Amy Andrews - Just One Last Night...

Her mother had aged so much since Julie’s death. For a woman with ten kids she’d always been remarkably spry. Full of energy and lust for life. Grace had constantly marvelled at how she did it—goodness, she herself was exhausted just trying to keep track of two!

But Trish Perry was greyer now, more pensive, less energetic. The sparkle in her eyes had been replaced by shadow. The spring in her step had disappeared completely.

And the same for her father. They were just … less.

Grace stood back to let her parents hug their grandchildren. A lump rose in her throat as a tear slid from behind her mother’s closed lids. A spike of guilt lanced her. Had it been wrong for her to take the two most tangible connections to her sister so far away?

But Natasha had desperately wanted to get away from Melbourne. Sure, she’d made a song and dance about always having wanted to live in the Sunshine State but no one had bought that. They’d known that she had wanted to get far away from the memories.

And, in the end, they’d all agreed that it might be for the best.

How were any of them to know it had been an unmitigated disaster?

‘Come on,’ Trish said over the general din, wiping at the tear before disentangling herself, all mother-of-ten businesslike again. ‘Let’s get you all home. I’ve made roast lamb, your favourite, Benj, and for you, young lady …’ Trish ruffled Tash’s hair ‘… I made chocolate crackles.’

Grace tensed and waited for Tash to primp her hair back into place or scoff at her grandmother’s offering. The way she had when Grace had made a batch the week the kids had come to live with her—after a particularly harrowing night shift—because she’d known that they were her niece’s favourite.

Tash’s vehement ‘ You’re not her ’ had been cutting and Grace had been walking on eggshells ever since.

‘Cool. My favourite,’ Tash said.

Grace expelled a breath. Teenagers!

The next couple of weeks were crazy busy. Grace re-enrolled the kids in the school they’d been in prior to moving to Queensland—the school she herself had attended a million moons ago—and spent a small fortune on books and uniforms and all the assorted paraphernalia.

The school was local to the Perry family home, and was also attended by the current generation of Perry children. None of Grace’s siblings had flown too far from the nest, all setting up house within a ten-kilometre radius of the family home and sending their kids to the same school they’d attended.

She had been the only black sheep.

With the kids settled, Grace went house-hunting. Her parents wanted her to continue to stay with them and she was happy to until she found somewhere else. But Grace had been independent for too long to move back home at the grand age of thirty-nine.

Her brothers and sisters may have been happy to stay close but Grace had always wanted more. And while she was grateful to have the amazing support of her family after doing the whole mother thing alone, she needed her space too.

Her parents’ home was just too chaotic—even more so than it had been growing up—with thirty grandchildren from babies through to teenagers coming and going at all hours of the day and night.

Grace had missed the love and laughter but not the sheer noise of it all. She’d forgotten how loud and busy it always was. And how everyone was in everyone else’s business.

That was something Grace hadn’t missed.

In short, she needed privacy. A place that was quiet. Still. A place that was hers.

It had been tempting to look at real estate on the other side of the city, close to her new workplace. Had she moved back to Melbourne in different circumstances it would have been exactly what she would have done. Found a dinky little terraced cottage in the inner city close to cafés and shopping.

But the point of coming home was to be close to family. Was to have them as an extended support system. Multiple places the kids could go and stay when she invariably got stuck at work. Always someone to pick up the kids if she couldn’t. Cousins to have sleepovers, share homework or catch a movie with. Aunts and uncles to spoil them and take them places and keep an eye on them. Grandparents to babysit.

No more nanny.

So Grace very sensibly looked only at houses for sale in the immediate vicinity of the school. The market was much more inflated in Melbourne and Grace was shocked at the prices. Luckily she’d made a good return on her investment with her place back in Brisbane and she calculated she could afford a three-bedroom house without going into a hideous amount of debt.

Julie and Doug had provided for the children’s expenses in their wills but they’d been heavily in debt at the time of the accident so there hadn’t been much money left. And what there was Grace hadn’t wanted to touch. It belonged to Tash and Benji and she knew her sister would have wanted the money to be put towards the kids’ university educations.

By the end of the second week she finally found what she was looking for. It was about a kilometre from the school in one direction and even less from her parents’ in the other. It was a post-war, low-set brick with a small backyard. It needed a little TLC—the décor definitely needed modernising—but it was of sturdy construction and she could afford it.

Tash had stared aghast at the lurid shagpile carpet in the hallway and the childish wallpaper in her room the day Grace had taken them to visit their new home. She’d also been completely unimpressed that she was going to have to share a bathroom with everyone else.

Benji had been kinder, his interest lying only in the fact that due to the backyard a puppy might be in the offing. Grace had fobbed him off, promising to think about it for Christmas.

But maybe, Grace thought as she signed the contract, she and the kids could work at modernising it together? She could let them make over their rooms—involve them. Working part time would be very conducive to a DIY project.

She had to try and engage Tash somehow. She’d hoped her niece would get over her resentment at being forced to move from Brisbane but it was just one more thing for Tash to hold against her. She was stubbornly recalcitrant where Grace was concerned. She was pleasant enough with everyone else but cut Grace no slack.

It broke Grace’s heart. She’d always been Tash’s favourite aunty. Cool Aunty Grace. Whenever Grace had come back for holidays Tash had been Grace’s shadow. They’d chatted on the phone every few days since Tash had been old enough to speak.

But those days had long gone.

‘Be patient,’ her mother had said.

Except patience had never been a virtue she’d mastered.

She was losing Tash. And she couldn’t bear it. But she just didn’t know what to do. How to reach her. She was a fifteen-year-old girl who had lost her parents and shut herself off from the one person she’d once been closest to.

The one person who could help her the most.

And with all this weighing on her mind, Grace would have expected there to be no room for thoughts of Brent Cartwright.

But she’d been wrong.

It had been eight weeks since she’d seen him, since that awkward moment in the supply room, and tomorrow she had to face him again.

And every day after that.

A heavy feeling had been sitting like a lead lump in her stomach ever since she’d accepted the job. Nervousness. A sense of dread.

And that she could cope with.

It was the rather contrary bubble in her cells and the fizz in her blood that made her uneasy.

Very, very uneasy.

‘ANXIOUS about today, darling?’

Anxious? Grace was so nervous she could barely pick up her cup of tea without it rattling against the saucer.