The Paris Wedding, page 1
Dedication
For Mum, who taught me to sew, and who left
home in England for new adventures in Australia.
The strongest woman I know, who has endured more
than one person should be asked to in a lifetime,
and who through all of that is still gracious, loving,
generous, and tenacious. With so much love.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Charlotte Nash
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
Rachael West could not have known that, on the same day her mother died, an invitation was mailed from an upmarket Sydney events firm. She had never met the woman who folded it, whose lacquered nails smoothed the creases, and who slid the creamy envelope into outgoing mail.
The envelope rested in the firm’s mailroom for twelve hours, the same length of time it took Rachael to do all the funeral director’s paperwork. Over the next two days, as Rachael walked numbly around the farmhouse, and her sister Tess arrived with her husband and children, the invitation made its way through the labyrinth of the Sydney central mail center. There, its top-right corner was creased in a sorting machine and a boot scuffed the front when it was dropped on the floor.
As Rachael sat leaden in the front pew at her mother’s funeral, trying not to simply crumble as the community choir sang “Gone Too Soon,” the invitation was finally in a mail truck, headed west.
Afterward, as Rachael drove her pickup in circles around tiny Milton, she could not have known that the invitation was being unloaded into the hands of the local postmistress, Beverley Watkins. All that Beverley knew was that Rachael had mail; Rachael knew nothing.
The town was uncharacteristically silent for a sunny December Tuesday. By now, everyone had made the drive from St. George’s Church in Parkes back to the Wests’ farm. Well, everyone except Rachael. Only Beverley had been required to stop between the funeral and the wake to fulfill her postmistress duties. Rachael was simply avoiding going home.
It was harvesttime, and across the paddocks combines worked under gray smudges of dust. Rachael’s left hand steered while she chewed the nails of her right down to the skin. The skirt of her black crepe dress stuck to her thighs, and her ragged ponytail was already coming undone. Any moment it might give way completely, like the great dam she’d built around her grief. She had managed to sit through the funeral. She couldn’t yet face everyone at the farm.
She waited ten minutes after seeing Beverley leave the post office before she finally turned onto the highway. The radio played country music, fading to static just before the farm’s long driveway. The driveway itself was the same as every other time she’d driven it, with the bend in the low spot given to potholes, the verges growing wild wheat, the distant glimpse of the house. The same, except her mother would never again be waiting at the end of it.
The farmhouse came into view: simple block walls with wide verandahs, the tin roof with the knob of an air conditioner perched on top, and tubs of her mother’s gardenias in a military row along the front. Cars and trucks were parked at all angles down the grassy banks, and Rachael could see black-clad mourners circling the front verandah and milling around inside the house. There must be a hundred people here from all over the district.
She hooked the wheel, pulled the pickup by the side door, and went in through the laundry, delaying contact as long as possible. In half an hour, everyone would walk up to the great tree on the rise to cast her mother’s ashes among the flowers. Until then, she’d let her sister receive the condolences. Tess was good with that sort of thing.
Rachael knew Sammy would be looking for her; her best friend hadn’t been keen on Rachael driving herself from the church. But Sammy was out there somewhere with everyone else, so Rachael sat in her bedroom facing the drawn lace curtains, waiting.
Outside, two women were talking. They couldn’t have known that Rachael was there, just behind the curtains, and could hear every word.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” said the first. “She didn’t deserve a life like that. First her husband takes off with some blonde, and just when she’d turned it around, she gets sick. Then ten years of being dependent on other people. I’m sure I couldn’t stand it. And then to die so young.”
“Marion coped with it very well,” said the other woman. “She always said it was just one day at a time.”
“It’s that daughter of hers who made it possible. Imagine that, giving up ten years of your life to care for someone else. She’s made of some stoic stuff. I’m sure none of my lot would do it. No sense of duty.”
“Marion was lucky to have her,” said the second woman. “However sad her passing is.”
Rachael didn’t recognize the women’s voices. But their words urged her to march outside and tell them it had been nothing to do with duty or luck. It had been love.
She stood. Her mother was gone, but Rachael would show how much she had been loved. It was time to emerge, to take up the responsibility of hostess, to walk up that hill and finally say goodbye.
“That’s not the saddest thing, though, is it?” said the first woman. “It’s what happens to Rachael now. Imagine trying to start your life at twenty-eight. Look at her sister—married with three children—and she’s a year younger.”
Rachael froze, ears straining for every word.
“I’m sure she’ll stay here on the farm. Seems to be doing well enough.”
The first woman tutted. “She’ll never get those years back. She was supposed to be good in school, wasn’t she?”
“Arty, I think,” said the other. “But she did well regardless. I think she was accepted to university.”
“There you go. To think of all the things she must have given up to stay. Well, I suppose we should go and wish her all the best. She’ll need it.”
And despite all the things that had happened in the last year, the last week, the last hours, that overheard conversation gave Rachael the distinct sense that however loving her relationship with her mother had been, however much she had chosen to stay, that she had lost something else, just as important and irrecoverable as her mother. Because the women were right. She had given up university. She had given up her future.
And she had given up Matthew.
Chapter 1
The day after the funeral, Rachael, by force of long habit, woke near dawn and made two cups of tea. She dumped the tea bags in the sink, then, remembering it would annoy Tess, squeezed them out and tossed them in the bin. It took her longer to register that the second cup wasn’t needed.
She poured her mother’s tea away and braced her hands on the sink, looking out the window. Their harvest had finished two weeks ago, and the wide rolling fields of stubble were gray before the sunrise. A beautiful gray, like a dove’s feather, joining the pale soft light at the horizon. As the sun appeared, it gilded the cut stalks, and the single majestic gum tree on the rise seemed to float on a sea of burnished gold.
Seven, Rachael thought. Seven sunrises without my mother.
She pressed her hand to her mouth. The tears kept boiling up unbidden, the wound still raw and open. Mercifully, Tess, Joel, and the children were still asleep. She had time to pull herself together.
“You’re up early.”
Rachael jumped and sucked back the tears. Tess had padded into the kitchen in thick, silent socks. Her checked robe was tightly knotted at her waist, her blond hair stowed in a neat plait. Rachael involuntarily touched the unbrushed, ragged clump behind her head, the result of sleeping on her ponytail. Amid the frizz were bits of broken elastic sticking up from the overstretched band.
“So, we’re getting started on Mum’s things?” Tess asked, flicking on the kettle.
“What?”
“Mum’s things. I asked you about it last night. You said we’d do it today.”
“When?” Rachael said. She couldn’t remember a single thing that had happened yesterday, apart from those two women talking outside her window. The day had been a blur of tears and hymns and the scent of white lilies.
“This morning.”
“No, I mean when did you ask me?”
“After dinner. When Joel was doing the dishes.”
“I don’t remember.”
She didn’t even remember eating dinner. She took her tea from the windowsill, but didn’t drink it. She wouldn’t have been able to swallow around the lump in her throat.
“Look, have some breakfast,” she said, dodging around Tess.
“I’ll eat later. Where to first—lounge or bedroom?”
“We don’t need to start right now,” Rachael said, trying and failing to keep the wobble out of her voice.
“
“She made a lot of them for other people—for formals and weddings and things like that.”
“What are they doing in her cupboard then?”
“Because people brought them back and she’d modify them for someone else. She didn’t—”
“I bet you don’t even know what’s in there,” Tess said. “I bet that ottoman’s still stuffed with winter woollies nobody wears. Don’t worry, Joel will feed the kids and keep them away.”
Rachael had a vision of her sister striding around her mother’s room and stuffing garbage bags with dresses and quilts and other precious things, mixing up what was going where. “No,” she said.
“I don’t understand. We have to get back to the farm in a few days, so I won’t be around to help later. You said you wanted to get started.”
Rachael threw her hands up. “I don’t remember what I said! It was her funeral, Tess. Besides, I was here with her the last ten years. I know what she wanted. If you have to go home, that’s fine. I can manage.”
“Oh, I see. This is about me choosing to go with Dad when we were kids.” Tess folded her arms, bringing out a well-worn bickering point like a favorite toy. “Well, someone had to. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care about her. And I’m just trying to make things easier for you.”
Tess delivered her speech without a shred of sadness. Rachael was utterly unable to understand how her sister was navigating the grief so easily.
“It’s not about that,” she said.
Though she couldn’t help remembering standing beside her mother on the day Tess and her father drove away. Rachael had pressed herself against her mother, her eight-year-old eyes unbelieving. Marion had squeezed her fiercely, tears in her eyes, though she’d held her voice calm and level. “She’s still your sister,” she’d said. “This will always be home. She’ll be back one day. She’ll be back.” Over and over the same words, as if they had the power to make it true.
Now, Tess pursed her lips. “Well, can I at least make some lists for you? There’s all the medical hire equipment that needs to be returned, and someone should throw out all the tablets.”
“Why would I need a list?”
“So you don’t forget.”
Rachael stared. Was it possible that Tess still thought of her as a dreamy girl with her sketchbook and pencils, often late and forgetful? Yes, that’s what she had been, once. But she’d worked very hard in her last years of school; and then had come ten years of looking after her mother’s appointments, medicines and meals, toilets and showers, and the farm. All that had changed Rachael forever. Tess simply hadn’t been here to see it.
“I’m not going to forget,” she said.
“You forgot what you said yesterday.”
Rachael gritted her teeth. All she wanted today was to be left alone, to stare down the fields or wander around the house, to be as lost as she needed to be. Choosing retreat, she abandoned her tea and headed for her room.
Tess followed. “Well, what about cleaning out the fridge? There’s tons of food from the wake that needs organizing.”
“Then take it home for Christmas.”
“Speaking of Christmas, I think you should come up to Dubbo. You shouldn’t be here all by yourself. Or, a better idea. I’ve got someone I want you to meet.”
Rachael spun back. “Why would I want to be fixed up with anyone?”
“Who said anything about fixing up? It’s Joel’s cousin, nice man. He’s bought a farm near Orange and he doesn’t know anyone yet. Family’s all in Western Australia, so he’s going to be alone too. You can talk shop and keep each other company.”
Rachael rubbed her face. She hadn’t slept much this week, her mother’s last days in the hospital replaying in her thoughts at night. Worries about the farm and the future were also accumulating like fallen leaves. Couldn’t Tess understand how tired she was, how upset? How the smallest things seemed like mountains?
She started back down the hall. “Will you please just leave it alone? We only just buried Mum.”
“I thought it would take your mind off everything, and besides, it’s time you found a man. There’s been no one since Matthew.”
Rachael froze with that same sick feeling she’d had yesterday, as if his name had dropped a cage around her body, one that was so tight she could barely draw breath. She steadied herself on the wall. Retreat wasn’t enough; she needed to escape. The door onto the rear verandah was right there. She suddenly found herself outside, boots on, striding through acres of field, mowing down a row of cut stalks in her haste.
“I’m just trying to help!” Tess yelled at her back.
Rachael didn’t turn around. Out under the sky, she pulled out her hair band and sucked in the warming air, trying to shake off the shock. Finding that Matthew’s name could still hurt was an unpleasant surprise. She thought she had packed him away so deep in her heart that he couldn’t affect her anymore.
She strode south, trying to lose herself in her steps, and avoiding the long field where a dip in the ground lay hidden in the wheat stalks. Sadly, avoidance didn’t help. If she closed her eyes, she could still imagine lying in that hollow with Matthew, the earth cool against her arms, his body warm beside her. She had lost hours lying against his chest, twisting his curly brown hair in her fingers, staring into his eyes, and listening to his plans for them both. She’d been so excited by the prospects he’d effortlessly sown in her mind: of university, and then coming home to work and build a home together. Dreams that were still tied to the earth and the baked-straw scent of the fields, to everything Rachael was.
He’d broken off and given her his broad smile. “I’m going on.”
“No,” she’d said. “I want to hear more.”
So he’d brushed his thumbs across her cheeks, cradled her face, and said, “I’ll love you forever.” Fierce and certain, he’d sealed his promise with a kiss, and her heart had lifted with joy.
Rachael wrenched her mind back with an exasperated curse. That same straw scent was in her nose, but everything else had changed. They’d both been seventeen when he’d made that promise, imagining a different life than the one that had happened. And yet she knew she would never love anyone like that again.
She walked until she hit the south fence and still the ache clamped around her like a too-tight belt. The sun was behind a cloud, shooting beams of filtered orange across the sky, and birds wheeled and skimmed low over the stalks. Across the highway in a neighbor’s field, a combine turned a lazy circle at the end of a row, the distant grumble of its engines competing with sporadic traffic. Rachael lifted the hair off her sweating neck but couldn’t put it up again; she’d lost the band somewhere in the field. She leaned on a fence post to pick the prickles off her socks, then chewed the remaining nail on her left hand as a truck rumbled down the highway toward Parkes. Another passed a minute later. Rachael lingered, watching.
The next truck had cowboy western murals painted over its cab. Then came two campers and two sedans. A sheep truck was next; the driver waved. Then she spotted a green Corolla flying down the highway. Rachael straightened. Just as she made out the mismatched door panel, the car flicked its lights at her and plowed onto the hard shoulder.
The driver’s door flew open and Rachael almost cried again, this time in gratitude. Sammy was here.
“I thought that was you,” Sammy called, negotiating the slope to the fence, the breeze ruffling her choppy fringe. She had a blond pixie cut, dimpled cheeks, and long eyelashes. “What are you doing out here?”
“Avoiding the house.”
Sammy raised her eyebrows. “Tess?”
“She wants to get into Mum’s stuff.” Rachael’s voice caught. “She’s being really awful. I don’t understand how she can be so . . .”
“Callous? Invasive?”
“Yeah. She’s worse than normal.”
Sammy hugged Rachael awkwardly across the fence. She was wearing her black work pants and blue blouse with Parkes Country Motor Inn stitched over the breast pocket.
“Are you on your way to work?” Rachael asked, confused. It was far too early for a shift at the motel; Sammy was more likely to have been at her second job, at the bakery.
“Later. I came to see how you are. I brought food.”
