‘Yep.’ He nodded, interpreting her unspoken question. ‘That’s Bryce.’
Apparently, Celia had been right—she might look like her mother in all other ways, but she had her father’s emerald-green eyes. Seeing the likeness made her want to weep for all that she’d lost, but blinking and brushing her tears away, she moved along to the last photo on the wall in which four people sat around a dining table. She recognised her grandparents. Her grandfather had been pretty spunky for an older man and her grandmother was elegance personified, and the other two people in the photo were young men. She’d hazard a guess that they were about nineteen or twenty, and it wasn’t difficult to pick which one of them was her father. His eyes shone with laughter as he commanded the attention of everyone else at the table. The other young man had wispy black hair and looked not unlike Mick Brennan.
‘Is this your dad?’
Noah smiled. ‘Yeah, good pick.’
Rather than eliciting more tears, this photo gave Beth nothing but warm, fuzzy feelings. Her father was clearly adored by his parents—they looked at him with so much love and pride—and Mick seemed to be so at ease, sitting there with the Campbell family. It was comforting to know that her dad had grown up with a good friend living just a stone’s throw away.
Seeing these photos was a blessing, she realised. She’d been anxious about visiting—because what if she came and felt nothing? But these images bridged the gap between past and present, helping her to forge a connection to the house that had been her father’s home. She was curious, though …
‘Can I ask why you have these hanging in your house?’
Noah shrugged, his gaze going to the photographs. ‘I like the idea of honouring the history of a place, you know? And remembering the people who lived there. They worked hard to make their house a home, so it doesn’t seem right to come in and change everything without acknowledging them in some way.’
‘So hanging photos is like … your renovation trademark?’
He smiled at that. ‘Yeah, I guess.’
She glanced again at the photographs that immortalised members of her family. ‘Where did you get these?’
‘Actually, Pru gave them to me. When I started renovating, I asked if she had any photos of the house and she gave me a shoebox full of family pics.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Nope. I’ll have to dig them out for you. You should have them now.’
‘Noah, that would …’ She stopped, needing to take a breath to calm her racing heart. ‘That would be amazing.’
Noah calmly took her hand as if he hadn’t just promised her the world and they carried on down the hall. He stopped beside a room filled with gym equipment. ‘This room was your dad’s.’
Beth stepped over the threshold, willing her father’s presence to make itself known, but it appeared to be an ordinary room. No sign of the boy who’d once called it his.
Noah pulled her a few steps further into the room, over to an old-fashioned, free-standing wardrobe.
‘Look.’ He pointed at the side panelling, where a series of incremental lines and dates had been gouged into the wood. At the top, in letters a few centimetres tall, were the words ‘Bryce’s Height Chart’.
‘Oh my goodness,’ she breathed, tracing each line until she reached the highest one, recorded when her father was nineteen. ‘He was so tall.’ She glanced at Noah, who was leaning against the wall, watching her with a soft smile. Her lips curved, too. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. It’s just nice to see you finding him.’
She held his gaze for as long as she could, but her heart thumped so violently, she knew it was only a matter of time before her cheeks flooded with colour.
He pushed off the wall and grabbed her hand. ‘Come on, there’s more.’
They headed deeper into the house and emerged in an open-plan living area that took her breath away. Floor-to-ceiling windows spanning the length of it let in plenty of natural light, and the newly renovated kitchen looked amazing, but Noah didn’t give her a chance to explore further, because he pulled her out onto the verandah.
Beth stepped up to the railing and couldn’t help but sigh. She’d been mesmerised by the beauty of the property on the drive in, but to see it from this vantage point was something else. Overhead, the sky stretched on forever, while to the right, tree-covered hills extended around the valley, as if holding the entire property in their embrace. This was the land her father had roamed as a child.
Noah stepped up beside her and pointed into the valley. ‘Campbell land stretched down to that fence line and extended over the hills behind us. Two hundred acres, all up.’
Beth nodded. She knew that the Brennans had purchased the land after Beth’s grandfather had passed away.
‘And down there—’ Noah pointed out the small stone cottage, ‘—is the original homestead my grandparents lived in—’ then to the modern farmhouse, ‘—and the place my parents built after they were married.’
‘Wow!’ She’d known the Campbells’ property had been adjacent to the Brennans’, but she’d never imagined that their houses would have been in such close proximity. ‘Our families really were close neighbours.’
She couldn’t help wondering, if her mother had agreed to marry Bryce, would they have moved in here or perhaps built their own place on the Campbell property, like Noah’s parents had on theirs?
