‘Nice,’ Spencer said, nodding and finishing his mouthful. ‘This a new one?’
Ian finished his piece. ‘New to us. Louisa asked Clem for the recipe of her famous South Giddi Giddi honey slice. I think she wants to impress her sisters back home. She had Clem print it on the Sunny Cross Farm Gate Cafe letterhead, got it laminated too.’
After that day in the hall in early January, when Ian had watched Spencer and Clem head outside, Indi’s hand in Spencer’s, he’d mentioned Clem’s name more often.
‘Sounds like a perfect keepsake,’ Spencer said, declining a second piece. He’d noticed the way his father-in-law had looked between him and Clem at the subsequent dress rehearsals, and you could almost hear the cogs turning in Ian’s mind when Spencer announced he’d made an offer on a small house in Penwarra.
‘Walking distance to the school,’ Ian had said when Spencer had taken them through on the open day. ‘You’ll have to buyyourself a bicycle, it’s only a short ride on the Rail Trail to the best cafe in town.’
And while he wasn’t sure how he was going to change Clem Crossley’s mind, Spencer had enough sense not to try making a move while he was still packing up his own house, and selling the furniture and appliances he and Belle had chosen. He also had enough tact to know it wasn’t the time for romance; not when Clem was mourning the death of a beloved family member.
He’d stayed at the back of the church during Jean’s funeral, and while he’d gone to the graveside to pay his respects too, he’d stuck to the fringes.
And boy, what a crowd. There had been hundreds of people, and it had been tough, standing there among the sniffles and the sobbing throughout the sermon.
There was a reason he avoided funerals as a rule, but he’d wanted to pay his respects to the Dellacourte and Crossley families.
The Brealys’ house was in a state of disarray when he dropped Ian back, the messiest Spencer had ever seen it, with moving boxes in every room and a whopping great shipping container in their front yard.
‘Looks like you’re in the thick of things,’ he told Louisa.
‘I’d invite you in for a coffee, but I’ve packed the bulk of the crockery and Heaven knows where I put the kettle. I moved it to shift one thing around and haven’t seen hide nor hair of it since.’
Spencer chuckled, and was about to drive back to his own mid-move mess when Louisa leaned in through his car window.
‘I forgot to say, Alison’s coming tomorrow for a garden tour, so I can show her which bulbs are planted where and what’s what in the garden. Can we pop around to yours after we finish here?’
Spencer nodded. ‘Of course.’
Louisa laid a hand on his forearm. ‘She knows how important Belle’s garden was. Alison is the green thumb of the family, so she’ll do her mum and dad’s garden over here, as well as keeping her own property blooming beautifully. She’s promised to send updates too, if we want.’
A bee buzzed in through the open windows, and Dolly snapped at it from the passenger seat, making them both laugh. Spencer shook his head. ‘It’s okay. I might take a few photos of my own before I leave, remember it as it was.’
His throat tightened and his nose tingled. When he looked up, Louisa’s eyes were damp too.
‘This is a fresh start, for all of us.’ Her voice cracked, and after a shaky laugh, she smiled. ‘They’ll take care of it, I know they will. And they’ll make many memories in the house that made Belle so happy.’
Spencer could only nod. He went to put the ute in reverse and drive off before she could see him cry, then stopped. If he couldn’t cry now, with Louisa, in their last days together at South Giddi Giddi, then when could he?
He put the car back in park, hopped out and wrapped his arms around his mother-in-law. Together, their shoulders shook.
‘I’ve got Belle’s photo albums out. How about I bring them around and we can go through them together?’ he suggested.
Louisa nodded. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I’d like it a lot.’
Clem stooped down to collect the purple-and-green rollerblades from the verandah.
‘No matter how many times I tell them, they still leave them lying around,’ she said, almost dropping the armload of beach towels she was carrying. It was a beautiful late-JanuaryMonday, that sweet spot when the weather was warm, but not too hot, and she had a day off.
Arthur chuckled, the sound of his walking stick accompanying his footsteps as he followed her to the car.
‘There’s something special about watching them zip around the driveway on those rollerblades.’ His tone turned wistful then. ‘Jean loved it too, said it was almost meditative.’
Clem burst out laughing. ‘Meditative for her, perhaps. She wasn’t the one counting the number of broken bones those little rollerbladers risk each and every time they strap themselves in. Certainly isn’t meditative for me.’
She stowed the towels in the boot of the Jeep, along with the bucket and spade Indi had insisted on, and the extra boogie board she’d promised Hazel she’d bring, so Indi and Alma could brave the shallow waves together.
The girls emerged from the house, their faces slathered in zinc sunscreen. Clem wasn’t sure she wanted to see how much of the sticky white liquid was all over her kitchen floor, but she was glad they’d been steadily ticking off the to-do list she’d set them before they could head to the coast.
