The Chocolatier's Secret (Magnolia Creek, Book 2) (24 page)

‘I wish you weren’t leaving,’ he said. But Molly put a finger across his lips. ‘I do,’ he said again, teasingly licking the tip of her finger so she couldn’t silence him any longer.

Her head tipped back as he kissed her along her collarbone. ‘Ben, we should stop.’

‘Probably,’ he said.

Back in control, she looked at him again, her body curled over his, her hands forcing him to meet her gaze. ‘It’d be different if this could go somewhere, but we have to say goodbye in two weeks and I don’t want to catch the twenty-four-hour flight home pining for you.’ She’d be doing that anyway, but she didn’t want it to be any worse than it had to be.

‘I’ll be pining for
you
, Molly Ramsey.’ He accepted the situation and pulled her into a hug. ‘You big tease,’ he laughed, nibbling playfully at her ear.

‘I know, sorry. Heat of the moment.’ She clambered off, and they sat side by side, the moon appearing from behind the trees as though watching them. They sat for quite some time, both contemplating the boundaries they’d overstepped in their friendship, the boundaries they both wished never existed and that breaking them made perfect sense.

‘My fingers are shrivelled.’ Molly let Ben wrap a towel around her when they eventually climbed out of the spa. He pulled her to him once she was encased in the soft material.

‘So are mine,’ he said. ‘Thankfully nothing else is.’ His eye raise made her laugh. ‘Sorry, I forgot we can only be friends.’

She kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘Stupid-distance, remember. Not long-distance, stupid-distance.’

‘Ridiculous-distance,’ he said.

‘Absurdly-long-distance,’ she replied.

‘This could go on all night if we’re not careful. Come on, get changed and I’ll walk you back to your place. I promise I won’t even try anything.’

Part of her wished he would.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Gemma

‘Try to keep the paint in the pot, or on the paper,’ Gemma instructed her class. For the last few days, she’d kept herself busy with teaching, volunteering to take extra-curricular activities, taking piles of work home with her when she didn’t always need to. She’d gladly taken Louis to each and every dialysis appointment, relieved to get out of the house and away from Andrew. The tension was palpable following the day at the chocolaterie when Molly had walked in on them, and she and Andrew had barely exchanged three words with one another since.

Today the kids had been asked to paint based on the ‘Home’ theme, and so some had painted their own houses, another had painted a picture of his back garden equipped with swing and monkey-bar set and another had painted the fire station.

Gemma stopped next to Megan. ‘Do you live right near the fire station?’

The little girl shook her head. ‘No.’

‘But you think it’s pretty important?’ She guessed the fire station was in the forefront of many peoples’ minds given the recent bushfires. Owen Harrison had been in yesterday to give a fire safety talk to the kids. He’d had them enthralled with his natural sense of adventure, the animated way he spoke. And the teachers were even happier than the kids. He was pretty easy on the eye.

‘My grandad was a volunteer,’ said Megan.

‘He must’ve been very brave.’ She let Megan get on with her work of art and walked round the next few tables until she came to Ellie, who had only painted long green strips across the bottom and was flicking droplets in numerous different colours. Usually a teaching assistant worked closely with Ellie, but she was out today with a bad case of the flu and they hadn’t been able to find a substitute. Gemma had thought she’d be able to handle it but now realised Ellie was having trouble focusing.

Gemma did a quick scan of the room, but all the other kids were enraptured with the task, and the paint looked as though it was going to and from the correct places.

‘Remember how we said this was the “Home” theme?’ When Ellie didn’t answer and the brush showed no signs of stopping, Gemma covered her hand with her own. ‘Ellie, eyes on me.’

Ellie stopped and looked at her teacher.

‘That’s better,’ said Gemma. She turned to the back table and grabbed a fresh sheet of paper. ‘I’ll put this first one to dry on the rack. You’ve got some lovely autumn colours there, but now let’s think about what you can paint to show me where you live.’

Ellie didn’t tear her eyes away from the original piece of artwork, suspecting Gemma was going to drop it in the nearest bin, but when she saw Gemma hang it on the rack as she’d said, Ellie turned back to the plain sheet. Gemma did another scan of the class, told Jacob to stop messing about and knew she had a few minutes one-to-one with Ellie.

‘Right, Ellie. What comes into your head when I ask you to think about where you live?’

Ellie bit gently on her bottom lip as she always did when she was thinking. ‘Mummy and Daddy, Cooper and Ebony.’

‘Ebony?’ Gemma already knew Ellie had an older brother called Cooper.

‘My dog. She’s a black Labrador.’

‘Right, that’s a great start. Now, close your eyes, and where do you see Mummy, Daddy, Cooper and Ebony?’

She did as she was asked. ‘In our backyard, playing.’

‘Now paint what you see.’ Gemma guided Ellie a little more. They talked about trees in the garden, a rusty swing, her dog running to catch a stick, and Gemma left the little girl powering ahead with the task. She was coming out of her shell more and more, and although different to the other kids with her mild autism, she was doing better in the mainstream classroom than anyone had predicted.

As Gemma walked around the classroom, she wondered whether, if she closed her eyes, her picture of ‘Home’ would look the same as it had a few weeks ago when Andrew and Louis were as close as could be, when she and Andrew still talked about having a family – when she and Andrew talked at all for that matter – and before Molly came on the scene. She looked at Joe, a little rascal but cute to boot; she watched Katy, hair never staying in her ponytail and whose clothes got muddy the second she stepped into school; she watched Millie, the little girl who blushed whenever she was asked a question in class. She wondered then how they had come into the world. Had their parents gone through the same struggle? Or had it all been plain sailing for them?

As the class came to an end and Gemma supervised the hanging of the artwork, the clearing up of paint pots, the washing of brushes, she realised what she needed to do if any of this mess was ever going to be sorted out. And she knew she should do it sooner rather than later.

*

Gemma knocked tentatively on the door to the cottage opposite the lake. No answer. She lifted her hand to knock again, but before she had the chance, Molly opened the door.

‘Hi.’ Molly was wrapped in a towel.

‘I’m sorry, you were in the shower. I can come back.’ Gemma turned and stepped off the tiny veranda.

‘Would you mind?’ Molly stayed tucked behind the door so nobody could see her. ‘Give me five minutes?’

‘Of course.’

Gemma gave her twenty. She felt terrible putting Molly on the spot, but she couldn’t let this go on any longer. Despite her nerves at the thought of a confrontation, she had to face the girl for all their sakes.

‘Come in,’ said Molly when Gemma knocked at the door once again. She gestured to the sofa. ‘Please, sit down.’

Gemma sat on the edge of the sofa in the lounge, anything but relaxed.

‘Can I offer you a tea? Coffee? Something cold?’ Molly rambled.

‘I’ll have a tea, please.’

‘Milk?’

‘A little, but no sugar. Thank you.’

Gemma sat rigid while she waited for Molly to go into the kitchen and make the drinks.

Molly reappeared with two mugs, each with a string and a label from the teabag hanging out the side. She set them down on the rectangular coffee table on top of the sky blue china coasters and pulled a little blue china teapot-shaped teabag drip tray from her back pocket.

‘I didn’t know how strong you like your tea.’ Molly explained. ‘Mum always makes builder’s tea, Dad on the other hand makes tea so weak it’s practically like water. I’ve learnt people can be quite particular about how they take theirs.’

Both women stirred their drinks, squeezed the teabags and discarded them onto the special tray.

‘I’m sorry for the way I reacted to you when I first found out who you were.’ Gemma was first to speak. ‘I’ve been in a state ever since you turned up and made everything so … real.’ She stirred her tea unnecessarily. She suspected that, had she had her own children, the shock of Molly’s existence wouldn’t have been so brutal, so raw. But for a moment, she’d let it change the person she was. ‘I’m also sorry for everything I said.’

‘There’s no need to apologise, really.’

‘I disagree.’ Gemma set her mug down on the table, clasped her hands in her lap and faced Molly. ‘I’m not usually an angry person, and if I am I’m never spiteful. I manage my feelings, but everything seems to have happened at once in our family and to be honest, I’ve not been coping as well as I might.’

When Molly looked at her, Gemma saw a flash of familiarity, but she couldn’t place why. She didn’t look exactly like Andrew, at least not in her opinion. It wasn’t Molly’s eyes, or her nose, or anything in particular. It was more Molly as a person, her presence, which exuded something Gemma could only describe as Andrew-ness.

‘You remind me of Andrew.’ Gemma smiled, watching Molly’s face. She looked happy, took it as the compliment it was meant to be.

‘He says I look a lot like Julia too, my birth mum.’

Relieved Molly had finally spoken, Gemma nodded. ‘He told me the same thing.’ She hadn’t seen a photo. He’d asked if she’d wanted to – there were a few on Julia’s Facebook apparently – but it was a step Gemma wasn’t quite ready to take.

‘Molly, I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about you that makes you very much a part of the Bennett family,’ Gemma explained. ‘I want you to know I’m not a complete bitch.’

Molly spluttered as though her tea had gone down the wrong way. ‘I don’t think that at all.’

‘Not even a tiny bit?’ She smiled.

‘I really don’t. I was warned this sort of thing could happen, but after Julia turned me away, I decided I had nothing to lose by turning up here.’

‘Still, I said some pretty unpleasant things, and, well, quite honestly I’m embarrassed.’

Molly rested her cup on the table. ‘You’ve come here and apologised. You don’t need to feel bad any more.’

‘You’re a good person, Molly.’

Both women looked at one another, and it was a few moments while the mutual understanding settled between them.

‘Louis spoke to me in the street that day,’ said Molly.

‘He’s a good man. Despite everything, all his faults, he’s a good man.’ Gemma finally shuffled back so she could lean against the sofa. ‘He’s pretty sick. I honestly don’t know how much longer he’ll go on.’

‘It must be awful. And he’s on dialysis four times a week now?’

Gemma smiled. ‘Andrew told me you’re in the medical profession. You must be clever … you got that from him, and you got his compassion.’

The compliment sat well again.

‘Louis has four sessions a week,’ Gemma explained, ‘and a while ago Andrew was tested and found to be a good match to be a live donor. He took it all in his stride. Louis had refused to let him help until he started to get worse and Andrew gave him a serious talking to. And then—’

‘And then I happened,’ Molly concluded.

Gemma looked across at Molly as she leant back against the sofa. ‘He had a message out of the blue from your birth mum. It knocked him sideways. And then Louis told him everything.’

‘It must’ve been terrible to know he’d been lied to.’

‘When Andrew found out exactly what Louis had done, he went ballistic. He was so angry. They’ve always been close and this was the ultimate betrayal. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Andrew so mad. I really thought he’d hit Louis.’

‘Was that when he told Louis he wouldn’t donate the kidney?’

Gemma nodded. Molly sounded calm, much calmer than Gemma felt. Maybe she was still enough of an outsider. Nothing was close enough to hurt her as much.

‘How long does Louis have?’ Molly asked.

Gemma shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes.

‘Wait there,’ said Molly, heading off to the kitchen. In less than a minute, she was back with two wine glasses and a bottle of Prosecco. ‘Sorry, no champagne flutes in this place so these will have to do. I figure we need something stronger.’

Gemma wiped beneath her eyes. ‘Oh, God, would you look at me.’ She took a glass as Molly wiggled off the top of the Prosecco with a telltale ‘pop’. ‘I didn’t mean to fall apart on you. Usually I’m quite a together person.’

Molly filled Gemma’s glass and then her own. ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’

‘Is that why you’re plying me with this?’ Gemma lifted her glass to her mouth and took a sip. ‘To lower my defences, get me talking?’

‘Not at all.’ Molly smiled. ‘I wanted to ask how you really feel about me being a part of Andrew’s life. I don’t want to come all this way, meet him and then say goodbye. That can’t be it.’

‘I agree. It can’t be it.’ Gemma paused. ‘And even though our family has its problems, we’re not bad people. It was an incredible risk to turn up on our doorstep. Imagine if we’d been some sort of crazy family, bogans who welcomed you with open arms but for all the wrong reasons.’

Molly smiled. ‘I did do a bit of digging on the internet before I came so I’d seen photos, read up about the business. I figured it was worth the risk, and I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character.’

‘You picked well with Ben Harrison.’

‘Ben?’

‘I’ve seen the way you two are with each other. Chatting away like nobody else exists … reminds me of when Andrew and I got together.’

‘It’s a bit of a fling, it’s not going anywhere.’ Molly told Gemma how they’d met, how they’d flown together from England. ‘We’ve spent the last few days together, as friends, and it’s made the trip so much easier.’

‘I don’t know much about the Harrisons, but they seem a lovely family,’ said Gemma.

Molly filled Gemma in on their trips to Sassafras, the city restaurants they’d been to, another trip to St Kilda beach. In return Gemma talked about their move here from the city and giving up the fast-paced life for Magnolia Creek.

‘We wanted to raise a family somewhere a little calmer,’ said Gemma.

‘Do you think you will? Raise a family.’ Molly looked into her bubbles.

‘I hope so, I really do.’

Molly filled Gemma’s glass and her own again. ‘Do you think you can change Andrew’s mind about the operation?’

Gemma shook her head. ‘A month ago I was so sure of everything, but now, I really couldn’t tell you.’

‘He’ll never forgive himself if Louis dies.’ Molly’s voice was small, and Gemma knew she’d underestimated how much Molly was already invested in this extension of family.