42. Jigsaw
“Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.” — Confucius
Darcy was hopelessly lost and her convertible was hopelessly silly, marking her out as a city chick even before she got recognised as the woman on the cover of TV Week.
The man at the paper shop said five minutes down the highway she’d see a gate. She’d been driving for twenty and all she saw was trees and scrub. Even if she found the gate, there was no guarantee the man who’d built a kit house there was Will. But she’d promised Peter she’d look for him, and if that meant finding an invisible gate she’d do it.
She U-turned and drove back the way she’d come at half the speed, squinting in the windshield glare at the heat haze on road ahead. She saw what passed as a driveway before she saw the gate. A strip of uneven grass flattened by tire tracks, like a runway to the never-never. The gate was wood, so sun bleached it blended into the surrounding grasses. She pulled up on the tarmac level with it. There could be anything or nothing the other side. It seemed an unlikely place for Will to want to hole up in a hand-built house.
The more she’d thought about him coming home to Tara, the more it had seemed the right guess, until she braked on the edge of town and realised she could see clear though the other side of it. So far Tara was all about thoroughfares and dead ends. Peter was right, why would he come here?
She got out of the car and unlatched the gate. Drove through, got out, went back and relatched the gate. A palaver designed to keep animals in, or maybe strangers like her out. There was every chance she’d meet a shotgun at the end of the drive and an unintelligible instruction phrased entirely in swear words; that was perfectly clear, and had to do with latching the gate on her way out.
The only sound other than the burble of the car was the rhythmic vibration of cicadas punctuated by lazy birdsong. It should’ve been relaxing, the sun, the endless blue sky, the solitude. No photographer was going to find her here. No bystander was going to tweet about what she was wearing. But her neck was stiff from driving, and the milkshake she’d drunk in town was curdling in her gut, making yoghurt with her nervousness. If the mad bloke who’d built a kit house on the old blockies site was Will, what the hell was she going to say to him?
She eased the car up the drive, praying for no potholes. This was four-wheel drive country, snake country, get lost and die of thirst if you weren’t careful country. Possibly even unknown serial killer country. She was freaking out.
It was a relief to see the roof of the house appear; a steely blue colour, then the rest of it, a neat box with a wide wooden verandah on one side. The front door was wide open. There was no sign of life, not even another car.
A man appeared from around the side of the house, a farmer type. He came towards her. Boots, torn denim, dirty shirt. He had his head down, and a battered Akubra hid his face. The owner, the builder, not limping, not Will. She got out of the car. She’d ask if she might use the bathroom and see if he knew of anyone fitting Will’s description.
Then he lifted his head and she saw enough of his face for her lungs to stop functioning. He pulled a headphone plug from his ear and stopped a half-dozen paces in front of her.
When he said her name she felt his voice all the way to her feet, a low sexy sound, an instruction, a commission, a plea.
“What the hell are you doing here? How did you find me?” he said, soft, demanding.
A dairy in the back of her throat, Darcy shoved her hands in the pockets of her shorts as if that might settle her stomach and anchor her to the spot. “I had help.”
“Fucking Bo.”
“No. You.”
“Me! I never said—”
“You said you were going home.”
He grunted acknowledgement. She could only see his chin, the line of his jaw, not his eyes. She couldn’t measure his mood by his voice or the way he stood there, legs braced apart, shoulders squared, arms loose by his sides. He looked strong. He looked oddly like he belonged here. It reinforced just how much she didn’t.
She blurted, “I wanted to see you,” before she chickened out entirely and got back in the car. “I thought you might need someone to talk to.”
“Like a friend.”
Her stomach clenched. She was desperate to touch him. “I could be. I’d like to be.”
“You’re selling something.”
He didn’t sound angry, but cautious, on guard. She dropped her eyes.
“I’m not buying—but God it’s good to see you.”
She brought her head up, felt her pulse leap. “That’s some hat.” It was several shades of worn, sweat stained with a hole in the crown from where it’d been repeatedly pinched to take on and off.
“This is a great hat.”
“You couldn’t afford a new one?”
He grinned. “You don’t toss a good hat like this. You stick it in a storage locker you pay rent on for about fifteen years, because you know a hat like this doesn’t come around every day.”