The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Page 18

  Pippa nodded.

  "Double Downs?" I asked. "Or Power FM?" There weren't a lot of great radio choices out here in the radio-and-cell-phone dead zone of Darling Downs, and what few stations they did have were decidedly quirky.

  "Double Downs," Pippa said. "I like the man who talks in between the songs."

  I tuned in the local community radio station where a down-home DJ rambled on about the drought and an upcoming Christmas charity benefit that had just been announced. He mentioned the name of Adam's boss and the fact that Queensland Gas & Coal was one of the sponsors. I turned up the volume just loud enough to drown out Adam's voice.

  Pippa patted her quilt to entice the dog up onto her bed. Thunderlane leaped up, and then stuck his cold, wet nose in my face, checking to make sure he wouldn't get yelled at.

  "It's okay, boy." I scratched his warm, furry ears.

  Adam got upset whenever he found the dog on the bed, but I was inclined to say the heck with the expensive designer bedspread and let the dog shred it into ribbons. Unlike the handmade quilt Adam's mother had made, it was replaceable. Pippa's fragile self-esteem was not.

  I kissed Pippa on the forehead and then backed out of the room, dimming the light so the kid could get some sleep. In the living room, Adam paced like a tall, angry tiger, tethered by the phone cord, his posture so tight I thought he might punch the wall. I faded into my own bedroom, determined not to interfere.

  It was still too early to go to sleep, so I slipped into my nightgown and turned on the reading lamp next to my bed. Without Pippa here, I was right back to where I'd started; a girl without a family, a home or a job. I caressed the handmade double wedding-ring quilt, drawing strength from the feel of crisp cotton and neatly hand-stitched threads as I folded it up and draped it over the back of the rocking chair. With a sigh I sank down into the chair, turned it towards the window, and rocked aimlessly as I stared out into the dying light, wondering where I would to go from here.

  At last, the house grew completely silent. It seemed that Adam's phone call had ended. I piled up the pillows, pushed back the blankets except for the sheet, and crawled into bed to read.

  After a while I heard the clink of bottles and sound of a beer cap twisting off. I debated seeing if Adam wanted to talk, or to stay here and mind my own business. I should mind my own business. After my own parents had argued, it was always better to leave them both alone.

  I flipped through my Native Aboriginal People's & Cultures textbook which explained the Aboriginal people considered dreams to be a form of wealth. I traced the petroglyphs we'd been unable to find, the ones which would have proven my nocturnal horseback rides were more than just wishful thinking. I glanced up at the picture of the girl on the white pony, her smile forever frozen in Technicolor.

  "What do you think of all this?" I asked Adam's dead mother. "Other than the fact you'd probably like to drop Eva down a mine shaft?"

  The picture didn't answer, but through the dreams, I'd begun to feel as if I belonged to this land where Adam's ancestors had carved a cattle station out of the outback. Tears welled in my eyes. No wonder I loved this place. It was exactly the kind of station I'd always dreamed of moving to with Harvey.

  A light knock tapped on my door, not so loud as to rouse me out of a sleep, but more of an auditory inquiry: 'Rosie, are you still awake?'

  I snapped shut the textbook.

  "Come in."

  The door opened. Adam peeked over the threshold, his expression serious.

  "Have you got a minute?"

  I swallowed. Here it was. Adam was about to fire me because he didn't need me anymore.

  "Yes," I said.

  Adam sat on the corner of my bed. Color flushed my cheeks as I realized he could probably see my nipples through the thin cotton weave of my nightgown. I crossed my arms in front of my chest, hugging myself, bracing myself for the bad news he was about to deliver. Adam's jaw clenched in a blend of apology and guilt.

  "Thank you for shielding Pippa from that ugliness."

  I nodded, for what else could I say other than, 'what in the hell is wrong with you two?'

  He stared straight at me, his expression distracted, but after a moment I realized he wasn't ogling my skimpy nightgown, but lost in his own worries and woes. The tension stretched out, my stomach clenched, at last it was too much and I had to know.

  "Pippa said her mother is taking her after all?"

  Adam grimaced.

  "Over my dead body. She gave up her chance. Now she'll have to go back to the regular schedule."

  "What schedule is that?"

  "I have Pippa most of the time. Eva gets to see her every other weekend and alternating holidays." Adam sighed. "Though for the most part, she usually blows Pippa off. She'll be here Friday afternoon to take Pippa for the weekend.

  Warm relief almost caused me to whimper. Oh, thank God! I still have a home!

  "That sounds reasonable." I forced my voice not to warble. "What made Eva decide to back off?"

  "I told her the teacher she insisted I hire discovered glaring deficits in Pippa's mathematical abilities. I told her you've begun her on a program of study designed to catch her up." He grimaced. "I'm sorry, Rosie. I didn't mean to drag you into the middle."

  "But it's the truth."

  A cloud crossed Adam's chiseled features.

  "I will try to keep you out of this as much as I can, but I couldn't just let Eva…"

  He fell silent and stared out the window. I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down as he swallowed whatever maelstrom lurked beneath the surface. He did not turn to face me as he finished his sentence.

  "Roberta Dingle was right. You are exactly what my daughter needs."

  He got up and walked out of the room. As he shut the door, he turned to add: "I have to work in Toowoomba tomorrow. I should be home by supper. I will break the news to Pippa then."

  "I'll make sure we're not home if Eva calls again," I said.

  Adam's eyes narrowed, and then he gave me a grim nod.

  "You'd make a worthy adversary, Rosamond Xalbadora," Adam said. "But don't cross her. You have no idea what the woman is capable of."

  He shut the door and left me to my thoughts.

  Chapter 18

  The phone rang. It was precisely nine o'clock.

  "I'll get it!" Pippa shouted.

  "No! I will…"

  I cut her off and grabbed the phone before she could pick up the receiver. All last night, and from the moment the kid got out of bed, she'd been so high-strung that I'd finally tickled her until she'd yowled she would pee her pants. It was a bad day for Adam to have to go into work, but what could he do? Get fired from his job because every time his ex-wife called, she set Pippa into a tizzy? I picked up the receiver.

  "Hello?"

  "Ahh, Rosie…"

  Oh. Thank God! It was Linda Hastings, not the Black Widow.

  "Hello Linda." I glanced furtively at Pippa. "I was just thinking about you. Do you need any help getting anything done today?"

  "Only if you and Pippa don't already have plans."

  My only plan is to keep Pippa too darned busy to obsess about her mother's machinations…

  "We've got to finish up our morning lessons," I said. "Her father is due home for supper around six-thirty, but between eleven and three, we're free for lunch."

  "Well, then," Linda said, "would you two like to come over to help me weed?"

  By 'weed,' she meant tug two errant strands of grass out of her ridiculously well-mulched garden, and then she'd send us home with a basketful of vegetables, some flowers, some goat cheese, and probably some more 'poor thinned out plants' she couldn't bear to throw away to add to my own, slowly increasing garden. I smirked at the thought of Adam out there bare-chested as Pippa bossed him around.

  "We'll be over at one o'clock."

  After coaxing Pippa to help me measure out a two-thirds recipe for pikelets, I changed into my denim shorts and a dark-colored tank top … all the better to
hide the dirt …and instructed Pippa to do the same so she didn't get her favorite My Little Pony shirt filthy. We stepped outside for a science lesson under the guise of watering our own fledgling garden.

  Pippa aimed the hose at a freshly planted row of kale, causing a tiny rainbow to appear within the spray. "Grandma liked to watch me water the plants. She used to come out and sit in the chair."

  I glanced over at the wooden café chair, painted yellow to match the house, placed next to a tiny weathered table. The garden oasis sat beneath a trellis that at one time had carried pole beans judging by the slender, dead stalks which still clung to the lattice. The entire garden bore the appearance of a horse whose shaggy winter coat desperately needed a brushing, but immediately around that chair, all of the weeds had been recently pulled.

  "What did you and your grandmother plant, nipper?"

  "We planted lettuce," Pippa said. "But it all wilted because I forgot to water it. Grandma would be sad if she knew I let her garden die."

  Tears welled in her eyes. Adam said his mother had hidden her illness by conserving her energy to take care of Pippa.

  "It's not your fault, honey," I said. "When your grandma got sick, taking care of her became more important than taking care of her garden. What matters is you remember to water it now."

  "You sound a lot like Grandma," Pippa said.

  I gave her a hug, and then we plucked weeds out of the tiny green shoots of kale that peeked out of the soil where Pippa and I had planted a row. The moist, black dirt got underneath our fingernails as we dug up earthworms, and then cheered for them to burrow back safely beneath the soil before the birds feasted on them. We then pulled weeds from around the pepper plants Adam had planted which now appeared to be thriving. The jury was still out on whether or not the tomatoes would survive, which is what had given me the idea for today's science lesson.

  "Why are the leaves turning yellow?" Pippa asked. "They looked so pretty in Mrs. Hastings garden."

  I smiled inwardly. Gotcha…

  "Whenever you transplant something from one place to another, some of the roots become damaged, and the plant needs extra care to survive."

  That goes for people, too…

  Pippa lifted a yellowed leaf with dismay.

  "How do we help it?"

  "We give it lots of love," I said. "But first, we have to get rid of everything which isn't productive."

  With a quick flick of my wrist, I pinched off a yellowed branch close to the bottom of the tomato plant.

  "No!" Pippa squealed. "You'll kill it!"

  The air filled with the tangy scent of the tomato plant's natural insecticide as I handed Pippa the yellowed leaf-stalk.

  "See how dry this is? This part of the plant is beyond saving. If you leave it there while the plant is weak, it will expend all its energy trying to keep it alive instead of setting down new roots so it can grow up healthy in its new home."

  "But doesn't it hurt the plant to cut off its leaves?"

  "Not all of its leaves," I said. "Only the diseased ones."

  I plucked off another yellow branch and then pointed to a small, yellow bump that bulged out of the stalk like a miniature nose.

  "See that?" I pointed to the tiny leaf bud. "That's a new leaf from where the plant just set down a brand new root. Now that we've given it room, the plant will focus all of its energy on helping the new little leaf grow."

  Kinda like your father is trying to do with you…

  Wielding a pair of scissors with surgical precision, Pippa painstakingly snipped each yellowed leaf while I removed the rest using a quick-and-dirty twist of the wrist. Soon the tomato plants looked like shorn sheep, not very leafy, but what leaves still remained looked lush and green. We staked them up. As Pippa gave them an extra-heavy dose of water, I explained how the roots drank up minerals from the soil. Her appetite for knowledge now suitably whetted, we went inside the house, ate a quick snack, and cracked open one of her grandmother's gardening books about growing tomatoes which conveniently showed diagrams of root growth and cell wall structures.

  "Okay, nipper," I said once I'd coaxed her to do the parallel exercises in her regular science textbook. "We promised Mrs. Hastings we'd help her weed."

  Pippa ran after Thunderlane, and I, in turn, ran after her, as we made our way through pastures full of sheep and alpaca, and past the black four-horned Jacob's Ram that glowered at us with intimidating disdain.

  "Good morning, Azazel," Pippa said. "I don't suppose you'll let me pet you today?"

  Azazel, of course, tried to ram us through the fence. That's what rams did. They rammed people. That's why they were called rams. Neither of us was foolish enough to step into his pen, so he tangled one of his four horns in the fence instead.

  "See!" I scolded him. "That's what you get for being mean!"

  Azazel got himself disentangled, which was a relief as I wouldn't want to go into his pen to 'rescue' him, only to be thanked by getting one of his sharp horns rammed up my butt.

  We barged into Linda's front door after knocking twice and calling her name. The hand-woven tapestry which dominated her living room had grown in the month I'd been here. Plant in spring, Linda said, milk and shear in summer, can in fall, and then only in winter would she have time to devote her energies into her art, but her gimpy hip had forced her to remain indoors. We stepped into the kitchen to find her up on a stepladder, rummaging through her uppermost cupboards with a fruit bat clinging to her hair.

  "Linda Hastings!" I scolded. "Didn't the doctor order you not to use the stairs?"

  Linda shot me a look that reminded me of Thunderlane when he tried to sneak in the front door, all muddy and wet from the river.

  "I was just feeling a little more independent," Linda said.

  "Why didn't you wait? You knew we were coming over?"

  Pippa picked up Humpty, or was that Dumpty, from the floor and moved him into his basket while I helped Linda get down with Dumpty, or was it Humpty, firmly clinging to her long, grey tresses.

  "I was just looking for my bowls," Linda said. "I promised I'd bake cupcakes for the Christmas bazaar at the church."

  "Christmas? It's still November!"

  "Only for a few more days," Linda said. "We hold the handcraft bazaar a month out, just around the time people start thinking about buying their loved ones Christmas presents." She gave Pippa a wink. "We want them to buy their gifts from us before they hit the stores."

  Christmas. Ugh! I pushed the upcoming holiday right out of my mind. Gregory was non-practicing Jewish, so for the last four years the only reminder of the vociferous tug-of-war my parents called 'Christmas visitation rights' was a thoughtful trinket unwrapped each night as we'd lit a candle to celebrate Hanukah.

  "Tell me what you need and I'll find it," I offered.

  I climbed up and rummaged through Linda's sizeable collection of every size and shape container known to mankind and handed down the disparate pieces to Pippa, who matched up the containers to lids.

  "You have enough here to outfit an army!" I said.

  "That's what happens when you attend a lot of bake sales," Linda laughed. "After a while, containers start to follow you home."

  We ate a light snack, and then Linda sent Pippa to scrounge up eggs from her chooks. We sat down for a cup of tea. Humpty squeaked from his basket for his sister. I fished him out and wrapped him in a towel, a bath towel as Humpty and Dumpty were now half the size of a puppy. So long as I covered his wings, it was easy to forget the fox-faced creature was a bat.

  "Since you'll be selling Christmas presents," I said, "have you any suggestions as to what I might get for Adam? I have a few ideas for Pippa, but I have no idea what to get her father!"

  "Adam?" Linda looked thoughtful. "He has everything he wants, and yet the poor man has none of the things he needs." She gave me an appraising look. "Unless, of course, you and him…"

  It took a moment for it to dawn on me what she suggested.

  "Linda!" My face burned sc
arlet with mortification. "It's not like that! He's still a married man!"

  Linda leaned back, far too perceptive, and took a sip of her tea.

  "If you encouraged him, maybe he would."

  'Yes,' I thought to myself

  "No," I said aloud.

  Linda laughed.

  "Linda … you have a dirty mind."

  Linda took another sip of her tea, and then glanced over to where she kept a picture of her long dead husband. On my lap, Humpty squirmed out of his towel. It felt very surreal, drinking tea out of fine china with a bat in my lap, talking to a 72-year-old woman about seducing my boss.

  "I loved my husband dearly," Linda said. "But if a gorgeous stud stallion like Adam Bristow were to suddenly take up living in my barn? Why, I think I might just take him for a ride."

  "Adam wants nothing to do with women." I waved my hand dismissively. "His soon-to-be ex-wife has put him through the wringer."

  "Adam is still young," Linda said. "Once he gets that mess cleaned up with Eva, it would only be natural for him to go looking for a woman who's better grounded." She leaned forward and jabbed her finger at my chest. "Someone like you, perhaps? You're much better suited for him than that high-strung Pomeranian."

  I suppressed a snicker. I had never heard the Jackson Oil heiress referred to as such, but from how callously she treated Pippa, the epithet fit. My only contact with a Pomeranian had been this friend of my mother who'd promised me one of her dog's purebred puppies … until the stupid dog ate her own babies.

  Linda's grey eyebrows reared up in appraising 'V' as she saw I'd taken the bait.

  "He's too old for me!"

  "He's only ten years older," Linda said. "Men grow up more slowly than women. A man in his thirties is about the equivalent of a savvy young college graduate who's always taken care of herself."

  "He's still in love with his wife." There. I'd said it. I said the reason I suspected Adam always pulled away.

  Linda sipped her tea.

  "He left her," Linda said.

  It was me who sipped my tea this time, absent-mindedly stroking Humpty's warm, leathery wings. Adam was tight-lipped. What little he had revealed was given in dribs and drabs. Depending on how he said it, the story always seemed to contradict itself.