Isla's Inheritance Read online

My fingers shook, jingling the car keys in my hand. The metal wouldn’t fit in the car lock. I tried again. Ugh. Why wasn’t it cooperating?

  “I’m driving.” Sarah snatched the keyring. I stared at her. The firm set of her jaw matched the steel in her gaze. “I am. You’re too freaked, and I don’t need a phone call telling me you’re on the way to the hospital too.”

  Words eluded me. My mind had stopped functioning the moment my cousin relayed what Mrs Wilson had found at Dad’s house. He was lying on the ground. Was he alive? Or dying? A lump formed in my throat.

  Would I get to the hospital before he passed?

  Sarah tossed Ryan the phone. “Call Mum. Tell her what’s going on.”

  He nodded and hurried inside.

  The drive to the hospital felt hours long. Sarah sat right on the speed limit. I wanted to object, but she was right: we wanted to get there in one piece. And being pulled over by police would hardly help. So I gritted my teeth and said nothing, instead staring out the window at passing houses, trees and light poles. My hands clenched into fists, between glances at the clock on my phone to confirm time wasn’t moving as slowly as I thought.

  It wasn’t.

  It only took us twenty minutes to reach the hospital, and another ten to find a spot in the multistorey car park, in a two-hour parking zone. We hurried out of the garage and through the main entrance into the hospital.

  Sarah steered me through the current of visitors and slow-moving patients, following the signs to emergency. The bright fluorescent lights dazzled my eyes as I followed her, grateful she’d come. The nurse working the desk in the emergency department clicked a few times at her computer before telling me, not without sympathy, that my father was being brought in on the Careflight helicopter and they weren’t expecting him for another ten minutes or so.

  A helicopter. That made sense, given how far his farm was out of town. He’d be excited about going in a helicopter. If he was awake to notice it. I took a deep breath to stop myself from crying.

  The nurse was still talking to me. Luckily, Sarah was paying attention, giving her my name and mobile number. My mind whirled like the blades of the helicopter carrying my father. Morbid visions of him, unconscious, lying still on a gurney, filled my brain. Would he be awake when he arrived?

  “We’ll page you when we know anything,” the nurse told me.

  “Come on.” Sarah took me by the elbow. “Let’s go get a coffee or something.”

  “I want to stay here.”

  She didn’t bat an eyelid. “Okay. Do you want me to get you anything?”

  I shook my head, and she left in search of a vending machine.

  All of the chairs in the emergency department were occupied. A man sat slumped over with his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees; a woman beside him had her arm around his hunched shoulders. A worried-looking mother cuddled a limp toddler whose eyes were bright and feverish, flushed spots on his cheeks. A father sat with a teenage boy in a sports uniform who cradled his arm, trying to look brave, although he winced with pain every time his father shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair. The atmosphere in the waiting area combined anxiety, frustrated impatience and sadness, laced with the scent of disinfectant. How did the nurse working behind the desk stand it?

  I leaned against the pale green wall, closing my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the glacial pace of the second hand on the wall-mounted clock.

  Sarah returned after a while, leaning beside me. “I got you some water. I know you said you didn’t want anything…”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I took the bottle from her and had a sip.

  And we waited.

  And waited.

  The mother and toddler were called in to be treated, replaced by a woman with curled white hair who continuously wrung her hands. Sarah slipped out to move the car into the long-stay part of the multistorey. Aunt Elizabeth and Ryan arrived, and we exchanged hugs. Ryan brought my bag from home; I slung it over my shoulder, feeling less naked. Aunt Elizabeth went to talk to the nurse at the desk again.

  “What did she say?” I asked when she came back over to us. “It’s been forever. He must be here by now.”

  “He is,” she said. “They’re running some tests and scans on him now. They’ll page us when we can see him.”

  “When?”

  Aunt Elizabeth put a sympathetic hand on my arm. “She didn’t know.”

  “Is he still unconscious?” Sarah asked.

  Her mother nodded. The lines around her eyes seemed more prominent than usual.

  “Uh oh,” Sarah murmured. I looked passed her to see Lily Wilson bearing down on us. She was dressed more neatly than I’d ever seen her, wearing slacks, a patterned blue shirt and sensible black shoes. A cardigan was slung over one arm and her steel grey hair was bound on the top of her head in a severe style that belied her good nature.

  “I’m so sorry.” She swept over to engulf me in a lavender-scented hug. “I wanted to come with him in the helicopter but they said no. I had to drive.”

  “It’s okay,” I mumbled, overwhelmed.

  “Thank you for coming all this way.” Aunt Elizabeth smiled graciously, drawing Mrs Wilson back from me. I gulped an appreciative breath. “David would be grateful. And thanks for checking on him.”

  “Not at all,” Mrs Wilson said. “It was quite the shock to see him lying there beside his ute. The engine was still running, you know, and the door was open. I drove it back up to the house after the helicopter left. Have you heard anything?” She looked around, as though she expected him—or an informative doctor—to materialise before her eyes.

  “Not yet. Soon.”

  Mrs Wilson clicked her tongue and looked past me to see Sarah and Ryan. “Goodness, Elizabeth, are these your children? Haven’t they grown!”

  “Yes.” My aunt looked amused by the suppressed outrage of her adult—or almost adult in Sarah’s case—offspring.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen them in … well, it’s been years.” She gave Ryan a disapproving look. “You look better with red hair.” He smiled stiffly.

  Aunt Elizabeth glanced at us and took Mrs Wilson’s arm. “How about we go to the café and get you something to drink? You must be parched after such a long drive.”

  “Well, I don’t mind admitting I am a little thirsty. Do you suppose they’d do a proper pot of tea?”

  “Let’s go find out. The children can wait here in case there’s news.”

  Sarah looked like she was going to protest at being called a child, but Ryan pinched her arm. She jumped but said nothing as Aunt Elizabeth hurried the older lady away.

  They were almost at the emergency department exit when Mrs Wilson stopped suddenly, escaping my aunt’s grip and hurrying back to us. “Isla, dear, it slipped my mind, what with everything. I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on some days.” Out of the folds of her voluminous cardigan she pulled a large envelope the colour of worn ivory. She pressed it into my hands. “I found this on the passenger seat of your father’s ute when I moved it back up to the house. I thought you’d best look after it for him.”

  “Thank you. I will,” I said, the dutiful daughter.

  She took my chin in her work-roughened hands, tilting my head so I looked up into her face. “Astonishing,” she murmured. “You do look just like her.”

  “What?” I stepped back so she had to release me.

  “Like your mother.”

  “How do you know what my mother looks like?” I asked, exasperated. It felt like everyone knew more than I did, although I knew it wasn’t entirely true. At the very least, Sarah and Ryan were as in the dark as I was.

  More, since I’d met Jack.

  Mrs Wilson reached out and tapped the envelope that I held against my chest.

  “You went through Uncle David’s stuff?” Ryan stepped forward, Sarah flanking him.

  Mrs Wilson had the grace to look abashed. “I had to check whether there was something important in there, something the paramedi
cs might have needed to know. Or it could have been important papers.”

  “Right,” he said, his eyes narrowing to icy slits.

  “You should go get that tea,” Sarah interrupted before he said anything else. His expression was thunderous. “Mum’s waiting for you.” Aunt Elizabeth stood near the sliding door that led past the ambulance station to the main reception. She was looking back at us with a frown.

  “Right you are, Sarah,” Mrs Wilson agreed, hurrying away.

  “I never did like that old bat,” Ryan muttered as soon as she was out of earshot.

  “Her heart’s in the right place,” Sarah said. She’d been quite fond of Lily Wilson when we were younger and I still lived with Dad. When she came to visit, we’d often go across to Mrs Wilson’s farm and visit the latest batch of kittens or ride her fat old horses around the yard. “She did drive all the way in here.”

  Ryan grunted, turning to look at me. My fingers clutched the thick envelope, which felt lumpy in places. I didn’t feel queasy, though, so it didn’t have any iron in it.

  “Are you going to open it?” Sarah asked.

  “Yeah. I want to find somewhere quieter to sit down, though.” The emergency department was still crowded and I’d been standing around for ages. Hours, maybe. My feet ached. And the nurse had said they’d page me.

  “We can’t go to the café,” Ryan said. “She’ll butt in again.”

  “Let’s see if we can find some unoccupied chairs somewhere,” Sarah said, leading the way.

  After some searching, we found a set of four plastic-covered chairs set around a large potted plant. The nook was in direct view of the front desk but hidden from the door leading to the café, so we should be safe from interruption by Mrs Wilson.

  I sat between my cousins. How much of their protectiveness was concern for me and how much was curiosity about what was in the envelope? It didn’t bother me when it was them, though.

  The envelope opened at one end. I reached inside to pull out a smaller, glossy envelope with an old photo lab logo on it. Inside, contained in a series of joined plastic sleeves, were half a dozen strips of photo negatives. A brief check against the fluorescent lights revealed the photos to be of people, the negative eerily reversing the colours and the images so small I couldn’t make out much of them.

  “Can I look?” Ryan asked when I slid them back into their envelope. I handed it to him and reached back into the larger envelope, pulling out a bundle of old colour photos of various sizes. I flicked through them slowly, my heart in my mouth. Sarah leaned her head on my shoulder to look. I barely noticed.

  The photos were of my mother. I recognised her from Ryan’s painting and my dream, but more so from looking at my own reflection all these years. The photos lacked the surreal, ethereal air Ryan had given her. These could easily be photos of a regular human woman.

  Her hair was a few shades darker than my own, almost black, as were her eyes. But those were the only real differences between us, and I wasn’t sure they’d be obvious to a stranger. Her skin was pale, and her face had the same fine-boned shape and smooth forehead. Her eyebrows arched above her eyes, and her lips were full, although hers had the red hue of lipstick in every photo, something I rarely wore.

  There were a couple of photos of her in a wedding dress, holding a simple bouquet of off-white roses. The dress was antique-ivory satin, strapless, with a sweetheart neckline. The bodice sparkled with rhinestones and crystal beading. A chapel train curved behind her, and a veil hung back over her hair, which was also beaded with crystals in a way that reminded me of how my hair had been decorated in my dream.

  In one photo my father stood alongside her, a huge grin on his face. He was slimmer, handsome in a black suit with a white shirt and an ivory tie. His hair was a brighter red, not yet faded to strawberry blond on its way to grey.

  I wondered what he looked like now, unconscious in a hospital bed. Tears stung my eyes. I flicked to the next photo.

  My mother was sitting on a couch, wearing a loose-fitting top with black slacks; I realised after a moment that what I’d thought was an unflattering fall of fabric was actually the gentle curve of a belly early in pregnancy. Dad sat next to her, looking as over the moon as he had in the wedding photo, grinning fit to burst, eyes sparkling.

  More photos of her as her pregnancy progressed, the belly growing more prominent. In the last one, her stomach was so round she looked as though she had a basketball up her shirt, but the rest of her body was still slender and elegant—although her expression showed some of the discomfort in a tightness in the jaw and around the eyes.

  There were no photos of her in the hospital with me as a newborn. I looked at her face in the last photo. What was she was thinking? Had she abandoned me in the hospital, as Aunt Elizabeth had hinted? Was she really a fae, a duinesidhe, like Jack had told me? She looked graceful and lovely in the photos, even the last one, but she also looked human. There was no hint of the supernatural about her: no glowing skin or dresses made of fragments of broken glass.

  “She didn’t smile much, did she?” Sarah murmured. I startled. I was so engrossed in the photos and my own thoughts I’d forgotten where I was.

  “She looks wistful,” Ryan said, adding, “And your dad looks head-over-heels in love.”

  I nodded, lips pressed tightly together, before handing the photos to Sarah and reaching again into the envelope.

  There was one thing left inside: a drawstring bag made of navy-blue velvet. Inside it were dried rose petals, possibly from the wedding bouquet, and two plain gold rings. One was larger, sized for my father, and the other was small. It looked as though it would fit me, but I didn’t try it on. Instead I gazed at it for a long moment, running a finger along the smooth, glossy metal. The ring gleamed from many years of care, with one small exception: on the inside, an engraving had been scratched out. I ran my finger across the frantic indentations, wondering what could have caused them. No accident I could imagine.

  The sight of the scratches chilled me. I slipped the rings back into the drawstring bag, knotting it tight and dropping it in the envelope.

  Sarah flipped back to the wedding photo in which my mother stood alone. “When you get married you should wear a dress that colour,” she told me. “It would suit your skin tone.”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but the hospital paging system clicked and crackled to life.

  “Isla Blackman, please come to the main reception. Isla Blackman.”

  Sarah and Ryan returned the photos and negatives to the envelope and we hurried over to the reception desk.