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He’d died the following year, drowned while helping some idiot escape his 4WD after attempting to cross a bridge in rising flood waters. That was fifteen years ago. Didn’t make the sting of his loss any easier to bear.
Reaching the back of the house, she drew aside the curtains, exposing the French doors that led to the rear veranda. Using the new keys Oliver had given her the night before, she unlocked the doors and pushed them wide open, then repeated the process for every door and window in every room, releasing the stale air trapped in the house and letting in the fresh omnipresent scent of the nearby rainforests.
Kinda like a domestic version of “Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.”
What Mia hadn’t anticipated was finding most of her family’s belongings already packed up in boxes, labelled and stacked neatly in the main room of the house, the furniture covered in dust sheets.
She’d been dreading what she’d find when she finally came home again. Her father may have preferred a Spartan lifestyle but her mother never met a crafting supply she didn’t like, and hoarded every scrap of paper, fabric and cardboard that crossed her path for future uses that never materialised.
Did Ollie do all of this?
The distinct lack of grime throughout the house did not escape her notice either, nor did the new kettle she discovered on the kitchen bench sitting next to a box of her favourite brand of tea bags, a jar of honey, three lemons and her father’s flask.
He found it.
When Ollie hadn’t said anything about it at breakfast, or later outside, she’d thought maybe he hadn’t been able to find it. Or maybe he hadn’t even looked.
She should have known better.
Oliver always kept his word. Always had. Probably always would.
And he’d never been one to brag, so of course he hadn’t said anything about it.
Mia mentally slapped herself for jumping to conclusions. She’d spent the last eighteen years living in a world where everything had a double meaning, everyone had a secret agenda, and nothing and no one could be taken at face value.
She’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone do something for her without the expectation of getting something in return.
As for the tea….
How could he possibly remember something as insignificant as how she liked her tea? Her ex couldn’t even remember not to put milk in it. Because according to him, tea without milk was unnatural.
After making herself a cup of unnatural tea, Mia wandered out to the veranda. She stared out over the valley to the mountains beyond, traced her gaze over their jagged edges and watched them change colour from green to grey and back again as the clouds above cast shadows that undulated across their surface.
She’d always loved sitting out there, at the back of the house where it was quiet and the prying eyes of their neighbours couldn’t reach.
Before her mother passed, the back veranda had always been used as a sort of outdoor lounge room. The whole area had been filled with potted plants, ferns and African violets and such, and a collection of wicker chairs had surrounded a matching coffee table with a glass top.
Mia had always hated that table. Every time she set her mug down, it made an awful clunking sound that made her think either the table or the mug was about to shatter. The chairs were comfy though, even if they were upholstered in the most garish palm frond fabric her mother could find. Louisa thought it added to the tropical nature of their home. Mia and the colonel had agreed letting her mother think that would be best for all parties involved.
“Happy wife, happy life,” her father used to whisper to her before praising his wife’s design choices, to which her mother would roll her eyes.
Louisa had always known what her husband was up to and played along. Sometimes Mia thought her mother made deliberately ghastly decisions just to stir the man up and get a reaction out of him. That reaction generally being a smack on her arse as he walked past her and a lot of noise coming from their bedroom at night, which Mia had drowned out with headphones and loud music.
Still, it was kinda romantic.
Certainly more romantic than anything any of her boyfriends had ever done for her.
As she leaned against the railing of the now empty veranda, Mia sipped her tea and considered her plans for the house and grounds. Like the house, the yard was in much better shape than she’d expected, and she wondered if Ollie’s maintenance had extended to the gardens.
After meandering through the house for almost an hour, running through her mental to-do list and figuring out what she needed and how she was going to get it, Mia began feeling weary. She needed to rest. So she washed her mug and locked up the house, then slowly ambled down the front stairs, adding “build a ramp” to her to-do list.
Before climbing back into her car, she gave a few more moments of thought to the name of the property.
Someday.
Her parents had named it that becausesomedaythey’d planned to turn it into their dream home, but that day had never come, and Mia wasn’t a dream home kind of girl.
She was, however, a veteran, and there were plenty of people just like her who needed a quiet place they could visit, a safe place where they could get out of their own damn heads and begin to heal.
