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My assets, such as they are, will come to you. A few mementoes from Douglas’s side of the family are really all I have cared to hold on to, and of course there is Doreen Anne, but it has been many years since I laid eyes on her.
Your grandmother, Mary Bluett.
What circumstance with her mother? What was so difficult? And why was this letter undated, and why was this the first she washearing of a grandmother who wanted to see her? And who was Doreen Anne?
Maybe this was good news. She’dloveto have a grandmother. ‘You want to tell me what this is all about, Mum? You told me there weren’t any Bluetts.’
‘Well,’ her mother said, which didn’t even begin to sound like an answer. ‘There’s more in the envelope.’
The something more was a small card, framed with silver gilt.
Oh. Her ribcage felt too small for her heart when she saw it was a death notice.Mary Alice Bluett, late of St Agatha’s Aged Care, Lismore, NSW, deceased, read the heading. Paperclipped to it was a handwritten note requesting that Kirsty Fox collect her bequest from a lawyer’s office at her earliest convenience as storage fees were accruing.
A grandmother, gained and lost within the space of a minute.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Kirsty.
‘What’s to understand? You’ve inherited some keepsakes, but you’ll need to let this lawyer know that you have a job and can’t possibly journey all that way to collect them. Perhaps the lawyer can put them on a bus or something.’
A job for which she’d just been grounded and was now under investigation. She’d crash-landed a flipping six-million-dollar plane and put the life of a mother and baby in danger. Depending on what the ATSB had to say she maynothave a job … which, now she thought about it, would solve the problem of her having stuck at this one too long. She could rent her house out, pick up some work in the Territory or flying the Bass Strait Islands run, maybe.
The awful tremor thing going on in her hands relaxed a little with her justthinkingabout clearing off to a new and curse-free future.
‘Where is this lawyer, again?’ she said.
‘Northern New South Wales. Practically a different country, Kirsty. I wouldn’t have bothered you with this, except I’ve been looking at that envelope since it arrived wonderingwhatkeepsakes you’ve inherited. Maybe there’s something of value. Anyway, looking at that letter is stressing me out, and I’m trying to keep myself stress-free, sugarplum. You know why.’
Yes. She did know. Her mother’s reaction to stress (other than skipping town, of course) tended to involve a brightly lit room and stuffing tokens into slots. ‘Hence the break-in and the knitting,’ she muttered.
She could do with some stress-free time herself, but knitting wasn’t going to cut it, and she wasn’t the break-and-enter type.
You could skip town, Kirsty Fox.
But where would she go? Had she really thought that?
Northern New South Wales, numbat.
That … wasn’t such a bad idea. Other than the fact she probably shouldn’t be driving, what with the stroke and/or carbon monoxide poisoning and/or concussion symptoms she had going on. But … She found her voice: ‘I’m going to go pick it up. Whateveritis.’
Her mother’s jaw dropped. ‘What? No! Kirsty, nothing good ever comes from visiting the past.’
‘Like you’d know, Mum. Since when did you ever go visityourpast?’
‘This isn’t about me,’ her mum said, in a tight, blank voice that made Kirsty wonder if, actually, this wasallabout Terri.
Kirsty took a swig of her now cold tea and grimaced. She could jump in her car right this minute and drive two thousand kilometres to reclaim the belongings of some dead relative who she’d never met, or, like her mother wanted, she could hang around. Wander down to the tiny pub at the end of her street, have a glassof wine since she wasn’t flying tomorrow (or ever again perhaps if the ATSB investigation went badly) and chat up the good-looking bartender. Spend her time while she was grounded hanging out in her house. With her madly knitting mother. Who would drive her nuts after three days.
Twenty minutes and one hastily packed duffle bag later, she was doing what Foxes did best when bad shit happened … heading out onto the highway and going someplace else.
