The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2) (17 page)

Andrew topped up all four glasses for the ladies. It was the end of the day, and hosting this fun group he found himself more relaxed than he’d been in ages.

Stephanie appeared in the doorway and spoke in hushed tones, barely audible with the laughter filling the room. ‘I don’t mean to bother you, but your dad is here to see you.’

Andrew tensed. ‘Tell him to go home. I’m busy.’

A bit taken aback and blissfully unaware of the turning tides in the Bennett household, Stephanie did as she was asked. Andrew took out cellophane wrapping and some small cardboard trays ready for the women to take their truffles home. But when he turned round, there was Louis.

Andrew said nothing. He looked up at his father, across at the women and then down again as he separated four cardboard trays and pulled out the roll of Sellotape to fasten them once the truffles were safely inside.

Louis shuffled forwards in his slippers. Andrew glanced briefly at him, and in those few seconds noticed his father was paler than last time he’d seen him and looked as though he’d shrunk a good six inches. Or perhaps that was how Andrew saw him now he knew his dirty little secret.

‘What are you doing here?’ Andrew snapped. His voice was as quiet as he could manage.

Louis took a moment, steadied himself against the table Andrew was working behind.

Bella was at Louis’ side. ‘Let me get you a chair.’

Andrew was angry, but didn’t want to see his father fall. He nodded his thanks to a confused Bella, who pulled a chair over and then went back to the other women and her Prosecco.

‘I need you to talk to me, son.’

Andrew said nothing.

‘Andrew, you won’t talk to me. You won’t talk to Gemma. I understand you’re angry, but—’

‘No, you don’t,’ Andrew snapped. ‘You don’t get it, and you don’t get to come here, to my place of work, the one place I can get some sanity, and force me to talk to you.’

Andrew adopted a jovial tone, left his father sitting at the front of the room and handed out the four boxes with instructions to carefully lay the truffles inside so they could be wrapped to take home. ‘This is your party bag!’ he called out to the welcome delight of the women. The only woman who wasn’t so enthused was newcomer, Molly, who seemed more intent on watching the exchange between him and Louis.

‘Dad, go home,’ he told Louis as he separated out the sheets of cellophane. ‘This isn’t professional.’

Louis bowed his head. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’

Andrew nearly weakened. All his life they’d been close, they’d laughed, joked, batted out business strategies, talked chocolate and crazy concoctions late into the night over a bottle of wine. And he’d offered this man a kidney, a piece of him.

But he couldn’t do it. Or he wouldn’t. Even he didn’t know which answer was accurate any more.

‘Andrew, please, I’m begging you.’

‘For part of my body?’ Andrew’s voice was fierce and he knew the need to keep the volume down was the only thing stopping him from roaring.

‘I don’t care about the damn kidney.’ Louis’ breath became shallow. ‘I honestly don’t give two hoots about it. But I do care about you. I do care about this family. And even if you let this come between us, do not let it come between you and Gemma.’

‘You leave Gemma out of this. Now I’ve got work to do.’

He barely glanced at his father as Louis shuffled out of the workshop and through to the main shop. Instead he focused on showing the women how to wrap the box carefully in cellophane, then handed each a sheet and some ribbons. ‘Make it look as beautiful as the truffles,’ he said, unable to make eye contact with any of them.

Andrew zoned out of the chatter. His fun mood had gone the minute Louis stepped into the room, but he’d at least been reminded how none of this was Gemma’s fault. And he’d been a bastard to her, letting her bear the brunt of his withdrawn moods, letting her take Louis to each dialysis session. She’d shouldered the worry of everything, and he knew how wrong that was.

And Louis was right about one thing. He couldn’t let this come between him and his wife.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Molly

‘You should’ve seen the way he was with his own dad.’ Molly sat on the small, pale blue sofa running along the edge of the lounge room in the holiday cottage. She toyed with the conch shell on the coffee table beside her, smooth and pale on one side, spikier on the other. Ben sat on the deep blue rug on the floor.

‘I can’t believe you did a workshop with your birth father.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s insane.’

Molly smiled. ‘It was totally by accident.’ And she explained to Ben how he’d come into the shop and taken her by surprise when she was browsing. Lost for words, her eyes had zoned in on a sign in the window advertising chocolate-making workshops, and the words were out before she had a chance to think about it.

‘Imagine. The guy has no idea he helped his own daughter make chocolates.’ Ben shook his head in amazement.

Molly put down the shell and covered her eyes. ‘It was a stupid thing to do.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, I got to see Andrew Bennett in all his glory. Another lady told me there was some family argument going on, but she had no idea what it was about. But apparently the father, Louis, is on kidney dialysis, and he didn’t look well to me. How can anyone turn their back on family like that?

‘It makes me worry about how he’ll react to me.’ She smiled at Ben. ‘I was warned about this from the agency. I was warned I couldn’t predict his reaction.’

‘Are you regretting coming?’

She almost said yes. ‘Actually, no. This way I get to see him as a person right away, with no pretence, no airs or graces, no effort on his part to make me believe he’s a certain kind of man.’

‘I think you’re starting to panic.’ Ben sat forwards. ‘You can’t really believe you’ve got him all worked out, surely? From that small part of the day, you figure you know exactly who he is?’

‘I suppose you’ve got a point.’

He dug her playfully in the ribs, which coaxed a giggle. Maybe she was over-dramatising the day, but Ben hadn’t seen the look on Andrew’s face. The look hinted at a simmering anger, something she’d not seen on any member of her own family. When they’d fallen out there’d been shouting, plenty of it, but then the air was clear. When words were unspoken they brewed for too long, and there was no chance for rage and frustration to subside. It was tantamount to disaster for everyone involved.

Molly handed Ben a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and grabbed one for herself. ‘Apart from the run-in with Louis, he did seem nice.’ Maybe she was misjudging Andrew Bennett. Maybe he was the good guy, and the frail old man was really a bit of an arse.

‘“Nice” is a word I use to describe my mum’s new Volvo, “nice” is a word I say when my brother’s girlfriend talks about hosting weddings at Magnolia House. “Nice” isn’t a word to adequately describe the first meeting with your birth father.’

Molly sipped from her can. ‘Okay, so he was friendly. That better?’

‘Much. Try some more … use your adjectives.’ He grinned.

‘Okay,’ said Molly. ‘He was polite – to everyone apart from his father. He was thoughtful.’ She remembered him helping her brush on the right amount of gold lustre dust, tender in the way he used the brushstrokes, gentle in the way he handled the truffles. ‘He was charming too. Bella was batting her eyelids at him.’

‘I’d heard Bella was there. My brother works up at the fire station and she came in raving about her chocolate workshop.’

‘So that’s how you knew I’d gone there.’

‘Yup. You should’ve told me, if only for moral support afterwards. Tell me next time?’

‘I’m not sure I could go through it all over again.’ She lay down on the sofa, a hand over her eyes.

‘You flew ten thousand miles to get here, Molly. You
are
going to go through it again.’

Ben had brought homemade sandwiches over for lunch and handed one to Molly. They were huge doorstep wedges of fresh bread with tuna, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. He’d even added black pepper, and when she’d accused him of having his mum make them for him, he’d laughed and asked her how useless she thought he was.

When Ben headed to his shift at the hospital, Molly set off for a walk round the lake and down through the bushland bordering Magnolia House. She’d seen signs in town advertising the Easter Egg Hunt to be held here on Good Friday, the day she was due to leave, and it brought it home to her how little time she had left. She wondered how she’d feel by then, whether she’d be on good terms with the Bennetts or whether she’d run away from Magnolia Creek crying and screaming because it had all gone so horribly wrong.

Molly stepped over the roots of trees encroaching on the pathway – or was she encroaching on their territory? – and she walked down to where the path thinned. The sun shone brilliantly and gave the day its mild temperature. Autumn leaves littered the path, and she kicked through purples, yellows and golds, the rustly sounds of the season. She leant in to smell the creamy white spray of flowers on a fiddlewood tree. Its shiny, lush leaves showed no signs of dropping. She walked on further until the path opened out to an enormous field, the bush carrying on at the foot of it and up a hill the other side. It was hard to believe all this beauty sat less than two hours from the cosmopolitan lights of Melbourne.

When she turned to follow the white, worn wooden sign saying Main Street and rounded the base of the gum trees to follow a different path, she saw Louis, sitting on an enormous tree stump, which made him look tinier than he really was.

Molly scurried past and followed the path, slightly uphill. She didn’t stop until she knew she was out of sight, hidden by surrounding mountain ash trees, foliage dotting the bases of their trunks. She put a hand against her chest as the same feeling as yesterday threatened to overcome her. Ben wasn’t around to help her this time if she had another panic attack.

She rested against one of the trees. She shut her eyes, told herself to breathe, in and out, in and out, and eventually the feeling subsided and her chest relaxed. It still amazed her how she’d reacted to flying on the airplane without any of this panic, because in reality, the flight had been the easy part. She was about to move on, but curiosity got the better of her, and Molly turned and walked back towards Louis. She stuck to the edge of the track so he’d see her approach and she wouldn’t scare him.

‘Lovely day,’ she said when he looked up.

A smile reached his eyes. ‘It’s beautiful.’ He sounded more Australian than she’d expected when he dragged out the first syllable, and the ‘T’ came out more as a ‘D’, softened from his years out here. He’d been in the country more years than she’d been alive, but still she’d expected more of an English-sounding man.

‘Are you okay?’ She moved closer. He didn’t look well. Not well at all.

Despite his pallor, his eyes shone out of him as though there was still hope.

‘May I?’ Molly gestured to the tree stump big enough for a family of four, but she wasn’t sure whether this man – her biological grandfather – wanted company.

‘Go ahead.’

She listened to his breathing, the little catches every time it went in, every time it came out.

‘You were at the workshop yesterday,’ he said.

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m Louis.’

‘I know.’

He nodded his head, lips pressed together. ‘Yes, I suppose you do.’

They sat, side by side, looking out over the same area of bush.

‘What was the row about?’ she asked. The wind lifted her hair and when she shivered, goose bumps travelled up her arms.

‘It’s a long story.’ He coughed and Molly put a hand on his shoulder, to calm him she supposed. ‘My son is very angry with me.’ He smiled, kindly. ‘And you probably think you saw a strong, competent man being an arrogant bugger to his own father. Am I right?’

Molly nodded. ‘Well—’

‘It’s not as simple as that. Oh, he was being an arrogant bugger, but he has every right to be.’

‘Why?’

‘I did something, years ago.’ He stopped as though he’d suddenly remembered he was talking to a total stranger.

‘Was it really that bad?’ Molly asked. ‘What you did?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Oh, yes, it was bad.’

‘And he won’t forgive you?’

Louis shook his head. ‘Maybe in time.’ He looked out into the depth of the bush again, and after a while he changed the subject. ‘So what brings you to Magnolia Creek?’

‘I needed a holiday,’ she lied. Thankfully he didn’t add, ‘why here?’

He asked her where in England she was from, and they chatted about places they’d both visited, the beautiful English countryside, the differences between here and there.

Molly shivered again. ‘You should get home, it’s getting chilly. Come on, I’ll walk with you. I’m staying up at the cottages.’

‘No, I’m fine here.’

‘No you’re not.’ She glanced down at his slippers, but didn’t want him to know how vulnerable she thought he looked.

If she didn’t think the shock could kill him, she’d tell Louis who she was, but one step at a time.

She held out her arm.

‘You’re very kind, taking pity on an old man like this.’ Louis took her arm as they walked slowly up the path to Main Street.

‘You shouldn’t go walking down there on your own alone,’ Molly admonished. ‘If you fell, you could be there for hours before anyone realised, and with the weather getting chillier—’

‘You sound like my daughter-in-law.’

Molly smiled. She’d met Gemma and liked her. In fact, it seemed she liked everyone she’d met so far, and the only person she had doubts about was the one she was really here to meet.