your cheque,’ he said, anger surging again. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. All I want is for you—his widow—’ and he gave the word his father’s inflection, the inflection it deserved ‘—to sign the release for his body. Let me take him home.’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted—’
‘He’s dead,’ he said flatly. ‘We need to bury him. Surely my mother has rights, too.’
Her fingers had been clenched on her knees. Slowly they unclenched, but then, suddenly, she bent forward, holding her stomach, and her face lost any trace of remaining colour.
Shocked, he stooped, ready to catch her if she slumped, concerned despite himself, but in seconds she had herself under control again. And when she unbent and stared straight at him, she was controlled. Her eyes, barely twelve inches from his, were suddenly icy.
‘Take him home, then. Give him to his mother.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I don’t want your thanks. I want you to go away.’
Which fitted exactly with how he was feeling.
‘Then we never need to see each other again. I wish you luck, Miss Myers,’ he said stiffly. Dear God, he sounded like his father. He no longer felt like a child. He felt a hundred.
‘I’m Kelly Eveldene.’ It was a flash of unexpected fire and venom. ‘I’m Mrs Eveldene to you. I’m Mrs Eveldene to the world.”
‘But not to my parents.’
‘No,’ she said, and she subsided again into misery. ‘Jess wouldn’t have wanted his mother hurt more than she has been. If you don’t want to tell her, then don’t.’ Her face crumpled and he fought a crazy, irrational impulse to take her into his arms, to hold her, to comfort her as one might comfort a wounded child.
But this was no child. This girl was part of the group that had destroyed his brother. Drugs, surf, drugs, surf... It had been that way since Matt could remember.
Get out of here fast, he told himself. This girl has nothing to do with you. The cheque absolves you from all responsibility.
Wasn’t that what his father had said?
‘Sign the papers,’ he told her roughly, rising to his feet with deliberation. ‘And don’t shoot the entire value of that cheque up your arm.’
She met his eyes again at that, and once again he saw fire.
‘Go back to Australia,’ she said flatly. ‘I can see why Jessie ran.’
‘It’s nothing to do—’
‘I’m not listening,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll sign your papers. Go.’
* * *
Kelly sat where she was for a long time after Matt had left. The receptionist would like her gone. She could understand that, but she was the widow of the deceased. The funeral home would be repatriating the body to Australia. It’d be a nice little earner. It behoved the receptionist to be courteous, even if Kelly was messing with the décor.
She needed a wash. She conceded that, too. More, she needed a change of clothes, a feed and a sleep. About a month’s sleep.
She was so tired she could scarcely move.
So tired...
The last few days had been appalling. She’d known Jess’s depression had deepened but not this much, never this much. Still, when he’d disappeared she’d feared the worst, and the confirmation had been a nightmare. And now... She’d sat in this place waiting for so long...
Not for him, though. For his father. She hadn’t expected a man who was scarcely older than she was.
Matt Eveldene. What sort of a name was Eveldene anyway?
A new one. She stared at the bright new ring on her finger, put there by Jess only weeks ago. ‘You’ll be safe now,’ he’d told her. ‘It’s all I can do, but it should protect you.’
She’d known he was ill. She shouldn’t have married him, but she’d been terrified, and he’d held her and she’d clung. But she hadn’t been able to cling hard enough, and here she was, in this nightmare of a place.
She’d been here for almost twenty-four hours, waiting for whoever came as the representative of Jess’s family. She knew they’d have to come here.
She had to ask.
‘If ever something happens, will you scatter my ashes out to sea, babe?’ Jess had asked her. Had that only been a week ago? It seemed like a year.
She’d failed at that, too. Matt had simply overridden her.
Like father, like son? Jess had told her of his bully of a father. She’d been gearing herself up to face Henry Eveldene, but Matt’s arrival in his father’s stead had thrown her.
She’d failed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the closed door behind which Jessie’s body lay. ‘I’m so sorry, Jess.’
There was nothing more she could do.
She rose and took a deep breath, trying to figure how to find the strength to walk outside, catch a bus, get away from this place of death. Nausea swept over her again but she shoved it away. She didn’t have the energy to be sick.
‘Mrs Eveldene?’ The receptionist’s voice made her pause.
‘Yes?’ It was so hard to make her voice work.
‘You’ve dropped your cheque,’ the girl said. She walked out from behind her desk, stooped to retrieve it and handed it to her. As she did, she checked it, and her eyes widened.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want to lose this, would you?’
* * *
Matt stood outside the funeral parlour, dug his hands deep into his pockets and stood absolutely still, waiting for the waves of shock and grief to subside. The image of Jess was burned on his retinas. His beautiful, adored big brother. His Jess, wasted, cold and dead on a mortuary slab.
He felt sick to the core. The anger inside him was building and building, but he knew deep down that it was only a way to deflect grief.
If he let his anger take hold he’d walk right back in there, pick up that piece of flotsam and shake her till her teeth rattled, but it would do no good at all. For that was all she was, a piece of detritus picked up somewhere along Jessie’s useless mess of a life.
What a sickening waste.
But suddenly he found himself thinking of the girl inside, of those huge, desperate eyes. Another life heading for nothing.
But those eyes...that flash of anger...
That was more than waste, he thought. There was something
