The fact that she was enjoying it back home on Coral Island was something she’d never thought she’d get a chance to experience after more than two decades in the city. But it was her home once again, and the beauty and tranquillity of life on the tropical island wasn’t something she’d ever take for granted again.
As she finished making up the café’s shopping list, her phone rang. She slipped it out of her apron pocket and held it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mum.”
“Dani, it’s so lovely to hear your voice. I was just thinking about you.”
“You were? Good things, I hope.”
“I’m so proud of how well you’re doing. It makes me happy to know that you’re enjoying your studies and your life, even if I don’t get to see you every day.”
“Thanks, Mum. That means a lot to me. In fact, I have news. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Lovely—I’m glad you thought to include me. What’s going on, sweetheart?”
There was a pause.
“I’ve met someone.”
Bea’s heart skipped a beat. “You’ve met someone? That’s great, honey.”
Even if change sometimes made her nervous, she reminded herself that this was agoodthing. Love was something she longed for both of her children to find, and when they did, she’d be kind, supportive and completely on board. She trusted them to be sensible in the people they ultimately chose to spend their lives with.
Dani had always been fussy — she’d been a picky eater as a toddler and had rarely found any hobbies she’d considered worth pursuing. When she did commit to something, she always did so with every part of her being. She called it “hyper focus,” but Bea saw it as a strength — her daughter could achieve anything she put her mind to because she put every ounce of herself into it.
She’d been told it came along with the autism Dani was diagnosed with several years earlier. So, when she finally did fall in love, Bea imagined she’d be choosy about the man she gave her heart to, and that she’d likely give him her all. Bea only hoped he’d deserve it. “What’s his name?”
“Damien Lachey. I met him in my architecture class. I told you about him, I think. He’s wonderful and kind. You’re going to love him.”
“I didn’t know you were taking an architecture class. And I didn’t know you were seeing him. You said he was a friend.”
“We’re more than friends now, much more. And I signed up this semester. I thought it’d help with my design aesthetic. Anyway, he’s amazing, and I’ve fallen in love with the class as well. I’m thinking of switching over to architecture next year.”
Bea frowned.Love?Already? What happened to being picky?
Another adjustment to her degree program at this stage seemed irresponsible. She’d already taken a year off social work before changing to interior design. At this rate, her daughter would never get a qualification. “Changing again? Is that a good idea, honey? You’ll have completed almost two years of your design course by then. Shouldn’t you finish it first and then think about doing something else?”
“You don’t understand, Mum. Damien says it’s the best way to make use of my talent. That I’m wasted on interior design. He sees a lot of potential in me. Besides, I’ll be able to transfer some credits.”
“Damien sounds like he has a lot of opinions for a twenty-year-old kid,” Bea snapped. She stopped herself and squeezed her mouth shut. She couldn’t help it sometimes—it was hard to let go of parenting her children like they were still … well, children. But Dani was an adult and responsible for her own decisions. Bea was paying for her daughter’s education, along with their father, so surely the two of them should get input into the decisions she made.
“Twenty-year-olds aren’t kids, Mum,” Dani huffed. “And anyway, Damien isn’t twenty. He’s thirty-six.”
Bea’s adrenaline spiked. “What? Why is a thirty-six-year-old man studying first-year architecture and getting into romances with twenty-one-year-old girls?”
“Mum, you’re being unreasonable. I’m not a girl—I’m a woman. And he’s not studying first-year—he’s teaching it. He’s the lecturer. He lives in this amazing flat with no furniture—it’s all just cushions on the floor. Can you believe it?”
Bea couldn’t believe it. She also couldn’t believe her daughter was calling a flat without furnitureamazing,but instead of saying so outright, she murmured something indecipherable in response.
“He wears beautifully coloured tunics instead of the formal shirt and pants that most of the lecturers wear. And he smokes this funny-looking thing with a long hose… I don’t know what it is, but he’s really into different cultures and says we have to open our minds to things beyond our own understanding. That we can’t limit ourselves to the things we know.”
Bea continued the conversation with Dani, but couldn’t focus on anything other than her daughter’s revelation. A stone formed in the pit of Bea’s gut. She felt like she’d be sick at any moment. They’d held Dani’s twenty-first birthday party in Sydney several months earlier. It’d been the first time Bea had seen her ex-husband Preston since he’d begun dating her former friend, Annie. She’d been nervous to bump into the two of them again now that they were an established couple, but in the end, she’d managed to stay out of their way for most of the night.
But her most vibrant memory from the event was her sweet young daughter on the dance floor, surrounded by other laughing, squealing young women. It’d struck Bea then how quickly the time had passed. She recalled in a flash the newborn baby riding home in the impossibly large car seat, with Bea and Preston anxiously driving through the Sydney traffic in pelting rain. The toddler who threw tantrums and food, but who had the sweetest smile in the world and loved to draw. The girl who begged to go to the beach on weekends so she could build sandcastles and ride her boogie board on the small waves close to the shore. She’d brought so much joy into their lives — both her and Preston. It was hard to believe she was twenty-one years old and halfway through a degree.
Dani had enjoyed the celebration — had invited all her old high school friends as well as her new university ones. There’d been an eclectic mix of people at the venue, but Bea didn’t recall a thirty-six-year-old man in a brightly coloured tunic. She was certain she wouldn’t have forgotten someone who fit that description. Dani had seemed so young to be turning twenty-one and Bea wasn’t quite ready to see her as an adult. But she’d been married by Dani’s age, something she had to constantly remind herself of whenever she was tempted to treat Danita like a child.
