Misty and the Single Dad

She settled him onto the passenger seat and she talked to him the whole way home.

‘You’re going to like it with me. I have a great house. It’s old and comfy and close to the beach, where you’ll be able to run and run as soon as your leg’s better. And there’s so many interesting smells…’ Then she couldn’t stop herself adding a bit more exciting stuff because, for some reason, it was front and centre. ‘And this afternoon we have two friends coming out to visit. Bailey and Nick. Nick’s the one who saved you.’

He really had saved him. Fred had given her the facts.

‘He’s left his credit card imprint. Every cost associated with this dog, long-term, goes to Mr Holt. There’s nothing for you to take care of. Yeah, he’ll need ongoing care, but it’s sorted.’

‘He’s a real hero,’ she said, thinking of the website, of Nick’s image, and of Nicholas last night. His care of his little son. His willingness to pay for Ketchup. The fact that he was haunted by his perceived failure to protect Bailey.

He was in such pain…

Ketchup wriggled forward and put his nose on her knee. Yes, he should be in a crate in the back but she figured this guy had had enough of crates to last a lifetime.

She was still thinking of Nick.

‘He’s our hero,’ she told him. ‘He’s come to Banksia Bay to be safe, not heroic, but he’s saved you. So maybe there’s a little bit of hero left in him.’

A little bit of Adonis?

No. He was done with adventure. He was done with risk-taking.

He wanted to settle in Banksia Bay and live happily ever after.

Maybe even marry the local schoolteacher?

Where had that idea come from? A guy like that… She felt herself blush from the toes up.

But you need to settle as well, she told herself as she took her dog home. You have a great life here. A comfortable existence. All you need is a hero to settle with.

And put another rocker on the front porch so you can rock into old age together? I don’t think so.

So what is it you want? she asked herself, and she knew the answer.

Life.

‘Life’s here,’ she told herself out loud. ‘Life’s Banksia Bay and a new dog and a new pupil in my class. Woohoo.’

Ketchup pawed her knee and she felt the familiar stab of guilt.

‘Sorry,’ she told him. ‘I love it here. Of course I do. I’d never do anything to upset you or Gran or anyone else in this place. You can come home and be safe with me.’

Safe with Misty.

A flash of remembered pain shafted through her thoughts. Her grandfather’s first heart attack. Her grandmother, crippled with arthritis, terrified. Misty had been thirteen, already starting to understand how much lay on her shoulders.

And then her hippy mother had turned up, as unexpectedly and as briefly as she’d turned up less than half a dozen times in Misty’s life. Misty remembered standing beside her grandfather’s bedside, watching her grandmother’s face drawn in fear. She remembered the mother she barely recognised hugging her grandmother, then backing out, to friends who never introduced themselves, to a psychedelic combi-van waiting to take her to who knew where? To one of the places the postcards came from.

‘You’ll be fine,’ her mother had said to her grandmother, and she’d waved inappropriately gaily. ‘I’m glad I could fit this visit in. I know Dadda will be okay. He’s strong as a horse, and I know you’ll both be safe with Misty.’

‘See,’ she told the little dog. ‘My mother was right all along.’

There was no way he could miss Misty’s house. It was three miles out of town, set well back from the road. There were paddocks all round it, undulating pastures with cattle grazing peacefully in the midday sun. The sea was its glittering backdrop, and Nick, who’d been to some of the most beautiful places on the earth, felt that this was one of them.

Here was a sanctuary, he thought. A place for a man to come home to.

Misty was on the veranda, easy to spot as they pulled up. She was curled up on a vast cane rocker surrounded by faded cushions. There was a rug over her knee.

Ketchup was somewhere under that rug. As they climbed from the car, Nick could see his nose.

Once again, that pang. Of what? Want? Of the thought that here was home? This place…

This woman.

He’d bared his soul to this woman last night. It should feel bad. Somehow, though, it didn’t feel threatening.

‘I can’t get up,’ she called, her voice lilting in a way he was coming to recognize, beginning to like. ‘We’ve just gone to sleep.’

As if in denial, a tail emerged and gave a sleepy wag.

Bailey scooted up the steps to meet her, but Nick took his time, watching his son check the dog, smile at Misty, then clamber up onto the rocker to join them.

Something was happening in his chest.

This was like a scene out of Little House on the Prairie, he told himself, at the same time telling the lump in his throat to go down and stay down. The way he was feeling was kitsch. Corny.

Any minute now, Misty would invite them inside for home-baked cookies and lemonade. Or maybe she’d have a picnic to take down to the beach. She’d have prepared it lovingly beforehand, with freshly baked cakes, fragrant pies, home-made preserves. They’d be packed in a cute wicker basket with a red gingham cover…

‘It’s about time you got here,’ she called, interrupting his domestic vision. ‘I’m stuck.’

‘Stuck?’

‘I’ve been aching for lunch but Ketchup gets shivery every time I put him down. So I’m hoping I can stay here while you make me a sandwich.’ She peeped up at him-cheeky. ‘Cheese and tomato?’

‘I could do that,’ he said, waving goodbye to schmaltz and deciding cheeky was better. Much better.

‘The bread’s on the kitchen table. Cheese is in the fridge and tomatoes are out the back in the veggie garden. I like my cheese thick.’

Mama in Little House on the Prairie would never demand her man make a sandwich, Nick thought, and he grinned. Misty saw it.

‘What?’

‘I was expecting the table to be laid, Dresden china and all.’

‘I have Dresden china,’ she said, waving an airy hand. ‘It’s in the sideboard in the dining room. You’re right, Ketchup and I would like our sandwich on Dresden china.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Why would we kid about sandwiches on Dresden china?’ She was helping Bailey snuggle down beside her. ‘Important things, sandwiches. Would you like a sandwich, Bailey?’

‘We’ve had lunch,’ Bailey said shyly.

‘Since when did that make a difference?’ she asked, astonished. ‘It’s not a school day. We can eat sandwiches all afternoon if we want. Will we ask your daddy to make you a sandwich as well? Is he a good cook?’

‘He cooks good spaghetti.’

‘Not sandwiches?’

‘I can make sandwiches,’ Nick said, offended.

‘Wonderful.’ She beamed. ‘Bailey, what sort of sandwich would you like?’

‘Honey.’ That was definite.

‘We have honey. Can I add that to our order?’ Misty asked and smiled happily up at Nick. ‘Please?’

So he made sandwiches in Misty’s farmhouse kitchen overlooking the sea, while Bailey and Misty chatted just outside the window.

He felt as if he’d been transported into another universe. He was making sandwiches while Bailey and Misty admired Ketchup’s progress and compared Ketchup’s bandaged leg to Bailey’s ex-bandaged arm.

‘My dad drew pictures on my plaster cast. Of boats.’