Page 2 of One More Time

How … odd.

She was almost too afraid to open it.

‘Well, come on, Mum, the suspense is killing me.’ Hope bounced on the spot.

Her heart thudding, Grace flipped the box open, and the sight of what was inside caught her breath. The sapphire and diamond brooch instantly dragged her back. She’d forgotten all about it, though the nostalgia it brought was raw and real and ever so powerful.

She went to speak, but her mouth was too dry to move, and her mind was too enfolded in the past to string a sensible sentence together.

Hope placed a gentle hand on Grace’s knee. ‘What is it, Mum?’

Grace felt a surge of emotions, born from days gone by – happier days, when all had seemed beautifully attainable, with Charlie by her side. They’d had so many dreams for their future, had shared so many promises to be able reach those dreams.

Looking back, as she had many times over, they’d been so naïve to believe it was going to be achievable.

‘Mum, are you okay?’ Hope’s voice was laced with concern.

Harnessing all of her inner strength, Grace cleared the emotion from her throat and found her voice. ‘This is the brooch your father bought me in our second year together, a few weeks before he decided to go back to that dreadful place, on that hopeless mission.’ She lifted it from the box, and looked at it as if for the very first time. ‘All those years he was missing, spent hoping and praying he would be found alive, that he would come home to us …’ Overcome with resentment, she choked on her words, and had to take a moment to regather herself.

‘Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.’ Hope’s tone was soft, and her blue eyes were filled with compassion. ‘Even though I was only a little girl, I still remember praying with you, asking god to bring him back to us.’ She took a moment, sniffled, then smiled through her own heartache. ‘But as I’ve said to you before, I don’t believe Dad valued finding the missing American soldier who saved his life, or being in the army for that matter, more than he treasured you or me.’ She half shrugged. ‘He was just a desperate man living with a tonne of guilt that he didn’t know how to deal with. Going back to Vietnam and trying to find that man, or his remains at the very least, so he could have a proper burial, was how he dealt with it.’

Grace drew in a long, steady breath. ‘Darling, I know more than anyone how it was for your father was when he came home from the war. But he promised me he was done with the fight, and that my love was enough. So I will never understand how he could leave his wife and eighteen-month-old baby girl behind, and go back to the very place that ruined him.’ She brought her teary gaze to Hope’s. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret marrying Rodger, but I do often wonder, if I hadn’t been so vulnerable at the time, desperate to somehow fill the void your father’s desertion had caused, and had waited that little bit longer, if your father and I would have made things work.’ She sniffed back her welling emotions, and smiled sadly. ‘Too little, too late, now, hey.’

‘I suppose we’ll never know, Mum.’ Hope regarded her with equally sad eyes. ‘So it’s no use beating yourself up.’

‘My sentiments exactly.’ Reining her emotions in, Grace stood and carefully pinned the brooch to her dress, admiring how it looked in the mirror of her duchess. ‘I can recall the day I gave it back to your father, too. The very day he boarded the plane for Vietnam. It feels like it was only yesterday …’

Grace’s voice trailed off as she remembered Charlie at the front door, six years older and shocked to see she’d re-married, this very brooch in his hand. He’d desperately tried to explain why he’d gone MIA, his foolish belief that losing his leg when he’d stepped on the unexploded buried bomb meant he wasn’t man enough to return to her. She’d both loved and hated him so much in that moment.

‘You weren’t to know Dad was still alive, Mum. How could any of us have known he was living in some hut in the Vietnamese jungle while he searched for that lost soldier? Or that when he failed to find him, he’d come back to Australia and was in Sydney, basically on the streets, for two years?’ Hope sighed, and rose from the edge of the bed. ‘But all that aside, as much as you two infuriate each other, I know you both still love each other very much.’ She slid her arms around Grace’s waist, and rested her chin on her shoulder, regarding her mother in their reflections. ‘And that means the world to me, knowing my parents had me out of pure, unconditional love.’

Grace turned and cupped her daughter’s rouged cheeks. ‘You, my darling, are the greatest accomplishment in both my life and your father’s and yes, when we had you, we were both very much in love.’

‘I know you were.’ Hope rested her hands over her mother’s. ‘And as much as you refuse to admit it, you still are.’ With Grace scowling, Hope’s sad smile gave way to a cheeky one. ‘On that note, I better get back downstairs and round up the girls and Kelvin.’ She groaned, rolling her eyes playfully. ‘I swear, I spend half my life telling them to hurry up, all three of them are highly trained side-trackers.’

‘And you do a very good job of running the ship, my darling.’ Grace leant in and brushed a kiss on Hope’s cheek. ‘I’ll be down in a few minutes, okay?’

‘Of course it is, take your time.’ She regarded Grace with tender adoration. ‘I love you so very much, Mum.’

‘Love you too, my sweet girl, with all my heart and soul.’

With one last meaningful look between the two women, Hope padded out. As the door clicked shut, Grace felt the urge to delve a little deeper into the past that was now at the forefront of her mind. She knew she didn’t have much time, but she walked over to the wardrobe, eased down to her knees on the sheepskin rug, and then dug behind her shoe rack. There, hidden away for all these years, sat the small suitcase she’d first used as her travel bag as an eighteen-year-old girl and which she’d eventually come to store her keepsakes in. Pulling it toward her, she dusted the top off and unclipped the two latches. As she lifted the lid, wistfulness stole her breath. Time slowed, stalled and rewound. Sat atop everything were the two pairs of booties, ones she’d knitted while dreaming of what their twin boys would look like. She’d even picked names for them – Hudson and Bryn. Her heart squeezed tight as she lifted each bootie out and pressed them to her cheek.

She’d never got to meet her boys – her miscarriage at five months had robbed her of that chance – nor had she ever told anyone about them, not even Charlie. Nor would she ever. Some secrets were better kept.

Tired of staring at his bedroom ceiling, Charlie Wilson groaned as he rolled onto his side and gradually pushed himself up to a sitting position. Gazing out the bay windows to where the sun had all but vanished behind the mountain ranges that backdropped Moonflower Acres, he saw a crescent moon and the first star beginning to peek out of the darkening sky. Shifting his gaze across the water, first to the glowing lights of Grace’s grandiose home and then to where tonight’s festivities would be held, he gruffly rubbed a hand over his face, hoping to goodness Hope had made the right decision in holding the party at the very place his childhood sweetheart had long ago dreamt of turning into a seaside teashop. He knew he was partly responsible for the fact that she never had, and hated himself for it – but it was too late now to make it up to Grace. An entire lifetime had passed them by.

Besides, Rodger Burrows had played his part too, steering Grace off what she’d believed to be her predestined path, though Charlie held little comfort in not being the only one to blame. As much as his beautiful daughter had asked him over the years, if not for himself, than for her mother, he’d never been able to find it within himself to forgive Rodger for stealing his girl. Or, as Grace had once brought to his attention, maybe it was actually himself that he found impossible to forgive, for breaking her heart, for leaving her to believe she was widowed for all those years, for not initially being the father figure to Hope that he’d promised to be.

Grace had deserved better than either of them, and merited way more love than either he or Rodger had ever given her. Rodger may have believed that financial security was the way to a woman’s heart – if that were the case, Grace would be the happiest woman in Sapphire Bay – but Charlie knew Grace better than she liked to admit, and had witnessed the loneliness that had lingered in her striking green eyes in all the years she’d been by Rodger’s side.

As for himself, he’d been young and stupidly trusted that if he could go back to the place that had torn him apart, he could somehow put all his broken pieces together and finally be the man he believed Grace needed him to be. Yet, here he was, more broken than ever, mind, body and spirit. He now understood that all she’d ever wanted was for him to let her in, to love her like he meant it, to be there as a husband and as a father, to walk beside her, hand-in-hand, toward all of their dreams. That understanding came too little, and far too late.

Closing his eyes, he shook his head. It hadn’t been a lot for her to ask of him. If only he could’ve seen this at the time, done things differently. If only he’d been less self-centred, if only he hadn’t gone back to Vietnam because he felt he owed his life to Sergeant Joseph Baker and his war-widowed wife, if only they hadn’t met with that long-buried IED in the derelict building, if only he hadn’t gone into hiding while he’d tried to come to grips with being an amputee … then maybe they’d have been right where they’d envisaged being. Here. Together. Happily in love.

The if-onlys were what ate away at him, as did the fact he’d never get a second chance to devoting himself to the one and only woman he’d ever truly loved with all his heart and soul. It was a regret he’d take to his grave as a lonely old man, a fate he truly believed he deserved.

His heart hurting with the agonising contemplations, he heaved an almighty sigh, as the weight of his past remained upon his shoulders. Regardless of his inner turmoil, he needed to snap to the present moment and get a damn grip. He’d tried to nap for the past couple of hours, unsuccessfully, and it was now time to put on his leg and his happy face, for Grace, Hope and his two beautiful grandchildren. So he grabbed his prosthesis from where he’d rested it up against the bedside table and placed it beside him on the mattress. Sliding the cotton sock over his stump, he skilfully eased the prosthetic leg on – more than half a lifetime of doing so had afforded him the experience to make it sit perfectly. He was grateful for the advances in the medical field over the years; this prosthesis was much more comfortable than his last few.