Morgan's Law (10 page)

Adam pulled up next to the BMW when they arrived back at the house.

‘Thanks for taking me out there today.' Inside the cabin it was quiet except for the country music on the stereo that had been turned down low. ‘You probably can't afford to take the day off just to go chasing my ghosts. I hope I didn't stop you from doing anything important.'

‘Nothing I can't make up later,' he assured her with a lopsided grin.

The piercing blue of his eyes held her captive for a moment, until she was brought back with a jolt by the bang of a screen door behind them.

Adam turned and looked out the back window. ‘Come on, there's someone you should meet.'

Eight

An old man stood on the verandah. He was tall and thin, and wore the same kind of battered Akubra as Adam. As they walked across the gravelled driveway Sarah saw him take a step forward before grabbing the railing to hold himself up. Adam bounded up the stairs ahead of her, taking hold of the man's arm in order to steady him.

‘Pop, you all right?' he asked.

‘I'm fine,' the older man croaked.

Sarah saw a frown of worry crease Adam's forehead. ‘Do you want me to call an ambulance?' she murmured softly.

Her voice seemed to jolt the older man out of his momentary state of confusion, because he instantly straightened and shook off Adam's hand. ‘I'm fine. I don't need an ambulance.I just stood up too fast,' he muttered, clearly embarrassed.

Adam didn't seem completely reassured, but he stepped back to allow the man to sit down in a beautifully handcrafted rocker on the verandah.

‘This is my granddad. Pop, this is Sarah. She's out here doing some research.'

Sarah smiled and stepped forward. ‘It's nice to meet you. You have a lovely property. Adam's just taken me out to show me around.'

‘Sorry, I didn't catch your last name,' the old man said.

‘Murphy. Sarah Murphy.'

‘What kind of research?'

‘I think my gran had ties to this area a long time ago. Her name was Rose.' Sarah thought she'd stumble over the unfamiliar name on her lips, but once she said it out loud, it felt just right.

‘You look just like her, girl.'

‘You knew my grandmother?'

‘I did,' he acknowledged. ‘A long time ago. How is Rose?'

‘Gran died a little over six months back, Mr Buchanan.'

The old man pushed his foot against the wooden boards of the verandah to set his rocker in a slow easy rhythm, his gaze drifting out over the pastures and far, far beyond.

‘Pop? You all right?' Adam asked, exchanging a worried glance with Sarah.

His grandfather inclined his head slightly, but it was clear he didn't feel like discussing Rose any further, so Adam nodded towards the screen door and, with one last worried glance at the old man, Sarah reluctantly followed him inside the house.

‘Do you think he's really okay?'

‘I dunno. He has the occasional bad day. It usually doesn't last long.'

‘Do you live here with all your family?'

‘Just Pop and me nowadays. Mum died when I was about ten, and Dad not long ago. Gran passed away when I was a baby.'

‘Do you mind living with your grandfather?' What did he do when he had women over? She tried not to think about that.

Adam gave a shrug. ‘Nah, I'm kind of used to it. He moved in not long after Mum died, to help Dad out. I had the option of moving into Pop and Nan's old house just up the road, but he's getting on now and I feel better knowing I'm close by if he needs me.'

A quiver of guilt raced through her at his casual explanation. He was the type of grandchild any grandparent would be proud of—unlike the kind she'd turned out to be.

The lounge room had the distinct markings of a bachelor pad. It wasn't messy or dirty, as such; it just lacked something, a softer, feminine touch perhaps. Maybe it was because there was a slight musty smell, as though everything needed a good spring-clean, or because there was dust on most surfaces. It was the little things that men never seemed to notice, even if they did do the cleaning.

Adam told her to take a seat while he fetched them a cold drink.

‘How did you know this is what you wanted to do with your life?' she asked as he returned and handed her a glass of iced water.

Placing his own glass on the table, he eased into a chair and considered her before he answered. ‘I guess I didn't realise how much I wanted to do it until I was away at uni.'

‘Where did you study?'

‘Brisbane. UQ.'

‘So you lived in Brisbane while you went to the University of Queensland?'

‘Yeah. Actually, it was Pop's idea. He wanted to make sure I got a chance to figure out what I wanted to do. It was good for me to get away and live somewhere else for a while.'

‘And you came back,' Sarah said, and hoped the surprise didn't show in her tone.

‘Yep.' He reached out and picked up his glass.

‘So, tell me about this bloke who killed off your happily-ever-after.'

Sarah sent him a sharp glance. She really didn't want to talk about Giles. But refusing to talk about him would make it seem as though she wasn't over him, and she was. She had realised in the past few weeks that she had never really been in love with him, but they had been comfortable together, and he was what her friends called a ‘good catch'. She'd thought love wasn't so essential when they suited one another so well. Boy, had she been wrong about that.

‘He didn't kill it off. He simply reminded me that usually when you think a guy is some knight in shining armour, he ends up being a moron in tinfoil.'

Adam grinned at her. ‘You've obviously been hanging around the wrong kind of guys.'

‘Which is why I don't intend on hanging around
any
kind in the near future.'

‘Fair enough. But I should warn you, country boys tend to take that kind of comment as a personal challenge.' His smile widened.

‘Then it's a good thing I won't be here very long, isn't it.' And the sooner she got out of this town, the better. She was definitely way, way out of her element here.

Nine

Sarah stared at the sepia photo, searching her gran's achingly familiar face. How could someone you've known your whole life hide such a big part of their life from you? Lost in her thoughts she didn't see the newcomer enter the pub's dining room until he came to a stop in front of her table. ‘Mr Morgan.' Sarah couldn't hide her surprise, but quickly scrambled to regather her composure.

‘I hope I'm not intruding?'

‘Ah, no. No, of course not. Please sit down.' She moved to put the photo away, but hesitated when Albert reached out and touched the picture of her gran.

‘May I?' He searched her face, waiting for permission, and Sarah nodded, a sympathetic smile on her face as she handed him the old photo.

As he settled into the seat across from her, Sarah wondered what had prompted the visit. For a few minutes he didn't volunteer anything, just stared at the photo, then he let out a long sigh and lifted his misty gaze to her face.

‘I wanted to come and see you. Your visit to Burrapine surprised me—shocked me actually. No.' He held up a hand when she went to apologise. ‘I'm glad you did. But it shook me a little to hear about Rose.'

Sarah bit her lip uncertainly before asking him the question she desperately wanted to find an answer to. ‘Why would she leave like that?'

The old man shook his head as he stared down at the photo in his hand then spoke almost as though to himself. ‘I remember coming back to the house that night and the whole place was lit up like Christmas. I didn't know what was going on.' He paused and Sarah sat quietly, hoping he'd say more, but he seemed lost in his memories.

‘All these years, how did no one find her?'

‘I tried,' he protested weakly, then gave a scornful snort. ‘No I didn't . . . at least, not as hard as I should have.' He shook his head slowly. ‘I tried to get my father to hire a private investigator when they couldn't find any sign of her—although everyone was convinced of foul play—but he wouldn't hear of it; said it was giving everyone false hope and dragging out the misery. I should have tried harder.' He stopped talking again briefly. ‘We all eventually moved on. I feel guilty now that I didn't do more. I let her down.'

Sarah wasn't sure what to say. The man clearly loved his sister and had genuinely missed her. The regret of knowing she'd been alive all this time must be a heavy weight on his heart right now.

She felt a flutter of uncertainty at her gran's apparent callousness. How could she have left her brother like that? Maybe she didn't get along with her parents, but surely she'd have realised Albert would be desperate to know she was at least safe and well? ‘Why would she just leave and never return? I just can't picture her doing something like that for no good reason.'

‘You don't know what it was like living with our father. He was a hard man, used to getting his own way, and back then we had money and influence. No one crossed Patrick Morgan. Rose was always so headstrong. They fought all the time, and usually it was Rose who came off second best.'

Sarah watched as the old man stared at the photo sadly. ‘So your family goes back a long way out here then?' Now that she'd met her gran's family, she was curious about them. Maybe if she found out a little more she could figure out why Rose would leave them behind the way she did.

‘Oh yes. The Morgans have been out here for a very long time. They had one of the biggest runs in the district once, but over time the land's been sold off. It's only about a third the size of the original property now. My great-great-grandfather, James Morgan, went fossicking for gold around Charters Towers somewhere back in the 1870s. By the time he was twenty-two years old he'd made his fortune and he came back down here to buy up as much land as he could. That land became Burrapine.'

Sarah had always loved history. Maybe because she'd never heard anything about her own family's history, she'd always found other people's fascinating. One of the things she loved about England was the sheer abundance of history everywhere you went. But now, hearing about young James Morgan gave her goosebumps. This was her
ancestor.
This was part of her very own family history. The realisation caused a bubble of excitement to swell within her.

‘Is the house at Burrapine the original homestead?' It'd have to be over a hundred and thirty years old, maybe more.

Albert shook his head, leaning forward eagerly, and Sarah smiled. She could imagine Albert's grandchildren had long since tired of hearing these old stories; the chance to regale a fresh set of ears with his tales lit up the old man's eyes like a candle. What would it have been like if Gran had told her about James Morgan? Had Rose ever wished she could sit down and talk about this illustrious past that was part of her heritage?

Sarah once more mentally kicked herself for being so self-centred. Maybe if she'd pestered Gran more she'd have weakened and told her about Negallan and Burrapine?

‘The original homestead was a grand two-storey house, complete with servants' quarters and marble floors. There's a photo of it in the museum here in town.'

‘What happened to it?' From what she'd seen of today's Burrapine, it was certainly nothing to sneeze at, but it was no match for the house Albert was describing.

‘Well now, you have to know the full story before I can tell you the ending,' Albert smiled. ‘You see, just after James bought Burrapine, he travelled to England on business, and while he was there he fell in love with Anita Searle, the daughter of a wealthy coalmine owner.'

The general chatter of the pub around them seemed to fade away as Sarah hung on Albert's every word.

‘But James knew he couldn't bring a woman like Anita to the middle of nowhere to live in a bark hut until he'd built a house on Burrapine, so he refused to marry her until he could carry her over the threshold of a house grand enough to be worthy of a woman of her breeding.'

‘Surely if she loved him it wouldn't have mattered?' Sarah cut in.

‘James was a self-made man, a miner, and from Australia, just to make things worse,' he added with a wry smile. ‘She was from a well-off English family and used to the finer things in life. Her family naturally baulked at this colonial wanting to whisk their daughter off to the other side of the world to a place where there was barely even an established town. Remember, this was back in the 1870s.'

Sarah tipped her head, conceding that he had a point.

‘Anyway, it took five years to build the house James had imagined, and it was something to behold. There was nothing like it anywhere for a thousand miles. Negallan itself had only a handful of buildings at this time, and most of them built with saplings and calico.

‘Anyway, he went back to England, married Anita and brought his new bride back to Burrapine. But barely a month after they moved into the house, it burned down, killing Anita and almost James as well.'

‘Oh my God.' Sarah hadn't been prepared for that at all. ‘Anita
died
in the fire?'

Albert nodded sadly. ‘Yep.'

‘Poor James. Poor
Anita
,' Sarah whispered. ‘So what happened?'

Albert gave a long sigh, and shook his head. ‘James threw himself into building up Burrapine, droving for months on end, living in a bark hut. Eventually he married a local girl, but they only had one child who survived, losing two others to illness. There's an old family cemetery at Burrapine. James and Anita are both buried there, along with all the generations after.'

Sarah's ears pricked up at this. A cemetery! Maybe the tree had something to do with the cemetery. Maybe it wasn't anywhere near the river after all.

‘Anyway, that's enough of that. It was all a long time ago. How did we get onto ancient family history? I came in here to invite you out to Burrapine tomorrow for lunch— meet the rest of the family. It's time to put this thing to rest once and for all.'