The Vet from Snowy River by Stella Quinn

CHAPTER

33

The Friday in November on which she was to farewell her aunt brought with it a bleak, grey-skied afternoon, and rain had darkened the granite of the old headstones scattered about the cemetery. Overhead, leaves shivered in the breeze, and Vera gathered her coat about her. This was all so wrong.

Jill had loved colour, and sunshine, and fun. Not drooping flowers, and grass running with rivulets of mud. The coffin she could barely recall choosing spilled dull sheets of water as it was lowered into the hole in the ground.

Marigold had organised everything, from holding Vera’s hand while she sat by Jill to say goodbye, to bossing around everyone at the funeral home and announcing herself celebrant of the service.

Vera had just … stopped. Everything, every goal she’d pursued since leaving the city, had hinged on Jill being alive.

Finding a new and peaceful aged care home for Jill: that had brought her to the Snowy River district. The need to find a way to earn income if she lost her case and was incarcerated? That goal had resulted in her opening a café in Hanrahan, hiring a manager who could run it in her absence, making enough profit to employ a replacement cook, and working dawn to dusk to make it all happen.

And the other goal … the secret that had been at the heart of every decision she’d made except for that mad, foolish, night with Josh … was to never get hurt again.

She’d screwed up, and now Jill was gone, and what did all her plans matter now?

She was like a knife with no blade, an oven with no heat. The only thing tethering her to the world was a criminal charge that she felt too exhausted to fight.

‘May your passage be swift,’ said Marigold, addressing the mourners who lingered in the rain.

Graeme had come, his partner Alex by his side in full fireman’s uniform. The café was shut. Baking, usually her go-to solace for every malady, had been more than she could face.

Kev stood by his wife, dapper in a corduroy cloth cap and suede coat, holding a misshapen orange golf umbrella over his wife’s head.

Mr Juggins was there, and Wendy from Connolly House; Sandy, the vet clinic receptionist, who she barely knew other than the fact she ordered a take home box of raspberry jam donuts every Friday for her sons’ afternoon tea. The woman who ran the op shop, the couple from the cinema who’d been so happy to promote a dinner and movie deal, and half a dozen faces from the weekly craft group all stood, solemn faced, by her aunt’s graveside.

They’d come, so many of them.

Marigold had volunteered the community hall for a cup of tea after the funeral, its doors now open to the public once more, and Vera had shaken her head. ‘There’s no need, really,’ she’d said. ‘Jill was a stranger here.’

‘Funerals are for those of us that are left behind,’ Marigold had said firmly. ‘Not for the departed.’

She still hadn’t thought a service was necessary. She wasn’t a local. And, after the notoriety of having her private shame splashed all over the community page of the Snowy River Star, she wouldn’t have been surprised if nobody showed up: to the funeral, or to darken the doorstep of her café ever again.

Her gaze wandered of its own volition over to Josh, who had turned up at her café and apartment more than once, only to be met with her stony silence.

She should never have slept with him. He’d been open and honest and asked her for her assurance that them being together was the beginning of something more … but her courage had failed. She’d scratched her way out of the mess she’d made of her last relationship with her self-esteem in tatters. She’d done it once, and it had broken her.

She couldn’t risk that again. She was a woman who made dumb choices, and he was better off finding a decent woman to hold in his arms on moonlit nights.

Not her.

She’d never seen him in a suit before. The coal black cloth, the white shirt … his hair combed so neatly it could have been cartoon hair, if cartoon did sexy. His face was drawn, though, and held none of the easy smile she’d grown so used to seeing.

He could have been a stranger, in that outfit, with that remote expression … but then, when she looked at herself in the mirror, was there not a stranger standing there, too? A chicken-hearted woman who’d had the stuffing plucked out of her.

Jill, she realised on a sob, would not recognise this pathetic worm of a woman she’d become, either.

‘May you know wholeness and peace,’ said Marigold, in a deep calm voice.

Oh, how she wished that for Jill. Her eyes burned with the simple truth of Marigold’s words. Wasn’t that the most anyone could wish for?

‘And now, our Vera is going to say a few words.’

It wasn’t until a dozen sets of eyes were looking at her expectantly that Marigold’s words sunk in. She sent the celebrant a speaking look, which was ignored.

‘We’ve not known our Vera long,’ Marigold continued, ‘and sad to say, we didn’t get a chance to know Jill De Rossi, but we would have liked to. Come now, Vera. Tell us a little something about your aunt. It’s just us and the gum trees here.’

Vera bit her lip. She felt a hand pat her back, just briefly, one quick touch of support from Graeme.

She dragged her eyes away from the rain-drenched coffin. She used to wield words to make a living … surely she could find the right words now for dear Jill.

She moved forward a step and was surprised to see Poppy standing tucked into her father’s side. Her hair was tied back in a braid, there was none of her usual eyeliner framing her eyes, and she wore a prim, old-fashioned dress that a librarian might have worn back before librarians became funky.

Poppy had tears on her cheeks, but managed to give Vera a little smile, and the sweetness of it caught at Vera’s breath. Her eyes dropped to Poppy’s feet, and there they were, those disreputable boots, and their incongruity with the dress pierced the hold she had over her emotions.

Jill would have adored Poppy. She took a deep breath as a memory she could share popped into her head.

‘There is a De Rossi family story,’ she began, ‘that when Jill was about thirteen, she told her parents, my grandparents, that she was never going to have children. Instead, she was going to be the cool, rebel auntie.

‘She was definitely a rebel. She was older than my mother, who predeceased her by nearly two decades, but she never let age stand in the way of her love of adventure. Camel trekking in the Northern Territory. Hot air ballooning over Kangaroo Island and getting blown out over the Southern Ocean. Jill could knit a tea cosy and change a spark plug in an outboard motor before breakfast.

‘But if there was one thing she loved more than adventure, it was cooking. She passed that love on to me, and …’ She paused and waited for the squeeze in her throat to ease. ‘Jill wasn’t demonstrative. She didn’t hug and pet and kiss, but she showed me she loved me when she taught me how to bake a crème caramel. Toasting coconut under a grill to sprinkle over hummingbird cake? I love you, Vera. Buttermilk pancakes with a vanilla pod scraped into the batter? I care for you, Vera. She deserved the world and she got it, mostly.’

Mostly. Until those corporate sharks in charge of the staff-to-patient ratio at Acacia View eroded her dignity.

She dragged herself back from the bitter edge. These kind people here weren’t part of that, and Connolly House had been a haven of kindness there at the end of Jill’s life. ‘I think you all would have adored my Aunt Jill. I know I did. And she really was the coolest auntie ever.’

She hesitated. Glanced at Marigold, who gave her a smile then swept her arms up so the sleeves of her apricot caftan billowed like parrot wings.

‘Go in peace,’ said Marigold.

Vera’s mumbled go in peace was drowned out by the sound of sods of earth being shovelled down upon the coffin.

Poppy threw her arms around her neck and gave her the hug she hadn’t known she needed.

‘I’m so sorry about your aunt, Vera.’

‘Thanks, Poppy. It means a lot to me that you’re here.’

‘Dad told me and asked me if I’d be okay with ditching school for a couple of days which, you know, was no biggie.’

Vera was so pleased to have a reason to smile. ‘That was a noble sacrifice.’

The girl tucked her hand in hers. ‘I’m glad I’m here … especially now I can see you don’t have any family with you today.’

She gave Poppy’s hand a squeeze. ‘I’m glad too. But the no family thing? I’m used to it.’

‘Parents?’

She shook her head. ‘My mum died when I was a teenager.’

‘But, your dad? Cousins? Step-siblings?’

She shrugged. ‘I was an only child, and Jill never had children. My dad and my mum weren’t married. She met him on a trip to Italy to visit the region her parents had emigrated from. He never made it to Australia. Jill always said it started out like a romance movie but ended like a really bad cliché.’

‘Wow. He never visited you? I’ll never understand that.’

She smiled. ‘Yeah, but that’s because you have your dad wrapped around your little finger.’

‘Speaking of … hey, Dad, can you come and hold your brolly over Vera? I’m going to run ahead. I promised to help Kev with the hot water urn.’

Vera took a quick breath as Josh stepped up beside her. She had to say something to him, but what?

She started with the least important but easiest to find words. ‘I’m sorry about that article in the paper, Josh, that dragged you into my mess. I know how you dislike being the subject of gossip, and now I’ve given the people of Hanrahan something else to wonder about.’

She could feel him looking down at her.

‘Gossip stopped bothering me long ago,’ he said quietly. ‘I just don’t like it when it affects the people I care about.’

Her boots crunch-crunched on the wet gravel as she walked, the silence between them stretched tauter than an elastic band. He wanted her to say she cared about him too, she could feel it. He wanted to know why she’d promised him that this thing between them, this heat and need and rush meant something, but then pushed him away.

She should have tried to explain days ago—visited the surgery, knocked on the front door of the Hanrahan Pub until she found which room he was in. And if she’d known what she wanted to say, maybe she would have. Instead she’d cloistered herself away with her cat and the hot mess of quilting fabric that made her feel guilty every time she looked at it.

Her head was a mess, her thoughts clogged up together like gunk in a grease trap. How could she explain the bleakness she was feeling to someone else when she couldn’t explain it to herself?

Don’t let your guilt get in the way of your life,Marigold had said to her once. She glanced over her shoulder, to where smooth earth now covered her aunt’s grave. She’d not been ready to hear that advice. Marigold had been a benevolent stranger then, not the accidental friend she’d since become.

Grass would grow like billyo over that new earth after this spring rain had passed. Cicadas would sing nearby on long summer evenings, leaves would skitter past in autumn, and southern stars would wheel overhead. And her aunt would be resting for eternity in Hanrahan.

This was, she thought on a rush, a tether. The funeral service was doing more than farewelling Jill, it was also connecting Vera to the community here in a way that couldn’t be broken.

She looked ahead of her up the path, to where people she knew—people she’d grown to care for—were shaking rain off their coats and bundling indoors into the historic stone cottage that marked a chapter in Hanrahan’s past.

Her footsteps faltered. She had a choice, she just had to make it. Did she really want to be trapped in this rain-dreary moment while the world spun on without her?

No. She’d let worry and despair drag her down long enough. She couldn’t add grief to the burden. This was her day to choose to accept a little of what Josh, and Marigold, and Graeme—even that pesky grey cat that had adopted her—had been offering.

Friendship. Belonging. Love.

Josh must have felt he’d waited long enough, because he broke the silence. ‘Poppy’s just down for the weekend, but when the school year ends in December she’ll be here for most of the six-week break.’

‘You must be happy about that.’

‘Yep.’

‘Josh, I—’

‘Listen, Vera—’ His voice was low, and he stood to the side so the other mourners could bypass them and head up the wooden steps into the community hall. They were alone now.

‘You first,’ she said.

‘I’m not going to pressure you anymore about seeing me. You’ve made it clear I’m not what you need right now, and I respect your decision. I just hope this—you and me thing, whatever it is or isn’t—won’t affect Poppy in any way. She loved working at the café, and I’d love it if she could keep doing that when she’s here. There will be zero awkwardness from me, I promise.’

What? Josh was done with her?

‘But I adore Poppy!’ she stuttered out. I adore you, too. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but the screech of tyres on the wet road nearby drew her gaze away from Josh’s face. A navy sedan slid into a car park. Out of it, looking as neat and pinstriped as a Bunda Street banker, stepped Aaron Finch.