A few more strokes and Bruce was done. He stood back, examined his handiwork, put a dab here and there, then went to wash his brushes at the tap beneath the kitchen window. Gabriel ducked, hiding behind the cabinets before he realised what he’d just done. He hadn’t hidden from Bruce since he was fifteen. He’d been so tongue-tied around the Scarlet Samson that it had been easier to lurk in the shadows and watch from afar. He tilted his head back and banged it on the cupboard door, rattling the remnants of a migraine that had occupied the base of his skull since the meeting.
Pull it together, Mora.
He needed to make amends: for Sofia’s sake, if not for some long-lost friendship.
It shouldn’t be hard to go out and say sorry for the way he’d acted. But it wasn’t saying sorry he was worried about; it was that Bruce might not accept his apology. There was only one way to find out.
He crawled on his hands and knees out of the kitchen to a spot far enough away from the windows, stood up, pulled his T-shirt straight and ran a hand through his hair to get his fringe out of his eyes.
Now or never.
Or maybe in five minutes or never.
Bruce’s shadow passed over the glass door—so long had Gabriel hesitated that Bruce had finished cleaning. Stomach jumping, he slid open the back door and walked to the edge of the verandah.
‘Are you finished?’
Bruce crouched on the grass packing up his paint and tools, but at Gabriel’s voice he stiffened like someone had stuck a gun in his back and demanded his wallet. ‘Yes. I’ve got another job to get to.’
After treating Bruce like some tradie trying to con them, he was lucky to get those few words.
Bruce hammered the lid on the last paint tin with three firm hits. Each percussive thud pounded inside Gabriel’s head. He inched closer. ‘It looks amazing.’
Amazing actually didn’t do it justice. The gazebo looked like it had been grown rather than built. No piece was too long or too short. No flecks of white paint from the beams and supports had spattered the brown rails or the varnished deck. Sofia was going to love sitting under it. She was keen to get the vines covering it with the sweet scent of night jasmine and the purple flush of hardenbergia. How beautiful it would be.
Bruce grunted. ‘It’s what I was hired to do.’ He hefted the paint tins in one of his big hands, the bucket and paintbrushes in the other. ‘Any problems, have Sofia call me.’
‘As if there’d been any problems. You were always good with your hands.’
Or so Jason had said.
Bruce’s mouth twitched in the corner, but it was the start of a snarl rather than a smile. ‘That’s me then. I hope Sofia likes it.’ He walked away.
‘I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you yesterday,’ he blurted. ‘It was rude and I had no right and I apologise.’
Bruce stopped and straightened to his full height. Man, he was tall. And those shoulders … Gabriel shook his head: he was meant to be apologising.
‘Fine.’ Just the one word and Bruce started marching again.
Gabriel chased after him and put a hand on his arm. His skin was hot. ‘Please, Bruce, I really am sorry.’
Bruce glared down at him with a look of cold stone that threatened to flatten him. But he had to resist. He couldn’t go on with this unspoken animosity swirling between them, not while he had Sofia to take care of.
‘Can I explain?’
Bruce blew through his lips. ‘You don’t have to. I get it. You’re looking out for your mother and you want to push her vision through without concern for anyone else.’
Bruce’s words rent jagged holes in Gabriel’s heart. He knew right where to strike. Repeatedly.
‘That’s not it.’ Even he struggled to hear his denial.
‘Really? I think you’re feeling guilty that you haven’t been around while she’s been sick and you’re trying to compensate.’
Gabriel blinked at him, each rapid shuttering of his eye breaking apart the long-cherished belief that Bruce actually liked him.
‘Have I got that about right?’
Bruce knew nothing. And for the first time Gabriel saw clearly what Bruce saw: a self-centred, uncaring, ungrateful son and friend. Where had that come from? They’d never exchanged angry words when they’d both lived in the same town. When he’d moved to Sydney, he’d tried to hold on to the friendship they once shared, but Bruce had severed those ties. Phone calls had gone unanswered, he’d even gone to Bruce’s house hoping to talk to him, by that stage knowing Jason had left him, but Bruce refused to speak to him. So they’d drifted apart and Bruce’s animosity had grown until it was palpable. He didn’t know if it could be fixed but he’d be damned if this holier-than-thou colossus was going to leave without knowing the truth.
Gabriel ripped his phone from his pocket and searched for his call log with Sofia, then turned the screen to Bruce.
‘Look at this.’ His finger scrolled down the screen. ‘Look at the times. Look at the dates. Look how frequently I called her and you tell me when it happened.’ His voice cracked, and his throat burned. ‘You tell me when she first got sick, because she didn’t tell me. Not once in any of those calls going back six months, a year, two years, did she say she had anything other than a headache or a cold. And then I get a phone call from you telling me she’s in the hospital and I have to come home to find that everyone else knew she had cancer
