A Heart Stuck On Hope Page 4

  Seconds ticked by. Ali didn’t move and neither did Tom, then he raised his chin.

  ‘Do you want a pitched roof or a slope?’

  ‘I just want a roof,’ Ali replied instantly.

  ‘Okay, kid.’ Tom took the offered art card. ‘I can build you a roof.’ He looked at Adele. ‘Got real scissors?’

  Adele’s relief rushed through her body like a whirlwind on speed. ‘Yes,’ she said, unsteadily. She walked out of the bathroom on shaking legs, heading for the living room and the box of office equipment, wanting to raise her hands to heaven and give thanks.

  Why Ali had chosen this man she didn’t know, and right this moment she didn’t care.

  ***

  Tom folded the art card for the roof in half and ran a thumb over the crease. ‘It’s got to hang over the edge of the house,’ he told Ali. ‘Otherwise you’ll have problems with your guttering.’

  She turned her head slightly and stared at him. ‘I don’t have pipes.’

  ‘Cheapskate,’ he told her. ‘I know your type. Cutting corners on the build so you can get yourself a walk-in robe and a fridge that makes toast over the internet.’

  She smiled at the toast remark but otherwise looked nonplussed. ‘Can it stick so I don’t see the tape?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure.’ Tom laid the cardboard roof over the top box, which Ali had already taped together in a haphazard manner. ‘I’m no cowboy. You’ve got yourself a master builder, kid.’ He picked up the packing tape. ‘First though, we’ve got to repoint your brickwork or your house is going to fall down.’ He pulled a long stretch of tape and bit off the end. ‘Hold the boxes, would you?’

  Ali put her hands onto the bottom box and shuffled the house around on the floor so that the back faced Tom. He bound the two boxes with the tape, finishing the ends neatly. It didn’t take him long to secure the roof, packing tape out of sight beneath the ‘eaves’.

  ‘I don’t have rollerblades,’ she told him.

  ‘What do you need those for?’

  ‘Because you said I’m a chipskate.’

  Tom grinned, which turned into an actual laugh—the first non-sardonic laugh in nearly five weeks. Without thinking he looked up at Adele, who had stopped fiddling with the plastic shower curtain she’d hung.

  She glowed. She was all lit up, and Tom’s heart did some weirdo flip.

  ‘Thank you.’ She mouthed the words silently, the gratefulness obvious from the shine in her eyes and the bloom on her skin. The haunted look had gone. Totally disappeared.

  Tom’s smile faded. He raised his chin in acknowledgement, and brought himself back into line as he looked away, fighting the emotional response happening in his chest.

  He gave Ali a quick glance. Her head was bowed, concentration visible by the pucker of her lips as she drew windows and a door on the cardboard house.

  Imelda had told him the kid didn’t talk and yet, for some reason, she’d responded to him. It was a responsibility he didn’t want and didn’t have time for.

  Something inside him told him to stop being an arse and accept the child’s and the mother’s responses to him, but that would be his heart talking. His head—if he ever got his brain to function again—should be telling him to get over the pull of attraction to the mother and the reward of having done something right for the kid. Especially when the only attribute he currently had to his name was ‘inability to safeguard’.

  He’d better get out of here before he was persuaded to cut out the windows. Her mother could do that.

  ‘I’ve got something I need to do. I’ll leave you to it.’ He stood and without looking at either of them, made his way to the door. ‘See ya, kid.’

  Chapter Three

  Adele turned to the schoolteacher, Cath Foster, and smiled with relief. The school was no more than four small rooms—enough for the two separate classes for the five- to eleven-year-olds. Only four were over the age of nine, and apparently their families were leaving Dulili within the month, but currently the school had twelve students—thirteen with Ali.

  Adele didn’t associate bad luck with that number. Her birthday fell on the thirteenth and the flat in Sydney had been 13A. It was only a number.

  She also thought she’d found her first friend in Dulili. She and Cath had hit it off immediately. Unable to voice how these things happened, Adele knew that they’d both recognised a bond of instant familiarity and ease with each other. Since speaking to Cath, Adele also knew she’d find fulfilment here in Dulili, she was sure of it. Ali would be accepted and would heal. Adele would heal too, from the indescribable and unknown ‘something’ that had been hurting her stomach like a bad case of the plague for the last six months.

  There wasn’t time to think about that now. Disappointment—if that’s what her plague was—only hit home if you let it creep onto your skin and sink beneath the layers.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ she said to Cath, her smile genuine and full of appreciation for the lady’s generous, no-nonsense attitude.

  ‘Thank you,’ Cath said. ‘I can’t wait for you to start.’

  Adele debated leaping right in with work versus taking time to settle. Cath was a go-getting forty-something woman with a zest for life and for children and she could probably handle another two weeks without office help. ‘I think it’s best if I ease Ali in, so I’d like to take the offer of waiting.’

  ‘Of course. Mothers know best.’ Cath grinned as though she had a secret that amused her. ‘Usually,’ she added drily. ‘But in your case, it’s the truth. I can see it in your eyes.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Determination. I’m not going to interfere in that.’

  ‘Do you think I’m being dogmatic?’ Ali was in the next room with paper and crayons, the door closed, and Adele’s conversation with the schoolteacher had been held in quiet tones. After everything Adele had told Cath, the teacher had accepted Adele’s depiction of Ali’s problems—for want of a diagnosis—with an ease Adele had been grateful for.

  ‘When she first stopped talking five months ago,’ Adele said, ‘nobody was too concerned because we all thought it was a phase, but after five weeks we all became worried.’

  ‘You were put on a list to see the school psychologist?’ Cath asked.

  Adele nodded. ‘Yes, but there was a long waiting list. Weeks, which turned into months.’

  ‘I’ll put Ali on the waiting list here. It’ll be weeks turning into months too, though. Possibly even longer.’

  ‘I realise that.’ Adele chewed her lip. ‘The thing is, the week before we left Sydney I got notice of an appointment. But that was a month away. I’d already let the lease go on the flat, and had made my arrangements to move here.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Adele had looked into the issue herself. She’d searched her memory for something that might have happened to traumatise Ali, and had come up with nothing. To all purposes, Ali was placid and easy-going. She just didn’t talk to anyone except Adele. Ali was unwilling to give Adele a reason for not talking, and Adele no longer pushed the issue in case her daughter backed away even more. The teachers were caring, but they weren’t in a position to make diagnoses, and could only watch out for Ali in the classroom.

  So far as Adele could fathom from her internet and library research, Ali might be considered depressed, which frightened Adele, because her child wasn’t depressed; she wasn’t in a prolonged sad mood like the articles suggested, she simply didn’t talk.

  ‘I couldn’t afford private counselling,’ Adele said to Cath, spreading her hands. ‘If I could have, I would have taken Ali.’ This hurt the most. Adele would have gone without food and shoes to see her child helped, but her small income and the high cost of living hadn’t come close to allowing her to get private help. She didn’t even have a car she could sell.

  ‘I understand,’ Cath said. ‘You’re not in any different position to hundreds of others. Thousands, more like.’ She smiled. ‘So we’ll give Ali a couple of weeks to settle into
her new home. Actually, I like your conviction that an easing-in process will work for Ali,’ Cath said, ‘because there’s love involved in that conviction, not power.’

  Power? Adele hid her amusement at the thought of having power. Who, in her entire life, had ever given her the chance to use whatever powers of persuasion she had built inside her?

  But she’d got through that awkward and debilitating stage she’d endured as a child and as a young woman, and she didn’t want Ali to be a victim in her adult life, like Adele had been. Maybe Adele’s experiences with dealing with her own troubles and coming through them reasonably well was a kind of power. Ali had withdrawn as a means of not facing her problem, whatever the problem was. And for God’s sake—what eight-year-old would know they had a problem and that they ought to face it? Ali didn’t show anger, she didn’t come home with lost clothing, she didn’t come home hungry because someone had pinched her lunchbox, and neither did she beg to not go to school. She’d withdrawn, but she wasn’t sad. Just look at the way she’d behaved with Tom—trusting and open. Look at the way Ali spent time talking to her stuffed animals and telling them stories, showing them her treasured collections of stones and shells and beads.

  Ali wasn’t depressed, she was just lost, and time here in Dulili was going to prove that.

  ‘I was also wondering if it would be possible for me to do the admin role over the weekend—just for the first week. I don’t want to be around Ali when she starts school, in case it—’

  ‘I understand,’ Cath interrupted. ‘Good idea. Let her acclimatise without mum around. You can take the work home to begin with, if you’d prefer. It’s mostly dictation. When you start in the office we can begin the delightful task of filing.’

  Adele grinned. She’d been shown the boxes and files sitting on tables, chairs and the floor, and the near-empty cabinets and shelving they belonged on. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How’s the house?’ Cath asked.

  ‘It’s great. I’m thankful Imelda sold it to the project committee.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say sold, she gave it away. Well, I think there might have been a dollar exchanged, for legal reasons.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She lived in the middle house. That’s where she brought up Tom. You’ve met Tom Wade?’

  ‘Yes. He—helped out a bit the other day.’ Adele paused, not wanting to chance luck and break it by mentioning Ali’s reaction to Tom, but Cath continued before she got a chance to ask why Tom had been brought up by his grandmother.

  ‘He lives in Canberra. Got a big house there. Goes with his big business.’

  And his big ute, and, from what Adele had seen, his big disdain for the human race.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a rigger.’

  ‘Cranes?’ Adele asked.

  ‘More than that. High-risk stuff. He’s highly skilled and seems to thrive on danger. He trained as an engineer, but he said there wasn’t enough excitement in the office environment. He turned to building and then rigging. Unfortunately, there was a serious accident just over a month ago. Tom’s company is probably going under because of it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He wasn’t there, but I understand that his dogman—another high-risk role—didn’t secure a load properly. The job is all to do with weight bearing and size. The sling snapped, the load fell and crushed him. He’s paralysed from the waist down.’

  Adele gasped. So that was the reason for Tom’s taciturn, hard-bitten mask. No wonder. ‘How can it be his fault, if he wasn’t there when the accident happened?’

  ‘Hammer falls on the boss,’ Cath said. ‘The boss owns the business, the business and the boss take the rap.’

  Adele already knew enough about Tom to understand that he was the type to take the rap, but it didn’t mean he had to take it easily or without anguish.

  The school bell rang, and Adele saw Cath’s assistant round up the children who were outside in the yard. She said her goodbyes to Cath, and fetched Ali. She didn’t creep out the back door of the school; instead she led Ali by the hand through the group of kids lining up to go back to afternoon class.

  They looked at Ali. Ali walked with Adele, holding her mother’s hand lightly, neither perturbed nor interested.

  ***

  The next morning, Adele was out washing her front windows when her attention was caught by the slamming of a door down the street.

  Tom Wade pushed through the garden gate on his grandmother’s house and made his way down his great-great-grandfather’s street towards Adele, carrying a box and a canvas bag, looking like a workman ready for a task.

  ‘Morning,’ he said as he stepped from the street to the broken concrete path of her front patch.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Brought that stuff I told you about. Where do you want it?’

  It was too big a box to take off him. ‘Inside. Thank you.’ The front door was open so that she could hear Ali.

  ‘No problem.’ He walked inside and Adele followed.

  He’d barely glanced at her, so she presumed his distracted look was all to do with business problems, and with those of his partner, or friend, who was paralysed. Or with whatever task he had to do, given his appearance: jeans, steel-capped boots, a T-shirt and a tool belt.

  She put the wet cloth in her hands on the rim of a metal bucket full of clean water in the hallway. Ali looked up from her spot on the floor in the kitchen, her dollhouse in front of her. Adele had cut out windows and a door and had sliced through one side of the two-storey house so that it now opened, the way a real dollhouse would. She hadn’t got around to making furniture of any kind yet but she was saving up various containers to make some.

  Tom didn’t look at Ali, although he could hardly have missed her presence as she was sitting by the kitchen door, practically in the hallway. He moved into the living room, so once again, Adele followed.

  ‘These will be useful,’ she said, eyeing the box and the various handles of brushes and scrapers spilling out of it.

  ‘Imelda mentioned something to me last night about the front-window curtain rods. They’re down.’ He looked up at the window, where, sure enough, the rod had been bent and was no use for hanging curtains, and the brackets were practically hanging off the wall. He pulled a drill from the box. ‘I’ll fix them for you. While I’m around.’

  ‘I do have my own drill.’

  ‘I’ll do it. Promised Imelda I would.’

  Adele wondered if he did everything his grandmother asked. Probably not, unless he wanted to, or felt he should. He didn’t look like a man to be led. ‘Thanks,’ she said, not bothering with the self-sufficient line. If he wanted to do this, he wouldn’t take no for an answer and she knew defeat when she met it.

  Adele studied him as he got Rawl plugs and the correct drill bit together. He must have arrived in Dulili last night, or early this morning. She hadn’t seen his ute around for a couple of days.

  It looked like he’d run a hand through his hair instead of a comb. The dark grey T-shirt showcased the line and form of the muscles in his arms and shoulders. For a tall man, everything seemed to fit. His arms were long, his legs were long, his torso was long, but everything was in excellent proportion and packed with muscle. He’d probably built those shoulders and biceps up with his rigging work.

  Many times she’d heard the old jokes about guys and tool belts making women go a little lust-crazy and truthfully, she’d never understood what the fascination was. But the way the leather tool belt sat on Tom’s lean hips, hitched on one side, low on the other, Adele got it. Tom Wade rocked a tool belt.

  Ali came into the room and Adele adjusted her thoughts, laughing at herself for being taken in by a hot-looking guy wearing a tool belt.

  This time Tom noticed Ali, although he didn’t look directly at her. ‘How’s it going, kid?’

  ‘If I give you a yellow pencil, what would you draw?’ Ali asked.

  Adele held her breath, awestruck that her chi
ld found it so easy to talk to this man.

  ‘Well, I suppose if I were a girl,’ Tom said, still concentrating on fixing a bit into the drill, ‘I’d draw a big happy smiling sun.’

  ‘But?’ Ali asked.

  Tom gave Ali his attention, a pull to his mouth. ‘I’m not a girl, kid. I don’t have a use for anything yellow.’

  ‘I know you’re not a girl,’ Ali said, ‘but you must like yellow something.’

  ‘Um … mustard. I like yellow mustard on my big juicy steak.’

  Ali giggled and Adele’s heart summersaulted.

  ‘How about flowers?’ Tom asked her. His attention was back on the drill but he must have felt a need to keep the conversation going. ‘Roses or something.’

  ‘Yellow is my friend Katrina’s favourite colour. That’s why I like it as my favourite too.’

  Katrina had been Ali’s best friend since kindergarten, but her family had moved from Sydney earlier in the year. Ali didn’t mention Katrina often these days and Adele was taken back to the time when there were sleepovers and movies. Popcorn and dolls. Giggles and chatter.

  She noticed that Tom had stilled.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said at last. ‘What are you going to draw with your yellow pencil?’ He asked it easily enough, but there was a tightness in his tone that made Adele think he was changing the subject.

  ‘I’m going to draw sunflowers on my dollhouse.’

  ‘Sissy,’ Tom declared. ‘Why don’t you draw a barbeque instead?’

  ‘Because I’m not a boy.’ Ali shook her head in despair and for a second she looked like a miniature grown-up, scolding her toy animals the way Adele would scold Ali sometimes for not being polite, or for not eating all her vegetables.

  ‘Okay, kid, you go draw your sunflowers and I’ll give you my opinion on the finished design when I’m done here.’

  ‘Okay.’ Ali turned, scolding forgotten, and skipped to the kitchen and Tom went back to his drill.

  ‘Pretty kid,’ he said, but he didn’t look at Adele.

  ‘Yes, she is.’ Adele didn’t know why this man made her want to smile. She didn’t know why he drew so many reactions from her. She hadn’t asked for his help, she hadn’t prayed that someday, some man wearing a tool belt, with a sardonic pull on his mouth, would puncture her circle of loneliness.