A Miracle for His Secret Son Read online

  ‘Before I go, let me see that burn. I’m not sure you should trust Poppy’s home-grown remedies.’

  ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ It was true. The burn no longer stung and, when she looked at her arm, the aloe vera was already working. The angry redness was fading.

  Gus’s fingers, however, encircled her wrist and, in spite of her beach girl’s tan, they looked very dark and strong against her skin. His other hand touched her wrist gently, unbelievably gently. So gently he was killing her.

  A tiny gasp escaped her and he went still. She looked up and something in his burning gaze sent a high voltage current through every vein in her body.

  She couldn’t bear it, had to look away.

  He said, ‘I’ll make contact with Nick’s doctor in the morning.’

  She was almost too breathless to respond. ‘If you need me, I’ll be here in the gallery all day.’

  ‘OK. I’ll call you.’

  Without another word, Gus went to the kitchen door where he’d left his overnight bag. Snagging it with two fingers, he let himself out and he didn’t look back.

  Freya was chopping mushrooms and onion for a homemade pizza when Nick came into the kitchen. His hair was still wet from his shower, and she always thought he looked younger somehow when his hair was wet. More vulnerable. Tonight, he looked shamefaced too.

  He sent a quick glance around their open-plan living area. ‘Where’s Gus?’

  ‘He’s gone to the hotel.’ She continued methodically to slice mushrooms.

  ‘Is he buying wine or something for dinner?’

  ‘No, Nick. He’s staying at the hotel.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t you ask him to stay here?’

  Setting down her knife, Freya folded her arms and she sent her son a rueful smile. ‘Gus thought it would be better. He wanted to give you time to get over your shock.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He’s a good man, Nick. He’s not like Sean. He really wants to help you.’

  The boy stared at the partly assembled pizza. ‘Are you going to put bacon on that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Plenty?’

  ‘Just the right amount. You know what Dr Kingston said. You’re supposed to have lots of vegetables and not too much salt.’

  Nick sighed theatrically and, for a moment, Freya thought the subject of Gus had been dropped. Not so.

  Leaning with his elbows on the counter, her son scowled. ‘I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. If Gus is such a great guy, why isn’t he a proper father? Why doesn’t he live here with us?’

  Freya’s heart thudded and her brain raced as she searched for the exact words to explain. This moment was so critically important. The explanation was complicated, but she had to get it right.

  Clearly, Nick thought she was taking too long and he rushed in with more questions. ‘If Gus is so helpful, why’d he go away in the first place? What’s wrong with us?’ Sudden tears spilled and Nick swiped at them angrily with the backs of his hands. ‘What’s wrong with our whole freaking family?’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Freya gave up searching for perfect words to answer these questions. Instead, she rushed around the kitchen counter to hug him.

  On Monday morning Gus looked out of his hotel window at blue skies and perfect rolling surf and wished his heart felt lighter. He’d spent another restless, unhappy night thinking about Freya and Nick and he’d resolved nothing.

  Still yawning, he showered and shaved and went down to the hotel dining room for breakfast. Coffee, fresh fruit and scrambled eggs helped.

  Then, as he left the dining room, he came to a sudden, heart-thumping halt. Nick was in the foyer, speaking to a woman at the front desk.

  The boy was dressed for school in a blue and white polo shirt with grey shorts and sneakers. He had a school bag slung over his shoulder and he fiddled nervously with its zip while he spoke to the woman behind the counter.

  What was he doing here? Gus’s heart picked up pace as he hurried forward. ‘Nick?’

  The boy whirled around. His eyes widened and he smiled nervously. ‘Hi, Gus.’ He turned back to the desk and said to the woman, ‘No need to call the room. It’s OK. I’ve found him.’

  I’ve found him.

  The words were like music to Gus, or the world’s finest poetry. His son was looking for him. His heart swelled with elation. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he told Nick thickly.

  The boy nodded. ‘I was hoping I’d find you.’

  ‘Have you had breakfast?’ Gus smiled, trying to put the boy at his ease.

  ‘Yes, thanks.’ Nick swallowed nervously. ‘Mum didn’t send me here or anything. I just wanted to see you—to…to talk.’

  ‘Sure. We could go up to my room or—’ A glance through the hotel’s large plate glass windows showed the beach sparkling in the morning sunshine. ‘We could go outside.’ Gus smiled again. ‘I think I’d rather be out in the fresh air. How about you?’

  ‘Yeah. Outside would be better.’

  They went out through automatic sliding glass doors into the pleasant subtropical sunshine. Children zipped past on bikes or dawdled to school. Ubiquitous surfers carrying surfboards mingled with early shoppers strolling on The Esplanade. Gus and Nick walked over soft grass strewn with pine needles to an empty bench seat beneath Norfolk Island pines.

  ‘Look at that.’ Gus gestured to the curling waves and the pristine curve of the beach. ‘You know you’re lucky to be living here, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nick smiled shyly. ‘But it’s not so great when you have to go to school all day.’

  ‘Although…as I remember, the surf’s still here when school’s out.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Nick grinned. ‘It’s a cool place to live, except lots of people only stay for a while, then move away.’ He shot a sideways glance to Gus. ‘Like you.’

  Making a deliberate effort to appear casual and relaxed, Gus leaned back against the seat’s wooden slats and propped an ankle on a knee. ‘There aren’t a lot of jobs in these parts. That’s why people move on. I had to go away to university and then, later, I worked overseas.’

  ‘Yeah, Mum told me.’ Nick looked down at his school bag, dumped at his feet, and he reached for the strap, twisting it with tense fingers. ‘Like I said, Mum didn’t send me here. I told her I had to get to school early. She doesn’t even know I’m talking to you.’

  Pleased by the boy’s honesty, by his obvious concern for Freya, Gus felt a strangely warm glow. ‘Maybe we can tell your mum…later.’

  ‘I guess.’ Nick kicked at a fallen pine cone. ‘We talked last night. About you. Mum told me what happened.’

  ‘Happened—as in—?’

  ‘Why you two split up. She said you didn’t deliberately leave us. You didn’t even know about me.’

  ‘Well…yes…that’s right.’

  ‘And she said it was her decision not to tell you about me.’

  Gus couldn’t resist asking, ‘Did she explain why?’

  Nick shrugged. ‘Kind of. It didn’t really make sense.’

  You and me both, kiddo, Gus thought. Even though he understood Freya’s motives, her secrecy still hurt, still didn’t make proper sense to him. Just the same, he tried to explain it to the boy. ‘Sometimes we do things that feel right at the time that don’t always make sense when we look back on them later.’

  ‘Especially in my weird family.’

  ‘Trust me, Nick, every family has its own kind of weirdness.’

  Wind ruffled the boy’s dark hair and he seemed to consider this for a moment, then shrugged it aside. ‘The way Mum tells it—sounds like she wasn’t good enough for you.’

  Gus lost his casual pose. ‘Freya told you that?’

  ‘She didn’t say those exact words.’

  ‘But she told you that she couldn’t fit into my life?’

  ‘Yeah. Something like that. Sounded pretty lame to me.’

  A heavy sigh escaped Gus. How could he ask Nick to understand that he and Freya had been
young, that most young people made bad judgements one way or another, although they never felt like mistakes at the time?

  The boy was eleven and he couldn’t be expected to look on eighteen-year-olds as young, especially when he faced a shockingly uncertain future.

  ‘The good thing is, your mum found me now,’ Gus said.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks for coming down here, and offering the kidney and everything.’ Nick sent him another shy smile. ‘That’s actually what I wanted to say.’

  Gus smiled back at him. He loved this kid. Heck, he wanted to wrap his arms around Nick’s skinny shoulders and hug him hard. But maybe it was too soon, so he resisted the urge. ‘I’ve got a kidney to spare, and you’re welcome to it. But I have to have the tests first.’

  ‘I emailed Dr Kingston last night.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Sent him an email,’ Nick said nonchalantly.

  ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

  ‘My doctor’s pretty cool. And he wrote back to say he’s really pleased we found you, and you can get most of your tests done at the Dirranvale hospital, if you want.’

  ‘That sounds good.’

  Nick’s grey eyes, which were the same shape as Freya’s eyes and had the same thick, dark lashes, took on an unexpected twinkle. ‘If you’re going to Dirranvale, there’s something I should warn you about.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘One of the nurses up there is a vampire.’

  For a split second, Gus wasn’t sure how to respond to this. He was about to laugh it off, then he caught the spark of mischief in Nick’s grin and changed tack. ‘No kidding? A vampire?’

  ‘I reckon when she takes your blood, she keeps some of it for herself.’

  ‘No!’ Gus gave an elaborate shudder. ‘You’d better describe her to me, so I’ll know to avoid her.’

  ‘She’s easy to pick. She has long black hair and really, really pale skin.’

  ‘And fangs?’

  Nick giggled. ‘No. She’s actually kind of pretty.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. That would be right. Vampires are often exceptionally beautiful. That’s why they’re so dangerous. Do you think I should tell her that we know what she’s up to?’

  Nick’s smile lost a little of its certainty. ‘I’m not asking you to drive a stake through her heart or anything.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Gus chuckled. ‘So you’re determined to save her bacon. Does that mean you’re keen on her?’

  ‘No way.’ The boy went bright pink.

  ‘All right, then. I won’t say a word.’

  From somewhere in the distance came the ringing of a bell.

  ‘Oh-oh.’ Nick scrambled to his feet and scooped up his bag.

  ‘You’re going to be late for school.’

  ‘Yeah. I’d better go.’

  ‘You’d better run,’ Gus said. ‘But be careful crossing the road, won’t you?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice about the vampire.’

  ‘Good luck!’ Nick flashed a final quick grin, and Gus watched the boy dashing across the grass beneath the pines, dark hair lifting in the breeze, school bag bumping against his hip, and he felt, for a fleeting moment, as if he’d known his son all his life.

  Then reality returned like a fist in his guts. He’d been deprived of this fabulous feeling, deprived for the past eleven and a half years.

  Freya’s concentration was shot to pieces. Gus had phoned to say that he’d hired a car and was driving to Dirranvale for blood tests, X-rays and scans and, although she went through the motions of her normal everyday activities—opening the gallery, smiling at visitors who wandered in, checking mail, answering phone calls—her mind was at the hospital.

  She’d been there so many times with Nick and she could picture exactly what Gus was going through—sitting patiently, or perhaps impatiently, on those hard metal seats outside X-ray, then having to change into one of the awful gaping hospital gowns. Afterwards, going on to Pathology to be stuck with needles.

  The thought kept her dancing on a knife-edge between hope and fear. This morning, Nick had been so excited, so certain that his dad would save him. He had all his faith pinned on this. And of course she was hoping too…

  Even though Nick wasn’t in immediate danger, he was on a national waiting list and they’d been assured there would be a donor match out there, but she knew they all, including Gus, wanted him to be the one who gave.

  The tissue match had to be perfect, however, so wasn’t it foolish to build up too much hope?

  She must have whispered good luck to Gus at least a thousand times this morning.

  When she wasn’t doing that, she was thinking about last night and the way Gus had held her wrist and looked at her… She kept seeing the dark shimmer of emotion in his eyes…

  The memory filled her head and how crazy was that, to be obsessed by such a teensy, short-lived moment?

  It was nothing.

  No.

  It was something. There’d definitely been something happening when Gus had touched her skin…intensity in his face that couldn’t be ignored. He’d looked that way all those years ago…on so many occasions during their perfect summer.

  Thinking about that summer, Freya found herself drawn into a web of memories…beginning with the first time Gus had asked her out, when he invited her to be his partner at their senior formal.

  She could recall every detail of that afternoon in their last year of high school…

  Wednesdays always finished with double history, one of the few classes Freya shared with Gus. And on that particular mid-week afternoon he spoke to her just outside the school gate.

  Her heart started a drum roll the minute she saw him standing there and realised he was waiting for her.

  She’d been hopelessly smitten from the day Gus arrived at their school two years earlier, but she’d been quite stupidly shy around him and, as Gus had been rather shy too, they’d hardly spoken.

  Oh, there’d been a little flirting…and a lot of smiling…but he’d been caught up with his surfing, his football and his studies, and he’d never asked her out on a date. As far as Freya knew, Gus hadn’t taken any girl out and there were plenty of girls who’d been hoping.

  But, on that special afternoon, he approached her with endearing nervousness. ‘Hey, Freya?’

  ‘Hey.’ She’d tried to sound casual, as if this wasn’t a big deal, like maybe the biggest deal of her life to date…

  ‘I was wondering…if you have a partner for the formal.’

  ‘Um…no, I haven’t.’ Oh, God. Her knees were shaking. ‘Not yet.’

  Mel Crane shuffled past and sent them a goofy grin.

  Gus scowled at him, then offered Freya a shy tilted smile. ‘I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.’

  ‘Um.’ Her tongue was suddenly paralysed. Speak, simpleton! ‘Yes,’ she managed at last.

  ‘Yes?’ Seemed he was about as inarticulate as she was. Why did he look so disbelieving? As if she wouldn’t jump at the chance? His shock gave her courage.

  ‘Yes, Gus, I’d really like to go to the formal with you.’

  ‘Sweet.’ He was smiling properly now, smiling fully at her in a way that was a little short of dazzling. ‘Terrific. I don’t know any details yet, about what time I’ll pick you up or anything.’

  ‘That’s OK. There’s no rush.’ She smiled at him bravely. ‘Thanks, Gus.’

  He walked with her then for three blocks, and she wasn’t sure that her feet were touching the ground. They talked about their history teacher, about their friends, about surfing…

  When they reached The Esplanade they said goodbye. Their houses were at opposite ends of the Bay.

  Oh, man. Freya rushed home to Poppy, bursting with excitement.

  And, immediately, she met her first hurdle.

  Poppy didn’t like the idea of her only daughter going out with a football jock. Weren’t they all smart-mouthed thugs? Wasn’t there a ni
ce boy Freya could go with? Someone more artistic and sensitive?

  Naturally, Freya insisted that Gus was nice. He wasn’t just good at football; he was practically top of their class. He was lovely, and she was going with him or with no one.

  When Poppy finally, but unhappily, acquiesced, they moved on to the Battle of The Dress.

  ‘I can do wonderful things with a sewing machine and a bucket of dye,’ Poppy suggested.

  Freya was beyond horrified. She loved her mum, but she flatly refused to go to the formal dressed like a tie-dyed hippie.

  ‘All the other girls are getting their dresses from Mimi’s in Dirranvale. Phoebe’s mother’s even taking her to Brisbane to buy her dress.’

  ‘That girl’s mother never had any sense,’ Poppy muttered darkly. ‘And you know we can’t afford so much as a handkerchief from one of those fancy salons.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’ll earn all the money I need.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll sell aromatherapy candles at the markets.’

  Poppy rolled her eyes. She’d gone through her ‘market phase’, as she called it. She’d sold handmade soaps and candles and jewellery and she’d made quite good money, but she hated the long hours of constant toil that were required to replenish her stocks week after week, and she’d opted for a part-time job caring for seedlings at a local plant nursery instead.

  Freya, however, was determined. She went with her best friend Jane and Jane’s mother to Mimi’s in Dirranvale and she fell in love with a most divine off-the-shoulder dress and put it on lay-by. Then she gathered used jars from all her neighbours’ households and spent hours in the evenings melting wax and adding essential oils and wicks, then decorating the candle jars with silver and gold calligraphy pens.

  For a month she spent every weekend doing the rounds of the craft markets in the local seaside towns. She was exhausted, especially as she had to catch the bus back and forth, and she had to burn the metaphorical candle at both ends, sitting up till midnight to finish her homework.

  But it was worth it. She’d earned enough to buy her dream dress from Mimi’s, as well as divine shoes that were dainty enough to make Cinderella jealous, and there was money left over for a trip to the hairdresser and a French manicure.