Christmas at the Little Waffle Shack - Helen J. Rolfe Page 0,82

them had wanted to ignore any extenuating circumstances, some of them ridiculed me during interviews, threw their weight around. I took it all; she was livid, but all I wanted was to face up to whatever punishment I got and move forward. Her dislike of police officers was why she was so mouthy with the copper at the opening night of the Little Waffle Shack. She was being accused of something she hadn’t done and it would’ve triggered plenty of reminders so that’s why she needed me to vouch for her and for added effect announced she was my wife.’

Harvey began to laugh. ‘It was a bit dramatic from what I’ve heard.’ The laughter faded. ‘Especially for Lucy.’

‘Lucy ran off before I had a chance to explain.’

‘It seems to be a common way of dealing with things around here.’ Harvey let the revelations between him and his brother settle. ‘I should’ve come after you when you left the Cove. I know part of the reason you left was because we’d drifted apart.’

‘And what would you have done? Given me my INXS album back and said all was forgiven?’

Harvey put his hand to his forehead and rubbed his fingers against his brow. ‘All my life I feel like I’ve been trying to protect – Mum, you, then Mum again, then Melissa until she was so stifled she had to get away. It’s as though I don’t know how to do anything else. When you came back here I put up barriers to protect myself as much as anyone and those barriers were built of anger and meant distance. I wanted to avoid you as though I was a little kid and if I closed my eyes long enough the problem would go away. Pathetic, eh?’

‘No, not pathetic. I’d probably have done the same thing in your shoes.’

Harvey blew out from between his lips. ‘I wanted to come to the grand opening of the Little Waffle Shack. I very nearly talked myself into it, but I couldn’t see past all the bad stuff. It’s not that I refuse to give second chances, more that I worry that with second chances to do the right thing comes double the possibility of everything going wrong. And I knew that if I saw the success you’d made of yourself, it would hit me full force that I’d had nothing to do with that. Not that I’m jealous, I don’t mean that – what I mean is that I should’ve been a part of your life, even in the background.’

‘Hey, maybe it’s OK we went our separate ways. Maybe, like Melissa leaving, we needed to do it, be our own men for a while. Heaven forbid if we’d turned out like Dad.’

‘Amen to that.’ When Daniel lifted his empty bottle to clink it against Harvey’s, Harvey offered to make them a strong cup of coffee each.

They drank the coffees wandering around Tumbleweed House. Daniel was impressed with the changes and rather than the nightmares he thought it would bring flooding back, it brought a funny sense of life evolving, moving on to a better place. ‘The loft conversion is pretty impressive,’ he said when they settled in the kitchen.

‘I had to do something. I couldn’t keep the loft as it was.’

‘You must’ve needed a skip to shift all that stuff.’

‘I did a few trips to the tip.’

‘What happened to your old sled?’ Amongst the junk up there, that was the item that stood out in his mind.

Harvey put down his coffee. ‘I still have it, it’s in my shed. I repaired it too.’

‘You know, I was always jealous you still had yours. Dad used mine for firewood, do you remember?’

Harvey swore loud enough the dog’s ear twitched upwards until she decided she couldn’t be bothered to join in with the drama and went back to sleep. ‘I’d forgotten. I think half the things he did I’ve blocked out. Why did he do it again?’

‘I bought the wrong newspaper for him when he sent me to the convenience store.’

‘That’s a crime against humanity, shocking, terrible.’

At least they could laugh about it. Daniel suspected if they didn’t, life would err on the side of misery far too often for either of them to be able to manage a normal existence. ‘The phrase walking on eggshells doesn’t even come close when it comes to our childhood, does it?’

Harvey told him all about the time Donnie came back as though he’d only nipped out for a pint of milk. He’d