Page 55 of A Chance to Believe

Cassie took a deep breath, and then another, placing the half empty glass on the table. ‘Longbourne was in my family for almost as long as Maidens Hill has been in yours. Sheep, with the occasional excursion into cattle and a very brief trial of alpacas.’

‘Nathan said there were alpacas when he bought it.’

‘My father had just bought a few to see how they went before the accident.’

‘That was ten years ago?’

‘Closer to twelve. It took a couple of years for probate to go through and allow the sale.’

He was counting on his fingers, his brows drawn together. ‘You were eighteen. Why weren’t you with them?’

‘I was at the Bialga rodeo with Brian Casey, my fiancé.’ Even now, after all these years, the pain still stabbed a little. ‘The bull he was riding hit him after he dismounted. He’d made the eight seconds, but he stumbled when he hit the ground. The bull was still bucking, and it twisted and landed on him.’

She’d been watching and jumping up and down cheering and that moment of exhilaration, followed immediately by the horror of seeing a tonne of bull trample on the man she loved still caught her breath. It took a moment to recover. Shayne reached out and wrapped his hand around hers, warmth sending the oxygen back into her lungs. ‘He was wearing the vest and helmet, but it wasn’t enough.’

‘Did he …?’ Shayne’s words came out choked.

‘No. But it was bad. His neck was broken and his pelvis crushed. So many internal injuries. He survived.’

Shayne’s fingers tightened. ‘How long?’

It was as if he could read her mind. ‘Four years. He was in a rehab facility for most of it. We were hoping to get him home when he caught pneumonia. He couldn’t fight it.’

‘Were your parents coming to be with you after the accident?’

‘Yes. Terry was with them. My twin brother. I can’t imagine how it happened. They were used to watching out for animals. According to the police, they must have hit a big ram at speed and left the road. The front passenger side was mangled and the wheel ripped off. The corpse was still on the road when they were found. The car rolled and ended up with the driver’s side wrapped around a tree. They were dead on impact, according to the coroner. It was my fault. They wouldn’t have been in such a hurry if I hadn’t called them about Brian.’

Shayne was very still. It was hard to read his expression. Shock, most likely. It was such a litany of disaster. Not that much more than his family had been through with his sisters and Ben’s injury, give or take a few deaths, but coming all at once, it had knocked her both mentally and physically.

It frightened her that sometimes she had trouble remembering what they looked like. Like his mother, she’d put away the family albums from when she was a child. She’d lost most of her digital photos when her computer crashed not long after Brian’s death. Even the pain was fading along with the memories. Somehow that was the most frightening thing of all. It had been all she had to hold onto.

His other hand cupped her cheek. ‘There’s nothing I can say that will make it better. I can’t imagine what you went through.’

The touch dragged her back to the here and now. She forced a smile but even that didn’t hurt as much. ‘Now you see why I think I’m cursed.’

‘Not cursed. Misfortune piling on misfortune. One thing leading to the rest.’ His gaze shifted to her stomach. ‘Was that when you lost your baby?’

That penetrated. A sharp hollowness that dissipated as she felt the new life in her belly. ‘How did you know?’

‘If your fiancé was so injured, I thought you must have been pregnant beforehand.’

‘I was at the hospital waiting for Brian to be flown out to Brisbane when a policeman came looking for me. I thought it was about Brian. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Wouldn’t believe. I rushed out of the hospital because I’d left my phone in the car. I fell down the stairs. The baby came too early.’

She exhaled, looking down at his fingers tangled with hers. ‘Misfortune piling on misfortune. You were right. It seemed like it would never end. I had lost everyone. Everything. They kept saying Brian would probably not survive. As it was, I couldn’t follow him to Brisbane for over a month. First, I was in the hospital being fixed up after the miscarriage. Then I had to fly out west to sort out my family’s deaths.’ She glanced up. ‘Nathan’s family were very good to me. They helped sort out everything. Once the funerals were done, I went to Brisbane. Not that Brian missed me. He was in an induced coma for weeks.’

‘I don’t understand how I never heard about it. Surely it made the news.’

‘It must have been not long after you lost Brittany, and then there were Ben’s injuries. I doubt if you were watching the news. If you did see it, it wouldn’t have registered.’

His brow creased. ‘Maybe I heard something about it. There’s something niggling in the back of my mind. Something Nate said when he bought the property. But you’re right. We had so much on our plate there was no room for empathy for someone else’s trauma.’

* * *

Shayne swallowed a ball of regret. Not that he would have been any help to her back then, but the urge to protect Cassie was strong. She’d made it through by herself in the end. Not unscathed, but still a beautiful person on the inside. She hadn’t let it embitter her. Only the fear still lingered, and she kept it well hidden under the serene surface.

She took a long swallow of her drink and placed the empty glass on the table. It seemed like that was the end of the revelations for the moment. She’d need a break, so he lifted the lids off the salad plates and handed her one. The salmon was in small pieces and the entire meal was easy to eat with just a fork.

He waited until she’d eaten a reasonable amount before asking another question. ‘Did Brian have family?’

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