Thornwood House by Anna Romer Read Free Book Online Page A

better get going.’
    I made a show of glancing at my wrist, although my watch was lying at the bottom of my tote with a broken strap. ‘There’s plenty of time,’ I told her. ‘Why the hurry?’
    ‘I’m not in a hurry. I’m just bored.’
    I searched her profile, worried by the wall of resistance she was putting up, wondering how much of it had to do with Tony.
    ‘You’re allowed to speak about your father,’ I ventured. ‘You know – ask questions, that sort of thing. I won’t mind.’
    A sigh from the seat beside me. ‘Mum, I’m all right.’
    ‘If you ever want to – ’ Talk, I’d been about to say. If you ever want to talk about him, I’m here. But then I noticed her hunched shoulders, her fingers curled into protective fists, the pallor of her face – and decided I’d said enough.
    Gravel popped under the tyres as we swung a U-turn and eased down the access road in a cloud of red dust. To our left, the garden receded into a forest of eucalypt saplings. On the right the hill dropped steeply away, plunging into a bowl-like valley where gumtrees cast long shadows across the paddocks. Sheltering in the patchy shade were white specks, probably cattle.
    The valley vanished as the road was engulfed on either side by tall ironbarks and thickets of bottlebrush and acacia and prickly hedges of blackthorn. As the way grew dark, my thoughts returned to Aunt Morag: her pudgy, waxy face framed by a fuzz of henna-red hair, her twinkling hazel eyes that somehow outshone the diamond ring she wore on her small freckled hand. She’d been always on the move, chattering nonstop, rushing through life like a purple-clad tornado.
    Aunt Morag had believed that the human heart was a sort of barometer. Only rather than measuring atmospheric pressure, it allowed a person to more easily navigate their life’s convoluted path. ‘You’ll get that ache,’ she used to say, tapping her fingers in the hollow of my bony ten-year-old ribcage, ‘a sort oftightness in the middle of your chest, just behind your breastbone. Don’t go fobbing it off as indigestion, my girl – it’s your internal barometer warning you that you’re about to make a dingo’s breakfast out of your life.’
    I stepped on the brake pedal and killed the ignition. Keeping my eyes on the track ahead, I groped around inside myself. Sure enough, I had the symptoms: An ache in my chest. An edgy throb of foreboding. A shortness of breath as I realised that something special was about to slip through my fingers. My barometer reading was loud and clear: You want this, so go for it. But how could I violate the resolutions I’d made in Melbourne? Rather than consigning Tony to the ancient history basket and moving on with my life, I was seriously considering thrusting myself – and my daughter – into a past that even Tony had fled.
    And yet . . .
    In my mind I saw the back bedroom with its rosewood dresser and sunken sleigh bed, and the photograph in its dusty silver frame. The man in the picture regarded me from the rose arbour, his expression seductive, his dark eyes commanding, almost hypnotic, as if willing me back to him –
    ‘I’ve made a decision.’
    Bronwyn’s head snapped towards me, a frown puckering her forehead. In that instant she looked uncannily like her father. Of course, she was fair-haired while he was dark, but the high cheekbones, the wide-spaced sapphire eyes, the bony features that made her so striking to look at, were all distinctively his.
    I gave a little cough, strangely nervous. ‘What if we were to move here . . . ?’
    ‘Move here?’ Bronwyn echoed incredulously.
    I saw hope flit into her eyes, but it was quickly hidden. I realised she’d been protecting herself, and my heart wrenched. I stole a look in the rear-view mirror. Somewhere behind us, the old homestead slumbered in its timeless sea of grass. I imagined unpacking my boxes in its cavernous lounge room, crowdingthe empty spaces with my own belongings. I