LITMIR.BIZ

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me at Carol’s funeral.’

      Where did a girl begin to undo that kind of mistake? ‘I’m sorry that I judged you for not starting the list.’

      He shook off the dark cloud. ‘Their deaths motivated me. It reminded me that you can’t rely on anyone but yourself. I set up Molon Labe the next year. Started small, building a client list, making my own way.’

      She stared at the darkening waters that rolled in huge swells past the boat. ‘And your father?’

      ‘He’s still around. I see him about once a year when he wants money.’

      Her chest squeezed as tight as his voice. ‘God, Hayden …’

      ‘It’s a small price to pay. Literally.’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘What about yours?’

      Her father? The man who’d left them when she was small. ‘No idea. I don’t remember him.’

      Didn’t let herself, anyway. Though she’d found a photograph amongst her mother’s things and kept it. Just because.

      ‘Carol only spoke of him once. Sounds like a man unsuited to settling down.’

      A man just like Hayden? Was she really that much of a cliché? Falling for a man like her father? ‘I wouldn’t know.’

      ‘You’ve never tried to find him?’

      She looked up. Her chest pressed in. ‘He knew where we were all that time. He lived there, too, when I was a baby. Until he left. And we were doing fine. Mum finished her PhD at night, then she went back to work as soon as I was at school full-time. We got by.’

      ‘What about her funeral. You didn’t send word?’

      ‘I sent word.’ She dropped her eyes. ‘He just didn’t come.’

      ‘That’s …’ A lost-for-words Hayden was a rarity. ‘He had no contact after he left?’

      The pressing against her lungs became crushing. ‘He’d made his choice. He left because of me; he was hardly about to ask for weekend visitation.’

      Hayden stopped, turned towards her. ‘Who says he left because of you?’

      She studied the sparkling water. The poling stopped.

      ‘Shirley?’

      ‘He wasn’t ready for fatherhood. And I wasn’t a quiet baby.’

      ‘But who says that?’ He pushed them along again. ‘If you were so young, how do you know that’s true?’

      She blinked at him. ‘Mum said. Now and again. When she was mad or upset.’ Or wanting to dent Shirley’s embryonic spirit. ‘Sometimes she’d talk about how much she loved him. Other times she’d talk about how he wasn’t cut out for parenthood. Or how maybe if I’d been quieter … happier …’

      ‘She blamed you for his leaving?’

      ‘She attributed his leaving to me,’ she said carefully. ‘There’s a difference.’ But when you were six years old, the difference wasn’t very distinct. ‘It took her a long while to get over him.’

      He shook his head. ‘She never remarried?’

      Shirley raised her hand. ‘Guilty again. It was hard to find love with a toddler in tow.’

      Hayden frowned. ‘Where are these words coming from? They’re not yours.’

      She actually had to think about it. Though she knew exactly where the ideas had come from—and the words—when she let herself acknowledge it. ‘My mother wasn’t quite so prosaic when it came to her own emotions as she was when discussing Nietzsche or Socrates or Demosthenes.’

      ‘And you were how old?’ His words were as unexpectedly gentle as his touch late at night.

      She shrugged. ‘Depends; she said some more than others.’

      But enough that she’d received the message loud and clear. Enough that Shirley had spent her young life trying to make up for crimes she hadn’t even meant to commit.

      He stared at her. ‘My mother was far from perfect, but everything she did she did for me. I can’t imagine her ever putting her own needs ahead of mine like that.’

      The intense desire to excuse her mother overwhelmed her. That was straight from the ancient part of her brain. ‘She was brilliant and focused and hardworking and totally dedicated to her job.’

      To the exclusion of all else.

      He turned and looked at her. ‘I guess all that focus had to be coming from somewhere.’ She glanced away. ‘I’m really sorry it was from you.’

      She shrugged. ‘It’s not your fault she wasn’t better at the personal stuff—’

      ‘It wasn’t your fault either, Shirley.’ He moved them onwards, visibly battling with something. He lifted the pole out of the water and sat down in front of her, with it lying flat across the gondola. ‘I’m sure there are things in your childhood you did do and you can feel all the guilt in the world you want over those, but don’t take on your father’s abandonment. That’s a reflection on him, not you. And if your mother let you be the reason she never tried to build a new family for you, then that’s on her. Plenty of single mums build new families. Their kids are only an impediment if they’re looking for one.’

      ‘Why would she seek out reasons not to find love again?’ Who didn’t want to be loved? Other than Hayden.

      ‘Maybe she couldn’t find it and it was easier to blame something external for that.’

      She stared.

      ‘I’m just saying you shouldn’t carry guilt for her issues,’ he finished.

      She sat up straighter. ‘I’m not.’

      ‘You’re carrying something. Why else would you have this burning desire to finish her list?’

      ‘To honour her memory.’

      ‘Why does it need to be honoured?’

      ‘Because I loved her.’ Even if it wasn’t a perfect love. She was the only mother—the only parent—she’d had.

      ‘You don’t need a bunch of activities to love her. Why the list?’

      She stared at him. Utterly at a loss. How had their nice day on the water turned suddenly so very confrontational?

      He wobbled back up onto his feet and moved them along again. ‘That’s a rhetorical question, Shirley. You don’t have to answer to me. Only to you.’

      They rowed in silence, the splish-splash of the pole becoming quite hypnotic.

      ‘Amazing we turned out such a balanced pair, really,’ he murmured into the warm air.

      His smile was contagious. Then it turned to a chuckle and a full-out laugh and the gondola rocked. Neither of them could really claim any prizes for mental health. Not if you scratched below the surface. Not even far below.

      Maybe misfits were drawn to each other.

      ‘Take me back to the jetty, Hayden,’ she breathed.

      Jetty, car, her place. It was a one-hour trip, minimum. The sooner they could be in each other’s arms, the better. And the list clock was ticking.

      ‘Does that mean you don’t want to see my place?’

      She lifted her head. ‘What place?’

      ‘The house behind the jetty. It’s mine.’

      She twisted to peer down the canal the way they’d come. A huge beige monstrosity stood beyond an immaculate field of heavily reticulated turf.

      ‘That’s yours?’

      In her periphery, she saw him nod.

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