‘How are you, really?’ Bel asked.
‘I’m wrecked,’ her friend said with a sad smile. ‘We’ve had some stressful times in our life, but nothing compares to this. The physiotherapy and rehabilitation he’ll need isa lot.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to get through it all. They say he’s going to have to learn how to walk all over again, and at this stage, they aren’t even sure how much mobility he’ll actually regain,’ she said as her eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t know how he’ll cope, Bel. If he can’t walk, he won’t be able to work the farm. We can’t afford to hire anyone. It’s going to kill him.’
Bel’s heart dropped. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would ease her friend’s misery, so she did the only thing she could—cradled her in her arms and let her cry. Bel suspected Emma hadn’t been able to let her guard down around Craig’s family, and she was constantly putting on a brave face for her children. Tonight, she needed to let it out.
The next evening, Bel left the little family to have some time alone after being invited to Dean’s place for dinner.
She and the kids had been over there a number of times, mainly to get them out of the house and as an excuse for the two of them to see each other when he was working long hours, but tonight was the first time she’d been here alone. She was more than a little excited by the prospect.
While Dean’s driveway was a still rough dirt, his paddocks were impeccable. He’d worked hard to bring his propertyback from the slow decline it had been on over the years when his father had been unwell—the yard and driveway would obviously be the least of his priorities.
The sight of the property made Bel even more impressed by Dean’s generosity over the last few weeks, with all the time he’d donated to helping with the kids and keeping Fernvale running. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have a million things here he could have been doing instead.He really is a good guy.
Her arrival was met with loud barking from Dean’s two work dogs before a sharp whistle split the air and the noise ceased. Dean appeared, pushing open the screen door to greet her. He always kissed her as though he hadn’t seen her in months instead of mere hours. She smiled as he pulled reluctantly away from their kiss.
‘Dinner smells good,’ she said, catching the scent of something delicious wafting in from the kitchen.
‘I put a leg of lamb in the slow cooker this morning.’
‘I’m starving,’ she said, almost drooling as she followed him inside. ‘Can I help with anything?’
‘Nope, all under control.’ He was so confident in the kitchen, and she’d never realised how hot that could be in a man. It had never been part of the whole Jax Lexington thing—cooking would have been far too mundane for Jax—and while Tate had cooked the odd breakfast and the occasional barbecue, it was never like this. When he’d been home, he had preferred eating out.
‘How’s it going over there?’ Dean asked.
‘The kids are still so excited about Em being home. They’ve barely left her side.’
‘It’s been tough on them. On Emma, too.’
Bel had blinked away tears more times than she could count since Emma had arrived as she’d watched the love between mother and children unfold before her eyes. Emma had taken over reading the bedtime stories and doing the rounds of tucking in each child at night, and Bel had realised what a poor consolation prize she had been for the kids. Nothing could replace a mum’s hug. ‘It’s going to be so hard for them all to say goodbye after the weekend.’
‘I can imagine. Hopefully when she goes back, they’ll get some good news from the doctors about when Craig can get home.’
‘I hope so,’ Bel said. ‘It’s so quiet here. I’m resisting the reflex to go and see what mischief the kids are up to.’
‘Stand down, soldier.’ Dean grinned. ‘You’re officially off duty tonight. But yeah, it does get quiet out here. Why do you think I always take up Emma up on an invite to dinner?’
‘That’s one extreme to the other,’ she said, smiling. The house certainly wasn’t the sterile motel room that Tate’s apartment had been, but it still lacked a personal touch that branded it as Dean’s. There were some photos on the walls, but they were old ones, of grandparents maybe, although there were a few smaller ones gathered on top of a china cabinet that shewalked over to now to inspect. In one of them, two people stood behind a small boy. She could already tell the boy was Dean, dressed in a football uniform and about seven or eight years old. A man and a woman were in the next one, which had been taken in front of a church on their wedding day, and she guessed they were his parents. A third photo was of a woman in her late forties, sitting on the front steps of this house and patting a small white dog. She was smiling brightly at whoever was taking the photo. ‘Is this your mum?’ she asked, holding up the photo in its brass frame.
He glanced up and nodded, a soft smile touching his lips. ‘Things were better when she was around.’ He dropped his gaze and turned away to put the tongs he’d been using into the sink.
Bel swallowed as her throat tightened. She understood too well how grief could creep up on you sometimes. It often caught her unawares. It never went away; you just learned to move forward with it.
‘I like the noise and chaos at Fernvale. I never had it,’ he said, turning back to face her before searching in the cutlery drawer and retrieving a spoon.
‘Being an only child? Yeah, I get that. It’s one of the things I love about being part of Emma and Craig’s crazy life too.’
‘For a long time, it was just Dad and me out here, and he wasn’t a great conversationalist at the best of times.’
‘Did you two never get on?’ she asked, curious about a topic they hadn’t really discussed much.
Dean quietly stirred the gravy before answering. ‘It wasn’t that we didn’t get on. I mean, we had farming in common, but we never really talked. He’d grunt here and there and tell me what I had to do the next day, but we wouldn’t talk about our days or anything. Dinner was always silent with the news on in the background. At breakfast we’d have the radio, local news and weather.’
Bel couldn’t help but feel for the younger Dean. The picture he’d painted sounded incredibly lonely.
‘He was of that generation where men were stoic and worked until they dropped dead out in the paddock. Which he did, quite literally.’
‘Was it a farming accident?’
