Page 9 of Wedding Bells By the Creek

‘That’s still a long way away.’

‘He fell in love with Katie, an English nurse who was working here. In fact, she helped us mend our bridges and I got my son back.’

‘You make it sound easy,’ Helen said.

‘This is a small town. Everyone knows a lot about everyone else. I don’t pry, but I know Tia has had a tough past. That’s over now. She’s a smart and very likeable young woman and you have Max to help you both. You’ll sort things out. I’m sure of it.’

Helen looked at his brown, lined face. She saw strength there. Not the kind of strength that bullies had, but rather the strength that comes from a lifetime of experience. She found his words comforting.

‘And in the meantime,’ Ed said, getting to his feet, ‘I’m around if you need a shoulder to cry on or a sympathetic ear. Or there’s this place. I’m about the only one who comes here, but I’m happy to share it with you if you need to get away from Trish Warren and think. It’s good for that. And if you’re lucky, you might see the kingfishers that nest in that big gum over there. They are very pretty to watch diving for insects on the water.’

Helen smiled. ‘Ed. I’m a city girl. I wouldn’t know what a kingfisher looked like.’

‘You’ll know one if you see one,’ he said. He stepped up the bank in one powerful stride and turned to face her. ‘Their wings are the same beautiful blue as your eyes.’

And he was gone.

Chapter Five

There was a car parked at his bowsers when Ed arrived back from the river. The driver, a stranger, was knocking impatiently at the garage door.

‘G’day,’ Ed called as he approached. ‘Just give me a second and I’ll be right with you.’

‘I’m on my way through to Birdsville,’ the driver said as he waited for Ed to unlock the bowsers. ‘So you’d better fill it up.’

As Ed went about a task that was as familiar to him as breathing, his mind was elsewhere. This was the first time in as long as he could remember that he had been late opening the garage for business. His garage was almost always open. Seven days a week. Every day of the year except for Christmas Day. That’s just the way it was out here. He was the only source of fuel for several hundred kilometres in every direction. Just as Max was always on call for emergencies, Ed was pretty much always on call too. For fuel. For repairs. His job wasn’t really life or death the way Max’s job was. When he was young and married and Scott was a kid, he’d taken time off on the weekends to share with his family. But when first his wife and then his son left him alone, he’d drifted into being open seven days a week. Even if there were no customers, the need to unlock those bowsers was the thing that got him out of bed every morning. Without the steady stream of people relying on him for their fuel, he had … nothing.

At least, that was how it had been. Today, something else had been more important than opening up.

Someone else had been more important.

That felt strange. But it felt good too.

As soon as his customer left, Ed ducked into the house to collect the still unopened brown envelope. Last night, he’d found yet another excuse not to open it. Well, no more excuses.

He dropped it on the counter next to the cash register and perched on his stool. Whatever that envelope contained, it was going to change his life.

He clenched his mouth into a thin line and tore it open.

The paper was crisp and white. The solicitor’s letterhead was a subdued dark maroon in colour. Very professional and efficient looking. He’d never actually met his solicitor, but in Ed’s mind, he was a grim man. You would have to be to spend your life doing what the man was doing for Ed. He took a deep breath and started to read.

Dear Mr Collins,

Pursuant to your request, we have continued to search for Mrs Stephanie Collins. Unfortunately our search remains unsuccessful. Therefore, as per your instructions, we have begun divorce proceedings.

Please find enclosed, for your signature …

Divorce.

The word leaped off the page at him. Seeing it in cold black and white made it all suddenly seem very real. He felt his shoulders tense. Slowly he bent his head forward, closing his eyes as he stretched the tendons in his neck. It was time. It was well past time. His wife had shaken off the dust of Coorah Creek fourteen years ago. She had walked out on a husband and a son, leaving their relationship as broken as the marriage. It had taken a very long time and a lot of pain for that relationship to heal.

And it had taken a very long time for Ed to move on from the marriage.

Ed had started this process a few months before, after an internet conversation with Scott and Katie in the UK. Scott had mentioned his mother. It was a passing comment that Ed could no longer remember, but at the time it had played on his mind. The next morning, he’d casually typed his wife’s name into Google. There were plenty of people called Stephanie Collins out there. A doctor. A charity worker. There was even an artist. For a few seconds that had given Ed pause. His Steph has been a bit ‘arty’. But that wasn’t her. He was looking for a woman with curly blonde hair. Or was he? He realised that, after so many years, he might not even recognise the woman he had once loved so dearly.

That’s when he decided to find a lawyer. Not just to find her, but to end a marriage that hadn’t been real for a very long time. It had never occurred to Ed that a divorce was anything more than just a tidying up of loose ends. It had never crossed his mind that he might have any other reason to free himself from his dead marriage.

Until a pair of kingfisher blue eyes had caused his heart to skip a beat.

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