Erin flashed a look at Caroline’s livid face.
‘I’ll just bet I won’t be.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘But I’ll come just the same.’
CHAPTER THREE
ERIN’S grandpa was just where she’d left him ten years ago.
She turned into the driveway of O’Connell’s farm and looked up to see Jack O’Connell lazily rocking back and forth in his favourite chair on the verandah.
It was like coming home.
Erin beeped the horn as a deep contentment welled up inside her. The events of the past hour faded. She was going to miss her parents so much it hurt—miss home and miss the life she’d built herself—but the decision to come here was the right one. The only one. She had been talking of it for so long—and finally she was here.
Why was this place so special?
The O’Connell place didn’t hold a candle to the McTavishes’. The farm itself was maybe a tenth of the size of the neighbouring landholding, and the small weatherboard cottage looked ramshackle in comparison.
Where the McTavishes had manicured gardens and English oaks and elms, here the paddocks ran right up to the verandah. Fat cattle wandered up to the windows or lazed in the shade of the gum trees round the house. Compared to the McTavishes it was definitely a poor relation—though not quite an abode fit for tramps!
This tramp was content, Erin thought happily. Her grandpa’s farm looked a million dollars to Erin. Home is where the heart is, and Erin’s heart had been split in two since her visit here ten years ago. Half was in America and half was here—but, by coming here, maybe the two halves could be brought closer together.
On the verandah the old man had stopped his rocking, his gnarled, weather-beaten face crinkling into a broad beam of welcome. Jack O’Connell came slowly down the verandah steps, but he hadn’t reached the bottom before Erin was flying up to meet him.
‘Grandpa...’
‘Erin... Erin, love... Well, well...’ Jack O’Connell hugged his granddaughter hard and then held her at arm’s length. ‘Let me look at you.’
‘Let me look at you!’ Erin was laughing and weeping in his arms. ‘Oh, Grandpa...’
He was the same Grandpa. Jack O’Connell was older and infinitely more worn—heavens, he was near eighty now, Erin thought with dismay—but there was life and vigour in the old face yet.
‘Eh, you’re the spitting image of your mother,’ Jack said softly. ‘It’s good to have you here, Erin lass.’
‘It’s good to be here.’ Erin tucked her arm through her grandpa’s and led him back up to the verandah. ‘Now all that’s left for us to do is to catch up on ten years’ gossip.’ She grinned. ‘But we have all the time in the world to do it.’
‘All the time in the world...?’
‘I’m here to stay, Grandpa,’ Erin said firmly. ‘So you’d better get used to me.’
‘Tell me about Mike McTavish,’ Erin ventured over her third cup of tea and Jack’s first beer.
The shadows were lengthening from the towering gum trees, and soon it would be time for dinner, but neither Erin nor Jack felt like moving. There was a deep satisfaction in them both, and as they talked Erin saw the lines of strain she’d noticed in her grandfather’s face slowly start to fade. Already he seemed somehow younger.
It must have been so hard for this man to watch his only son migrate to America, she thought. Erin’s dad had had his own hard reasons for moving his family to the United States and Jack knew and approved—but Jack had been left alone too long. Erin’s decision to return was the right decision.
‘What do you want to know about Mike McTavish?’ Jack asked cautiously. He cast a slightly anxious look at Erin. ‘The lad’s engaged to be married, Erin.’
Erin winced as she saw his anxious look. So Jack O’Connell had noticed his granddaughter’s childish crush ten years ago! Oh, dear! If grandpa had noticed, it must have been obvious to everyone.
The only consolation was that it hadn’t been memorable to Mike McTavish. Mike McTavish seemed not even to remember her. Which was just as well...
‘Grandpa, I’m a grown lady now.’ Erin smiled, even though the smile cost her an effort. ‘You can put what I was like when I was fourteen right out of your mind.’
Jack grinned affectionately across at his granddaughter. ‘Well, you sure were stuck on Mike McTavish.’ He hesitated. ‘It did cross my mind...when I had your letter saying you were coming...’ He shook his head. ‘Your parents look like staying in Pittsburgh for a lifetime now. Your mother tells me your dad will never be fit enough to travel. So...what made you come back?’
‘It wasn’t because of Mike McTavish,’ Erin said soundly. She hesitated. ‘Or maybe...’ She met her grandfather’s look, fair and square. ‘Maybe it was, in a way. Because when Mom and Dad sent me out to visit you ten years ago, I had that awful crush.’ She smiled self-consciously. ‘And, I’ll admit, for a while there I dreamed of marrying the man. Fourteen-year-olds are like that. But it started me thinking what it would be like to live here for ever. And somehow...somehow it wouldn’t go away. The feeling that here was home.’
‘Your parents moved away when you were five,’ Jack growled. ‘This is hardly home.’
‘It is,’ Erin insisted. ‘It’s Pittsburgh that’s never seemed home to me.’ She bit her lip. ‘Grandpa, I don’t like the city. You know I’ve spent every minute I can on farms. I did an agricultural course in the States—’
‘In between riding horses.’
‘In between horses,’ she agreed. ‘But I always knew this was where I wanted to be. It’s my dad’s home. And all of us have hated you being here by yourself.’
‘Your parents approved of your coming?’
‘Even Mom.’ Erin smiled. ‘She’s married to an Aussie and she’s resigning herself to having an Aussie daughter.’
‘But your riding...’
‘I can ride here.’
‘Not—’
‘Grandpa, it doesn’t matter.’ Erin reached out and took his hand. ‘I want to live here. It’s my decision.’
‘And...and Mike McTavish had nothing to do with it?’
Erin shook her head and smiled. ‘Honest, Grandpa. It has nothing to do with Mike McTavish.’ Or, at any rate, she acknowledged to herself, not very much.
Jack O’Connell smiled, as if suspecting Erin’s mild deception. His crinkled old eyes saw heaps. They always had. ‘So why are you asking about Mike McTavish then, lass?’ he asked gently. ‘If you haven’t been thinking of him.’
‘Because I’ve already met him again...’
Briefly Erin outlined the events of the afternoon. Jack O’Connell listened in silence and then nodded slowly to himself.
‘I’ll bet Mike McTavish won’t have known about the child’s hair until it was cut,’ he said slowly. ‘Mike’s a good lad. He wouldn’t hurt a child deliberately and it’s local opinion he’s nutty on the twins. No. The haircutting sounds just like Caroline Podger.’
‘Tell me about Caroline.’ Erin nestled down in her ancient chair, contented. Jack O’Connell had always been a man of few words—but one who saw a lot for all his silence. He told no one his