Burnt (4 page)

His father came out and sat in his favourite place in the sun at the end of the plastic outdoor setting. After Seb had left home, his parents had enclosed the side of the verandah and turned it into a sunroom. In winter, it caught the sun and was the warmest part of the house. His father seemed to spend the majority of each day out here, reading and doing crossword puzzles.

After that first night, Seb had gone through the house and discreetly disposed of every bottle of liquor he'd come across, but there didn't seem to be any reaction from his father. The old bugger obviously had a stash somewhere, so Seb's next avenue would be the machinery sheds, and he'd do it in a grid search, centimetre by bloody centimetre, as soon as he got the chance.

‘Dad, I've been thinking about a new venture.'

His father stopped reading the paper and looked at him warily.

‘Have you heard much about wind turbines?'

‘Can't say I have,' Angus said slowly.

‘I've been looking into them as a bit of a business venture – a retirement fund of sorts. They need wind to make them work effectively and the high country we have on the farm would be ideal. There's not much upkeep – we don't have to feed them, grow them or worry about drought.'

His father sat there and considered him silently. Seb pushed the booklet he'd been looking through across the table. ‘Have a read and see what you think. I want to lease the land from you to run them. I need to invest some money I've had put away in something that will work for me, so I'm prepared to fund it all. You wouldn't need to pay for anything. You just keep your eye on it, and sit back and watch it generate money.'

‘Sounds like you've thought it all through.'

Seb gave a half-grin, before taking a sip of his coffee. ‘There's a lot of down time and waiting on the job – sometimes gives you way too much time to think.'

‘You're like your mother. She was always the financial guru around the place – always coming up with new ideas of how to make money.'

Seb watched his father, catching a glimpse of the loneliness he'd been living with for the last few years. ‘Well, have a read and see what you think. No hurry, looks like I'll be here a while.'

Gathering the determination and mental discipline he'd developed over the years in order to get him through his training and the work he did, he went into the yard to continue cleaning up. There were more bushes to tame into a respectable height and enough weeding to keep him occupied for the rest of the day. Tomorrow he planned on tinkering with the tractor and starting on some slashing.

The shadows from the thick trees lining the side of the road flickered in a dazzling, almost blinding glare as Rebecca drove through them. She breathed a sigh of relief as the long stretch of road ended and she came into sunlight once more.

God – how long had it been since she'd driven out here? Something tightened in her stomach as the answer came back to her as clear as though she'd spoken it out loud.

Eighteen years.

She tried to block the growing despair that seemed to claw its way up her throat and into her head. Around the corner and over the bridge … She turned up the volume on the CD and hoped that Beccy Cole would blast the demons from her memory. She needed to make this trip. Fixing her eyes determinedly on the horizon, she refused to allow her gaze to drift to the gully on the side of the road and acknowledge its presence.

A couple of days earlier, Rebecca had done a quick search of the files – as had become her usual practice – to check that Seb had been coming in to have his dressings changed. She'd tried not to feel hurt that he planned his visits around the times she wasn't rostered on. The first time it had stung, so had the few times after that, but she'd come to accept that he clearly didn't want any further contact with her. The files had revealed that it had been a few days since his last visit and although she'd replaced the chart and got on with her work, all day a niggling concern had bothered her. She'd tried to convince herself that he was a grown man and was more than capable of taking care of himself, but his absence had continued to bug her – so much so that she'd decided to give him one more day and if he hadn't come in by the end of her next shift, she'd take matters into her own hands.

When she'd opened the chart yesterday, she hadn't been sure if she were holding her breath in fear or relief.

Now, as she drove, she let her mind empty of anything but the music and sang along loudly, then began keeping her eye out for the turnoff to the Taylor property.

When she reached it, she crept slowly down the long driveway, careful to stay in low gear and take it easy. The once well-tended driveway was peppered with pot holes and the edges had been eroded by heavy rain over the last few years.

At the bottom of the drive, two kelpies jumped and barked around her car as she opened the door. They weren't snarling and aggressive, so she ignored them and grabbed the tackle box of equipment she'd packed at work.

Seb's father was walking towards her and she summoned a smile. ‘Hello, Mr Taylor.' When she noticed his puzzled expression, she realised he didn't recognise her. ‘It's Rebecca Whiteman. I used to be Seb's … friend,' she finished lamely.

At the mention of her name, his hand paused as it moved to push open the gate in the fence that surrounded the yard. Her breath caught at the flash of emotion that flooded his face. Inside, she gave a tired sigh; it still hurt to have her name associated with so much pain. Since coming home, she'd taken to introducing herself with her married name – resorting only to her maiden name when she met people who apparently knew her face but couldn't place her surname. It felt less weird to stay anonymous.

‘Rebecca, it's been a long time,' Angus finally said, his gaze searching her face, probably trying to find the eighteen-year-old beneath the thirty-six year-old's face, with its crow's feet starting around the eyes.

Rebecca swallowed despite her constricting throat. ‘Yes, it has.'

‘I guess you're here to visit with Seb?' he asked. ‘
I
certainly don't get good-looking sheilas coming out to visit me.' A small twinkle shone in his hazel eyes, so very much like his son's.

Rebecca smiled and shook her head. ‘Actually, I'm not here to visit him, I'm here to change his dressings. He hasn't been coming in to the hospital to get them done lately, so I thought I'd better come out and check up on him.'

‘Ah.' He nodded wisely, the twinkle only getting brighter. ‘A business visit, then. Who says our hospital system is on the brink of collapse? You do a lot of these special visits as a rule?'

She gave him a level stare. ‘I take my patients' welfare seriously. Especially stubborn, mule-headed army jocks who refuse to keep their appointments.' She smiled.

Seb's father chuckled gently. ‘You still seem to have him pretty well worked out.'

Her smile slipped a little, but she walked through the gate as he held it open for her.

‘Come on in and have a cuppa, he's down takin' a look at the pump. He'll be back soon.'

The house had become more of a man's domain than a woman's. It still had doilies under photos on the china cabinet and pot plants scattered around, but the photos were dusty and the plants limp and neglected. Newspapers and copies of
National Geographic
were piled around the room, left where Angus had been sitting last. Seb's mother would never have let it get to this state.

She watched Angus get two cups down from the cupboard and noticed his slow movements. He'd aged a lot since she'd last seen him. Rebecca knew his wife's death would have been a terrible blow – she could remember them sharing the odd peck on the cheek as they passed each other in the kitchen, and when they were in town he always put an arm around her when they crossed the street. They were the little touches that hinted at the genuine love and respect they'd had for one another. There was a lot she remembered about this family … Once upon a time, she'd been a regular visitor – almost one of them.

From her seat on the barstool at the kitchen bench she saw him struggling with the coffee lid before turning away to search through the kitchen draw for something. She calmly reached over to pick up the spoon and popped the metal lid from the tin. ‘Do you have sugar and milk, Mr Taylor?' she asked, spooning the coffee granules into the cups without causing a fuss. She didn't want to draw attention to the fact that she'd seen his hands shaking and the difficulty he was having with dexterity. He seemed grateful she'd taken over, bringing her the milk from the fridge.

‘How have you been, anyway?' she asked casually, as she placed his cup in front of him.

‘Not too bad, but the old hands aren't as nimble as they once were,' he said, acknowledging the unspoken concern in her eyes. ‘Still kickin' though, so that's something, I suppose.'

The sound of a car pulling up outside drew their gazes to the sliding glass door in time to see Seb climbing out of his four-wheel drive. She saw him give her car a once-over as he walked past, pushing the gate open without missing a step.

Rebecca felt her pulse do a funny little start-and-stop dance as he got closer, and took a calming breath just before he opened the door.

He stopped in the doorway as she caught his eye and she thought he was going to turn and walk away, but he just sent her a hard stare before walking inside.

‘Look who's dropped by for a visit, son,' his father said, eyeing Seb's reaction carefully.

Rebecca dragged up a smile and kept her gaze on his unwaveringly. ‘Hello, Seb. Actually, this isn't a social call. I noticed on your chart that you hadn't been in lately to have your dressings changed, so I thought I'd –'

‘Come out and check up on me?' he interrupted in a toneless voice.

She lifted an eyebrow and gave a small smile. ‘Something like that.'

‘Long way for a house call,' he said, going to the fridge for a can of soft drink, then cracking it open and tossing the tab in the sink.

‘Not for around here.' Which was true: the number of remote farms and small places allied health services in areas like Macksville routinely visited was sometimes hard for the larger metropolitan health areas to fathom.

‘I don't need to come in as often. So this was a wasted visit.'

‘I'd feel better if I could take a look and make sure.'

‘You know, I've trained as a medic. I probably know as much – if not more – about all this as you do,' he said quietly, watching her with a condescending expression.

‘Then you should have known better than to stop coming in for your dressings to be changed,' she snapped.

‘Just let her take a look, son. She's made the effort to come out here, it's the least you can do. I can hear my crossword calling me.' Angus excused himself to take his coffee out onto the verandah.

Rebecca continued to hold Seb's stare, refusing to give in to his less-than-thrilled glare. ‘It'll just take a minute,' she continued, hitching her eyebrow expectantly at him, daring him to say no.

Muttering under his breath, he came around the kitchen bench and took a seat at the table where she'd left her box of supplies. She noticed he had a T-shirt on today, which was going to be a bit harder to remove.

‘I ran out of button-up shirts,' he said, obviously noticing the way she had been silently deciding on the best way to tackle the problem.

‘Must have been rather interesting getting this on earlier,' she said, placing her hands on the hem of the soft material at his waist and carefully lifting it up over his arms.

Centimetre by painful centimetre, his chest was revealed – but she kept her attention fixed firmly on the bandage stuck haphazardly over the side of his torso. ‘Glad that medic training paid off for you … interesting technique you got going here.' Her dry tone caused a disgruntled frown to cross his face.

‘Yeah, well it's a little hard to reach on your own,' he growled in self-defence.

‘Hence why we told you to keep coming in to get it changed.'
Honestly – men!

Rebecca looked through her equipment and collected what she needed. Satisfied she had everything, she crossed to the sink and washed her hands.

As usual, Seb sat in stony silence – something she knew was his way of coping with pain. Under the clumsily applied bandages, his wounds were healing nicely and were in much better condition than the first time she'd seen them. She worked quickly and efficiently, trying to cause a minimal amount of discomfort.

‘So why'd you really come out?' he asked as she began to pack up.

‘Because I have a feeling if it weren't for me working at the hospital, you'd probably be coming in like you were supposed to. I didn't want your relapse on my conscience.'

He flashed a brief grin – sarcastic as it was, it was still potent enough to make her breath freeze in her chest.

‘Well, you can rest easy, Florence Nightingale; it's not because of you. It's a pain in the arse driving all the way in every day – and it's healing just fine.'

‘Is that why you rang up to check what shifts I was rostered on after that first visit?' she said casually.

He didn't bother denying it, but he couldn't meet her gaze, either. ‘You don't have to bother coming back out,' he told her stiffly.

‘Then make sure you come into the hospital and I won't have to.'
Ungrateful jerk.

As the silence lengthened, she bit back a tired sigh. She didn't like conflict, so she tried for a less aggressive approach. ‘So what's it like being back?' she ventured as she gathered her belongings together.

‘Like I've woken up in a bad dream.'

She lifted her eyes to meet his, a smile of commiseration coming automatically. ‘I feel like I've gone back in time and I'm about fifteen all over again. The only thing missing while we were with Mum and Dad was the curfew.'