Margaret Way - Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family - Outback Bachelor / The Cattleman's Adopted Family

Jack nodded. “True blue was Lena. I tried once to get her to talk—fill me in about Cathy and her connection to the family—but Lena wouldn’t open up. Still, I think Lena knew a lot.”

“About what, specifically?” Maybe she could get more information out of Lena than her father if she tried?

“Oh, an amazing amount of stuff,” Jack said, looking like he wanted to terminate the whole conversation. “I guess we should have had this discussion years ago, but in all truth, love, I never did know a lot. Cathy wouldn’t talk about her past. She’d started a new life. With me. Whatever she wanted I went along with. So in a way I’m accountable for her death.”

“No, Dad, no !” Skye protested strongly. “You have to stop all that. It was a tragedy.”

“Yes, a tragedy,” Jack groaned. “She died in my arms. My little Cathy. Do you suppose it could have been because you arrived early?”

This was way beyond Skye. There had never been any mention that she had been a premature baby. All her life she had enjoyed excellent health. Unease struck harder.

“Who attended the birth? Who was the doctor, the midwife, whatever?”

Jack’s face was showing strain. “Tom Morris. A good bloke, a good doctor. He’s dead now, Tom.”

“Who called him?”

Jack looked stunned. “Why, Lady McGovern got him here fast. He was flown in. I remember him saying practically right off he had concerns.”

“Why didn’t she go to hospital?”

“She didn’t want to,” Jack said broken-heartedly. “She was adamant about it. She was happy to be on Djinjara. She loved it here. She loved being with me. ‘You’re my minder, Jack,’ she used to say with a laugh. I minded her. Yes, I did. Until the end. I don’t know what her reasons were for leaving her own people. All I know is she found sanctuary with Lady McGovern. Lady McGovern used to talk to Cathy like she was her own child. Of course she wasn’t. But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear there was some blood connection.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t, love.” Jack shook his head. “And I wouldn’t dare ask the old lady.”

So her father had lived with his own demons. High time for her to face up to her own. Lady McGovern would know the truth. Probably she was the only one living who did. But she had the dismal notion Lady McGovern wasn’t about to help anyone out. Bizarre as it sounded, even Broderick McGovern might never have known a great deal about Cathy. He would have been married by then with a wife and children.

Time to visit her mother’s grave. Then time to go back to her city life. Back to the life she had forged for herself. She had to confront the fact the same aura of unease regarding her background surrounded Keefe as it did her. Maybe the crucial bits that were missing explained why neither of them seemed able to move forward. Only Lady McGovern knew exactly what had happened all those years ago…

She took one of the horses to the McGovern graveyard, tethering the mare in the shade of the massive desert oaks. A huge wrought-iron fence enclosed the whole area, the iron railings topped by spikes. The gates were closed, but unlocked. She opened one side and walked through, shutting it with a soft clang behind her. This was the McGovern graveyard, scrupulously tended, with generations of McGoverns buried here. Everywhere there were markers and plaques, tall urns, a few statues. A classical-style white marble statue of a weeping maiden marked the grave of the wife of the McGovern founding father.

What was her mother doing, lying here among the McGoverns? She had asked Lady McGovern once when she had been about twelve and had failed to get any answer whatever. Just a stern silence. She had never asked again. Broderick McGovern’s grave as yet had no headstone. No one had expected him to die so prematurely, leaving his son at barely thirty to take up the reins.

She had brought flowers with her. Not from the home gardens, though she could have asked and been given as many armfuls as she wanted. Instead, she had broken off several branches of pink and white bauhinia, arranging them in a sheaf. Oddly, although the cemetery wasn’t a cheerful place, it wasn’t depressing either. Surrounded by such incredible empty vastness , in the distance the ancient temples of the sandhills glowing an orange-red flame, it wasn’t difficult to get one’s own life into perspective.

Her mother’s grave was marked by a child-sized white marble angel with outspread wings. The inscription read:

Catherine Margaret McCory, 1964-1986.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there

Silently she mouthed several more lines of the famous bereavement poem. She knew them by heart. All around her the silence was absolute except for the soft tranquil swish of the desert breeze. For an instant she fancied the breeze very sweetly kissed her cheek. Perhaps it was a greeting from her mother? Why not? It was hard to believe one simply ceased. There was mind, spirit. Only the body was consigned to the ground.

Cathy could well be in the thousand winds that blew, the swift uplifting rush of birds, the soft stars that shone at night. Though the stars that shone in their billions over Djinjara were ten times more brilliant than city-soft.

“Where are you, Cathy?” Without being aware of it Skye spoke aloud. “ Who are you?” She desperately needed reassurances. Tears for what might have been pooled in her eyes. She bent to place the bauhinia branches, weighed down by exquisite blossom, on the white stone. There were so many mysteries in life. She couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of the mystery of her own family. Had her mother lived she could have bombarded her with questions and got answers. She had always been a questioning child. Now it seemed her mother’s short life had been defined by her death.

She paid her respects at Broderick McGovern’s resting place then made her way slowly along the gravelled path to the tall gates. Along the way she passed a brilliant bank of honeysuckle that adorned one side of the fence, pausing to draw in the haunting perfume. Life might be many things, she thought, but in the end it all came down to one thing. Great or small, the body returned to dust. She chose to believe the soul roamed freely…

Just as she reached the gate, a station Jeep pulled up so hard it raised a great swirl of red dust and fallen dry leaves. Deliberate, Skye thought. Rachelle was at the wheel. Resolutely Skye turned to face her. She could hardly remount and gallop away. Unpleasant and abrupt as Rachelle was, this was Djinjara. Rachelle was a McGovern. She had to be accorded respect.

Rachelle was out of the vehicle with the speed of a rocket being fired. She was dressed in a cream silk shirt and jodhpurs, riding boots on her feet when it was well known Rachelle didn’t particularly enjoy riding, though she was competent, as expected of a McGovern.

“What are you doing here?” Rachelle whipped off her big black designer sunglasses.

“I wonder you ask, Rachelle,” Skye managed a quiet answer. “My mother is buried here.”

“Highly unusual, I’d say.” There were shadows under Rachelle’s fine dark eyes. She looked faintly ill and nerve-ridden. Yet even in the tranquillity of the graveyard, with her father laid to rest not far away, Rachelle couldn’t rein in her dislike and resentment.

“You should speak to your grandmother some time,” Skye suggested. “She was very fond of my mother. My mother could only have been buried here with her approval.”

“It’s all seriously odd,” Rachelle said, a vein throbbing in her temple. “That’s all I can say. Your mother should be all but forgotten. You didn’t know her. We were only little kids when she died yet we can’t seem to get rid of her. Or you either.”