Koomera Crossing: Now and Then

At the present time, Ruth McQueen is in her seventies. Ruth’s heir, her beloved grandson Kyall, has fulfilled her every hope and dream. She loves him so much he can move her to tears, when she hasn’t shed a tear in all the years she’s been widowed.

Kyall will succeed her. Ruth can die happy. Kyall will marry well—a young woman Ruth approves of from an “exceptional” family. Since his early teens Kyall’s had all the girls falling madly in love with him. Girls from the right side of the tracks.

Only once did Kyall cross over into forbidden territory. It was about sixteen years ago…. This wasn’t the first time Ruth tampered with others’ lives, but it was the worst. She retains disturbing images of that particular year.

Not that Ruth wouldn’t do it all again. Ruth McQueen is used to disposing of threats, even if they come in the form of a fifteen-year-old girl. Ruth won’t have her beloved grandson’s life ruined. Everything she did, she did for him.

What does it matter that Kyall and Sarah Dempsey grew up together? That they formed a bond Ruth tried hard to destroy? For a grown woman to hate a mere child is demeaning. But it happened, and that hatred will continue unabated into the future.

In the end, Sarah brought the whole unhappy business to a halt. She got pregnant….

Dear Reader,

I’m currently involved in an exciting new project: a series of five books centered on the Outback town of Koomera Crossing in the Channel Country of far southwest Queensland, my home state. It’s an endlessly fascinating, unique part of Australia—a riverine desert on the fringe of the Wild Heart, which is what we call the vast 56,000 square miles of fiery red sand at the continent’s center. There are no permanent waters in the great Simpson Desert, but the Channel Country—by virtue of its natural irrigation system, a mighty filigree of tree-lined watercourses, billabongs, lagoons and swamps—is home to the nation’s cattle kings.

The Channel Country, even to other Australians, is as remote as the far side of the moon. This remoteness, the loneliness, the savage beauty and the overwhelming sheer empty vastness give the Never Never its glamorous mystique. Often described as one of the world’s harshest environments, the “Red Center” is transformed into paradise after rain. No one who has ever seen the incredible desert gardens, mile upon mile to the horizon, could ever forget such a sight.

My KOOMERA CROSSING stories are all set in this area. They are about the people who have been born and bred in the great Outback and will never leave it, and the people somehow damaged by life who find their way there, desperate for answers in the peace and freedom of the Outback. This is the land of the dreaming. Of miracles.

My first book in the series, Sarah’s Baby, a Superromance novel, is about a young woman raised in this Outback town who returns after many years of banishment as resident doctor at Koomera Crossing Bush Hospital. Sarah’s memories of her hometown are both glorious and devastating. Her journey home to Koomera Crossing, courageously undertaken, has far-reaching effects—far beyond anything she has imagined. Not only does fate give Sarah the chance to rebuild her shattered life, it steps in to reinforce what we all surely know: lies cannot be lived forever….

Margaret Way

Sarah’s Baby
Margaret Way

MILLS & BOON

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Sarah’s Baby

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Koomera Crossing

Outback Queensland

Australia

THIS IS THE TOWN. About as far off the beaten track as one can get. Roughly a thousand miles from the dynamic cosmopolitan cities of the continent’s seaboard, where the bulk of the population lives. This is the Australian outback. The Never Never where the power of nature prevails and love for the ancient landscape suffuses life. It’s what makes the outback unique.

Here the creeks run dry or ten feet high, bursting their banks and spilling their iridescent green waters across the fiery red sands. It’s either drought or flood. One follows the other without break. But when the floods recede? The drought-ravaged country is transformed into a wildflower-swept paradise.

The red plains, parched and quivering under the all-powerful sun, are overnight transformed into a blindingly beautiful undulating ocean of brilliant yellow and white as zillions of paper daisies sprout with astonishing momentum from the reenergized soil. The lonely sun-scorched desert tracks, once trod by brave explorers and their chosen men, are obscured by a mantle of pure magic. Exquisite ephemeral plants create a kaleidoscope of colors—the scarlet desert peas, the felty bellflowers, woolly foxgloves, the succulent pink parakeelya, the fluffy lilac mulla mullas and the lime pussy tails, the native hibiscus and the thickets of pink and white rain lilies, the pure white Carpet of Snow that so gloriously embroiders the bloodred sands. These are the miraculous sights that give the Inland its fascination. These glimpses into heaven affect the lives of outback people like the hand of God upon their hearts. They can live in no other place on earth, despite all the hardships and isolation. They will never leave and if they do, they always return.

The town of Koomera Crossing is on the desert fringe. In the early days of settlement, it was called O’Connor’s Waterhole in memory of one of the most romantic and foolhardy of explorers, Sweeney O’Connor, a young Irish adventurer who once enjoyed a spell in an English jail before being put on a boat to Botany Bay, where the good colonists were shocked by his howling hotheadedness and lunatic ideas.

O’Connor, to no one’s surprise, all but perished on the site of the town. This was in the early 1800s when he was well into his doomed trek to find the fabled inland sea. Many Europeans in those days were convinced that a sea lay at the continent’s center when it really lay underground in the Great Artesian Basin. Only O’Connor’s fervent prayers—and he later confessed he had to dig deep to remember any—and the intervention of a great thunderstorm plucked him from the greedy arms of death. Life-giving water filled the dry creek bed where he and his faithful Indian sepoy, Gopal, had made camp, along with their four camels and small herd of goats. Ironically, the lot of them nearly drowned in the flash flood, although they emerged on dry land, smiling and blessing their various gods.

Instead of the inland sea O’Connor had boasted he would swim in, he found a land of savage grandeur, blazing heat, vivid color and monstrous rock formations that had the power to undergo spectacular color changes. To O’Connor’s eyes, it was “the most violent, most bizarre environment on God’s earth” until it was refreshed and reborn by rain. Hell and paradise as a matter of course.

That long-ago thunderstorm saved O’Connor’s life although he was to die at the age of twenty-nine, a scant two years later with an Aboriginal spear sunk deep in his belly. A tragic end, the more so since he’d left behind someone he loved with a baby kicking in her womb.

When the fledgling sheep stations started to prosper and the settlement developed into a service town, O’Connor’s Waterhole, already elevated to O’Connor’s Crossing, reverted to its Aboriginal name. Koomera refers to a stopping place with plenty of moojungs (birds), nerrigundahs (berries) and a rock pool or waterhole (koomera). So Koomera Crossing became a place of safety and promise. A place where a man had the opportunity to make a new life for himself, where he could raise a family. Or hide. These were the men who broke rules. Men who rebelled against the confines of the city. These were the adventurers and the visionaries and—it has to be said—a few out-and-out villains.

At the present time, some fifteen hundred people call this outback shire home. A relative handful of people with vast, majestic, open spaces to themselves. Everyone in town knows what everyone else is doing; at least they all like to think they do. In any event, gossip whips around Koomera Crossing like the wind in a dust storm. It’s always that way in a bush town, but the community is closely knit, its members unfailingly supportive of one another in time of need.

The town is located more than one thousand miles northwest of the state capital of Brisbane. It continues to serve this important sheep- and cattle-raising region as a vital transportation point.

Koomera Crossing has a mayor, a rich woman and handsome, with her thick shock of hair cut like a man’s. Enid Reardon, born McQueen. Enid is a forceful, energetic, out-spoken woman who’s spent her life trying to live up to her mother, the matriarch Ruth, but will never make it. Enid, for instance, has never done an unthinkable thing. Ruth has.

The McQueens are one of the oldest pioneering families in this vast area, and they all but own the town. The town geographically comes under the heading of the Channel Country. This is an extraordinary part of the world—riverine desert, quintessential outback. Deeper into the southwest pocket, even more remote, is the home of the country’s cattle kings, with their giant sprawling stations that carry the nation’s great herds.

The Channel Country is immense. Seemingly without end. There, one cannot escape the untamability of the land or fight its powerful allure. To the Aborigines, the Channel Country is a region of magic and mystery rich in Dreamtime legend, many parts of it capable of inspiring fear. The area covers at least one-fifth of the state and is more than twice the size of Texas. The name—Channel Country—refers to the great complex network of braided, interconnecting water channels, billabongs, lagoons and creeks, through which the Three-Great-River system, the Diamantina, Georgina and Cooper’s Creek, make their way to what remains of that fabled lake of prehistory, Lake Eyre. Known as Katitanda to the Arabana, Tirari and Kujani desert tribes who won’t go near it. The lake fills rarely, to the wonderment of man, beast and bird. Only twice in the twentieth century, in 1950 and 1974. Its surface, all four thousand square miles of it, is mostly covered by a glittering pinky-white “polar” salt crust, some fifteen feet deep. It’s as incongruous as the pack ice it resembles in the red heart of the desert.

Ruth McQueen, already halfway to being a law unto herself, saw the lake fill in 1950 when, as a young woman, she and her husband, Ewan, took a joyride over it in their private plane. Ewan was destined to die in a plane crash years later, when his Cessna came down in very turbulent conditions just outside Alice Springs in the Red Centre. Flying is a tricky business in the outback. The air is so hot there’s little or no feeling of buoyancy, of riding the air currents. It’s almost as if an aircraft could suddenly plunge like a meteorite out of the cloudless cobalt sky.

This was the fate of the much-loved, much-respected Ewan McQueen, leaving the devastated Ruth alone with two children, Stewart and Enid, to rear. But Ruth is a great survivor. As soon as she could cope with her grief, she took over the reins, running the family’s historic sheep station with all the energy and skill her husband had. A task nothing short of heroic, but Ruth employs something Ewan had never used: a ruthless hand forever poised in the air, ready to slam someone down. This has earned her many enemies. Something else Ewan McQueen never had.

So the McQueens are held in love and hate. They are the most powerful and influential family in the Northwest, their historic run, Wunnamurra, named after the fiercely predatory eagle hawks that patrol the desert skies. The founder of their dynasty, Dougray McQueen, a Scot who had traveled the world, noticed these birds of prey when he first made camp on the site of his future homestead. This was in the mid-1800s. A man of great strength, McQueen flourished in the harsh, remote environment, so different from anything he’d ever known or ever seen on his travels. It all but defied logic that he chose to build his life there.

His first bride, Fiona, a cousin and a young woman of breathtaking beauty, was brought out from Scotland to Dougray’s immense pride and joy. Fiona lost her reason within a year of arrival. The heat as good as killed her. The isolation! The primitive, overwhelming landscape! The strange indigenous people with their glistening black skin and incomprehensible language. The terrible taste of creek water. The food. The millions of strange birds with their strange names—kookaburras?—their brilliant plumage, their strident cackles and mournful calls. The deprivations a gently reared young woman was forced to endure. It was all too much to bear. Fiona, in a distressed state of mind and in the absence of her husband, wandered off into the bush and disappeared without a trace, despite a huge search that employed the most skilled trackers on earth, the Aboriginals. A number of people over the years claimed to have seen Fiona wandering the lignum swamps, her long, curly red hair hanging unkempt and tangled down her back, face pale and strained, glittery, staring eyes. She wears a long flower-sprigged dress, the hemline dripping moss and mud. The claimants were not fanciful people, either, but iron-nerved family and tough stockmen already familiar with the eerie nature of the Australian bush and its foreboding moods.

Dougray remarried a short time later. He wanted sons. Another Scottish girl, Eleanor, not nearly so bonny, but full of fight. This one had the advantage of an adventurous nature. From that point on, with Eleanor willing and able to take over domestic affairs while producing six children (two dying in infancy), Wunnamurra prospered. It rose to a position of great wealth and prestige as Australia emerged as the greatest producer and exporter of wool in the world. Getting rich off the sheep’s back, as the saying goes. Even before wool sales went into a decline, the McQueens diversified, raising cattle as well, growing wheat on their newly acquired properties in the rich highlands of the central Darling Downs, investing in oil and mineral exploration in a state with fabulous resources and tremendous potential for development.

So the McQueens remain big contributors to the state’s economy. Their fortune, presided over by Ruth, is substantial. The family always figures in the 200 Wealthiest list. Enid, the mayor, is democracy in an iron glove. Her CEO, her husband, Max, has been reduced to a peripheral figure after all these years with two dominant women. Max’s own family were once wealthy landowners, but a series of financial downturns and the loss of two sons in the Second World War took their toll. Max and Enid have two offspring—the vivid, commanding Kyall, the heir, and his younger sister, Christine. Unable to thrive under her mother’s domination and declared disappointments in her, Christine has fled to Sydney to find her own identity and make her own life.

There are other families in the town who make their presence felt. The Logans, the Hatfields and the Saunderses, all represented on the shire council and serving variously as town consulting engineer, finance manager, building inspector and the like. Then there’s the town lawyer, dentist, pharmacist, mechanical engineer and the owner of the local pub, Mick Donovan, good-hearted, with a short-tempered wife who’s never quiet. There are also the lone police constable (his city-born wife left him, screaming she couldn’t stay another moment), town trucker, the plumber, the postie, the baker and the hairdresser. There’s the artist Carol Lu, who could make a fortune with her beautiful landscapes if she so wished but clearly doesn’t, and the mysterious and exotic Maya Kurby. Kurby isn’t her real name. Her real surname is impossible to pronounce, let alone spell. Maya runs the truly excellent ballet school. Then there’s the near-blind violinist, Alex Matheson, who had a nervous breakdown when he was forced to abandon a brilliant career and now conducts the town’s orchestra guild. A man of mystery is Evan Thompson, who arrived in town a year or so previously. Evan can fashion anything from wood, but it’s obvious to everyone that at some stage of his life Evan Thompson was “someone,” not just a gifted woodworker. Evan is a big man, with a dark, brooding presence. Of course, the women of the town are attracted to his good looks and smoldering dark eyes, but he acts as though he’s had enough of women to last him all his life. Charlotte Harris (Lottie to everyone) is an extraordinary dressmaker who could find a job behind the scenes at a Paris fashion house.

Another important character in the town is the authoritative and highly respected Harriet Crompton, a spinster and the town’s lone teacher for the past forty years. Harriet teaches the children and grandchildren of all the local families until they go away to boarding schools to complete their secondary-school education. Harriet is no ordinary woman but a woman of considerable culture (she founded the town’s theatrical society) and fine, upstanding values. She has almost as much impact on the town as Ruth, of whom she has been highly critical from time to time; such is Harriet’s standing in the town that Ruth has never been able to have her removed.

The families of the outlying stations served by the town, like the Claydons of Marjimba, have their role, too, although these stations, like Wunnamurra, are mostly self-sufficient, dealing with their own problems and their own affairs. Great technological advances have made station life a lot easier, telecommunications and modern media opening a door onto the world. All these families are admirable people, but an underlying “cold war” with the McQueens has been going on for decades. Ruth McQueen has earned a reputation for being absolutely ruthless in business, even when dealing with so-called friends. She is indeed a tyrant and her words are set in stone. Even her family, with the notable exception of Kyall, fear to cross her.

The McQueens are therefore loved and hated for a variety of reasons. Ruth is genuinely hated and perhaps should be. She has done things she had no right to do and all of Ruth’s “crimes” are not known. Her grandson, Kyall, on the other hand, is universally admired. He is a splendid figure, striking of looks, clever, egalitarian, resourceful, innovative, with such charisma he appeals to everyone, men and women alike.

The McQueens are the pulse of the town, their money the town’s lifeblood. It was Ruth McQueen who fought to get a hospital established in the town. McQueen money funded its construction and outfitting. The town has long boasted a resident doctor, a good one, Joe Randall. He’s been there from the beginning, handpicked by Ruth (rumour spread early that he was her lover), but he’s now approaching seventy and must retire. Depending on demand, Dr. Randall has up to six nurses to assist him. Nurses are easier to come by than ambitious young doctors, who can’t be lured into rural and outback practices. Joe Randall can handle most everything in general surgery, but in the event of serious cases, he brings in the Royal Flying Doctor service. The Flying Doctor service, the “mantle of safety” over the outback, was founded in 1928 by Flynn of the Inland, a Presbyterian minister who saw the urgent need for medical treatment for the people of the region. Doctors from various bases fly almost two million miles a year ministering to the far-flung communities.

The Royal Flying Doctor service, like Joe Randall, has the gratitude of the town. Ruth McQueen shows her gratitude through big donations. Ruth isn’t all bad. It’s simply that she always has to have her way. Even if it involves playing God with people’s lives.

For all her ability, Ruth has a strong vein of megalomania. Not so astonishing in a woman who’s had so much power, can lay claim to a fortune, a fine historic sheep station and one of the grandest homesteads in the nation.

Love died for Ruth with her husband. She has never felt close to her children. She’s been far too committed to running the station—or such is her excuse. But love sprang to life again when her grandson Kyall, crying lustily, was put into her arms moments after he was born. The great chunk of ice that entombed her heart for so long suddenly thawed. Love she had locked out for years flooded in.

What does it matter if Ruth brushes aside her only son, Stewart, who stands beside her at the foot of his sister’s bed? Stewart who is destined, bruised and battered, to surrender his heritage rather than submit to a lifetime of endless clashes with his mother, in which he knows he can only come off second-best. As for daughter Enid? Enid will hang in for her son. At Ruth’s insistence, the boy will be known as Kyall Reardon McQueen, an imposition Enid and Max are forced to accept. Kyall is the heir.

In Ruth’s view, it is only fitting that he should carry the dynastic name. Indeed, before the boy is barely three, the “Reardon” is dropped as too much of a mouthful. Ruth has her way. Her grandson is Kyall McQueen—just as she has ordained. Kyall is more or less stuck with it, as this is the name the town, indeed the entire outback, becomes used to.

Ruth has never looked in the direction of Max, her son-in-law. As far as Ruth is concerned, she has “kept” him—although for years and years he’s worked very hard. Max would never have been allowed into the family except for his impeccable background.

At the present time, Ruth is in her seventies. She still holds Wunnamurra in a tight grip, fearing that if she lets go she might die. And perhaps go to hell?

Ruth’s heir, her beloved Kyall, has fulfilled her every hope and dream. She loves him so much he can even move her to tears when she hasn’t shed a tear in all the years she’s been widowed—including when she received news of the death of her son, Stewart, and his wife in a bus crash in Malaysia. They left a young daughter, Suzanne, safe in a Sydney boarding school. Ruth is her guardian.

But Kyall will succeed her. Ruth can die happy. Kyall will marry well. A young woman Ruth approves of from an “exceptional” family. A young woman who can take her place anywhere. Since his early teens, Kyall’s had all the girls, one after the other, falling madly in love with him. Girls from the right side of the tracks.

Only once did Kyall cross into forbidden territory. Ruth never likes to think about that time although the terror of eventual discovery is coiled inside her like a hidden spring. This wasn’t the first time Ruth tampered with other’s lives, but it was the worst. Ruth would like to say she doesn’t fear Judgment Day, but in her heart of hearts she does.

Not that Ruth wouldn’t do it all again. Ruth McQueen is used to disposing of threats, even if they come in the form of a fifteen-year-old girl. Ruth won’t have her beloved grandson’s life ruined. Everything she did, she did for him. Even now she feels no remorse. There are certain laws laid down about who should be admitted into the McQueen family. The Dempseys would never find themselves on the list.

What does it matter that Kyall and Sarah Dempsey grew up together? That they formed a bond Ruth and Enid tried hard to destroy? Tried, but to no avail. For a grown woman to hate a mere child is demeaning. But it happened, and the hatred will continue unabated into the future.

In the end, Sarah Dempsey brought the whole unhappy business to a halt. She got pregnant. Ruth had to work fast to avert a scandal. Sarah’s father presented no problem; Jock Dempsey is dead from a spinal injury sustained on Wunnamurra station, where he was an employee, one of the fastest shearers in the McQueen sheds. After that, Sarah’s mother, Muriel, took on the running of the town’s general store, with twelve-year-old Sarah handling the business side. Sarah is clever. But no match for Ruth. It was up to Ruth, the matriarch, to find a solution.

Sarah was removed from town, weeping bitterly. Her mother, a vulnerable woman, is made to keep quiet. Kyall McQueen is never told. Kyall at sixteen would have given up everything for Sarah. His future, his family. Ruth had to take care of it all. She’d hoped for a miscarriage. Sarah had refused point-blank to agree to an abortion, telling Ruth in a young, ringing voice that nothing and no one could make her get rid of her baby.

So the baby lived.

Ruth knows where she is, one of only three people who do. The fourth has since died of snakebite, although no one knows exactly how the snake, a desert taipan, got into Molly Fairweather’s house.

Ruth to this day can’t bring herself to admit that the child, already the age her mother had been when she’d stolen Kyall’s heart, is her own great-granddaughter. That would take moral courage; Ruth only deals in the physical kind.

Life continues. Nothing goes terribly wrong. Ruth continues making plans, showing a rare smiling face to one India Claydon, who springs from a good gene pool and will make Kyall an excellent wife.

Then one August afternoon around three o’clock, Muriel Dempsey, Sarah’s mother, gives a great cry, calls her daughter’s name and collapses behind the counter in her grocery shop, bringing down on top of her a pile of mail.

In the small space of time it takes for her assistant, the town stickybeak, Ruby Hall, to run for help, Muriel Dempsey dies at fifty-six without ever knowing she has a living, healthy grandchild. Muriel has been robbed of the great joy of knowing her only grandchild. Robbed by a cruel woman whose name is Ruth McQueen.

CHAPTER ONE

Waverly Medical Centre, Brisbane

THE SURGERY HAD BEEN chaotic that morning. Winter flu. The time of year no one looked forward to. The epidemic had hit the city in the wake of the August Royal National Show, a huge crowd-pleaser, with plenty of hot sunshine and flying red dust from the show ring to encourage the germs. The patients, coughing, sneezing, searching for tissues, others with their heads firmly buried in magazines, were either waiting for flu shots—injections of the vaccine, which was an attempt to second-guess what strain of influenza would strike or seeking medication to relieve the distressing symptoms. Antibiotics didn’t work.

Sarah didn’t prescribe them for the flu or a common cold, but she knew she’d always get an argument from some of her patients who thought that only drugs could kill off the virus. These were the days of Be-Your-Own-Doctor, with many a patient discussing his or her diagnosis and suggesting various drugs. Home remedies and bed rest simply wouldn’t do. Small wonder the pharmaceutical companies were becoming enormously rich while bacteria became increasingly resistant to the most frequently prescribed drugs. It was a big problem and it worried her.

Around midday things got worse. Pandemonium broke loose when a three-year-old boy with silky blond hair was brought in suffering severe febrile convulsions.

“Please, please. Where’s Dr. Sarah?” The distraught mother registered her terror, appealing to the packed waiting room in general, tears pouring from her eyes.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Fielding, you’re here now. We’ll take care of you.” The clinic’s head receptionist, Janet Bellamy, a kind, competent woman, closed in on the hysterical mother fast, while her junior, Kerri Gordon, ran for Dr. Dempsey, who had a wonderful rapport with her patients, children in particular. Dr. Sarah was the one everyone wanted to see. Especially the mothers of young children.

By the time Sarah, who’d been preparing to run an electrocardiogram on a male patient with chest pains, rushed into the reception room, the young mother was screaming her fear and desperation. Janet and one of Sarah’s female patients, an ex-nurse, were trying ineffectually to calm the young woman and take the lolling, unconscious child from her arms. Another child, a little girl who’d been sitting quietly with her pregnant mother, was sobbing into her hands at this frightening new experience, while her mother placed a soothing, protective arm around her shaking shoulders.

Sarah remembered this wasn’t the little boy’s first brush with seizures. She had recommended further action at the child’s first presentation, but his mother, Kim, had been fiercely against it, no doubt dreading a worse neurological disorder like epilepsy.

At Sarah’s appearance, Kim Fielding seemed to gather strength. She stopped screaming when Sarah addressed her and immediately surrendered her only child to Sarah’s arms. The frantic look left her eyes and in the examining room she watched calmly as Sarah swiftly administered an anticonvulsant medication. The seizure, however, proved of such severity and duration that Sarah called for an ambulance to take the child to hospital to be admitted for observation. Privately she thought the boy’s high fever was only masking a more serious disorder. She grieved for the mother, and the anxious years ahead, squeezing her hand tightly as the young woman climbed into the ambulance to go with her son. These incidents involving children were deeply heart-wrenching for everyone, doctors and patients alike, but for the sake of her other patients Sarah had to refocus in order to deal with her caseload for the afternoon. It didn’t help knowing she’d have to tell Megan Copeley the results of her mammogram.

Not good.

Megan’s fat-rich, low-fiber diet alone had increased her risk of breast cancer by a factor of six. Despite every warning and every lecture Sarah gave her, she’d been unable to wean herself off it.

“But, Sarah, I can’t go without all the foods I enjoy. Neither can my family. Mealtimes would be so dull. Jeff wouldn’t stand for it. There’s no history of breast cancer in my family, anyway.”

There was now. Sadness crept up behind Sarah’s fixed resolve to maintain a professional detachment. She could picture Megan sitting opposite her in a state of shock. Megan was only a handful of years older than her. Thirty-five, with two beautiful children. Some days Sarah could hardly bear the terrible burden and responsibility of being a doctor—telling patients their fears were confirmed or breaking totally unexpected bad news. There was no way out of telling the truth, of telling patients that life as they knew it was over. It was her job to help them deal with it. She knew she was a good doctor. She knew her patients liked and respected her, but sometimes she wanted to pull a curtain and hide behind it. To weep.

What Sarah didn’t know as she agonized for Megan Copeley and tried to swallow the lump in her throat was that tragedy was about to strike her.

Not for the first time. Sarah was no stranger to loneliness, grief and despair. She had walked, talked and slept with it for years. Could she ever put the loss of her own child, her baby, behind her? Never. A mother doesn’t suffer a blow like that and continue serenely on with life. Maybe she’d learned a deeper, fuller understanding her patients seemed to recognize, but the grief and the insupportable loss would go on forever.

Baby Dempsey, who had lived only a few hours. She’d already named her in her mind—Rosalind (Rose) after the grandmother she recalled with such love. From time to time, although it was fifteen years ago, she relived the long, empty months leading up to the birth. Hidden away with a middle-aged married couple Ruth McQueen had found. She relived the birth itself, which had taken place in a private clinic. My God, the pain! Her patients didn’t have to tell her anything about that, not realizing because of her single status and lack of family that she’d given birth to a child. She remembered the morning after when she’d awakened, wanting to get up, to go to her baby. She’d wanted to tell Rose not to fear, she’d make something of herself. For both of them. Don’t be afraid, my little one. My little one. There were moments when she could remember nothing but the feel of her baby against her breast. So fleeting a time!

Miss Crompton always told her she had what it took to be anything she wanted.

“You work hard, Sarah, and I see a future far beyond this little outback town. You’re one pupil I know in my bones is going to make a name for herself. You have it here.” At this point Miss Crompton always tapped her head.

She might’ve had the brains, but emotionally she’d been frail. At fifteen she’d been made pregnant by the great love of her life, the only love, and she was into her thirty-first year now, with all her friends either married or getting married. But she couldn’t forget Kyall and the wonder of loving him. His spirit, like their baby’s, was locked up inside her. Internalized. She carried Kyall within her, and his presence in her life sometimes seemed so real it was as if he was there, melting her spine with love of him. Other times she hated him with a shocking intensity, lowering herself to curse him to hell. How could he have abandoned her? Kyall McQueen, her soul mate. They’d each shadowed the other, despite the opposition of the all-powerful Ruth McQueen, his grandmother, and his mother, Enid. Even her own mother had found their unique bond a source of great worry.

“You can’t be so daft, Sarah, as to think anything good can come of this. They’re the McQueens! God almighty, they’re royalty to the rest of us. We’re nothing, nobodies. It takes all my time to put clothes on your back and shoes on your feet. With your father gone…” Here her mother used to choke on her tears.

In the end, her dear sweet mother had been right. A few secret hours spent together one starry night, one single glorious starry night cocooned in the bush, and she’d gotten pregnant when she was little more than a child. So much for Miss Crompton’s pleasure and pride in her! Her whole future ruined. Kyall’s splendid future already mapped out. Master of Wunnamurra, one of the country’s most historic sheep stations. Kyall had been born not with a silver spoon in his mouth but the whole goddamn service.

Ruth McQueen had snatched her away from the town. Snatched her away from Kyall. Forced her devastated mother to keep her mouth shut about Sarah’s baby. But the terrible hurt… How many times had Sarah gone to the phone during those long months of waiting, wanting to scream that she had to speak to Kyall. Of course they’d never have let her. Finally she believed what Ruth McQueen kept telling her. She would destroy Kyall’s young life. She would ruin her own chances, having a baby so young.

“My dear, what you need is an abortion,” Ruth had told her, voice very calm, very firm. “I can arrange it. Afterward I’ll see to it that you have a good education. A private school in Brisbane. You would board. Harriet Crompton keeps telling me ad nauseam that you’re a very clever girl, although you haven’t been terribly clever about this, have you, my dear?”

She had been shocked at Ruth McQueen’s utter callousness, especially when the baby in her womb was Ruth’s great-grandchild. She had told the woman what she thought of her murderous suggestion, her own voice every bit as determined as that tyrant’s. She believed that abortion was wrong, and she wasn’t about to cower before Ruth McQueen. When she first knew she was pregnant, she was wild with panic like some trapped animal, but it didn’t take all that long for her to settle down. She felt almost calm. Full of wonder. She would have the most beautiful child ever known to woman. Her child. Kyall’s child. Her baby would have turquoise eyes like his, olive skin, blue-black curls. Her next baby would look like her. A brown-eyed blonde with a little dimple in her chin.

But she had lost her baby. She only remembered its little body lying on hers, its darling little head pressed into her shoulder while she crooned words of love. She’d felt that rush of maternal love, even exhausted and foggy from all the medication they’d given her. How her baby had hurt her coming out! The pain. Agony, really. She awoke sometimes at night crying out with that remembered pain. It was like being on the rack. The tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. And for what?

She learned the next morning from Ruth. Believing but never quite believing, somehow.

“No!” It was a scream that still resonated in her head. Not surprisingly, Ruth McQueen was much kinder to her than before. She attended to everything. It was McQueen money that sent Sarah to that exclusive boarding school, McQueen money that got her through medical school, though she’d worked hard at part-time jobs to pay as much of her own way as she possibly could. The McQueens were great benefactors. Sarah shivered as she took a breath. To lose her baby was in the order of things, wasn’t it? She had never figured in Ruth McQueen’s plans. She and her widowed mother were the ordinary people of the town. The baby, hers and Kyall’s, had died without her ever telling a soul. Kyall never knew, and her mother had been advised to look on the whole tragic incident as if it had never happened. But her mother wasn’t like that. Muriel carried the pain deep within her. Unspoken but never far from her mind.

Ruth McQueen had been grateful. She’d paid for their silence. Sarah never stopped long enough to think about how much she hated Ruth McQueen; she only knew she carried those suppressed feelings like a burden around her neck.

“Can you take a call, Dr. Dempsey?” Kerri was buzzing her, bringing her out of her unhappy reverie. “They say it’s very important.” From her tremulous tones, it was clear Kerri was still upset by the child’s seizure.

“Not now, Kerri.” Sarah had a patient with her. Mr. Zimmerman. She was in the middle of writing a referral to an ophthalmologist for him. Mr. Zimmerman had increased fluid pressure in his eyes, which needed looking at. He’d experienced no preceding symptoms, but Sarah knew glaucoma was all the more insidious because blindness presented with little warning. A pressure test really should’ve been done by the optometrist he’d recently visited. It was imperative at age forty and older.

“It’s a Dr. Randall,” Kerri persisted. “He’s calling from the bush.”

Sarah touched the tips of her fingers to her temple. Felt the pulse start up a drumming. “Put him through, Kerri,” she said quietly, pushing the script across the table. “There you are, Mr. Zimmerman. You’re going to like Dr. Middleton. He’s a fine man and a fine ophthalmologist. The best around.”

“I just hope I haven’t left it too late,” said Maurice Zimmerman as he rose to his feet. “You’re the first to see a problem.”

“Foresee, Mr. Zimmerman. Now the condition has been detected, it can be treated.” She smiled encouragingly.

“Thank you. Thank you, Doctor.” He sounded immensely grateful.

Joe Randall was still on the line. “Joe, how are you?” Sarah couldn’t keep the anxiety out of her voice. This had to be about her mother.

“I have bad news for you, my dear.” Joe spoke with infinite sadness. “I can’t believe it myself.”

Sarah closed her eyes, swinging around in her swivel chair so she wouldn’t be facing the door and no one could see her face. “It’s Mamma, isn’t it.”

“It is, dearest girl. With no history of heart disease, your mother has had a massive coronary. By the time I got to her—she collapsed in the shop—she was beyond help. I’m so sorry, Sarah. I grieve for you. Your mother seemed well and happy when she came back from her last visit. How she loved you. How proud she was of your being a doctor. Anything I can do for you—anything—I’ll do it. I can make the arrangements if you want. I can do it all.”

“I’m coming, Joe,” Sarah said, looking fixedly at a small photograph of herself and her mother that stood on her desk. “I won’t be able to get a flight out until tomorrow morning. I should be there by midafternoon. Where’s Mamma now?”

“In the hospital mortuary, my dear.” Joe’s voice was low and shaken. “You’ll go to the shop?”

“Where else can I go, Joe?” Sarah flushed deeply, then went paper-white. “To the McQueens?”

“Sarah, Sarah,” Joe answered, his gentle voice torn. “You can come to me. You know that. I have plenty of room. I’m your friend. I brought you into the world. You could also go to Harriet. She’s always been your great supporter. She’d do anything to help you.”

“I know that, Joe.” Sarah’s voice, like her body, was growing faint. She stiffened her back. “I could never forget either of you and your kindnesses. No, I’ll stay over the shop. Thank you for ringing, Joe.” Sarah couldn’t manage another word, so she hung up feeling as though she was dying herself. Swiftly she lowered her head to her knees. She would feel better in a moment. She had to feel better. She had things to do. She had to bury her mother. Her mother, her father and her child. She raised a pale, bitter face.

And, God—are you up there? She seriously doubted it. I’m going to miss her so much!

IT WAS LATER AFTERNOON when Kyall McQueen touched down at Wunnamurra’s airstrip, taxiing the Beech Baron until it came to rest in the huge silver hangar with the station’s name and logo emblazoned in royal blue on its roof. He’d been in Adelaide for almost a week, looking after McQueen business interests. Wunnamurra had always been among the nation’s finest merino-wool producers, but the family had long since diversified. It was Kyall who had convinced his grandmother to buy Beauview Station, owned by the Youngberg family, winegrowers in the beautiful South Australian Clare Valley. Carl Youngberg, the grandfather and head of the family, had died, leaving the business in crisis. Seeing an opportunity and loving the whole business of wine, Kyall had moved in. The next step had been to secure the services of a great winemaker returning home from years in Europe. It hadn’t been easy persuading the man to take over Beauview—he had a top name—but in the end they had stitched up a deal. It was, Kyall knew, a fantastic coup. Already the newly formed company had bounced back with the promise of wonderful wines from their new production manager/winemaker.

There were other developments, too. McQueen Enterprises, of which he was now CEO since his grandmother had vacated the position, had moved into specialty foods, growing olives and mushrooms on their properties on the Darling Downs. To prevent waste and enhance that region’s culinary reputation, he had hired top people to open and run a factory making use of tree- and vine-ripened olives and tomatoes rather than see such splendid produce plowed back into the ground. Supermarkets only wanted produce that was picked green, which considerably affected the taste, especially of tomatoes. Now their factory made a whole range of sauces, relishes and preserves; these were proving a big hit in the specialty delicatessens.

So one way or another, he was doing his bit and making life a little easier for a lot of people.

Several members of the extended McQueen family had been brought into the company, boosting the capital. Every time he visited Adelaide, the family arranged a few parties, a mixture of business, pleasure and moneymaking. They were all delighted that he was so good at this. Hell, what else did he have to devote himself to but work?

Yesterday he’d talked over lunch with his great-uncle Raoul McQueen, a prominent merchant banker and McQueen board member, and his uncle’s lifelong friend, Senator Graham Preston. It was all very, very discreet, but he could see that they hoped he’d give running for Parliament a try in the not-too-distant future.

They were at his uncle’s club, a haven of comfort and privacy, and a natural rendezvous spot for the country’s power brokers when in town.

“May I remind you, Kyall, the McQueens have always been involved in politics,” his uncle pointed out jovially. “It’s time for you to do your share. After all, you’ve been promoting a whole raft of ideas.”

“With which I agree absolutely,” said the senator with a little nod of his snow-white handsome head. “If you decide to go in, I can tell you, we’ll be right behind you. The party needs young men like you.”

“And who exactly would run Wunnamurra?” Kyall had asked laconically, eyeing his uncle, who occasionally spent time relaxing at the family station.

“Didn’t you tell me you’d found an excellent overseer? What’s his name?”

“Dave Sinclair. Who will be excellent eventually. Right now he still needs a little help.”

“But what about Ruth? Enid and Max, for that matter?” his uncle had persisted.

Kyall had answered patiently, “Gran doesn’t play the dominant role she once did. You know that, Raoul. Maybe she’s still a powerhouse, but she’s seventy-five years old.”

“You can work it out,” his uncle had said then, plucking at his mustache. “After all, Malcolm Fraser was a sheep farmer before he became prime minister.”

“Fraser was a big guy.”

“So are you,” his uncle had returned, smiling. “You have a wonderful combination of assets. Financial and political expertise, brains, daring, imagination. A great sense of mission.”

Kyall had had to laugh. “All of which could get me into trouble, if not destroy me. Those qualities aren’t admired in some circles.”

“They are in ours.” The senator had met his eyes directly. “All we’re asking is that you think about it, Kyall. There’s no one I’d like to recruit more. It’s no disadvantage to be a McQueen, either. The McQueens have had a sense of obligation to their country right from colonial days.”

“People put their trust in you,” his uncle had put in. “You can talk to anyone about anything—a whole cross-section of people—with equal charm and ease. It’s a talent most politicians would give their eyeteeth for. You have a natural aura of authority, but you’re not in the least arrogant. You have very real leadership skills. Lord, didn’t they say that about you all through school and university? Not only that, you really care about people. God knows how many owe their livelihood to the McQueens. All we’re asking you to do is think about it, Kyall. In my view and Graham’s, you have the potential to rise to the highest office.”

“Praise indeed!” Kyall had answered casually. “But wasn’t I raised thinking my future was Wunnamurra? You know that, Raoul.”

“There’s a great deal more to it—to you—than that. As we’ve already seen. I’ve heard you debate political issues with a passion. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to be on the front lines solving the nation’s problems. Think about it, Kyall. You’ve got the brains and the guts to make a difference. This nation is really on the move. You can be part of it.”

For a while their enthusiasm had swept him along. Of course, he’d always been interested in politics. He’d grown up talking politics. His family had always been vitally interested in a fair deal for the man on the land. A number of McQueens had played a role in public life, all of them members of the Country Party, then the National Party now in coalition with the Liberal Party currently in power.

Just as they were parting—the senator had gone off to another meeting—his uncle had asked him about his “love life.”

“Is Ruth still pushing the Claydon girl at you?” This with a long, steady look.

“Sometimes it’s very hard to get through to Gran.”

“Ever hear from that little one, Sarah? Her father was a ringer, worked in our sheds. I’ve often wondered. The two of you were quite inseparable at one time. Lord knows how it went down with Ruth and your mother. An incredible pair of snobs. Sarah, ah, yes! As beautiful a creature as I’ve ever seen.”

At any mention of Sarah’s name, anger and pain overtook him. “Sarah and I lost touch long ago. For her own reasons she wants no part of me. She’s been back in town a few times over the years to see her mother. Mostly her mother goes to see her. She’s a doctor now. A good one. The Sarah I remember was always flooded with compassion for her fellow man.”

“Sounds like you’re still in love with her, my boy. Maybe you should do something about it. Unless she’s already married. A lovely creature like that surely would be.”

“No, she’s not married, but like I told you, she no longer has the slightest interest in me.” He didn’t mention that the last time he’d seen Sarah at Tracey McNaught’s wedding some eighteen months ago, she had turned her beautiful dark eyes on him briefly. For an instant those eyes had fired up as in the old days, then turned to ice, their message unmistakable. Keep away from me.

No, Sarah wanted nothing to do with him or the McQueens anymore. Something drastic had happened to her. He didn’t know what. For a long time he’d tried to speak to her mother, only to have Muriel Dempsey shake her head and frown, her gaze fixed on some point over his shoulder. It was clear the woman didn’t want their friendship to continue. She only saw trouble. But that hadn’t stopped her from allowing Sarah to accept a McQueen scholarship to complete her education. From there, Sarah had gone on to med school.

Both his grandmother and his mother had been pleased—and enormously relieved—that Sarah had left.

“Darling, it’s all for the best. She’s a pretty little thing, but there’s something a whole lot better in store for you.” His mother had tried to soothe him. “You’re a McQueen, after all.”

A McQueen, that’s me. Why was it some days it felt so bad? Not that he didn’t know the reason. The reason was the unceremonious way Sarah had gone out of his life. The last time—the first time—they’d been together, with electricity leaping from her body to his, passion had blazed between them. Its excesses, the sheer glory and excitement of it, had left them both mute. He had always loved Sarah, but nothing like that. That was the one time they’d come together as lovers. Slipped the confines of adolescence and become adults. To this day, he was unable to forget. Unable for all his successes to pick up his life. Get married and be done with it. Have children. What the hell was he waiting for? A genuine miracle?

In all these years, there was no one who could oust Sarah from his mind, although he’d had his share of girlfriends. India Claydon was always around. His grandmother’s choice. India seemed to think that fact alone would win the day. India was of his world. She knew all the things he knew. She liked all the things he liked. It was cruel to encourage her, but he’d never really done that. His grandmother was the one who kept pushing for an engagement because she truly believed India Claydon was the right wife for him. He could see it in a way. India was “suitable” she could deal with being a McQueen wife. The big drawback was that although he was fond of her—he’d known India all her life—he didn’t love her. It was going to take him a long, long time to forget what love was like. Love was Sarah. So beautiful, so bright, so real. So complex.

His grandmother said Sarah was ambitious. He knew that; Sarah had plans. Miss Crompton had encouraged her all the way. Sarah was going to make something of her life. She was also going to look after her mother, of whom she was very protective. He came to realize afterward that Sarah had never thought for a moment that she’d marry him.

“Darling boy, Sarah knew only a simple friendship was possible between you,” his grandmother had pointed out, love and sympathy in her tones. “Your future is here, though it wouldn’t come as a total surprise to me if someday you branched out into public life. You’re a McQueen. You have the looks, the name, the money. You can always commute. Trust me on this. Sarah is from a humble background, and the press would always ferret it out. She was thrilled when I offered her the scholarship. So was her mother. For both of them it’s a dream come true. Ask Harriet Crompton. Didn’t she fill Sarah’s head with lofty ideas? It was inevitable that Sarah Dempsey would leave like this. Surely you know that in your heart. You had a childhood bond, but that’s all over. Outgrown, because it’s unworkable. I understand these days Sarah’s set her mind on becoming a doctor. I’ll see to it that she gets help. This is the way life is, my darling, and this is the way it will remain. A door may have closed, but you’ll see another one will open.”

Lots of doors had opened over the years, but in all that time Sarah Dempsey had never walked through one. She’d only had a dozen words to say to him on the few occasions he’d seen her. Once it had seemed to him she’d been almost afraid. That didn’t fit with the Sarah he knew. Another time she’d told him flatly to stay away. “Stick with your own crowd!”

Though he had taunted her cruelly in a desperate bid to get at the truth, she’d turned into a cold stranger right before his eyes. Probably he was the only one who had loved, inventing a Sarah who’d never really existed outside his own mind. When she was offered the chance to be someone, Sarah had jumped at it. That was real ambition, just as his grandmother had said. High time he just gave up.

When he arrived at the house he found his grandmother and his mother in the plant-filled solarium. High walls of glass allowed for a superb view of the garden with its huge ornamental fountain and beyond that, rolling plains to the horizon. On a small circular table in front of them sat a sterling-silver tea service with beautiful china. Unless the family was entertaining, the very grand drawing room, too elaborate in his view, and the equally grand dining room were never used. He wondered if either woman knew or cared just how much it cost to maintain a mansion of this size. And that didn’t include the home grounds. But then, they were so used to being rich, they didn’t care about anything. Or anybody. His father had lived his married life largely unnoticed, left out of family councils, never making inroads into his mother-in-law’s affections. Why the hell had he stayed? There didn’t seem to be any real feeling between his mother and father, yet the relationship was civil enough, built on the premise that no one could alter the status quo. Marriage was a serious and solemn business entered into for life. Solidarity was important for the family. No scandals. Still, his uncle Stewart had left Wunnamurra behind. So had his sister, Christine, both of them determined to find their own happiness.

Stewart had died in Malaysia. Chris, who looked very much like him, traveled the world as a fashion model. The last time he spoke with her, she was doing some fashion shoot in New York. They always kept in touch.

“I’m never coming back to that bloody place, Ky. You and Dad are the only ones I love.”

He knew his sister had sought their mother’s love, but his mother had treated Christine less than kindly, forever finding fault. God knows how many times he’d told her as much. Chris, the “perennial disappointment” and, strangely, the “ugly duckling” when she was growing up. By the age of seventeen, just as he’d predicted, Chris had turned into a swan, still hording the endless criticisms her mother had directed at her, often in front of people. Their dysfunctional relationship had made Chris a very angry young woman. But she was fine now. The talk of the town. No one minded a bit that she was six feet tall—it was actually an asset—although their mother had deplored her height for years. He must have recognized very early, probably in the cradle, that he had to be his own person. Neither his grandmother nor his mother had ever come anywhere near pushing him too far, as they had with the others. The fact was, he wouldn’t stand for it.

Like Chris, he loved his father, but he wasn’t like his father, though they both owed their height to him—he and his father were six-three—their flashing smile and the turquoise eyes. The rest of them, the dark hair, the olive skin and the bone structure, was pure McQueen. He’d had enormous advantages. He knew that. But he was no playboy. He worked extremely hard. One reason was that he liked work. Another? He wasn’t happy. So he kept himself occupied.

When he walked into the solarium, the women looked up.

“Hello, darling.” Both spoke together. What had he done to deserve this damn-near hero worship? Was it because he was the heir? Didn’t they know that didn’t matter to him?

He stared at them, silent for a moment. “Hi! What’s up?” He was nothing if not observant.

“A bit of news, darling,” his mother replied, putting her hand to her thick dark hair, which she wore very short. “Muriel Dempsey died. Apparently she dropped dead in the shop. Just like that.”

“Good God!” He felt something like an electric shock. “How awful. She couldn’t have been more than fifty-five or -six. What was it, heart attack?” He lowered himself into a chair, his mind immediately and inevitably springing to Sarah.

“So Joe said.” Now his grandmother spoke, her voice not quite as strong and self-assured as usual. She’d lost weight recently and suddenly she looked her age, instead of nowhere near it. Only the eyes remained brilliant, sharp and searching. “The extraordinary thing is, I’ve been thinking about Sarah all day.”

“So it was today?”

“Only hours ago.”

“How dreadful.” He knew genuine grief. For Muriel Dempsey and for Sarah. Muriel hadn’t had much of a life, although he’d heard through the grapevine that she’d resisted Sarah’s pleas to come to Brisbane to live with her. Muriel Dempsey had always struck him as completely unselfish. She’d probably thought she might be a burden to Sarah in some way.

“Then Sarah will be coming home. Home, sweet home,” he finished ironically.

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” said his mother, then flushed when Ruth sent her a frown.

“So what’s the problem there?” he asked, his own voice sharpening.

“We’ll be expected to put in an appearance at the funeral or send a representative. The town expects so much of us.”

An angry feeling rose from his heart to his throat. “Perhaps because we have more than enough. I can’t understand what gets into you, Mum. Aren’t you the bloody mayor? Haven’t we known the Dempseys forever? Wasn’t Sarah’s father one of our best ringers? I can’t compel you to go, but I certainly will.”

“We’ll all go,” Ruth said, signaling her daughter with her eyes. “Joe had already contacted Sarah before he rang me. She’ll be in town by tomorrow afternoon. She’ll be staying over the shop.” One of Ruth’s arthritic hands closed tightly over the other. “The funeral is scheduled for Friday. Muriel wished to be cremated and her ashes scattered over the desert like her husband’s.”

“It’s just so very tragic,” Kyall said. “Sarah’s had so much suffering in her life.”

“What do you mean?” Ruth asked very suddenly, her voice like a blade. She leaned forward in her upholstered rattan armchair as though hanging on his answer.

“Why so surprised?” His expression conveyed his reaction. “She lost her father, and now she’s lost her mother, Gran.” Emotion tightened his striking features.

He’s never forgotten her, Ruth thought. The knowledge made her feel more vulnerable and frightened than she’d ever felt in her life. What if he found out? What if Sarah suddenly decided to tell him? Well, if Sarah tried it, she wouldn’t know what she was letting herself in for.

“I did my level best to help her, Kyall. I didn’t have to pay for her education, then send her on to medical school. Sometimes I think I was a damned fool. She’s never appreciated it. One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but Muriel was the same, even though I put plenty in her pocket. She didn’t have to continue to work at that shop. She wanted to.”

“Why exactly did you do it, Gran?”

Shocked, she detected an undertone of bitterness and skepticism in the way he said it. “I carried on from your grandfather and his father before him. The McQueens are philanthropists. Isn’t that the truth?”

“When it’s worth it to you.”

“Kyall!” his mother gasped, her strong-featured, aristocratic face turning pale.

“Mum, must you always be such a hypocrite?” he asked coldly. “Let it go. This news has upset me if it hasn’t upset you.”

Ruth’s glittering black gaze flickered. “I can scarcely believe that my grandson, my splendid grandson, never in awe of me or our fortune, can’t escape that girl. Did she steal your heart, my boy?” For once Ruth allowed herself to show her contempt for Sarah.

Kyall stood up, the last rays of the sinking sun striking blue out of his raven hair and turning his skin gold. “Don’t overplay your hand, Gran. You have a tendency to do that, but I’m not one who’s going to listen.”

“Kyall, darling, don’t!” his mother pleaded, stretching out a hand that shook slightly with nervous tension.

“I certainly never meant to hurt you, Kyall,” Ruth said, aware that someplace inside her was trembling, as well.

“But that’s your problem, Gran,” Kyall said, standing up and turning away, not waiting for her answer. “You do hurt people.”

Normally charming, courteous, above all a gentleman, he spoke like a man who could say anything he wanted to.

These next few days were going to be terrible, Ruth thought. She could hardly have foreseen that Muriel Dempsey would die so soon.

CHAPTER TWO

A FUNERAL WAS an opportunity for the whole town to come together, to reaffirm the bush tradition of “mateship,” of offering real comfort and support in times of trouble and grief.

Father Bartholomew of the Aerial Ministry conducted the service, talking about Muriel Dempsey and her late husband, Jock, in a way that Sarah really appreciated. She’d known Father Bartholomew all her life. He had never failed to give Sarah and her mother comfort and hope. Father Bartholomew was a man you could really talk to, laugh with, whose shoulder you could cry on.

There were no tears today. Sarah sat in the front pew of the small all-denominational church, her features composed. In her short years as an intern and then in private practice, she had seen many tragic things. Everybody lost a loved one at some time or other, many of them far too early—children with terminal leukemia, young women with breast cancer, adolescents overdosing on drugs, young drivers involved in horrific road accidents. She had seen and attended them all. That was part of her profession, what she believed with all her heart was a noble calling.

But this was different. This was saying her final goodbye to her cherished mother. The one who’d loved her absolutely, unconditionally.

Her mother. So lovely. Her mother had always called her “my angel.” Her long mane of curly blond hair, Sarah supposed, plus she’d never been a moody, rebellious child. She and her mother had been too crucially interdependent to allow disharmony into their lives. They’d been mutually supportive and caring. Her mother had continued to call her “my angel” even when she’d had to confess in floods of tears that she was pregnant.

My Rose. I, too, would’ve had a girl. I would’ve had a wonderful, meaningful relationship. Little more than a child she’d been, but she had really wanted her baby. The child in Kyall’s image. Rose Red. Just like in the old fairy tales. She had since learned that everyone had to cope with dreadful losses over a lifetime, but it was something that shouldn’t have happened to her at fifteen.

Joe had tried to talk her out of attending her mother’s cremation. He and Sister Bradley would act as witnesses. But she intended to be with her mother to the very end. Afterward she would borrow Joe’s vehicle to drive out into the desert to scatter her mother’s ashes. She knew where. Around a particularly beautiful ghost gum that had held some special message for her mother. Sarah never knew what.

She would’ve given anything to be talked out of the wake, but she knew she had to go. Her mother had many, many good friends in the town. Attending the wake was expected. Harriet, that eternal tower of strength, had arranged it at her place. “Harriet’s Villa,” the town had always called it. A building considerably grander than those usually allotted to an outback town’s schoolteacher. Convincing evidence of Harriet Crompton’s regal, no-nonsense presence. The villa was really a classic old Queenslander with the usual enveloping verandas, lacework balustrades and valances. As a child Sarah had loved it. What made the villa truly extraordinary was Miss Crompton’s remarkable collection of native artifacts. She’d gathered them from all over—the Australian outback, New Guinea, where she’d been reared by her English parents on a coffee plantation, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, which she’d visited in her youth. There was hardly a field of learning Harriet didn’t know about or couldn’t talk intelligently about. She was an inveterate reader with an insatiable appetite for knowledge. Miss Crompton—she hadn’t become Harriet until a few years ago—had sensed the day after Sarah and Kyall had made love that something new had taken over her favorite student’s life. Sarah had sometimes thought Miss Crompton had sensed the very day she knew she was pregnant. Certainly Miss Crompton had said Sarah could come to her at any time if she needed help.

“My door is always open to you, Sarah. Whatever problems we experience in life, we can get through them with friends.”

She was two and a half months pregnant, her body as slim and supple as ever, showing no outward changes, when Ruth McQueen put a name to her condition and in so doing put a name to her.

“You little slut! What were you thinking of? What were you and your mother thinking of? That you’d trap my grandson? As though I’d allow it for one minute! It’s unthinkable. You’ll go away and you’ll stay away. You have no future here.”

What did it concern her that the baby was someone she and Ruth McQueen’s adored grandson had created together?

“I’ll protect my grandson in any way I have to. Understand me. I’m a powerful woman. Do you think I’ll listen to your stupid prattle about loving Kyall? This will ruin him, bring him and my family down. It will never happen. You’ll go away if I have to drag you off myself. If you truly love my grandson, you’ll recognize that this pregnancy has the potential to destroy his life. God almighty, girl, he’s only sixteen! Do you think I’m going to allow him to waste his life on someone like you? You’re fortunate you haven’t told him your little secret, or God knows what I’d do.”

Sarah hadn’t doubted then, nor did she now, that Ruth McQueen would have taken drastic steps to shut her up. But basically it had come down to one thing. She did love Kyall. His happiness was very important to her. She’d never seen them in terms of a committed relationship; their backgrounds were too far removed. She’d accepted what Ruth McQueen and to a certain extent her own mother had told her. Exquisitely painful as it was, it would be better for her, for her baby and for Kyall if the child was adopted out to a suitable young couple who would give it a good, loving home.

She remembered how frightened her mother had been of Ruth McQueen. “Everyone is, my angel. She’s done some terrible things to people in business. Her own son was forced to leave. She simply doesn’t have it in her to love anyone. Except Kyall. This is a real crisis, my angel. I have no money. Nowhere else to go. No husband anymore. I know it’s dreadful to accept what she’s offering, but she proposes to look after us if we do what she says.”

So the answer, although it was terrible and not what she wanted, was very clear. She was to go away and put her baby up for adoption. Afterward, as though nothing monumental had happened, she could resume her education, one important difference being that she’d never go back to the town but be enrolled in an excellent girls’ boarding school.

NOTHING HAD PREPARED HER or would ever prepare her for the sight of Kyall. She thought she gave a stricken gasp, but in fact she hadn’t made a sound. She stood outside the church, flanked and supported by Harriet and Joe, surrounded by people of the town, the mourners, as her mother’s casket slid into the hearse and then began its final journey to the funeral home on the outskirts of town. It had been decided that she would attend her mother’s wake first before the cremation. Harriet and her mother’s best friend, Cheryl Morgan, would accompany her.

There was something eerie about seeing Ruth McQueen again. She had aged. Lost height and weight. Never a tall woman, she’d always had such an imperious manner she’d managed to overcome her lack of inches. From this distance—and Sarah hoped she’d keep it—Ruth McQueen looked almost frail. Wonder of wonders! Hard to believe that, but she still had the incredible aura of glamour her daughter Enid, though a handsome woman, totally lacked. Both women were dressed in black from top to toe—a lot of people weren’t—but the McQueens always did things by the book. Kyall’s father, Max, a tall, handsome man with lovely manners, glanced in her direction. He lifted his hand and smiled, somehow indicating that he’d see her at the house.

The McQueen women had already turned away as Kyall cleared a path for them to the old, meticulously maintained Rolls Ruth McQueen kept for her dignified entries into town. What was more of a surprise—but then again, perhaps not—was the presence of India Claydon of Marjimba Station, who now stood beside Kyall, suggesting she was a young woman of some significance in his and his family’s life. India did not look in Sarah’s direction. Her concern was solely with supporting the McQueen family, as though they were the chief mourners.

India, a tall, athletic young woman with a long fall of glossy brown hair and bright blue eyes, appeared cool and elegant even in the heat of the day, which had most women waving decorative straw fans. India Claydon was a few years younger and had never been a friend. India, as heiress to Marjimba Station, liked the locals to keep their distance. Certainly she had looked down on Sarah and made the fact very plain. India had been educated at home until age twelve, when she was sent away to boarding school. As fate would have it, she’d attended the same prestigious school Ruth McQueen had picked out for Sarah. An excellent school was something Muriel Dempsey had found the strength and the courage to insist on for her clever daughter. Right from the beginning, India had made it her business to let the other girls at school know Sarah was there through the charity of that philanthropic family, the McQueens, her own family’s close friends. If it was meant as an embarrassment, the ploy backfired. No one cared. Sarah Dempsey was a bright girl, a real worker and she excelled at sports. Everyone liked her. She was kind and courteous, respectful to her teachers, who couldn’t praise her enough. Eventually she was “dux” of the school, the top student, as well as school captain. Impossible to believe Sarah Dempsey had ever put a foot wrong in her life. Impossible to believe that behind the sweet seriousness of her expression lay a grief and a guilt that had never been resolved.

What did I do wrong that my baby was born without a chance at life? Sarah agonized endlessly as she faced the future without her child. What had happened? During all that long, lonely waiting time, she’d tried her very best to take care of herself. She had felt physically strong, never questioning that she would deliver a healthy child.

But I slept while my baby died.

LEAVING THE CHURCH, Kyall kept moving forward, unaware that his face was still and somber. People greeted him on all sides, saying the usual things one said at funerals. Untimely…sad occasion…no nicer woman than Muriel… He could see they were pleased he and his family had come to pay their respects. Some were a little awkward about mentioning Sarah. These good-hearted people knew all about the adolescent bond between him and Sarah Dempsey. They had been inseparable. He knew there’d been lots of whispers when Sarah had gone away so suddenly to boarding school, everyone certain his grandmother had put an end to an “unsuitable” relationship. No doubt in the town’s view it had been for their own good. Kyall had to admit their bond had amounted to near obsession. They were both too young for it. Probably the townspeople felt that the breakup had been inevitable from the start. Such a friendship would never culminate in anything, given the fact that his family reigned supreme and the Dempseys, though respectable people, were nevertheless working class. That would be the reasoning.

Still, Kyall knew the town had a soft spot for the remarkably bright Sarah, Miss Crompton’s protégée, fatherless child and a great comfort and help to her widowed mother.

There were just too many obstacles, too much formidable opposition from his family. His grandmother Ruth, who showed little or no affection for anybody, doted on him. Who knew why? But the upshot had been the severance of the greatest bond of his young life. With some bleakness, Kyall pondered that. I could never forget her, but Sarah quickly enough blotted out all memories of me.

Now his family was attending Muriel Dempsey’s funeral, an odd gesture, perhaps, but one that was obviously much appreciated. It was, everyone seemed to agree, in the true spirit of the bush, yet the pain in his heart was so bad Kyall thought he might groan aloud with it. Across the room he could see the women of the town, one by one, go to Sarah and wrap their arms around her, hugging her, their faces full of sympathy and compassion. The men gripped her hand. Some of the older men, the grandfathers, hugged her close. He saw India’s brother, Mitchell, a friend and in his view the pick of the Claydons, kiss her on both cheeks; he wasn’t surprised when she lifted her beautiful grave face and gave him a heartbreaking smile. Sarah had always liked Mitch. It was Mitch who’d christened her at age ten the “little Queen of Koomera Crossing” a reference to some quality in Sarah that put her above the rest.

She was more beautiful every time he saw her. Even now, when he knew she was filled with desolation, she managed to keep the tears at bay. She was…gallant. He knew she wouldn’t break down until she was entirely on her own.

She wore a simple black dress that made her skin glow and her hair glitter. That extravagant blond mane was pulled back from her face and arranged in a thick upturned roll, though wisps like little golden flames found their way onto her temples and cheeks and clustered on the creamy nape of her neck. Taller than most of the women around her, she was slim to the point of thinness.

Even as a child she’d had presence. Now, her natural beauty allied with her focused demeanor and high intelligence gave her real power. Not the power his grandmother possessed and had basked in for most of her life but the power of the spirit. Sarah was the sun, on the side of the angels. His grandmother? Well, his grandmother was his grandmother. He’d always thought of her as a woman full of darkness, full of secrets. Her eyes, for instance, were so dark one could look into them and never see the bottom.

His grandmother and mother weren’t among the women who reached out to Sarah with consoling arms. They stood together as people expected them to, overdressed in this company, faces pale, clearly saying the necessary words, words that covered up what both women wanted most. For Sarah to go away. Miles and miles and miles away. Back to the city and her medical practice.

They were out of their minds if they thought he’d forgotten Sarah. It was just something he couldn’t give up. Like a powerful addictive drug. Soon it would be his turn to speak to her, although he knew she wouldn’t want it. The last time they’d confronted each other, she’d told him she never wanted to see him again. You’d have thought he and the McQueens had personally run her out of town, instead of financing her education. It was all so inconsistent with the Sarah he thought he’d known and with whom he’d shared such a remarkable friendship.

That friendship had ended literally overnight. Maybe his daring to make love to her, to take her virginity, had shaken her to the very core. He remembered—how he remembered—that she’d cried. He’d thought it was with rapture. Hadn’t tears filled his own eyes? It hadn’t been rapture, though. It’d been something else. Things hidden in a young girl’s soul. All he knew was that she’d stepped away from him as if it was the only possible way she could protect herself. As if this perilous new dimension in their lives could only damage her. Of course, she would’ve feared having a child; any young girl would have. But their child. Wouldn’t that have been the most wonderful thing? That was his spontaneous reaction, years later of course, although he realized it would have changed their lives.

Ultimately he’d discovered that Sarah had wanted more for herself. And why not? She’d gone away. Withdrawn her body, her mind and her heart. In effect, his own family’s money had sealed her off.

A few moments more and he saw his mother and grandmother turn away, both formidable figures, as Miss Crompton returned to Sarah’s side. She was a spare, birdlike woman, but elegant, erect, albeit dressed like a woman from another era—Edwardian?—with hairdo to match. There was a troubled look on Harriet’s face, her English skin weathered to crazed china by an alien sun. It was a face that would’ve been outright plain except for a fine, glinting pair of gray eyes that were normally filled with sardonic humor. He liked and respected Miss Crompton. Many times he’d sought her out in the late afternoons when he was in town and knew she’d still be in the schoolhouse, her second home. He felt with certainty that she enjoyed his company as much as he enjoyed hers. She was a very interesting woman with a keen mind. As a boy she had taught him, reined in his high spirits. During those years he thought she took as much notice of him as Sarah, showing her pleasure in their learning skills, knowing he would soon go away to his prestigious private school to complete his education. What had she called him?

“The princeling.” That was it, although she never said it to hurt him. It was more like taking a shot at his grandmother for whom, he came to realize, she had a deep, unspoken distrust. It had been strange growing up knowing most people regarded his iron-fisted grandmother as a terrible woman. No, not a woman at all. A vengeful deity. Get on the wrong side of her and all manner of afflictions would be called down on you. He had never wanted to believe it—since he was completely unafraid of her—but he came to see over the years that it was true. Yet it was due to his grandmother that little Sarah Dempsey, who lived with her mother over the shop, was now the well-respected Dr. Sarah Dempsey. Her aura of calm poise and balance, of caring, would inspire confidence in her patients. Yet the sparkle, the vivaciousness, the youthful high spirits he remembered in his Sarah now lay below the surface.

Hell, would the pain ever stop?

He made his way across the packed room, the press of bodies raising the temperature to an uncomfortable degree. Sarah looked cool, though. Was that because she was so blond? Or maybe the hot blood no longer raced through her veins….

“Sarah. Miss Crompton.” He stood in front of them. Sarah didn’t raise her eyes. Hadn’t she told him she didn’t want to see him again? But pride, and he had plenty of it, didn’t seem worth bothering about where Sarah was concerned.

“Good to see you, Kyall.” Harriet Crompton smiled up at him—encouragingly, he thought. “I’ll leave you and Sarah alone, although I’d like to speak to you later, Kyall, if you can spare me a few minutes.”

“Of course,” he said, his faint smile sardonic. Acknowledging what they both knew: it didn’t do to keep Ruth McQueen waiting.

“I want you to know how sorry I am about your mother, Sarah,” he said, trusting that his voice carried his utter sincerity.

“Thank you, Kyall.” She flushed, then paled. “My mother always thought the world of you.”

“Did she?” he asked quietly, his skepticism plain. “Estranged wouldn’t be an overstatement. Our relationship became extremely complex after you left. When I was a boy, I knew your mother liked me. She said so. I made her laugh. But once you were gone, she presented a different face. She couldn’t have been more distant. No, not distant,” he mused, looking over Sarah’s golden head. “What? As though the whole situation overwhelmed her.”

“Perhaps she was afraid your grandmother would turn really nasty if your friendship with her persisted,” Sarah answered, as the dark whirlpool of the past swept her on.

“What else could have accounted for her nervousness?” he said, shrugging. “Anyway, I never lost my affection for her. And she did love you, Sarah. I’ve never felt that kind of love.”

“No. You just have to get along on idolatry.” She spoke without thinking, her words dredged up from that deep well of bitterness.

He stood looking down at her, knowing this yearning to do so would never stop. “If that was said to hurt me, it missed the mark. Idolatry, as you put it, isn’t something I crave. It’s not easy living up to a million expectations, either.”

“But you do. I’m sorry, Kyall. I know you wanted none of it. But your grandmother’s and your mother’s fixation on you left your father and Chris out in the cold. How is Chris?” Sarah had a lot of affection for Christine, who was three years younger, feelings that were reciprocated. But she’d never been tempted to confide in Chris. That really would have started something.

Kyall turned toward the cool breeze blowing in the window and fluttering the filmy lace curtains. All in keeping with the house, except that the windows were flanked by two pretty-scary wooden witch doctors from New Guinea. “Chris is in the States at the moment. She gets plenty of work.”

“She’s stunning,” Sarah said, carefully pushing a few tendrils of hair away from her face. “I always said she would be. She’s got a ton of grit. She paid me a visit the last time she was in town—it has to be a year ago now.”

“She told me.”

Sarah nodded, knowing how much Christine loved and confided in her brother. “It says a lot for Chris that she never resented you because of your mother’s attitude—endlessly, openly criticizing Chris while lauding you. Chris would’ve given anything for some love and encouragement.”

Fire sparked in his brilliant blue eyes. “She got it from me. And Dad. It wasn’t all terrible.”

Sarah started to apologize. Stopped. It was much too late to forgive the McQueens. “No, I suppose not.” Sarah sighed deeply, knowing she was only doing damage to herself by standing there talking to Kyall. Their problems would never be resolved. “I’ve spoken to your father. I always liked him. But I find it difficult to speak to your grandmother and your mother. You know that.”

“So nothing’s changed?” What was that expression flickering in her eyes? She wasn’t as indifferent to him as she pretended.

“Nothing can change, Kyall.”

“Why is that?” he challenged, desperate to get somewhere near the truth. “You’ve never had the guts to tell me.”

She lifted a hand, let it fall. Wordlessly.

Somehow that broke his heart. “Forgive me.” Swiftly he reined himself in. “This is hardly the time.”

Someone else, a male mourner, was approaching. “Sarah, are you willing to spend a few hours with me?” he asked urgently. “There are so many questions you’ve never answered. I know I made one terrible mistake, God forgive me. But, Sarah, I loved you. I shouldn’t have touched you until you were a woman. I’ve had to live with that. Excuses are no good. I know that. When are you leaving?” He held up a hand to stay the other man—he didn’t know him—who appeared determined to speak to Sarah.

“Two or three days. I have things to attend to.”

“Tomorrow. Can I see you tomorrow?”

“Kyall, there’s nothing more to say. You’re wasting your time.” Was she a total emotional coward? Simply that? Loving Kyall McQueen was like a terminal illness.

“Look at me.” He knew his demeanor was pressing, but he couldn’t help it. “You’re not looking at me. Why? Does my face upset you? Do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you at all.” Her voice was low and stricken.

“But apparently you’ve got so much against me.”

“Kyall, please don’t.” Being with him, within touching distance, was so disturbing she was afraid of it. Even on this day of sorrow, her flesh was responding the way it once had.

“How can I when there’s something in your eyes that…” He lowered his dark head. He wanted to lift up her chin with its ravishing dimple, force her to look at him. “I’m not a fool. Don’t treat me like one. Tomorrow?”

“So I can be cross-examined?”

“It’s a sad thing, Sarah, to be left completely in the dark,” he said, the severity of his hurt never forgotten. “It’s like being blind. If you despise me for what I did, you must tell me.” He broke off, glancing over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t you think that guy would go away?” he said in frustration.

“People want to speak to me, Kyall,” Shockingly Sarah felt like laughing.

“Okay, but you can’t shelter behind your wall of silence forever. I’ll be back in town tomorrow afternoon. Say, around three,” he said, looking every inch the arrogant, always-gets-what-he-wants McQueen. “I’ll come and fetch you at the shop.”

“Kyall. I thought I made it clear—”

“That’s just it.” He mocked her with the merest flash of his marvelous smile. “You never have. To this day. I almost have to wonder if you were part of some conspiracy.” He strode away.

MURIEL DEMPSEY’S FUNERAL was, in every way, an event no one was destined to forget. It brought Sarah back to town, the one place she’d planned never to go again. It brought her back into Kyall McQueen’s orbit with its powerful emotional pull. It struck fear into Ruth McQueen, watching their intense conversation from across the room. Sarah had never spoken out in all these years. Neither had Muriel. Now with Muriel gone, what would happen? Sarah might think she could tell her story with impunity. As always, Ruth would be ready to step in. Nevertheless, fear pounded forcefully through her veins, raising her already elevated blood pressure.

There were anxious stirrings inside Harriet Crompton’s breast, as well. Harriet had once believed young Sarah was pregnant when she left town. She would’ve done everything in her power to help, but Sarah had gone off with Ruth McQueen in the unlikely guise of benefactor and protector. Harriet couldn’t dispute the fact that McQueen money helped many. The child had gone willingly, seduced by education. Lord only knows, she’d been the one to encourage Sarah. Sarah had written to her frequently over the years, sounding fulfilled and happy. Why, then, did she continue to think there was some mystery? Obviously it hadn’t been a pregnancy, after all. Harriet was certain Sarah would never have given up her baby. Muriel, too, would never have given up a grandchild. And Sarah wouldn’t have kept such momentous news to herself. She would’ve told Kyall. For surely Kyall McQueen was Sarah’s first and only lover. Both of them so young, so beautiful, so radiant and careless, suddenly thrust into adult love.

It was a puzzle Harriet often brooded about. Both of them had locked up their hearts. And Muriel…

Harriet didn’t want to consider whether poor Muriel had died of a broken heart.

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