The House at the Bottom of the Hill (30 page)

Charlotte studied her guest. His rugged features, the sparking light in his watery blue eyes and the way he held himself. Old, yes. Decrepit? No. This strong man had lived fully, had given his energies to those around him, whether family or neighbours. This man didn’t need to look for friendships, he could hold his own without them and that was the characteristic that made him so compelling. His safe, almost stately personality brought people to his side and made them listen to his quiet instruction. People wanted to hear his wise words. And Charlotte wanted to hear how she could colour her heart.

‘Got a few things that need doing, Charlotte, and I need your help.’

‘At your farm?’

‘No. I won’t be going back to the farmhouse.’

‘Why not?’

Grandy leaned over the arm of his rocking chair and took hold of Charlotte’s hand. ‘There’s a folder in the desk drawer in the back bedroom.’ He pulled a small key out of a fob-watch pocket on his waistcoat. ‘Give this to Ethan and Junior. Tell them everything they need to know about the legal stuff is in that folder.’

Charlotte took the key. ‘What legal stuff? Are you going to sell your farm?’

‘I’ll be leaving it, that’s for sure.’ He smiled at her, his tanned face creased and consideration sparkling in his eyes. ‘’Bout time too. I need to be somewhere else. Just like you do.’

Was he saying he thought she needed to leave town too? There were lessons in his eyes and Charlotte wanted to be taught. She suspected he’d been born a teacher and over time, with many experiences, he’d become a professor. One that stood in front of the blackboard of life and chalked up notable recommendations for all to read, if the lesson was necessary. She’d kept the child she’d been at a wary distance since the terrible event in her past, but she had a suspicion Grandy saw the little girl still hiding inside her.

He nodded at the key in Charlotte’s hand. ‘Got three boys. Didn’t know that, did you?’

Charlotte breathed deeply and brought her attention back to what he was telling her. He had his son, Junior, here in town and a son in Victoria—a farmer, Mrs Tam had said. She hadn’t heard of another son.

‘My boys won’t fight when they find out. It’s my girls I’m worried about. They won’t take kindly to the news.’

‘What news?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Totally independent from me, my girls. Have been for years. I got this hope they still have brains enough to recognise that what happened, happened and what is, is.’ Grandy looked over at Charlotte and patted her hand. ‘Go talk to Ethan, Charley Red. That’s why you’re here, ain’t it?’

A chill crept over Charlotte’s shoulders and down her spine. ‘You know why I’m here.’

‘Been expecting you for years, but I guess you had your life to live in England first.’

‘How do you know?’
What
did he know?

‘O’Donnell,’ he said, his tone roughened with disgust.

Dan pulled into the driveway at Ethan and Sammy’s homestead, taking the curve faster than he should. He’d been up all night, thinking, rearranging the puzzles in his head, getting nowhere. If he wanted to keep Charlotte in town, he was out of time for second-guessing. He needed answers.

Charlotte was in Swallow’s Fall to search for O’Donnell, she had to be. O’Donnell had lived here at some point. Dan had never heard of the man, but there was only one house on Burra Burra Lane and Ethan had been born in that house, had grown up in that house, and now lived it in with his family.

Gravel spat and crunched as he brought the car to a skidding halt outside the house. He slammed the car door, jumped the steps, made his way along the veranda to thump on the open front door. He pushed it wide and walked through. ‘Ethan!’

‘You’ve kicked up gravel in my driveway,’ Ethan said, coming out of the kitchen, a tea towel in his hands as though he’d been washing the breakfast dishes. ‘What’s up?’

‘Hi,’ Sammy said as she stepped out of the dining room. ‘What are you doing here so early? Is everything okay?’

Dan looked from one to the other and hoped to God he wasn’t going to be poking sticks in old wounds by mentioning Charlotte’s history. He nodded a sort of apology before speaking to Ethan. ‘I need to talk to you about Charlotte. About you … and about some guy called O’Donnell. He used to live here, in your house.’

Ethan stilled quickly, his stance the same except for the response in his eyes—stony, cold. ‘You don’t mention that name in my house.’

‘Our house,’ Sammy said, stepping beside Ethan and taking hold of his elbow. She looked at Dan. ‘We don’t mention that man’s name in our house.’

‘I’m sorry, guys, I really am.’ They’d gone as still as they had that night Charlotte had asked Ethan about his parents. They were hurting, but Dan had to keep going. ‘I need answers. It involves Charlotte.’

‘How?’ Ethan asked.

‘O’Donnell killed her mother.’

Sammy gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

‘She was just a kid,’ Dan said. ‘Six years old. She hid in the wardrobe while he murdered her mother.’

‘Holy shit.’

Dan blinked. Yeah, he’d heard Ethan swear, but the intensity in his tone rocked the rafters.

‘What?’ Dan demanded.

‘I need to speak to Grandy, and you need to talk to Charlotte.’

‘Why?’

‘Not my place to say.’ Ethan turned, walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. ‘Sammy,’ he called.

Sammy looked at Dan, helplessness and worry in her demeanour. ‘I need to be with Ethan. You should talk to Charlotte.’

‘He’s long gone,’ Grandy said. ‘He can’t hurt you any more than you let him. And I’m hoping you’re going to let go of all that fear and beat him.’

‘He killed my mother,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘He might have killed me too …’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘Is Ethan my brother?’

‘No.’ Grandy looked at her, his eyes creased at the corners. ‘O’Donnell wasn’t Ethan’s father.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘He wasn’t your father either.’

Charlotte crumpled, pulled her hand from the old man’s as a racking sob escaped her chest. She pressed her hands to her face, holding on, remembering everything through her tears.
Face it without reliving it
.
Thank God. Thank you, God
. The bastard wasn’t her father.

‘How did you find us?’ Grandy asked.

Charlotte swallowed the unsavoury moisture in her mouth and looked at him. He’d given her answers to questions she hadn’t asked and he wasn’t finished. She breathed deeply, needing to find the moment again. ‘I discovered newspaper clippings after my gran died,’ she told him, a catch in her voice. ‘The official paperwork was there too—all the correspondence between the police in Sydney and my gran. The police said they’d spoken to an Ethan Granger, O’Donnell’s son, who was training to be a vet at university and they’d informed him of his murder. They mentioned Swallow’s Fall too. It was easy to find Ethan after that. I just looked him up on the internet and found his veterinary business.’

Grandy nodded. ‘You tell Ethan why you’re here. Tell him soon.’

Charlotte shook her head. ‘If he’s not related to me, why upset everyone by bringing up old news?’ It would hurt Ethan—and Sammy. ‘It isn’t their problem, now I know he wasn’t my father and that Ethan didn’t know about me.’

‘I knew about you. Came to visit you in the foster home.’

Someone had cared enough to visit her. Grandy had cared. The knowledge overwhelmed her. Comforted her, even. ‘How do you know so much?’

‘Your mother came here.’

‘To Swallow’s Fall?’

Grandy nodded. ‘You were about five years old.’

Charlotte had been here before? It was incomprehensible.

‘She’d come looking for Thomas. She’d been with him for a couple of months and he’d disappeared on her, taking a few hundred of her dollars with him.’

Charlotte gasped. ‘She wanted him back?’

‘She had courage, your mother. She came here hoping to get her money back, but mainly to put wrongs to right as much as she was able. She’d recently suspected he was married. She wanted to know the truth, and to apologise for the wrongs she’d done to his wife and any children.’

Charlotte gasped. ‘He might have been here.’

Grandy lowered his jaw. ‘Thank God he wasn’t. I warned her to stay clear of him.’

‘But he found her.’

No need for an answer.

‘The only other person who knows something—but not everything,’ Grandy continued, ‘—is Mrs J. She was with me when your mother arrived. We both spoke to her and she seemed so emotionally exhausted by the journey that we suggested she stay in town the night. You both stayed here, in the B&B.’

‘Good God.’ Charlotte gripped the arm of her chair, holding herself still as her heart beat wildly in her chest.

‘There’s a longer story, Charley.’ Grandy grabbed his cane from its resting place on his thigh and gripped it, his fingers tight around the curl of the handle. ‘Ethan can tell you more, and he will, but the short tale is—I’m Ethan’s father.’

It took a few seconds for this second astonishing piece of information to settle in Charlotte’s mind.

‘Nobody knows except Ethan and Sammy. My kids don’t know—yet. I kept it from prying eyes and flapping ears around town all these years too. But things are about to change.’

‘You’re going to tell your children now?’

‘I have to.’

‘Because of me?’ Discomfort travelled through her. ‘You don’t have to tell anyone. I’ll leave and they’ll forget about me … and about O’Donnell.’ She spoke the man’s name on a hushed breath, as though his ghost might turn up any second and scare her to death.

‘Some stuff has to be told,’ Grandy said, contemplating the wooden floor of the veranda. ‘Somebody killed him, Charlotte. Knocked him out cold, then gave one last punch, I reckon. Someone ended his life and before they did it, maybe that someone had a word with him. Put him straight.’

Some man had killed O’Donnell and by doing so, had undoubtedly given life to others. ‘He was a monster.’

‘A violent man,’ Grandy agreed. ‘He’d have killed again. Just wish that
someone
had got to him before he killed your mother. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.’

‘I always harboured fear it was my fault—because I didn’t do anything. I should have screamed, should have got out of the cupboard and run for help.’

‘Sweet Jesus, Charlotte, you were six years old, love.’

‘I know, but it lives with me.’ As a little girl she’d thought fear was normal. That darkness meant loneliness, hurt and shame for being so unable to help.

‘It lived with the child, the emerging teenager and the young adult you were. Now you have to handle it.’

‘I’ll try.’ If she didn’t, she’d never be true to herself. ‘Do you know who my father was?’

Grandy shook his head. ‘Sorry, but I don’t. I know it wasn’t O’Donnell because for two years before you were born, he was causing trouble up in Darwin. Did a spell inside. The cops told me that. They came down here too, looking for answers after his murder. They didn’t know he wasn’t Ethan’s father and I didn’t tell them.’

Relief helped pour salve on her fatherless state—O’Donnell wasn’t her father and that’s what mattered to her most. Perhaps her mother had loved someone who’d left her. Or had simply found herself pregnant and alone.

‘And I don’t care where anybody’s morals lie on the killing issue,’ Grandy said. ‘O’Donnell did damage to many people, to people I cared about. Far as I’m concerned, he met the right end.’

Charlotte nodded. A man like O’Donnell would have always found a grizzly end. The discovery of his killer would never have concerned her, unless it was to offer thanks. She reached out and put her hand onto Grandy’s, gripping the long, stiffened fingers, and couldn’t stop the next thought in her head: Did Grandy kill O’Donnell?

‘Don’t let him beat you, Charley Red.’

‘I think I can walk away now.’ She’d put the knowledge of what Grandy
might
have done for her, for her mother and for the other people he was referring to—Ethan, probably—to the back of her mind. O’Donnell had deserved his death.

‘Do something for your mother, would you?’

Better memories bounced on the cobwebs of fear around Charlotte’s heart. As though her mother were above her, around her, within her. ‘I miss her.’

‘Live for her. Live your life for her—she’ll want that.’

‘I sometimes wonder if she’s watching me. If she’s here with me.’

‘Oh, she’ll be at your side, love, when you need her. But she can’t live your life for you. That’s up to you.’

‘I’ll try.’ No more than a whisper, this second promise.

‘I’m asking a lot of you,’ Grandy said. ‘But that’s because I think you’ve got it in you. You got brains, but you haven’t figured out yet what it is you’ve got in front of your eyes.’ He held his hand out, palm up. ‘It’s in your hands.’

‘A life?’

Grandy nodded.

Away from here. The emotional cobweb would need unpicking but she’d have time to heal and the stitches could be woven once more. She’d lost so much in her life. First her mother, then her gran, then her home and business, and now the person she’d thought she was. It would be hard, looking for her real self all by herself, but she’d do it.

‘Charlotte, would you do me another favour?’

Charlotte’s mouth had gone dry. She couldn’t speak.

‘Be a friend to Julia, would you?’ Grandy asked. ‘Looks like she’s found herself a decent man at last, but I think she’ll need a good friend too. With you, and Sammy, she won’t feel so lost when she realises she’s settled in town for good. It’s what she wants, but she’s been feral for so long, it might come as a bit of a shock to her that she’s finally got something she wants. She’ll need a friend to tell her she’s doing the right thing and not to be scared.’

Charlotte swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Tears prickled her eyelids. ‘She’ll have you,’ she said. ‘You tell her.’

He shook his head, ever so slightly. ‘Won’t be here to do that.’

Charlotte gripped his hand. ‘Grandy, you’re scaring me.’

C
harlotte chewed on the tip of her pencil, telephone pressed to her ear as she waited to be put through to the realtor in Canberra. Since her conversation with Grandy, her stomach had been knotted, as though she’d swallowed the chain of horrendous events and they’d settled in her gut and rusted there.