she answered, nodding.
The boy hurried away and left the castle and its splendid knights on horseback lying abandoned in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Mary worried her lower lip with her teeth. ‘He’s not dealing very well with the bad news about his father,’ she said.
‘I dare say it will take a long time.’
She frowned. ‘Why do you keep acting as if Ed’s already dead? Surely, while there’s a chance he’s alive, we should hope?’
Tom kept his gaze fixed on the abandoned castle. ‘I don’t think there’s much chance, Mary.’
‘Why are you so sure?’ she asked quietly. ‘The Army has a great support network but I can’t find out what happened. Were you there? Can you tell me?’
He swung his gaze back to hers and for the first time she saw how tired he looked. Smudges of shadow lay beneath his eyes and creases bracketed his mouth. ‘We were involved in a hot extraction. You’ve heard about them, haven’t you?’
‘Where ropes are lowered from a helicopter?’
‘That’s it. Well, we’d finished a mission in the jungle and we were ready to be winched back up—’
‘Where? Where was the mission?’
‘South-East Asia.’
‘But which country? Which jungle?’
‘You should know better than to ask me that, Mary.’
She sighed. ‘It was worth a try.’
‘Anyway, the chopper was in position above us and we were below in the jungle and we had to get out fast. Really fast. There were guerrilla fighters all around us and it was pitch black. Even with night vision goggles we couldn’t see a lot because of the dense timber, so we’re not absolutely sure what happened. But somehow, when it was Ed’s turn to ascend, the rope got tangled.’
‘Oh, no,’ Mary whispered.
‘Sometimes trees, brush or ground debris can snag it. It hardly ever happens that the rope breaks, but it did this time.’
Mary flinched and tried to blot out the picture that formed in her head. ‘So Ed fell,’ she whispered.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘But what happened then? Couldn’t you find him?’
Tom heaved a loud, painful sigh.
‘You did search for him, didn’t you?’
‘We tried, but we couldn’t hang around for long. There was too much enemy fire. We had to consider the safety of the rest of the squad. And—’ He looked as if he was about to say something else and changed his mind.
‘So you just left him there?’
‘Believe me, if I had my way I’d still be looking for him now, but that’s not how the Army works. I had to follow orders. When I demanded permission to go back I had a run-in with the brass. A proper ding-dong confrontation.’ He let out a hiss of air through gritted teeth. ‘By the time I persuaded them that we should at least go back and recover his body there was no trace of him.’
Looking away from her, he stared through her kitchen window to a view across Arlington parkland. ‘I think you should resign yourself to the fact that Ed won’t be coming back, Mary. Everyone is convinced that he couldn’t have survived that fall.’
She didn’t answer, but she shook her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tom added, and his throat worked.
The smell of coffee filled the room and Mary distracted herself by collecting the coffee pot and their mugs and setting them on the cleared kitchen table. They took seats opposite each other and Mary felt painfully self-conscious. She wondered if Tom felt as awkward as she did to be sitting in such a domesticated setting—after all these years. It was so strange to be taking coffee with Tom Pirelli as if he were no more than a friend of Ed’s.
Was he feeling as self-conscious as she was? Was he inwardly calm, or was he battling memories? She couldn’t stop thinking about the past…Their past.
Good grief, here she was, worried about her husband, and yet she was remembering it all. Dancing and laughing with Tom, kissing him, riding on the back of his motorbike, walking hand-in-hand with him in the moonlight along a beach of silver sand. Making love…
And then her father’s insistence that Tom Pirelli couldn’t possibly love her.
‘Do you take cream or sugar?’ she asked, forcing the memories aside.
‘I’ll have a little milk, no sugar, thanks.’ He watched her fill his mug and then his face broke into a smile.
‘What’s amusing you?’ she asked tightly.
‘The way you call milk cream—like a proper Yank.’
She gave an offhand shrug. ‘It happens when you spend eight years in a place. After a while you don’t even notice the differences.’
‘There are differences, though, aren’t there?’ he said, as if he were deliberately trying to steer their conversation into safe, pedestrian waters. ‘I mean, on the surface Australians and Americans seem to speak the same language, but—’
‘But here nappies are diapers and tomato sauce is ketchup.’
‘Yeah—and footpaths are sidewalks and taps are faucets.’
‘And scones are biscuits and biscuits are cookies.’ Mary smiled too.
Tom watched her, then looked away and seemed to study her kitchen. It wasn’t a remarkable kitchen but he took his time, as if he wanted to remember the yellow walls, white cupboards and sandstone-coloured bench tops, the decorative touches of blue and white pottery—Ethan’s artwork stuck on the refrigerator door with magnets. On the wall, stars and stripes fashioned in cross-stitch framed the words ‘God Bless America’.
‘Ed’s mother made that and gave it to us last Thanksgiving,’ she said, feeling a need to explain.
She sat stiffly, twisting the coffee mug back and forth and not looking at him, aware that they would very quickly run out of safe topics to discuss. ‘How is your Nonna?’ she asked. ‘I hope she’s still alive.’
Fresh smile creases showed around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. ‘You bet she is. I think nonna’s organised a special deal with God. No doubt she’s promised him that when she gets to heaven she’ll cook gnocchi gorgonzola on a regular basis, if he’ll let her stay here till she’s good and ready.’
‘You’ve always loved your nonna’s gnocchi gorgonzola, haven’t you?’
‘I’m surprised you remember.’
‘Of course I remember.’ I remember everything about you, Tom. ‘Your nonna’s very special.’
‘Yeah.’ Tom released a long sigh. ‘It’s too damn long since I’ve seen her.’
‘Are you going back to Australia now?’
‘Definitely. Soon as I can.’
The awkwardness returned and this time Tom must have decided he’d had enough. He jumped to his feet. ‘Thanks for the coffee. I’d better get going.’
‘Yes,’ she said, jumping up just as quickly.
Was he happy to be leaving? Was that relief in his eyes? She remembered the way he used to smile whenever he saw her. The way his whole face would light up and his dark eyes would glow—and how she used to cling to him when it was time for them to part, begging for one more kiss—for him to hold her just a little longer.
And now they were both relieved to be parting.
He walked to the front door and she followed.