly. “You’ve already
gone against your uncle’s dying wish—”
“But that’s not even true, Mum,” I exclaim. “Jon told me that he heard you—”
She swings back to face me, eyes flashing with surprising fire.
“Jon doesn’t know what he heard that day. You kids don’t understand—” She squeezes her eyes closed for just a minute as she collects herself.
“Well, what did he hear, then?” I demand. “What is it we don’t understand?”
Oh, what I wouldn’t give for her to lose control. To shout at me, if that’s what it takes.
“Tad expressly asked you to leave that place be until I pass too. Has it even occurred to you that maybe he didn’t ask that
for our benefit, but to protect you?”
I think about the bucket and the glasses and that eerie, prickling feeling I had last night.
“Protect me from what?” I ask uneasily.
She stares at me for a long moment, then she deflates, turning back to her scones, as if they require her full attention as
they cool.
“Wurimbirra has secrets, Fiona,” she finally says. “And I pray to God that even if you do stay there, you never find out what they are.”
The back door slams, and a soft voice calls out, heavy with a British accent. “Ginny? I was just up at the shed and Alan said
you had morning tea for the boys so I thought I’d come collect it and save you going up there—Oh, hi!”
It’s a young blonde woman, maybe in her early twenties. If she notices that the air in that kitchen is thick with tension,
she doesn’t let on. She just offers me a sweet smile and extends her hand towards me.
“Erin Davies. I’m Vince’s girlfriend.”
“This is Fiona,” Mum says, and Erin’s eyes widen.
“The famous Fiona! I heard you’ve moved back into Wurimbirra. On your own? Really? Aren’t you scared? One of the girls I met at the gym told me your uncle did a talk at her high school and the stories he told them about that
house—”
“Were fiction,” I say even though my stomach is still churning at my mother’s comment. It’s habit to argue for logic when
it comes to Wurimbirra, even if I’m not feeling quite so “logical” myself at the moment. “My uncle Tad was a novelist. He
made things up for a living—that was his job. He made a very boring, run-down house seem spooky and mysterious because he
loved the drama. That’s all there is to it. But . . . sorry, who is Vince?”
“Vince and Erin are backpackers. Vince is working for us for six months. He and Erin are living in the too-small cottage,” Mum tells me as she reaches into the fridge and withdraws a mixing bowl, covered in foil, and I know it will be full of cream she whipped earlier for the scones.
There are three worker’s cottages on the farm.
We visited this farm for some reason or another when I was five and I jokingly called them “too small, too big, just right” and those nicknames have stuck.
“Fiona and I are done here, Erin. I’ll help you carry this up to the boys at the shed. ”
And like that, I’m dismissed. I slip back into my car and turn down the driveway, back out to the main road and beyond that,
Wurimbirra.