Page 107 of The Vet from Snowy River
Poppy threw her arms around her neck and gave her the hug she hadn’t known she needed.
‘I’m so sorry about your aunt, Vera.’
‘Thanks, Poppy. It means a lot to me that you’re here.’
‘Dad told me and asked me if I’d be okay with ditching school for a couple of days which, you know, was no biggie.’
Vera was so pleased to have a reason to smile. ‘That was a noble sacrifice.’
The girl tucked her hand in hers. ‘I’m glad I’m here … especially now I can see you don’t have any family with you today.’
She gave Poppy’s hand a squeeze. ‘I’m glad too. But the no family thing? I’m used to it.’
‘Parents?’
She shook her head. ‘My mum died when I was a teenager.’
‘But, your dad? Cousins? Step-siblings?’
She shrugged. ‘I was an only child, and Jill never had children. My dad and my mum weren’t married. She met him on a trip to Italy to visit the region her parents had emigrated from. He never made it to Australia. Jill always said it started out like a romance movie but ended like a really bad cliché.’
‘Wow. He never visited you? I’ll never understand that.’
She smiled. ‘Yeah, but that’s because you have your dad wrapped around your little finger.’
‘Speaking of … hey, Dad, can you come and hold your brolly over Vera? I’m going to run ahead. I promised to help Kev with the hot water urn.’
Vera took a quick breath as Josh stepped up beside her. She had to say something to him, but what?
She started with the least important but easiest to find words. ‘I’m sorry about that article in the paper, Josh, that dragged you into my mess. I know how you dislike being the subject of gossip, and now I’ve given the people of Hanrahan something else to wonder about.’
She could feel him looking down at her.
‘Gossip stopped bothering me long ago,’ he said quietly. ‘I just don’t like it when it affects the people I care about.’
Her boots crunch-crunched on the wet gravel as she walked, the silence between them stretched tauter than an elastic band. He wanted her to say she cared about him too, she could feel it. He wanted to know why she’d promised him that thisthingbetween them, this heat and need and rush meant something, but then pushed him away.
She should have tried to explain days ago—visited the surgery, knocked on the front door of the Hanrahan Pub until she found which room he was in. And if she’d known what she wanted to say, maybe she would have. Instead she’d cloistered herself away with her cat and the hot mess of quilting fabric that made her feel guilty every time she looked at it.
Her head was a mess, her thoughts clogged up together like gunk in a grease trap. How could she explain the bleakness she was feeling to someone else when she couldn’t explain it to herself?
Don’t let your guilt get in the way of your life,Marigold had said to her once. She glanced over her shoulder, to where smooth earth now covered her aunt’s grave. She’d not been ready to hear that advice. Marigold had been a benevolent stranger then, not the accidental friend she’d since become.
Grass would grow like billyo over that new earth after this spring rain had passed. Cicadas would sing nearby on long summer evenings, leaves would skitter past in autumn, and southern stars would wheel overhead. And her aunt would be resting for eternity in Hanrahan.
This was, she thought on a rush, a tether. The funeral service was doing more than farewelling Jill, it was also connecting Vera to the community here in a way that couldn’t be broken.
She looked ahead of her up the path, to where people she knew—people she’d grown to care for—were shaking rain off their coats and bundling indoors into the historic stone cottage that marked a chapter in Hanrahan’s past.
Her footsteps faltered. She had a choice, she just had to make it. Did she really want to be trapped in this rain-dreary moment while the world spun on without her?
No. She’d let worry and despair drag her down long enough. She couldn’t add grief to the burden. This was her day to choose to accept a little of what Josh, and Marigold, and Graeme—even that pesky grey cat that had adopted her—had been offering.
Friendship. Belonging. Love.
Josh must have felt he’d waited long enough, because he broke the silence. ‘Poppy’s just down for the weekend, but when the school year ends in December she’ll be here for most of the six-week break.’
‘You must be happy about that.’
