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‘Have you washed your hands?’ Tara’s mother was quick to ask—as she always did when Graham came in from working on the farm.
‘Yes, I’ve washed my hands,’ he said as he held them up for inspection, before kissing Tara on her forehead. ‘How’s my best girl?’
Tara frowned. She hated the way her father often treated her as if she was still his little girl.
‘Fine, Dad.’ She reached for her cup of tea as her mother passed the cake. ‘How did you go with the fences?’
‘All done, but I won’t move the cows until after milking tomorrow morning.’
‘Want a hand?’
Though she was quite able to handle a quad bike to get around the farm, and knew the routine of milking back to front, she guessed her father would say no. As he always did. She was sure she could manage most of the work from her wheelchair with a simple modification to raise her height. She’d developed strength in her arms and shoulders to rival any man’s.
But her father had refused to let her near the dairy after the accident. He didn’t seem to understand that her help would give him more time for the heavier work that neither Tara nor her mother could manage. For him, there was a non-negotiable line between men’s and women’s work that she’d almost given up trying to cross. His one concession was letting her mother help out now they could no longer afford to hire a dairyman.
‘No, love. It won’t take long, and you deserve your free time on the weekends.’
He had good intentions but was seriously lacking in subtlety. Another one of those man things, as her mother would say. He had no idea, though. She hardly needed to keep a social diary. Her life had settled into a comfortable equilibrium of work, home and the occasional outing to the shops or the pool at the physio’s in Bayfield, fifty kilometres away. And at the end of her working days she hardly had any energy left to party.
Their conversation was interrupted by a car pulling up at the front of the house.
‘Are you expecting visitors?’ Graham glanced at his wife.
‘Might be Audrey. She said she’d come round some time this week to return those preserving jars. But she usually drives around the back.’
A car door slammed and a few moments later there was a crisp knock on the front door. ‘I’ll go and see who it is,’ she added.
Graham stood up, an imposing thick-set man of six foot three. ‘No, I’ll go. You get another cup of tea poured.’
Tara heard her father talking, but not what he was saying. She could tell he was angry by the sharp rise and fall of his voice. The visitor was male, that was all she could tell, and clearly unwelcome.
‘Doesn’t sound like Audrey,’ her mother said with eyebrows raised.
They stilled at the sound of the front door slamming and her father clomping, barefoot, down the passage.
‘Who’s that?’ Jane asked. She’d already poured a cup of tea for the visitor and looked disappointed.
‘You don’t want to know.’ He scowled and shifted his gaze to Tara. ‘It’s Ryan.’
It took Tara a few moments to process the information.
‘Ryan?’ The word escaped as a husky whisper and didn’t require an answer. She’d tried to put her feelings for her ex-husband on hold since their dramatic parting, but rarely a day went by without her thinking of him, dreaming of what life could have been if she’d not rejected him so coldly. She’d made the right decision, though. She’d heard Ryan had married again and started a family. She was happy for him.
But she’d never stopped loving him.
So she’d have to make sure she remained cool and detached and not let her true feelings show.
But why was he here? And why now? She felt her heart pumping as a film of sweat broke out on her forehead. She felt winded.
After all these years!
She took a deep breath and attempted a steady voice. Both her parents were looking at her, waiting for her reaction. She tried to restore her usual calm.
‘Ryan Dennison?’
The angry fire in her father’s eyes answered her question.
‘He’s waiting outside, insisting he talks to you, says he won’t go until he’s seen you.’ He paused as if gauging her reaction. ‘I’ll send him away—even if it means running him off the property with the shotgun—’
‘No, Dad, I’ll see him.’ Though the last person she wanted to see was her ex, she knew her father wasn’t joking about the gun. ‘I’ll go outside. There’s no need for him to come in.’
He seemed to accept her suggestion as a sign of her disapproval of her ex-husband and conceded.
‘All right, but you be careful.’
Tara wasn’t sure what her father meant.
At the time of their separation her thoughts had been clouded by the devastation of losing so much—the use of her legs, her career, the baby they’d so desperately wanted to make their family complete.
Ryan had had his whole life to live. She hadn’t wanted to take that away from him. He’d just started his specialist training in orthopaedics—his dream career. If he’d become her full-time carer, as he’d said he would, the future they’d planned before the accident would have been shattered. She’d felt she had little choice, especially in the early days when the pain had been so acute, and in retrospect she’d probably been depressed, not capable of making rational decisions. Back then there’d been no way she could have deprived Ryan of his dreams of a career, a happy marriage to a healthy wife and the children he had wanted so much.
The best thing had been to divorce. It had been easier that way. She hadn’t wanted to find out if Ryan was capable of coping with living with a woman who was disabled. He’d always described her as perfect in every way.
But she wasn’t perfect any more, not since the crash, and her scars were more than just physical. Yes, the sadness and pain, both physical and emotional, had lessened as the years passed, but memories still lingered of the man she’d loved with every part of her heart and soul.
Why was he here? The thought tumbled into her mind again.
She felt light-headed as she opened the door and the familiar clawing of panic descended like thick smog. Her heart began to pound and she gagged on the taste of bile at the back of her throat. A shard of irrepressible fear mixed with long-suppressed hurt stabbed at her heart and threatened to take control of her mind.
She stopped in the doorway and began taking slow, deep breaths.
‘What’s the matter, Tara? Are you all right? You look pale.’
For a long moment she’d been so preoccupied with losing control in front of Ryan she’d forgotten where she was. By now it was too late. A man she hardly recognised crouched in front of her. This was a successful man in his mid-thirties, with thick brown hair clipped short, clean-shaven and dressed in a conservative charcoal-grey suit, white shirt and silver tie. He looked nothing like the relaxed young man she remembered.
She was beginning to feel normal again, but couldn’t bring herself to smile. Her emotions were too raw. She felt the slowing of her heartbeat and the fuzziness clearing from her head.
He still had the same deep blue eyes, though, and right now they were full of concern.
‘I’m fine,’ Tara replied. She hated the fact she’d let down her guard and revealed how vulnerable she could be before they’d even said hello. ‘I just get a bit light-headed sometimes. It never lasts for more than a few minutes.’ The tension in Ryan’s face relaxed. ‘Dad said you wanted to talk to me.’
Ryan stood up with an expression that was almost but not quite a smile.
Damn his charisma and amazing good looks. She was determined not to expose her emotions, though. He mustn’t know she still had feelings for him, but already she knew the spark was still there.
At least he wasn’t focused on her humiliating physical response to him. But that was the thing with panic attacks. She’d thought she had them beat but they could be triggered by the most unexpected and sometimes insignificant things.
‘There’s something I thought you needed to know.’
Her confidence was coming back.
‘I’d better sit down.’ Tara had become used to making jokes about her condition, to break the ice for people who weren’t comfortable with her disability, but this time it didn’t work. The frown on Ryan’s face was set in stone.
‘You’d better sit down, then.’ She pointed towards an old swing seat suspended from the rafters. She now felt calm and in charge of the emotions which had threatened to be her undoing a few moments ago.
‘Do you need any help?’
‘No.’
She set the chair in motion and forced him to move out of the way. Finally he sat down on the swing opposite her chair.
‘So, what is it you want to talk to me about that’s so important you were prepared to brave Dad and his threat to run you off the property?’
Ryan smiled.
But it didn’t last long.
‘He said that?’
‘Mmm, he did.’ She paused a moment, wondering how much of the past she could raise without ramping up the tension that already buzzed in the air between them. On reflection, she realised she had nothing to lose. It wasn’t as if she was trying to impress Ryan, and he was well aware of her parents’ dislike for him.
Ryan gazed into her eyes and she jolted at the unexpected connection. The feeling was from the past—something that had been exclusive to them alone—an understanding that she and Ryan had used to consider a sign of their closeness.
But it served no purpose now. She wasn’t going to reveal how she really felt.
He finally spoke.
‘I’m going to be working down here. I start in two weeks in the new specialist rooms attached to your clinic.’
He stared, as if trying to gauge her reaction. And she produced the goods in the form of a violent blush. Her heart began to race again, but she was determined to keep her cool despite the overwhelming shock of his revelation.
‘I thought it was better for you to know in advance, rather than just bumping into me at work one day.’
She swallowed and concentrated on the calm evenness of her breathing.
‘You could’ve easily phoned.’ She wondered at his motives. She’d not heard from this man for nearly six years—
since he’d finally got the message she didn’t want to be reminded of the past by his e-mails and calls. All she knew of him was through the medical grapevine—he was a successful orthopaedic surgeon, three years after they broken up he had remarried, and the last she’d heard he was overseas.
‘I wanted to see you …’
Tara found that hard to believe.
‘Why?’ That gnawing pain in her heart that visited her every day was demanding an answer. Anger surfaced unexpectedly. ‘Were you frightened of what you might see?’
Ryan looked genuinely hurt—a totally unanticipated reaction. She hadn’t meant to be cruel, but her emotions were ruling what came out of her mouth.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered.
‘No … You’re absolutely right. I should have phoned. I didn’t realise seeing you without warning would upset you.’ His pupils dilated, which made their rim of blue the colour of bright sky reflected in black ice. ‘I’m the one who should be apologising.’
She still wasn’t quite sure why he’d gone to the trouble of driving all the way to Keysdale and then out to the farm. It wasn’t the sort of visit a person would plan on the offchance. She suddenly felt resentful that he’d upset the ordered balance of her life.
He looked down at his hands clasped in his lap and said quietly, ‘How are your parents?’
It was a question she wasn’t expecting. She thought a moment before replying.
‘You’re not part of our lives any more. I’d describe Mum’s attitude to you as ambivalent, and Dad … well … you saw what he was like when he answered the door. But I don’t think they actually hate you. It’s what happened—the accident—they both still blame you for that.’
Ryan reached for Tara’s hand but she snatched it away. Seeing him was traumatic enough. She didn’t want any physical contact because … because she wasn’t sure how she’d react. The old desire she thought she’d buried long ago was still there. It frightened her.
‘And you?’
Tara closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was hurting. Why was Ryan trawling through what had happened so long ago? No one was to blame for the accident. He was a good driver and had done what most people would have—tried to avoid their collision with a kangaroo. With devastating consequences. Her situation was a cross she had chosen to bear without him, and up until ten minutes ago she’d been managing perfectly okay.
She opened her eyes but didn’t look at Ryan.
‘You know I’ve never held you responsible.’ She sighed. ‘It happened, it was regrettable, but I’m over it and I think you should be too.’
Ryan brushed a piece of fluff from his sleeve.
‘Of course you’re right,’ he said. ‘But it isn’t enough to stop me feeling it was my fault. Can you understand how difficult it is for me to see you like …?’ The words seemed to stick in his throat and he swallowed.
Tara looked into the distance, trying to take on board what Ryan was saying. He was hurting too.
Neither of them could ever forget the crash and its aftermath, and sometimes Tara thought Ryan had been more damaged than she. His dreams had been blown apart—his career, the life they’d planned together, the children they’d so desperately wanted. They’d talked about her completing her GP training part-time. She’d been off the pill for a couple of months and the heartbreaking irony was that her period had been a week overdue. She’d planned on doing a home pregnancy test the following week, but the day after the accident she’d bled … and bled … and bled …
Another tragic loss.
It had been as if her lifeblood had drained from her, but she’d always put on a brave face.
Of course they both knew she was still physically capable of conceiving and bearing children. She’d assumed she was no longer sexually attractive to him, though, and even if she did have a child she would need help to look after it. With the long hours Ryan worked she would be effectively a single parent. Combined with her disability, the whole scenario was unworkable.
To her alarm, she was close to tears. She needed to change the direction of the conversation.
‘So you’ll be doing sessional work, I guess?’
He also seemed grateful for the change of subject.
‘I’ll be operating on Thursdays and consulting Fridays, with the option to do an extra theatre session on alternative Saturday mornings. I’ll stay overnight.’
‘Where are you planning to stay?’ she asked, purely out of curiosity.
‘I thought one of the motels. But if you can suggest anything better?’
She thought for a moment.
‘The Riverside is the best of the three motels in town. It’s off the highway and not far from the clinic.’ That was all the advice she was prepared to give.
