Page 113 of Stockman's Sandstorm

‘You do?’

‘Yeah, when you move to the country, you somehow learn to relax, not just with the place but into yourself.’ She patted over her heart. ‘Everything about you becomes weirdly, calmly, okay. It’s magical when you discover that under all that red dust there’s this hope that eventually everything is going to be okay. You learn to smile again. It may be crooked or bleak, but it’s the start of a smile.’

Harper grimaced, couldn’t help it.

‘I’ve been there too, blossom. I’ve learned through my many, many mistakes that there are always new ones to make, but that’s okay—it’s just the death part that sucks the most. You are grieving, Harper.’

‘I called it my brain fog.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘It got so thick, and I let it, to help me forget that my parents, my family were gone. I got so lost that all my plans got thrown out the car window.’

‘What were you planning to do?’

‘To come back to Australia, close up my parents’ house. I was supposed to put the car in storage and catch a plane to meet up with Mason. But when I learned that Mason was coming here, and that my father had slipped in his own caveat for Mason’s welfare, offering Ash twenty-eight days, as a choice.’

Bree leaned closer. ‘You mean Ash was given an escape clause? That if he didn’t want the boy—’

‘I stayed in case Ash rejected his son, my nephew.’ She’d been keeping a tally of the days. ‘Today is day nineteen. We’re just nine days shy of the twenty-eight-day agreement.’

‘Wow.’ Bree sat back. ‘So you drove here…’

‘To be close. I’ve been living in limbo ever since. If Ash didn’t want Mason, I had to think about work, day care, where we would live, everything. I have plenty of job offers. My boss, the Ambassador, even offered to let me work in Canberra, until I got Mason a passport. But …’

‘You can’t do anything until the twenty-eight days is over.’

Harper nodded, even though the stabbing pain rolled around her ribcage, and an anxious sweat brushed across her skin. The fear of missing out on time, or losing time, created a sickening stomach squeeze.

Harper was a fixer, but she couldn’t fix this. She couldn’t turn to her parents for advice, nor ask her sister questions about Mason, her work, or living arrangements for a child because it would always be the same answer. Complete silence. The weightlessness of silence from those you’d loved and would never hear from again, was like floating in space with the earth and the moon rolling past, like tiny stars stuck in an endless galaxy of silence. It was depressing.

‘Have you ever lost someone?’ Harper asked.

Bree nodded, but remained expressionless. ‘I could give you all the nice words that they’d say at funeral homes, but …’

‘The funeral home said some words, but I didn’t hear them. Have you got any words of wisdom?’

‘Far from it.’ Bree shrugged. ‘Only that life happens. Life hurts. Life sucks. And you’ll have days where you’ll want to chug down a jug of gin—’

‘I did beer.’

‘Good. Which means you’re stumbling down the path the overpaid shrinks call the healing process.’

‘What did you do to get over your grief?’

‘Oh, I got freaking mad.’ Bree even chuckled. ‘I wanted to burn the world. And I did for a time. But then I learned to let go.’ She leaned closer, patting Harper’s hand. ‘As you are the queen of watching time, let me tell you that time does something as part of this process. Some say time heals as it passes, and it does get a little less painful. I think time helps to make the memories blur a little around the edges, and the guilt of not being there, or not doing enough for them, starts to pass. But you also have to think of what your parents would have wanted you to do with the time you have today.’

‘They would want me to be happy.’

‘And Mason’s mother, your sister?’

‘To watch out for Mason, to make sure he was happy.’

‘Which is what you’ve been doing. And you found your happiness out there at the station, didn’t you? Not just with Mason, but with Ash, too.’

She licked her lips, pushing down another spate of tears that went with the heartache of missing Ash. ‘I’d never planned to, you know, with Ash. Believe me, I tried to push him away. It just happened. But none of the brothers will let me explain myself. I never lied to them.’

‘But you were playing politician, cleverly deflecting the truth.’

Harper couldn’t lie now. ‘Because I didn’t want to …’

‘Leave.’

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