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“I don’t remember either of my parents.” She rubbed a hand over the leather embossing on the album. “Sometimes I need to look at the photos to remind me what they looked like.”
He sprawled on the sofa beside her, legs extended, and crossed his ankles. He’d exchanged the lumber jacket for a hand-knitted pullover in forest green, his white tee showing at the V-neck. For once his hair looked a little ruffled, but it only lasted until he brushed his hand over the top, smoothing down the strands probably caught when he’d pulled on his jumper.
Leaning back, letting the sunshine bathe his face, he shut his eyes. “I remember she was pretty. Long and lean, like Grandad, but with blonde curls and blue eyes.”
“Like you, but with curls?”
“Her hair was brighter. At least.” His brow wrinkled. “I don’t know. She could have used hair colour and had it curled. It would make sense considering both her parents have light brown hair. Gran’s hair is more like mine with the blonde bits.”
“Flo puts streaks in at the hairdressers every six weeks. They’re growing out, so I imagine she’ll be heading off to the salon any day now.”
His eyes opened to mere slits. “Streaks. Is that all?”
Bonnie grinned. “She may put a little colour in to hide the greys.”
“It sounds like a lot of trouble. I’m going to let myself be grizzled.”
“It’s all right for men. You get called a silver fox and everyone thinks you’re hot. For women, they think old and past it.”
*
Xander let hiseyes linger on her hair. “Don’t disillusion me by telling me you’re covering grey hairs.”
She fingered an escapee from her tight plaits, a soft curl drooping over one temple. “Not yet. But I’m pretty sure if I do go grey, I’ll be down at the salon getting it touched up.”
He fought an urge to wind the curl around his own finger. To release the lush hair from its prison of neatness. She shifted uneasily and he wondered if she’d read his thoughts.
She opened the album. “There’s a photo or two of your mum in here.”
Welcoming the excuse, he slid along the seat, dislodging the sheet and revealing the lush red velvet and carved timber of the arm. “Why would there be a photo of my mother in your album?”
“There are photographs of my father as a child.”
The photographs were in colour. For some reason he’d half expected them to be in black and white, like the photographs of his great-grandparents who’d married in Scotland during the second world war.
Bonnie indicated a photograph with one finger. It was a couple of girls and a boy around the same age in swimsuits playing in one of those blow-up swimming pools. He recognised the garages of the inn in the background. The couple of acres of gardens planted so painstakingly over the years were only in their infancy in the photograph. “What makes you think it’s my mother?”
“There’s a picture here with your grandparents and Nan and the two children.”
Taken at a different time, with the pair a couple of years older, maybe ten or twelve, it seemed odd. He’d hardly seen any photos from his mother’s childhood. Don had packed them away because they upset Flo. His grandparents still grieved the daughter they’d lost, without the shadow of death coming between them. An idea sparked for a song. “Do you have paper and a pen?”
Frowning, she rummaged in the box and came up with an old school pad and pencil case. There were sums on the first few pages but he found an empty page and ripped it out, scribbling a note and folding it into the back pocket of his jeans.
“Do you often do that? Write down ideas on scraps of paper.”
He nodded. “If I don’t, I’ll forget them.”
“You must have quite a collection of scrap paper somewhere.”
Remembering the pile of papers his grandparents had boxed up, he screwed up his mouth. “I need to be neater.”
She choked out a laugh. “I don’t see how you could be any neater. You fold your own underwear, and your drawers are colour coded.”
“I like to know where my things are.” It came out defensive and a crease appeared between her arched brows.
“Is it because of what it was like on the Appleton place?”
Rolling his shoulders to ease the sudden tension, he forced a smile, knowing it wouldn’t fool her. “We lived in sheds and old caravans that leaked like sieves. It was impossible to be clean and tidy.”
