Lyrebird Hill (44 page)

Please, not Owen. Not my gentle little Owen who swam naked in the river like a fish and blushed crimson when the clan girls teased him. Not the little boy who clung to my father like a shadow and tripped us all up in his eagerness to be loved. Not Owen . . . please, please – not my dear Owen.

In a box under my bed I found the revolver Aunt Ida had given me, and a carton of brass cartridges. The weapon was heavy. It took forever for me to find the catch that hinged open the
frame. The cylinder had been cleaned and oiled, and the shells slid easily into their hollows.

Downstairs in the yard, I placed a row of pinecones along the fence. Walking back twenty paces, trembling hard, I wasted a full chamber of rounds to shatter only two pinecones. Reloading the gun, I slowed my pace. Breathing deeply, I took control of my tremors. And instead of seeing pinecones, I envisioned my husband’s face.

Six shots rang out, and six times his countenance shattered to dust. When my shells were spent, I returned to the house. Upstairs in my room, I wrapped the pistol in burlap and secreted it in the false lining of my travelling trunk, covering it with clothes. As I was packing it, I found the pouch of wolfsbane flowers I had picked that day in the glade. The deadly blossoms were withered now, and would crumble easily to powder. I slipped them into my pocket, and then stood in the dimness, hugging my arms, breathing the scent of wildflowers and perspiration-stale clothes and gunpowder, as I planned my return to Brayer House.

Belief in limitation breeds unhappiness.

– ROB THISTLETON,
EMOTIONAL RESCUE

Ruby, May 2013

A
few days after my ordeal on the rocks, Pete drove me into Armidale to have my ankle checked by the doctor. The swelling had mostly gone down, but Pete was insistent.

‘Just in case,’ he told me. ‘Besides, I’m going in anyway, I’ve got a delivery of seedlings to make to the Landcare group’s nursery. And,’ he added with a grin, ‘I’m becoming quite addicted to your company.’

I rolled my eyes, but was secretly pleased.

‘Hey, I’m serious,’ Pete insisted. ‘I’m hooked, Ruby . . . and and so are the kelpies.’

I glanced over my shoulder at the cab window. Sure enough, two pointy brown and tan faces with lolling tongues were gazing raptly back at me. A few weeks ago, I would have shuddered at the sight; but a funny thing was happening. I was moving through tolerance, and into the first shallow waters of acceptance.

And I had the sneaking suspicion that they knew this. Lately, both dogs had turned deaf to Pete’s commands to leave
me alone; they followed me wherever I went, flopped beside me when I sat on the verandah, and gazed, besotted, up at me when I reached towards them to tickle the tips of my fingers over their silky ears. I hadn’t quite progressed to rolling on the ground and cuddling them – as Pete often did – but it was a start.

Half an hour later we drove through Clearwater and my phone made a succession of chirps. I checked the register and found eleven missed calls; two were an unknown number, the rest were from Rob. I deleted them all, glad I’d been out of range. Which was why, when we reached the Armidale town limits and my phone began to warble, I was reluctant to answer.

‘Hello?’

‘Is that Ruby Cardel?’ a woman asked. ‘We’ve been trying to contact you for several days. My name’s Anne Arding, from New England Solicitors. I was hoping to arrange an appointment with you to discuss a matter regarding the estate of Esther Hillard. How soon can you be available to come in?’

I did an internal double take: Esther’s estate? My good mood plunged. Had someone complained about me staying at Lyrebird Hill, a long lost family member who had somehow gotten wind of my extended visit?

‘I’m in Armidale now, if today suits you?’

We agreed on a time, and Anne explained how to find her office. I hung up, and slumped.

‘I think I’m in trouble,’ I told Pete.

‘I couldn’t help overhearing,’ he replied, and a secretive little smile touched his lips. ‘Was that Esther’s solicitor?’

‘She wants to see me.’ I looked at him worriedly. ‘Can someone get sued for overstaying their welcome?’

‘That depends.’

His serious tone made me look at him more closely. He was studying me, not exactly smiling, but there was a hint there, as if he was on the brink of a laugh.

‘What?’ I asked.

The laugh finally erupted. Suddenly Pete was all teeth and twinkling sapphire eyes, and a merry gaze that locked onto mine – and even though I clung fiercely to my annoyance, I felt the quiver of a smile take hold, and then the bubbling urge to laugh along with him. How did he do that?

Pete leaned back in his seat. ‘I hope she’s left you something amazing.’

A flush of warmth filled me, but as I made my way along Rusden Street in the direction of the solicitor’s office, the anxiety oozed back. I hoped Pete was right. I remembered the book Esther had mentioned to me that night in the gallery, and how she had insisted it belonged to me. It wasn’t Jamie’s diary, because that had gone into the ashes years ago; but it could be an old volume of fairytales, which – considering the memories that had been trickling back in the past weeks – would have been a most welcome memento of Granny H.

The solicitor’s office was in the central mall, an old building with an echoey foyer that led upstairs into a tiny cluttered room.

The solicitor, Anne, got straight to the point.

‘Esther has named you in her will to receive her farmhouse and the surrounding three thousand acres of land known as Lyrebird Hill.’

I hovered on the edge of a heartbeat, hardly daring to breathe. When I found my voice, I blurted, ‘But I hardly knew her.’

Anne smiled warmly. ‘When my associates witnessed this will, Esther explained that you had lived at Lyrebird Hill as a child, and that you’d been neighbours. She said she was fond of you, and since she had no other relatives, she wanted the property to go to you. There’s also this.’

Taking a paper-wrapped parcel from her drawer, she passed it across the desk to me.

It was a book.

While I sat stunned, Anne explained that probate would take a month, after which time the deeds and related documents
would transfer to me. She would then send me a letter when the documents and spare keys were ready for pick-up.

I thought I’d better come clean about my extended stay at the property, in case it impacted the legals, but Anne reassured me that since I was there at Esther’s invitation, and there were no living relatives to question my presence, she could see no reason why I shouldn’t continue to stay on.

I left the office in a daze, stumbling along the street to where Pete’s Holden waited. I got into the car and sat silently, hugging myself as I stared through the windscreen.

‘Are you okay?’ Pete wanted to know. ‘You seem a bit out of it.’

I held aloft my parcel. ‘Esther gave me a book.’

‘That’s great,’ he said, frowning. ‘What else happened in there?’

‘She also left me the farm. I barely knew her, and she left me a three-thousand-acre property.’

Pete blinked, then broke into the giddiest smile I’d seen so far. He let out a delighted howl, which inspired the dogs into a barking frenzy.

‘I knew it, bless her,’ he declared, thumping his palm on the steering wheel. ‘Oh the darling old girl, if she was here now I’d give her one of my famous bear hugs.’

‘You seem pleased.’

He beamed. ‘Of
course
I’m pleased.’

My brain was still trying to untangle the complicated idea that in a month’s time Lyrebird Hill would belong to me. I looked at Pete with his wild dark hair, and the blue gaze now fixed steadily to mine. He and Esther had been close, and Pete had always been there to help her. I felt a rush of protectiveness for him.

‘Of all people, I would have thought she’d leave the farm to you.’

He shrugged, and hammed up the wide-eyed puzzlement. ‘I’ve got my own farm.’

‘But . . . she should have left you
something
.’

‘She did.’

Clearly, I’d slept through the part about Pete’s inheritance. I frowned and shook my head, mystified. ‘What are you talking about?’

He grinned, buckling on his seatbelt, and leaning towards me so his face was a handspan from mine; his eyes crinkled at the edges and gleamed like gemstones.

‘Ah, Roo,’ he said in a softer voice. ‘It’ll be just like the old days, only better. We’re going to be neighbours.’

It wasn’t just any old book in Esther’s parcel, it was a large leather-bound journal.

And not just any old journal. It had been written by my great-grandmother, Brenna Whitby, recording events that had occurred between March 1898 and her imprisonment in August that same year.

The book was full of beautifully detailed botanical paintings. They were clearly rendered by the same hand that had decorated the letter to my grandfather as a baby. Native orchids, ferns, gumnuts and blossoms – all accompanied by notes about their medicinal uses.

But most intriguing were Brenna’s personal entries.

It is dawn,
she had written towards the end of the book.
I am sitting on a blackened scar of land. Tears stream down my cheeks as I write, splashing onto my words and making the ink bleed. Once, a humble dwelling occupied the patch of bare dirt where I now sit. But the people who lived here are gone, their ashes swept away by the wind. I searched for them all day yesterday, and late into the night. But they are gone.

From the moment we got back to Lyrebird Hill, I immersed myself in Brenna’s world. As her story unfolded – as the pages turned, and as I became more entangled in the web of mystery
surrounding Brayer House and the shadow it had once cast over Brenna’s family – I found myself desperately hoping that she had been innocent. I wanted to know the truth – but I wanted it to be a truth that led to redemption, and not one that marked her as a murderer.

But as I reached the journal’s last pages, I couldn’t help feeling disheartened.

I could understand Brenna’s grief, and how it had driven her over the dark brink of endurance. But still, the question shadowed my mind. Was I like Brenna, after all? Did the potential for murder lie buried in me, just as it had in her?

‘This calls for a celebration,’ Pete declared, as we sat on the verandah later that afternoon. ‘I’ll fire up the barbie, and we can relax with a glass of wine or three and bliss out under the stars. What do you say, Ruby?’

‘I say,
absolutely
.’ I tried to smile, tried to force up a festive mood – but I was still feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of Esther’s bequest and the uncertainty inspired by Brenna’s journal. I gazed across the rambling disorder of the garden, and down the slope to the river. Through the grove of casuarinas, I could see the water babbling over the stones, and kingfishers swooping for insects, and above it all, an endless vista of blue sky.

‘I’m still wondering,’ I told Pete. ‘Why me?’

He reached for my hand and gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. ‘Esther liked you, she used to talk about you a lot. Maybe she thought you deserved a break. You know, after your sister.’