Melissa sighed. It probably read Jobs Even Melissa Could Do.
“How about waitress?” Ally suggested. “I could ask Ben if they need anyone at Mangos.”
“No thanks,” Melissa said. “I’d be hopeless at remembering people’s orders.” She tore off a chunk of crusty bread and dunked it in the bowl of olive oil.
“Farm worker?” Tony suggested.
Melissa shook her head. “You know I’d never get my fingernails dirty. I don’t own so much as a pair of blue jeans, much less work boots.”
“What about the Mineral Springs Resort?” Cheryl asked. “You could get a job as a masseuse.”
“She’d need a diploma in massage therapy for that,” Ally objected. “But they did run an ad last week for someone to work behind the counter selling aromatherapy oils and tickets to the mineral baths.”
“Now there’s a career worthy of my enormous intellect.” Melissa peeled a microscopic piece of skin off her hangnail.
“You got good grades in school,” Cheryl reminded her. “You just never did anything with them.”
“I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. I still don’t,” she admitted. “I do know that I’m sick of small jobs that lead nowhere and have no higher purpose.”
What she didn’t add was that she hated always being perceived as an underachiever. Her family loved and supported her, but they didn’t expect much. Nobody did, including herself. Maybe seeing the incredible feats performed by Julio and his fellow circus troupers had given her grandiose ideas. Or maybe she’d simply come to a crossroads in her life. But since returning to Tipperary Springs she’d felt stifled and restless for change. She wanted more.
“You must have some idea about what you’d like to do,” Tony said.
“I want to do Something Big,” Melissa said, opening her arms wide to show them all just how big.
Ally carefully placed her pen on the table and exchanged a glance with their mother. Melissa let her arms fall with a sigh and resumed her examination of her hangnail. It was definitely getting infected.
“You mean, like brain surgery?” Tony asked cheerfully as he refilled his own glass from the nearly empty bottle of Shiraz. He held the ruby liquid up to the light, squinted at it, then took a sip.
Sweet man. He was such an optimist that if she’d said yes he’d have believed she would go ahead and try it. To him, nothing was impossible, even when he was proved wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt.
She thrust her thumb under Ally’s nose. “Do you suppose this is serious?”
“No.” Ally waved her away without looking. “You’d think a hangnail is terminal.”
“It is a hangnail,” Melissa replied, examining it with renewed alarm.
Ally heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Never mind that. Have you updated your résumé recently? I’ll make copies at work for you.”
“I’ll get it.” Melissa went down the hall to her bedroom and came back with a couple sheets of paper. She borrowed Ally’s pen and inked in corrections. “I’ll have to type it up first.”
“Leave it with me,” her sister insisted. “It’ll take me five minutes and then it will be done.”
And done right was the implication.
Melissa felt terrible. Ally managed a busy cottage-rental agency, Mother owned and ran a successful art gallery, Tony—well, no one in his right mind would want his checkered track record. Still, he’d started up half-a-dozen businesses in his life and not all of the failures were his fault. In fact, the olive grove was still going strong. What had Melissa ever done that was noteworthy?
“When I stopped for the eggs, the farmer was looking for a nanny for his four-year-old daughter,” she said. At the time she’d dismissed the idea but after this discussion, being a nanny didn’t seem so bad.
“What do you know about kids?” Ally said doubtfully.
“I was one once myself.” Melissa popped another olive in her mouth. “I could be a nanny. If I wanted to.”
The oven timer beeped. “Dinner’s ready,” Cheryl said. “Melissa, can you help set the table?”
“Sure.” She pushed back her chair to get up. Then froze. The footy game had been interrupted by a news bulletin. Diane’s face flashed up on the TV screen, flanked by pictures of Josh and Callie. Melissa grabbed the remote and stabbed at the volume.
“…Diane Chalmers and her two young children disappeared yesterday from their home in an exclusive district of Ballarat,” the female reporter was saying. “Mrs. Chalmers’s car was found abandoned half a mile from the bus station. Judge James Chalmers is appealing to the public for any information leading to the recovery of his wife and children. Foul play has not been ruled out.”
A florid-faced man with silver hair told the reporter in a quiet, tightly controlled voice the details of his missing family. Then, his gray eyes intense and glistening, he turned to the camera and begged Diane to come home.
“That poor man,” Cheryl said, clucking softly.
“I—” Melissa stopped. Was he who Diane was running from? Melissa couldn’t say anything. Her family would insist she go to the police. But they hadn’t seen Diane’s desperation.
“I hope the police find them, poor things,” Cheryl added, “and that they haven’t come to any harm.”
Now Judge Chalmers was saying that his wife had gone through a depression and wasn’t emotionally stable. Melissa bit at her hangnail. Had she done the wrong thing in protecting Diane? She’d seemed balanced, aside from her anxiety. But was Melissa qualified to judge? What if Diane’s children were in danger?
“Maybe his wife wasn’t abducted,” Melissa suggested. “Maybe she ran away from him.”
“Why would she do that?” Tony asked.
“He might have abused her. Or the children,” she added, recalling the bruises on Callie’s face and arm.
“He’s a judge,” Cheryl said firmly. “Judges don’t do things like that.”
“How do you know?” Melissa asked.
“It’s against the law.”
“Lots of people break the law.” Melissa gave Tony a pointed look. “Some of them get away with it.”
“You can see how upset he is that they’re gone,” Ally objected.
“It could be an act.”
“Why are you against him?” her sister inquired. “You don’t even know the man.”
“Why are you defending him?” Melissa countered.
“Girls!” Cheryl interrupted. “Dinner’s ready.”
The roast lamb their mother put on the table seemed like a feast when Melissa thought about Diane, Josh and Callie in the cold, dark cottage. The farmer obviously didn’t know about them, which meant they probably didn’t have electricity or heat. Even if they did, Diane wouldn’t risk cooking for fear of being detected. God knows what they’d eat—probably tinned beans. Cold beans, at that.
She had to go back, Melissa decided. She couldn’t just abandon them without knowing if they were all right. She barely listened to the others chatting about the olive harvest, the new glass artist, whose work Cheryl was displaying in her gallery, and the town’s worryingly low water supply.
As