to make the flights home. Are you okay to do whatever you’ve got to do before we leave?’
He gulped down some more whisky. It helped burn away the welling of tears behind his eyes. ‘Ready to go,’ he asserted just as brusquely, rising to his feet. ‘Let me make a few calls first, clear the way.’
Helicopter to Phoenix, flight to Los Angeles…many hours passed before Ric and Johnny could finally board the Qantas jet to Sydney and settle in their seats for the longest leg of their journey over the Pacific Ocean. The flight steward offered them champagne. They both declined, choosing orange juice instead. It was not a time for champagne.
A question had been niggling at Johnny. ‘Why didn’t Mitch call me direct? It would have saved you coming to get me, Ric.’
‘We thought it was better this way…the two of us travelling together.’
‘Well, I’m glad to have your company but we could have linked up here for this flight.’
Ric slanted him a wry look. ‘You might not have co-operated with that plan. You have a habit of doing things your own way. This course ensured I’d be with you.’
Johnny frowned. ‘You thought I needed my hand held?’
‘No. It’s all a matter of timing. There’s more, Johnny. Mitch didn’t want to load it on you all at once over the phone. He gave that job to me with the advice to let you get over the shock of Patrick’s death first.’
The nerves in his stomach started knotting up again. ‘So hit me with the more. I’m sitting down and locked in. What else do I have to absorb?’
Ric looked at him, decided he was ready for it, and let him have it. ‘Patrick’s will. Mitch held it. He’s opened it.’
‘Well, that can’t be bad.’ Instant relief. ‘Patrick was always fair.’
‘Prepare yourself for another shock, Johnny. There’s a huge mortgage on Gundamurra and you’re about to inherit half of it.’
‘What?’ Incredulity blanked out several million brain cells.
‘Not quite half. You get forty-nine percent of Gundamurra and Megan gets fifty-one, leaving her in the driver’s seat where she’s always expected to be. But she won’t have expected to share her inheritance with you, Johnny. The normal thing would be a three-way split with her sisters.’
Co-owner of Gundamurra with Megan?
‘Mitch thought you should be prepared…get your head around it before we arrive at Gundamurra,’ Ric went on.
Johnny’s head was spinning.
What did it mean?
Why would Patrick cut out his two older daughters?
Why make him co-owner rather than Ric or Mitch?
A sense of horror billowed through him. He reached out and gripped his friend’s arm. ‘I didn’t ask for this, Ric. I swear I knew nothing about it.’
‘I didn’t think you did, Johnny,’ Ric assured him. ‘I have no doubt Patrick planned it himself.’
‘But why me? It’s not right, not…’ His mind fumbled for words. ‘Did he…did he explain to Mitch when he drafted the will?’
Ric shook his head. ‘Mitch wasn’t in on drafting it. Patrick did it himself and sent it to him sealed for safe-keeping two months ago.’
‘Two months…’ Johnny shook his head in bewilderment. ‘He must have made up his mind after Christmas.’
‘Maybe he knew he didn’t have long to live.’
‘Dammit! Why wouldn’t he tell us? We were all at Gundamurra for Christmas.’
‘If Patrick thought it was the last one for him, he wouldn’t have wanted to spoil it.’
‘But…’ Johnny lifted his hands in helpless frustration.
‘Want to know what Mitch thinks?’
He waved a go-ahead, completely beyond imagining what had motivated such an extraordinary step.
‘Patrick elected you to save Gundamurra. It’s highly unlikely that Megan can do it by herself. The way things are going with the drought, she won’t be able to service the mortgage. And it was you who always thought of it as home. Not me. Not Mitch. You.’
Johnny frowned. ‘Mitch had a home with his mother and sister, but I thought you…’ He searched Ric’s eyes.
A very direct gaze accompanied his reply. ‘You needed it more than I did, Johnny. And you can’t deny it touches something in your soul. It comes out in your songs.’
Need…yes. There was so much hype and superficial crap in the career he had chosen, so much touring to make his success stick, it was the thought of Gundamurra that kept him sane, grounded, and going back there always put his world in perspective again—what was real, what wasn’t.
‘It won’t be the same without Patrick.’ Grief squeezed his heart. ‘He was the soul of Gundamurra.’
‘You’re forgetting Megan.’
Megan.
His mind shied away from thinking of her right now. Already he could see those stormy grey eyes hating him for being given half of her place, wishing he’d never set foot on Gundamurra, let alone have any claim on it.
‘Patrick forgot his other daughters, Jessie and Emily,’ he said, tearing his mind off the one daughter who’d become such a nagging thorn in his side.
‘They’ve both made their lives away from Gundamurra and Patrick financed their ambitions,’ Ric reminded him. ‘I think they’ll feel they’ve had their share. Jessie has her medical degree and the women’s clinic she wanted at Alice Springs. Emily has her helicopter business at Cairns. The money to set them up was taken out of Gundamurra, probably contributing to the current debt. They can’t be unaware of that.’
True enough, Johnny silently acknowledged, yet the family home was the family home. Leaving them out and putting him in might very well stir a sense of injustice. He couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about this inheritance on many counts. On the other hand, Patrick had wanted him there and it was impossible to discount a decision which would not have been taken lightly.
‘It’s up to you and Megan to pull Gundamurra through this bad patch and revive it, Johnny,’ Ric gravely assured him. ‘Patrick got it right.’ He sighed and softly added, ‘He always got it right.’
It was some relief that Ric thought so.
Mitch, too, apparently.
But no way was Megan was going to accept it gracefully.
Jessie and Emily might not, either, though Ric was right about their interests lying elsewhere and Patrick had put large investments behind their chosen careers. Besides which, both of them were married to men who shared those interests, Jessie’s husband being a doctor for the Royal Doctor Flying Service, and Emily’s husband a fellow helicopter pilot.
Only Megan was unmarried.
Not surprising with her bristling form of feminism, Johnny thought, wishing she’d stayed in the sweetly amenable little sister mould that he’d always found so engaging. That much younger Megan had never minded him stepping in and helping.
The flight steward came and took their glasses. The plane was about to take off. Johnny leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes and tried to relax. Fourteen hours to Sydney. Then the flight to Gundamurra in the far north west of New South Wales…the outback.
He felt the pull of it in his mind…the vast, seemingly empty land, wide-open space, searingly blue sky. It had a rhythm all its own—one that always felt good. The only jarring note was Megan standing in the middle of it, waiting for him, furiously frustrated because she had to share Gundamurra