‘You said you love me.’ She hadn’t imagined that, had she?
‘I do.’ He started walking towards the door again. ‘It doesn’t mean you have to love me back. That’s not how it works.’
Moments later he was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BRIDIE DROVE HOME, half expecting her father to have taken off again, but he met her at the door, no questions on his tongue but his eyes awhirl with them. She didn’t know what to say to him, she really didn’t.
‘Judah says you’re a lying old coot,’ she offered finally. Might as well start at the top. ‘So let’s make ourselves a cup of tea and figure out where to go from here.’
She let the motions soothe her as she filled the teapot with leaves from the little tin canister that had sat on the kitchen shelf forever. Her father took his black and strong. She took hers with milk and liked it weaker, so she made sure she took first pour. And all the time she marshalled her thoughts and arguments so that the two most important people in her life would remain in her life. ‘Let’s take it out to the veranda.’
He picked up his cup and she followed him out, unsurprised when he chose the northern veranda with its relentlessly bright light that reached deep into the veranda and sometimes hit the windows. It had the best views, unmarred by garden trees. It was red dirt and spinifex as far as the eye could see, with very little variation in topography. Their most brutal view, in many ways. There wasn’t a scrap of civilisation in it.
She sat down beside him on the veranda ledge and nudged his shoulder with hers. They both sipped deeply of the tea.
‘I’ve missed this,’ he murmured.
‘You didn’t have to leave.’
‘Needed to get my head on straight,’ he said, and she thought about that. About what Judah’s return might have done to him. Judah could reject the notion all he liked but he’d done so much for them. So much more than anyone could have asked of him. And all Judah had asked of them was to let it go and move forward.
‘Thing is,’ she continued doggedly, ‘me, you, Aunt Beth—we can all blame ourselves for the decisions that led us to that moment.’ She took her father’s calloused hand, with the knuckles just starting to thicken with arthritis, and held on tight. ‘I should never have chosen modelling and brought Laurence Levit into our lives. Aunt Beth should have known better than to be taken in by him, but she had barely more experience with predatory men than I did. You could have come to Paris with us and pegged him as a bad one or maybe you wouldn’t have, who knows? Point is, he got hold of us and then kept on coming. The law didn’t stop him. Those AVOs we had out against him meant nothing out here. Can we agree on that? That Laurence Levit wasn’t stopped by ordinary means?’
Her father’s hand tightened around hers, a squeeze to show he was listening. ‘We can.’
‘So whatever happened, happened. And one way or another we owe Judah more than we can ever say. Can we agree on that too?’
‘Yes.’
She took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. ‘The only payment Judah wants is for us to look forward rather than back, and I am on board with that. I can understand you not being in the same place, and that feelings of guilt or shame or the need for penance might be eating at you, but I want you to know that in my eyes you are both heroes. Laurence crossed a line when he took me. All the character witnesses they put on the stand, all those people who said he was an upstanding man, they didn’t look into his eyes and see their own death staring back at them. I did, and it was me or him, Dad. Me or him. I’m glad you chose me.’
Her father squeezed her hand and then carefully let it go, but Bridie wasn’t finished yet.
‘Judah’s adamant he did the deed and he knows I don’t believe him, but he won’t tell the truth. He’s protecting us. Even if I’d rather he didn’t this time around.’
‘He’s a man of his word,’ her father muttered with far more complacency than Bridie thought was warranted. ‘But look on the bright side, at least now you know the truth, even if he never confirms it. No more secrets between you two. A clean slate before marriage. That’s a good thing, so I’m told.’
Wait. ‘Did you know Judah was never going to rat you out?’
Her father shrugged. ‘Might’ve.’
Holy—
‘That’s...’ She had no words.
‘Inspired?’
More like brutally self-serving. ‘You left him to hang. Again.’
‘I knew he loved you and wanted to marry you. I knew he could never tell you what really happened, no matter how much he wanted to. Not if he wanted to protect you from knowing too much. But if I told you, he could still deny it and we’d all be protected. And you’d know what he wanted you to know but could never tell you.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘It worked.’
Heaven help her it had, but not without cost. She remembered Judah’s stricken face and furious outburst when she’d been twisting her engagement ring around and around. When she’d been doing her damnedest to understand his position. ‘You took a huge risk, playing us like that.’