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“You got good grades in school,” Cheryl reminded her. “You just never did anything with them.”
“I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. I still don’t,” she admitted. “I do know that I’m sick of small jobs that lead nowhere and have no higher purpose.”
What she didn’t add was that she hated always being perceived as an underachiever. Her family loved and supported her, but they didn’t expect much. Nobody did, including herself. Maybe seeing the incredible feats performed by Julio and his fellow circus troupers had given her grandiose ideas. Or maybe she’d simply come to a crossroads in her life. But since returning to Tipperary Springs she’d felt stifled and restless for change. She wanted more.
“You must have some idea about what you’d like to do,” Tony said.
“I want to do Something Big,” Melissa said, opening her arms wide to show them all just how big.
Ally carefully placed her pen on the table and exchanged a glance with their mother. Melissa let her arms fall with a sigh and resumed her examination of her hangnail. It was definitely getting infected.
“You mean, like brain surgery?” Tony asked cheerfully as he refilled his own glass from the nearly empty bottle of Shiraz. He held the ruby liquid up to the light, squinted at it, then took a sip.
Sweet man. He was such an optimist that if she’d said yes he’d have believed she would go ahead and try it. To him, nothing was impossible, even when he was proved wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt.
She thrust her thumb under Ally’s nose. “Do you suppose this is serious?”
“No.” Ally waved her away without looking. “You’d think a hangnail is terminal.”
“It is a hangnail,” Melissa replied, examining it with renewed alarm.
Ally heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Never mind that. Have you updated your résumé recently? I’ll make copies at work for you.”
“I’ll get it.” Melissa went down the hall to her bedroom and came back with a couple sheets of paper. She borrowed Ally’s pen and inked in corrections. “I’ll have to type it up first.”
“Leave it with me,” her sister insisted. “It’ll take me five minutes and then it will be done.”
And done right was the implication.
Melissa felt terrible. Ally managed a busy cottage-rental agency, Mother owned and ran a successful art gallery, Tony—well, no one in his right mind would want his checkered track record. Still, he’d started up half-a-dozen businesses in his life and not all of the failures were his fault. In fact, the olive grove was still going strong. What had Melissa ever done that was noteworthy?
“When I stopped for the eggs, the farmer was looking for a nanny for his four-year-old daughter,” she said. At the time she’d dismissed the idea but after this discussion, being a nanny didn’t seem so bad.
“What do you know about kids?” Ally said doubtfully.
“I was one once myself.” Melissa popped another olive in her mouth. “I could be a nanny. If I wanted to.”
The oven timer beeped. “Dinner’s ready,” Cheryl said. “Melissa, can you help set the table?”
“Sure.” She pushed back her chair to get up. Then froze. The footy game had been interrupted by a news bulletin. Diane’s face flashed up on the TV screen, flanked by pictures of Josh and Callie. Melissa grabbed the remote and stabbed at the volume.
“…Diane Chalmers and her two young children disappeared yesterday from their home in an exclusive district of Ballarat,” the female reporter was saying. “Mrs. Chalmers’s car was found abandoned half a mile from the bus station. Judge James Chalmers is appealing to the public for any information leading to the recovery of his wife and children. Foul play has not been ruled out.”
A florid-faced man with silver hair told the reporter in a quiet, tightly controlled voice the details of his missing family. Then, his gray eyes intense and glistening, he turned to the camera and begged Diane to come home.
“That poor man,” Cheryl said, clucking softly.
“I—” Melissa stopped. Was he who Diane was running from? Melissa couldn’t say anything. Her family would insist she go to the police. But they hadn’t seen Diane’s desperation.
“I hope the police find them, poor things,” Cheryl added, “and that they haven’t come to any harm.”
Now Judge Chalmers was saying that his wife had gone through a depression and wasn’t emotionally stable. Melissa bit at her hangnail. Had she done the wrong thing in protecting Diane? She’d seemed balanced, aside from her anxiety. But was Melissa qualified to judge? What if Diane’s children were in danger?
“Maybe his wife wasn’t abducted,” Melissa suggested. “Maybe she ran away from him.”
“Why would she do that?” Tony asked.
“He might have abused her. Or the children,” she added, recalling the bruises on Callie’s face and arm.
“He’s a judge,” Cheryl said firmly. “Judges don’t do things like that.”
“How do you know?” Melissa asked.
“It’s against the law.”
“Lots of people break the law.” Melissa gave Tony a pointed look. “Some of them get away with it.”
“You can see how upset he is that they’re gone,” Ally objected.
“It could be an act.”
“Why are you against him?” her sister inquired. “You don’t even know the man.”
“Why are you defending him?” Melissa countered.
“Girls!” Cheryl interrupted. “Dinner’s ready.”
The roast lamb their mother put on the table seemed like a feast when Melissa thought about Diane, Josh and Callie in the cold, dark cottage. The farmer obviously didn’t know about them, which meant they probably didn’t have electricity or heat. Even if they did, Diane wouldn’t risk cooking for fear of being detected. God knows what they’d eat—probably tinned beans. Cold beans, at that.
She had to go back, Melissa decided. She couldn’t just abandon them without knowing if they were all right. She barely listened to the others chatting about the olive harvest, the new glass artist, whose work Cheryl was displaying in her gallery, and the town’s worryingly low water supply.
As soon as they were finished eating, Melissa jumped up. “I hate to eat and run, but I’ve got to get going.”
“You didn’t mention you were going out tonight,” Cheryl said. “Where to?”
This was exactly why she couldn’t stand living at home. Her mother was asking politely, out of curiosity, and Melissa owed her a courteous reply, but wasn’t used to accounting for her every action. “I’m going to visit some friends.”
Cheryl followed her. “Have you got your key?”
“Yes, Mother.” Spying the platter of leftover lamb, Melissa paused. “Can I take some of this meat?”
Cheryl’s eyebrows rose under her platinum-blond coif. “I suppose so. Is it for your friends? Can’t they cook for themselves?”
“They don’t have the use of a kitchen at the moment,” Melissa said. Technically speaking, it was probably true. “They’re living on cold tinned food.”
“Renovating,” Ally deduced with a shudder. “I know what that’s like. Don’t they have a microwave?”
“The electricity’s out.” Melissa rummaged in a drawer for a large freezer bag.
“Let me, darling,” Cheryl said, as if, goodness knows, Melissa couldn’t manage on her own, and began placing slices of meat inside the bag, one at a time.
Melissa watched impatiently for a moment, then took the bag out of her mother’s hands and, grasping the leg of lamb by the frilled bone, shoved the whole thing in. “May I take the potatoes, too?”
“If you like,” Cheryl said, astonished.
“Gravy?” Tony offered, holding up the gravy boat.
“Too messy.” Melissa zipped up the bag and upended the pan of roast potatoes into another one. Then she lifted a hand in farewell to her wide-eyed, speechless family. “See you all later. Thanks for doing my résumé, Ally. Say hi to Ben and Danny.”
“Will do,” Ally murmured.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to take?” Tony asked.
“Now that you mention it…” Melissa turned to her mother. “Do you have any blankets I could borrow?”
“For your friends?” Cheryl asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Since the electricity’s out they have no heating.” There might be blankets stored in the cottage, but she wasn’t banking on it.
While Cheryl went down the hall to the linen closet, Melissa slipped behind the kitchen counter and pocketed the salt and pepper.
“Why aren’t these people more organized?” Ally asked. “They should have thought of cooking and heating before they started renovating.”
“You know how some of Melissa’s friends are,” Cheryl said, coming back into the room with an armful of folded blankets.
“I should resent that,” Melissa said mildly. Just because she was hopelessly impractical didn’t mean her friends were.
“How many are there?” Cheryl asked, piling the blankets into her arms. “Who are they?”
“Golly, you people ask a lot of questions!” She staggered to the front door, loaded down with blankets and bags of food.
“Would they like some olive oil?” Tony called after her, holding out a bottle of his premium extra virgin.
“Not this time, but thanks,” Melissa said. “’Bye!”
She threw everything into the backseat of the Volkswagen and drove back to the turnoff to Balderdash Road, parking a hundred meters from the farm. She just hoped the dog was inside the house; otherwise, she might have to sacrifice the lamb, and that would be a shame.
Melissa got out of the car with her bundle of blankets and bags of food and walked up the long track to the cottage. The tiny beam of her pocket flashlight wobbled along the shadowed ruts.
The yard was dark except for a pool of light spreading from the bare bulb above the door of the barn. The curtained windows of the house glowed yellow. She tried not to think about Gregory, but his image rushed into her mind—silky black hair, dark eyes watching her….
She reached the cottage and tapped lightly on the door with the end of the flashlight. No response. She turned the handle and pushed hard. The door creaked open.
“Diane?” she called softly into the blackness, “it’s me.”
CHAPTER THREE
YAWNING, ALICE ANN snuggled deeper beneath her raspberry-pink comforter and hugged her stuffed Piglet closer. Her hair was still damp from her bath and dark brown tendrils curled around her cheeks.
Gregory, sitting on the edge of the bed, reached over to turn out her bedside lamp. “Good night, sweetheart.”
“Daddy?” she said sleepily. “Why can’t Melissa be my nanny? She smelled pretty. Like flowers.”
“Did she?” Gregory asked, pretending he didn’t remember, even though he recalled quite clearly the scent of violets and wild roses.
“So can she, Daddy?”
“She’s not a nanny, sweetheart. Even if she wanted the job, the question of who looks after you is an important decision. We need to consider qualifications and experience, not just how nice a person is or how she smells. I only want what’s best for you. Do you understand?”
“I guess so.” She sighed and hugged Piglet closer.
“I’m going to call Mrs. Blundstone tomorrow.”
“Not Mrs. Blundstone!” Alice Ann sat up, her arms braced against the bed. “She’s a witch. She’ll turn me into a cane toad! Then she’ll make me blow up like a balloon and ’splode into yucky stuff and fly all over the place and go splat and—”
“Alice Ann. Where do you get these crazy ideas?” Gregory said sternly. “Mrs. Blundstone has many years’ experience both as a teacher and as a nanny.”
“I hate her!” His daughter flung herself back onto her pillow. “She never smiled at me, not once. And she didn’t say hi to Benny.”
Gregory smoothed her tangled hair back from her forehead. “I need to talk to you about Benny.”
Her scowl faded into a smile that put a dimple in her right cheek. “He’s nearly as big as the other weaners now, isn’t he, Daddy?”
“Yes, he is. Benny’s a fine pig. A valuable pig.” Gregory paused. This was as difficult for him to say as it would be for his daughter to accept. “You see, sweetheart, the time has come for the weaners to leave our farm.”
A tiny frown creased Alice Ann’s forehead. “Why? This is their home.”
“Not…forever.” Gregory cleared his throat.
She straightened up. “But you don’t mean Benny.”
“Benny, too, I’m afraid.”
Alice Ann clutched her Piglet, anxious and angry. “He’ll miss me so much. Why does he have to go away?”
Gregory scratched the back of his head, feeling perspiration form on his scalp. “He’s getting big. It’s time for him to leave, to go to…a better place.”
“How can it be better when he won’t have me to play with?” Alice Ann argued. “Where is he going?”
“It’s a special place just for pigs,” he fibbed, hating himself. “Benny will love it. You want Benny to be happy, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She thought for a minute. “Is it like the resort Grandma Finch went to on the Gold Coast?”
“Well…” Gregory began, then stalled.
“A pig resort!” Eyes shining, Alice Ann paid no attention to her dad’s protest as she danced Piglet across her pink coverlet. “Benny’s going to a five-star pig resort.”
“Wait a minute—”
