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Phoebe looked out across the garden from the wicker chair where she sat. The landscaping wasn’t modern and manicured, like Tilly’s, it was more like a scene from The Secret Garden. The flowerbeds were overflowing with floral ground cover, large old trees with low-hanging branches lined the perimeter of the generous-sized property, and there was an uneven clay brick pathway leading to an archway covered in jasmine.
It was beautiful and timeless and she felt so very much at home in Ken’s house. All that was missing, she thought, was a Christmas tree and a hearth in the living room. The hearth would never happen in temperatures over one hundred degrees, but perhaps she could work on bringing a little bit of Christmas to the three men who lived there.
‘My family have their moments,’ Heath told her.
‘Don’t they all? But yours don’t appear to interfere in your life, which is great.’
Heath shook his head. ‘Believe me, they try—but I put a stop to it quickly.’ Then he paused. ‘The way you said that sounded a little Freudian. Am I to gather that your family does?’
Phoebe ran her hand along the balustrade next to her. ‘Sometimes.’
Heath sat down in the armchair next to hers. ‘Did they try to interfere in your decision to come to Australia?’
Phoebe rolled her eyes and sipped her soda and lime as she recalled the last conversation she’d had with her mother, by the waiting cab.
‘I’m taking your expression to be a yes,’ Heath commented.
‘Well, a yes to my mother—but my father was supportive from the get-go,’ she said, putting the glass down on the table.
‘Why was that?’
‘He knew I needed a break from Washington and he wanted to help.’
‘But your mother didn’t think you needed a break?’
‘Hardly …’ she lamented. ‘She wanted me to stay and work it out.’ Phoebe instantly realised that she had said too much, but the words were already out.
‘Work what out?’ he asked, leaning forward in the chair with a perplexed look on his face.
‘Oh, just things … You know—things that she thought needed to be worked through and I thought needed to be walked away from.’
‘No, I can’t say I do know what you mean, Phoebe.’
She sighed. She knew she had to elaborate, but she had no intention of going into all of the detail. ‘Relationship issues. Some of those just can’t be sorted out.’
‘With another family member?’
‘No, thank God—he never made it into the family.’
‘Ah … so an issue with a man, then?’
‘Yes, with a man.’
‘So you ran away to the colonies of Australia to get away from a man?”
‘Uh-huh …’ she mumbled, and then, looking at the question dressing his very handsome face, she continued, ‘Now you know everything there is to know about me, it’s your turn. What is Heath Rollins’s story? Have you ever run away from anything?’
As she said it she wanted to kick herself. She knew his story, and it was a sad one that begged not to be retold. He had lost both his mother and his wife. And Phoebe suddenly felt like the most insensitive woman in the world to be asking that question.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. Please ignore me.’
Heath considered her expression for a moment. There was sadness in her face, almost pity. ‘You know about my wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you know I did run away from something, then. From overwhelming grief and a gaping hole so big that I never thought it would heal.’
She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I can’t begin to know what that feels like.’
He sat back in his chair again in silence, with memories rushing to the fore. ‘Did my father let you know or was it Tilly?’ His voice was calm—not accusing, but sombre.
‘Neither,’ she answered honestly. ‘It was Oscar. He told me the other day, when we were in the garden at Tilly’s. He said that he was very little when his mother died and doesn’t remember anything. I assume he must have been a toddler.’
Heath was surprised that Oscar had opened up about it to Phoebe. He rarely spoke of his mother, and particularly not to anyone he didn’t really know.
‘He was five months old, actually—when Natasha died. He never had the chance to know his mother. To walk beside her or even to hold her hand.’
‘Oh … I don’t know what to say except that I’m so sorry, Heath.’ As she sat on the chair next to him she felt her heart breaking for him. ‘After a loss as devastating as that it must have been so hard for you to even begin to find your way through the grief and cope for the sake of your son.’
‘It was hard for all of us, watching her die. Knowing there was nothing we could do. It was the hardest time of my life and I was powerless to stop it. I felt guilty for allowing it to happen, for not making her have treatment earlier.’
Phoebe didn’t ask what had taken his wife’s life. It wasn’t for her to know. But she could see he was still wearing the guilt. ‘You can’t make a person do what you want if it’s not their wish. They have to do what is right for them, even if it’s not what we see as right. I’m sure she had her reasons for not starting treatment.’
‘Yes—Oscar was the reason. She was twenty weeks pregnant when Stage Three breast cancer was diagnosed, and although she could have safely undergone modified chemotherapy during the pregnancy she refused. She wanted to wait until she had given birth, then start the treatment but with the hormones surging through her body she understood there was a chance it would spread. But it was a risk she wanted to take. In my mind, with the oncologist’s advice, it was one she never needed to even consider. They took Oscar four weeks early, but the cancer had already metastasised. She underwent surgery and chemo but she knew it was useless. She had done her research and was aware that there was little chance of her surviving.’
‘What an amazingly selfless woman.’
‘More than you can know. But at the time I was angry with her, for leaving me with a baby to raise and no wife to love.’
Phoebe watched Heath wringing his hands in frustration.
‘I can understand your feelings, but I guess I can also understand your wife had a right to do what she thought was best. Sometimes what two people in love want is not the same, and it’s not that either is wrong, or not respecting the other, it’s just that they see things differently. Their life experience and values alter their perspective. And she was a mother. I can’t say it from any experience, since I have never had a child, but I am sure carrying a baby would change everything about how you see the world.’
‘But she was so young, and she had so much to live for—no matter how I try I will never understand. I love Oscar so much, and I’m grateful every day for him being in my life, but it was a huge and difficult choice she had to make. And I feel guilty for what happened because it means Oscar is growing up without a mother.’
Phoebe was puzzled at his feelings of remorse. She understood the sadness, but not the guilt. ‘I don’t know why you would say that. Your wife made the decision—not you.’
‘But I should have made her have the chemo. I should have never let her delay it. And perhaps I shouldn’t have married her so young. If she hadn’t married me then she wouldn’t have rushed into having a child, and when she was diagnosed she would have gone ahead with treatment.’
‘Heath, you can’t know that for sure. Natasha might not have been diagnosed until it was too late anyway. A young woman in her twenties wouldn’t have been having mammograms, so it might have gone undetected for a long time—by which time she might have faced the same fate. It’s something you will never know. But you have a very special little boy. And you can’t harbour any blame—it’s not good for Oscar.’
Heath nodded, but Phoebe could see his thoughts were somewhere else, struggling with his memories.
He was thinking back to the day Natasha had died.
It had been Christmas Day.
The next day Phoebe woke early, still thinking about everything that Heath had told her. While the heartbreak Giles had inflicted on her had been soul-destroying at the time, she knew now that it had been for the best. But nothing about Heath’s heartbreak was for the best. His wife had died and left behind a little boy who would never know her. And a man who couldn’t fully understand or accept her reasons.
She felt a little homesick for the first time, and called her father.
‘I assisted in surgery last week, and I’m heading in today to the practice, and then tomorrow I’m in Theatre again,’ she told him as she ate her muesli and fruit breakfast with her mobile phone on speaker. ‘And I finally met Ken Rollins.’
‘That’s great. I bet you quizzed him about his papers.’
‘I did and he was so generous with his knowledge.’
‘How long will his son be filling in before he leaves and heads back to his old position?’
Phoebe’s mood suddenly and unexpectedly fell as she listened to her father and was reminded that Heath and Oscar were only transient in her life. She had enjoyed spending time with Heath out of work hours. No matter how much she was looking forward to working with Ken, she knew she would miss Heath. He was charming company when he lifted his guard, and he had managed to make her feel important with the way he listened to her and engaged in their conversations.
He was a far cry from the distracted man who had once held the title of her fiancé. And she suddenly felt a little sad that Heath would be gone in a few short weeks. She knew she wanted more. What that was, she wasn’t sure—but she knew even after such a short time there would be a void in her life when he left.
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