Lizzie nodded and watched him walk away. It was only after he'd gone that she noticed what he'd left on the table. The bottle of French champagne. Her heart swelled. The man was trying to know her. And he seemed to know that right now, family came first. He understood that blood is thicker than water and that, for the first time in fifteen years, her brother needed her. And she couldn't let him down.
She slipped the champagne into the fridge in place of the bottle of white wine she'd just pulled out, grabbed two glasses, the multicoloured crocheted rug that was her grandmother's, and headed out to the deck to sit with Joe.
It was the promise of an easy Australian victory in the fifth and final Test of the Ashes that drew Dan to Ry's place. Watching the game on Ry's big-arse television sure was better than his compact screen.
'Catch.' Ry slipped a beer over Dan's shoulder and he reached for it without taking his eyes off the action. Ry fell onto the white leather sofa next to him, unscrewed his twist top and took a slow swig.
'Great catch!' Ry shouted as the Australian bowlers claimed their first victim. He reached over and clinked bottles with Dan. Then he turned to his best friend.
'So,' Ry started.
Dan was eyes front, waiting for Australia's best bowler to heave another thundering delivery down the wicket. 'So what?'
'I guess you haven't heard.' A roar went up from the crowd as the batsman swung and missed.
'This better have something to do with cricket, mate.'
'Nothing to do with cricket and everything to do with Lizzie.'
At the mention of her name, Dan cast a scrutinising glance in Ry's direction and noticed he wasn't paying one bit of attention to the game. 'So are you gonna come right out and tell me or are we playing twenty questions here. I'm trying to watch the match.'
'You don't know, do you?'
'What the fuck are you talking about, Ry?' He was not in the mood to be discussing Lizzie with anyone but Lizzie.
Ry looked up the stairs to make sure Julia wasn't in earshot.
'It's Joe. His life's gone to shit.'
Dan took a good, long swig of his beer. Watched a whole over while not taking in anything happening at the SCG. The brother. It had been a couple of days and he hadn't heard from Lizzie, so he genuinely didn't know what Ry was talking about. Lizzie had maintained radio silence and he figured it was all because of Joe. Did Dan resent him for it? Hell yes. Did he also understand her connection to what was left of her family? Of course. But that didn't mean staying away from her wasn't driving him bat-shit crazy.
'So what exactly happened to the bloke? Elizabeth mentioned something but not the specifics.'
'Shit,' Dan said with tight lips. 'If Julia knew I was telling you, she'd have my guts for garters. But … ' Dan dropped his voice, just in case, ' … the poor bastard lost his job and his wife on the same day.'
The pang of a guilty conscience twisted in Dan's gut. 'Bloody hell.'
Ry leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. 'But wait, there's more. Turns out his wife was doing the dirty with his best friend.'
'Ouch.' Dan winced.
'And he caught them. In flagrante delicto.'
'Double ouch.'
'So, he got in his car and drove right back to Middle Point.'
Dan considered Joe's story, weighed up all that he knew from what Ry had just revealed and what he'd seen with his own eyes the other night at Lizzie's. Damn it. There was more to the bloke than he'd figured, and he could totally understand why someone whose life was falling to bits would want to leave the city behind, and all that they knew, and head to this sleepy coastal town. Dan hadn't grown up here and he'd still found it a place of refuge and retreat. From what Lizzie had said about him, Joe hadn't been home in years. It couldn't have been easy to come back with his tail between his legs. No job. No wife. Everything in a state of flux, not knowing what was ahead of you and whether you'd actually make it around the next corner to see the possibilities and the problems.
Dan finished his beer and decided it would be his first and last for the day. He needed a clear head to think. 'You know, Ry, I can't say I like the guy, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone.'
Ry looked to the cheering noise come from the television. 'Gold for Australia, that's another wicket down. He's all right, Dan, give him a break.'
Dan got defensive. 'Why should I? Why do I have to like the bloke?'
Ry chuckled. 'I wouldn't get between Lizzie and her brother, if you know what's good for you. He's her family.'
And all she has left.
Dan had lost interest in the match by the first ball of the fourth over. After that, it became nothing but a visual jumble of blokes playing a bit of bat and ball. He didn't care if Australia was thrashed.
Every thought in his head was about Lizzie. He felt further apart from her than ever. Given what he'd just found out about her brother, how could he tell her what he'd been through, what he'd been battling? How could he add to the burdens she already had? Dan understood family and what that meant. Ry had dropped everything after the accident, had done what families are supposed to do. Lizzie was doing the same for Joe. It's what people did for each other. And if Joe was brave enough to talk to his sister, all power to him. Maybe he was a bigger man than Dan had realised.
He knew all about keeping secrets and hiding the truth. Hell, until New Year's Eve, he'd still believed that some things were best left unsaid. His plan to change that was now hanging in the air like the freeze-framed shot of a ball about to leave the bowler's hand. If the image remained static, no one would ever know the outcome of that delivery. It could hang there for eternity. No resolution. No one would ever be out. No score would ever be recorded from it.
He'd wanted to be honest with Lizzie. To tell her the truth. He'd wanted her to see him for who he really was. The man he'd become, for better or worse. A man with more baggage than a Qantas flight to London.
She was right. Their timing was terrible.
After a week of sisterly rebukes for his secret squirrel behaviour, Lizzie forgave Joe. Not that it was easy, mind, but after they'd talked it through she understood his reasons. Some blokes don't like to talk about stuff, he'd told her, don't like the idea of eviscerating themselves just to satisfy other people's expectations of what sadness and grief should look like. When she'd asked for the umpteenth time how he was doing, Joe had given her a stern big-brother lecture.
'I'm feeling like crap actually, Mosquito, and I'm allowed to feel like crap. I'm unemployed, my wife left me for my best friend and I'm sleeping in a single bed in my childhood bedroom. How the fuck do you expect me to feel?'
She'd stopped asking after that. He had a point, after all, the smug shit that he was. It turned out that he'd only told her the truth on New Year's Day, just before Dan had come over, because he'd had a call from Jasmine. She'd just told him there was no chance of reconciling, that she was moving in with his best friend. His ex-best friend.
And thinking of that night made her think of Dan. Again. Raking over the coals of that evening was turning out to be torture. She'd wanted so much to spend it with Dan, drinking that beautiful champagne together, flirting and fucking. Oh, God yes, she'd planned on fucking him. The scorching kiss out front of the pub on New Year's Eve had whipped her senses into a frenzy which had buzzed through her body for the twenty-four hours after that, making her skittish with expectation and giddy with the thought of his hands on her, and hers on him.
But hearing Joe's news had evaporated all that sensation. She'd been transformed from potential sex goddess to concerned sister in one sentence.
Four times in the past few days, Lizzie had picked up her phone and scrolled down to Dan's number. And four times, she'd chickened out.
Of course she'd wanted to be there for Joe. Unlike her, he'd at least opened up to someone about his pain. Maybe it was the fatal Blake flaw, she wondered, the compulsion to keep secrets until they buried you with their weight and their guilt.
There was something else she shared with Joe, besides their blue eyes. Listening to Joe unburden himself, talk about his pain and his heartache, meant her secret had uncloaked itself, knocked at the door of her throat, tried to force its way out, to finally be spoken. The secret she'd kept hidden since London, because she'd learned from bitter experience that telling someone, someone important, simply drove them away. The secrets she'd hidden since she'd fallen apart and put herself back together again in Middle Point.
Saying it out loud would mean reliving it. It would mean explaining why she'd run home and had never left again. Why she'd never been brave enough to have any ambitions that didn't involve this life, this house and her job at the pub.
Had it helped Joe to talk about his pain? It was too early to judge. If she revealed hers, would the burden be lifted from her shoulders or magically erased from her life? Would it mean it had never happened? (For that's what she really wanted). Would it help others forgive her, those she'd hurt by keeping it secret?