But a seventeen-year-old?
He’d judged her back then because of her appearance and obvious desperation, but things were making horrible sense now.
All apart from the age. Surely seventeen was underage for marriage in Hawaii? They’d have needed special permission.
Had they done it because Kelly had been pregnant?
These were questions Matt should have asked years ago, not now.
The questions had been there, though. He’d flown home with Jessie’s body and the questions had rested unanswered in the back of his mind. The image of a girl curled in utter misery, of a cheque floating to the floor, of a desperation he’d done nothing to assuage, these images had stayed with him. The questions had nagged while he’d qualified as a doctor, while he’d got himself away from his domineering father, while he’d attempted his own marriage... While he’d come to terms with life, as Jessie never had. Just as Kelly had obviously come to terms with her life.
He remembered his relief when he’d found the cheque had been cashed. Now I don’t need to feel guilty, he’d told himself. But the questions had stayed.
They had been answered now—almost. She’d used the cheque, but to what purpose?
To train herself in medicine?
To raise another surfer like Jess?
If his father found out... To have a grandson addicted to surfing...
Better not to tell him. Better to leave things as they were, just get this kid well and on his way.
But he looked so much like Jess...
So? He’d be in hospital for a week or so and then an outpatient for longer with rehab. He’d see him a lot. He had to get used to it.
And his mother?
Her image haunted him. In truth, her image had haunted him for years and now there was this new image juxtapositioned on the old.
Should the new image make the haunting go away?
A surf doctor. What sort of doctor was that?
What sort of woman was that?
A woman with spirit.
How could he know that?
He just...knew. There was that about her, an indefinable strength. A beauty that was far more than skin deep.
Beauty? He raked his hair again, thinking he wasn’t making sense. He was too tired, too shocked to take it in. He needed to go home.
At the thought of his home he felt his tension ease. Home, the place he’d built with effort and with love. Home with his dogs and his books.
His house was the only place where he was at peace. His home mattered. He’d learned early and learned hard; people only complicated that peace.
He needed to go home now and put this woman and her son out of his head.
He needed to be alone.
CHAPTER TWO
THE SURF CHAMPIONSHIPS lasted for two more days and Kelly worked for both of them. There were gaps in the day when she could visit Jess, but she had to work for as long as she could. She needed the money.
The surfing community looked after its own, but there wasn’t a lot they could do to help. They’d need to employ another doctor for the next round of the championships in New Zealand. As soon as Jess was well enough for Kelly to rejoin the tour, the position was hers again, but pro-surfing ran on the smell of a surf-waxed rag, and they couldn’t afford to pay her for time off.
And she would not use the trust fund.
She needed to move from the hotel. One of the locals offered her a basic surfer’s squat and she accepted with relief. She’d find a decent apartment when Jess was released from hospital but until then she’d live in her surf squat and focus on Jess’s recovery.
From Jessie’s charts and from information she drew from junior doctors, she could track Jessie’s progress. There was therefore no need to talk to Matt Eveldene. The advantage of Matt being head of the orthopaedic ward was that where Matt went, students followed. She could always hear him coming so she could give Jess a quick hug and disappear.
‘Here come the medical cavalry. It’s time to make myself scarce.’
‘He looks at me funny,’ Jess said sleepily on the second day, and she hugged him again, feeling defensive about leaving him.
‘Surgeons are a law unto themselves,’ she said. ‘If he only looks at you funny, you’re getting off lightly. These guys spend their days looking inside people, not practising social skills.’
The surf tour moved on. She spent a couple of hours of her first free day moving into her dreary little apartment. Back at the hospital she found Jess awake and bored, so she spent an hour going over the results of the championship he’d missed out on, talking future tactics, as if those tactics might be useful next week instead of in six months.
Finally he went to sleep. What to do now? She knew how long rehabilitation would take. She had weeks and weeks of wondering what to do.
Okay, do what came next. Lunch. She slipped out to find some—and Matt was at the nurses’ station.
Was he waiting for her? It looked like it. His hands were deep in the pockets of his gorgeous suit, he was talking to a nurse but he was watching Jess’s door. As soon as he saw her, he broke off the conversation.
‘Sorry, Jan,’ he said to the nurse, ‘but I need to speak to Mrs Eveldene.’
‘That’s Dr Eveldene,’ she said as he approached, because her professional title suddenly seemed important. She needed a barrier between them, any barrier at all, and putting things on a professional level seemed the sensible way to achieve it. ‘Do you need to discuss Jessie’s treatment?’
‘I want lunch,’ he growled. ‘There’s a quiet place on the roof. We can buy sandwiches at the cafeteria. Come with me.’
‘Say “please”,’ she said, weirdly belligerent, and he stared at her as if she was something from outer space.
But: ‘Please,’ he said at last, and she gave him a courteous nod. This man was in charge of her son’s treatment. She did need to be...spoken to.
They bought their lunches, paid for separately at her insistence. He offered but she was brusque in her refusal. She followed him to a secluded corner of the rooftop, with chairs, tables and umbrellas for shade. She spent time unwrapping her sandwich—why was she so nervous?—but finally there was nothing left to do but face the conversation.
He spoke first, and it was nothing to do with her son’s treatment. It was as if the words had to be dragged out of him.
‘First, I need to apologise,’ he said. As she frowned and made to speak, he held up his hands as if to ward off her words. ‘Hear me out. Heaven knows, this needs to be said. Kelly, eighteen years ago I treated you as no human should ever treat another, especially, unforgivably, as you were my brother’s wife. I accused you of all sorts of things that day. My only defence was that I was a kid myself. I was devastated by my brother’s death but my assumptions about him—and about you—were not only cruel, they were wrong.’
‘As in you assumed Jess was back using drugs,’ she whispered. ‘As you assumed I was the same. An addict.’
‘I figured it out almost as soon as I got back to Australia,’ he said, even more heavily. ‘The autopsy results revealed not so much as an aspirin. I should have contacted you again, but by then I was back at university and it felt...’ He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know how it felt. I was stuck in a vortex of grief I didn’t know how to deal with. Somehow it was easier to shove the autopsy results away as wrong. Somehow it seemed easier to blame drugs rather than—’