Brothers of the Vine
Forever Evermore
Women of W.A.R.
Fate, hope and desire collide for one special couple in a way they never would have expected. An epic love story, in the tradition of Nicholas Sparks, from bestselling Australian author Mandy Magro.
One split-second choice. A spark of magic. What if your life could be completely different?
Grace Burrows knows her seventieth birthday celebration is going to be an enchanting affair. And she can’t wait to immerse herself in an evening surrounded by family and her closest friends, to waltz across the dance floor as she used to and reminisce over shared memories gathered across the decades. But it’s also the evening she’ll have to finally reveal a secret that she knows will devastate her family – her time left with them is too short to be fair…
Scarred by his war-time experiences and losses, Charlie Wilson knows he’s made a lot of mistakes. Too many. But none greater than ruining his marriage to Grace when they were young. Tonight, as they dance, Charlie is determined to tell her he’s always loved her. But when old feelings and resentments are drawn to the surface, tempers fray and Charlie and Grace are left on opposite sides of the same old argument.
Fate, however, will give them one last chance to be truthful – and as a touch of magic sparks, everything changes…
17 September – modern day
Holding her future in trembling hands, Grace Burrows took one last tear-blurred look at the results of her recent blood test. Her doctor had been gentle when delivering the shocking news, but that hadn’t softened the blow. After thirty-odd years spent nursing people through sickness, she understood surviving this would take a miracle, and her long life had been fairly short on those. But she still believed in the power of prayer – unanswered or not – and the potency of positive thinking. That’s what she needed, now more than ever.
Breathing in deeply, she folded up the document and tucked it into her safe spot – beneath her mattress. There were too many prying eyes in her house to risk such information being seen. Flattening the quilt and then straightening her weary bones, she rubbed her lower back. Arthritis was making her left hip achingly tender, and her knees didn’t have much suspension left. But even though her body was failing, getting older was still a wonderful gift, not least because it meant more time with her daughter and beloved grandchildren.
Taking unhurried steps toward the golden shafts of sunlight stretching across the oak floorboards, she pondered her next move. She had to tell her loved ones the news, but she didn’t know quite how to put it into words. Besides, the timing was off – it would be selfish of her to break it to them now.
She drew a slow, steady breath, then sighed it away. After a day filled with a steady stream of out-of-town visitors, and with only an hour until her seventieth birthday celebrations began, she had sought to steal a few moments to herself before once again putting on a brave face.
Gone were the days where she yearned for companionship and conversation, although it had been lovely catching up with people she hadn’t seen in years. With her deteriorating health, she was well aware it could be the last time, and it made every moment spent with her family and friends bittersweet. Tonight was going to be emotional. She just hoped she made it through without breaking down.
She parted the blackout curtains, passed through the French doors, then raised a hand to shield her eyes. Resting against the wrought-iron railings of her top-floor balcony, she blinked into the stunning view. The setting sun was stealing the warmth of the glorious spring day, and the cool sea breeze stirred the hem of her crimson cocktail dress and brushed the few wisps of silver hair she’d left loose from her chignon against her cheeks. Even after calling Waterside Estate home for the past forty years, she’d never tired of the view. How could she, when the only thing separating her from the softly rolling hills of Moonflower Acres was the soothing lap of the turquoise ocean upon the white-sand shores of Sapphire Bay? Her hometown was heaven on earth.
Her thoughts drifted back. She’d quite often stood here, wondering what her life would’ve been like if she’d stayed at Moonflower Acres, with her first and – dare she say it? – only true love. She was fairly certain she wouldn’t have ever been able to move past the hurt, after he’d broken her heart so categorically. She’d forgiven him for deserting her and their baby girl, but she’d never forgotten the pain of Charlie Wilson’s hardheartedness.
As she gazed out at the myriad boats bobbing in the marina, her late husband’s face came to mind. She smiled softly as she reflexively twisted her wedding band. She adored anything to do with the ocean, but Rodger Burrows had sadly not shared her passion, his predisposition to seasickness making it all too much. ‘Opposites attract’ had been the embodiment of their relationship, and the saying had proved to be both a blessing and a curse. They’d had so many contradictions – their taste in music, religious beliefs, even the way they each liked their steak cooked, and yet she’d loved him so. How could she not? Right from the start, when she’d been a broken, guarded young woman, he’d been gentle with her, simply content in her company, and had quickly proven to be a devoted stepfather. And in all their years together, he had never raised his voice to her, not even once. If only they’d been able to have children, maybe there would have been something to fill the many silences that had hung between them, especially in the later years.
Shifting her gaze closer to home, she admired the gardens she meticulously tended. What had been a row of tiny plants and buried seedlings all those years ago was now a flourishing display of tropical trees and shrubs, bursting with differing shades of blooms, and her lemon, orange and limes trees were abundant with fruit. It was a haven for the birds, butterflies and bees she liked to capture in photos. As with anything in life, consistent love and attention could yield great things.
Gardening had always been one of her three greatest passions in life, along with dancing and baking. She pondered how much longer she had to enjoy such simple pleasures. A month? A year? Either way, she was going to fight until her very last breath. She still had lots of life to live.
Making her way back inside, she eased onto the seat at her mahogany duchess. Not one for lots of make-up, she applied some lipstick and blush, then brought her fingertips to the crinkles framing the corners of her sea-green eyes. Laugh lines, her darling daughter Hope preferred to call them. Grace liked to agree, even though she knew that though she’d laughed a lot throughout her seventy years, some of those lines were due to disappointments and heartbreak.
A knock at the door had her twisting to face it. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s just me, Mum. Can I come in?’ Hope’s singsong voice carried through it.
‘Yes, love, of course you can.’
Grace stood as the door swung open and Hope stepped in, her long cobalt dress whooshing around her ankles and her silky dark hair swishing around her shoulders. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked, spinning, her arms wide and her blue eyes sparkling.
‘Oh my, you look …’ Hope was, and had always been, the spitting image of her father. As emotions overcame her, Grace’s hand came to her mouth, and she blinked faster. ‘… absolutely beautiful.’
‘Aw, thanks Mum.’ Her eyes widening, Hope closed the distance, and took Grace’s hands in hers. ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ She stepped back, her fingers lacing with Grace’s at an arm’s length. ‘You seriously never age, Mum. You don’t look a year older than fifty.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that, but thank you for being so nice, my darling.’ She patted Hope’s hand before letting it go.
‘I’m not just being nice, Mum, it’s the hand-on-heart truth. You’ve got an ageless elegance about you.’ Hope rested down on the edge of the bed, and watched as Grace slipped in her sapphire earrings. ‘Dad asked me to give you this.’ She held out a goldwrapped parcel adorned with a blue ribbon.
A little taken aback, Grace tipped her head to the side as she cautiously took it. ‘Why didn’t he just give it to me tonight?’ A thought struck her – Charlie’s dependability had not been great over the years. ‘He is still coming, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is.’ Hope nodded enthusiastically. ‘I don’t think he’d be game not to, knowing how much Sharni and Rose are looking forward to dancing with their grandpa.’
Grace chuckled – they unquestionably were a bloodline of strong-minded women, and she was proud of it. ‘Ha, yes, I suppose, with three generations of us around to lecture him at the moment, your father would most certainly be in big trouble if he didn’t show up.’
‘You got that right.’ Hope smirked playfully. ‘To be honest, though, tonight has been the topic of conversation with him ever since we arrived last week.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Anyone would think the man’s still madly in love with you,’ she added, giving her mother a knowing look.
‘Mm-hmm,’ Grace replied, brows wrinkling. There was truth behind Hope’s words, and an awareness in her daughter’s gaze, all of which Grace had learnt to turn a blind eye to over the years. Charlie had had his chances – too many chances – all those years ago. And he’d blown them, good and proper.
‘Right, well, on that tongue-tied note …’ Hope pointed to the present, still clutched in Grace’s hands. ‘I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but Dad was hoping you might like to wear it to the party.’
‘Oh, okay.’ After sitting down beside her one and only child, Grace carefully peeled the elaborate wrapping paper back, revealing a little velvet box. ‘He’s bought me jewellery?’
How … odd.
She was almost too afraid to open it.
‘Well, come on, Mum, the suspense is killing me.’ Hope bounced on the spot.
Her heart thudding, Grace flipped the box open, and the sight of what was inside caught her breath. The sapphire and diamond brooch instantly dragged her back. She’d forgotten all about it, though the nostalgia it brought was raw and real and ever so powerful.
She went to speak, but her mouth was too dry to move, and her mind was too enfolded in the past to string a sensible sentence together.
Hope placed a gentle hand on Grace’s knee. ‘What is it, Mum?’
Grace felt a surge of emotions, born from days gone by – happier days, when all had seemed beautifully attainable, with Charlie by her side. They’d had so many dreams for their future, had shared so many promises to be able reach those dreams.
Looking back, as she had many times over, they’d been so naïve to believe it was going to be achievable.
‘Mum, are you okay?’ Hope’s voice was laced with concern.
Harnessing all of her inner strength, Grace cleared the emotion from her throat and found her voice. ‘This is the brooch your father bought me in our second year together, a few weeks before he decided to go back to that dreadful place, on that hopeless mission.’ She lifted it from the box, and looked at it as if for the very first time. ‘All those years he was missing, spent hoping and praying he would be found alive, that he would come home to us …’ Overcome with resentment, she choked on her words, and had to take a moment to regather herself.
‘Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that.’ Hope’s tone was soft, and her blue eyes were filled with compassion. ‘Even though I was only a little girl, I still remember praying with you, asking god to bring him back to us.’ She took a moment, sniffled, then smiled through her own heartache. ‘But as I’ve said to you before, I don’t believe Dad valued finding the missing American soldier who saved his life, or being in the army for that matter, more than he treasured you or me.’ She half shrugged. ‘He was just a desperate man living with a tonne of guilt that he didn’t know how to deal with. Going back to Vietnam and trying to find that man, or his remains at the very least, so he could have a proper burial, was how he dealt with it.’
Grace drew in a long, steady breath. ‘Darling, I know more than anyone how it was for your father was when he came home from the war. But he promised me he was done with the fight, and that my love was enough. So I will never understand how he could leave his wife and eighteen-month-old baby girl behind, and go back to the very place that ruined him.’ She brought her teary gaze to Hope’s. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret marrying Rodger, but I do often wonder, if I hadn’t been so vulnerable at the time, desperate to somehow fill the void your father’s desertion had caused, and had waited that little bit longer, if your father and I would have made things work.’ She sniffed back her welling emotions, and smiled sadly. ‘Too little, too late, now, hey.’
‘I suppose we’ll never know, Mum.’ Hope regarded her with equally sad eyes. ‘So it’s no use beating yourself up.’
‘My sentiments exactly.’ Reining her emotions in, Grace stood and carefully pinned the brooch to her dress, admiring how it looked in the mirror of her duchess. ‘I can recall the day I gave it back to your father, too. The very day he boarded the plane for Vietnam. It feels like it was only yesterday …’
Grace’s voice trailed off as she remembered Charlie at the front door, six years older and shocked to see she’d re-married, this very brooch in his hand. He’d desperately tried to explain why he’d gone MIA, his foolish belief that losing his leg when he’d stepped on the unexploded buried bomb meant he wasn’t man enough to return to her. She’d both loved and hated him so much in that moment.
‘You weren’t to know Dad was still alive, Mum. How could any of us have known he was living in some hut in the Vietnamese jungle while he searched for that lost soldier? Or that when he failed to find him, he’d come back to Australia and was in Sydney, basically on the streets, for two years?’ Hope sighed, and rose from the edge of the bed. ‘But all that aside, as much as you two infuriate each other, I know you both still love each other very much.’ She slid her arms around Grace’s waist, and rested her chin on her shoulder, regarding her mother in their reflections. ‘And that means the world to me, knowing my parents had me out of pure, unconditional love.’
Grace turned and cupped her daughter’s rouged cheeks. ‘You, my darling, are the greatest accomplishment in both my life and your father’s and yes, when we had you, we were both very much in love.’
‘I know you were.’ Hope rested her hands over her mother’s. ‘And as much as you refuse to admit it, you still are.’ With Grace scowling, Hope’s sad smile gave way to a cheeky one. ‘On that note, I better get back downstairs and round up the girls and Kelvin.’ She groaned, rolling her eyes playfully. ‘I swear, I spend half my life telling them to hurry up, all three of them are highly trained side-trackers.’
‘And you do a very good job of running the ship, my darling.’ Grace leant in and brushed a kiss on Hope’s cheek. ‘I’ll be down in a few minutes, okay?’
‘Of course it is, take your time.’ She regarded Grace with tender adoration. ‘I love you so very much, Mum.’
‘Love you too, my sweet girl, with all my heart and soul.’
With one last meaningful look between the two women, Hope padded out. As the door clicked shut, Grace felt the urge to delve a little deeper into the past that was now at the forefront of her mind. She knew she didn’t have much time, but she walked over to the wardrobe, eased down to her knees on the sheepskin rug, and then dug behind her shoe rack. There, hidden away for all these years, sat the small suitcase she’d first used as her travel bag as an eighteen-year-old girl and which she’d eventually come to store her keepsakes in. Pulling it toward her, she dusted the top off and unclipped the two latches. As she lifted the lid, wistfulness stole her breath. Time slowed, stalled and rewound. Sat atop everything were the two pairs of booties, ones she’d knitted while dreaming of what their twin boys would look like. She’d even picked names for them – Hudson and Bryn. Her heart squeezed tight as she lifted each bootie out and pressed them to her cheek.
She’d never got to meet her boys – her miscarriage at five months had robbed her of that chance – nor had she ever told anyone about them, not even Charlie. Nor would she ever. Some secrets were better kept.
Tired of staring at his bedroom ceiling, Charlie Wilson groaned as he rolled onto his side and gradually pushed himself up to a sitting position. Gazing out the bay windows to where the sun had all but vanished behind the mountain ranges that backdropped Moonflower Acres, he saw a crescent moon and the first star beginning to peek out of the darkening sky. Shifting his gaze across the water, first to the glowing lights of Grace’s grandiose home and then to where tonight’s festivities would be held, he gruffly rubbed a hand over his face, hoping to goodness Hope had made the right decision in holding the party at the very place his childhood sweetheart had long ago dreamt of turning into a seaside teashop. He knew he was partly responsible for the fact that she never had, and hated himself for it – but it was too late now to make it up to Grace. An entire lifetime had passed them by.
Besides, Rodger Burrows had played his part too, steering Grace off what she’d believed to be her predestined path, though Charlie held little comfort in not being the only one to blame. As much as his beautiful daughter had asked him over the years, if not for himself, than for her mother, he’d never been able to find it within himself to forgive Rodger for stealing his girl. Or, as Grace had once brought to his attention, maybe it was actually himself that he found impossible to forgive, for breaking her heart, for leaving her to believe she was widowed for all those years, for not initially being the father figure to Hope that he’d promised to be.
Grace had deserved better than either of them, and merited way more love than either he or Rodger had ever given her. Rodger may have believed that financial security was the way to a woman’s heart – if that were the case, Grace would be the happiest woman in Sapphire Bay – but Charlie knew Grace better than she liked to admit, and had witnessed the loneliness that had lingered in her striking green eyes in all the years she’d been by Rodger’s side.
As for himself, he’d been young and stupidly trusted that if he could go back to the place that had torn him apart, he could somehow put all his broken pieces together and finally be the man he believed Grace needed him to be. Yet, here he was, more broken than ever, mind, body and spirit. He now understood that all she’d ever wanted was for him to let her in, to love her like he meant it, to be there as a husband and as a father, to walk beside her, hand-in-hand, toward all of their dreams. That understanding came too little, and far too late.
Closing his eyes, he shook his head. It hadn’t been a lot for her to ask of him. If only he could’ve seen this at the time, done things differently. If only he’d been less self-centred, if only he hadn’t gone back to Vietnam because he felt he owed his life to Sergeant Joseph Baker and his war-widowed wife, if only they hadn’t met with that long-buried IED in the derelict building, if only he hadn’t gone into hiding while he’d tried to come to grips with being an amputee … then maybe they’d have been right where they’d envisaged being. Here. Together. Happily in love.
The if-onlys were what ate away at him, as did the fact he’d never get a second chance to devoting himself to the one and only woman he’d ever truly loved with all his heart and soul. It was a regret he’d take to his grave as a lonely old man, a fate he truly believed he deserved.
His heart hurting with the agonising contemplations, he heaved an almighty sigh, as the weight of his past remained upon his shoulders. Regardless of his inner turmoil, he needed to snap to the present moment and get a damn grip. He’d tried to nap for the past couple of hours, unsuccessfully, and it was now time to put on his leg and his happy face, for Grace, Hope and his two beautiful grandchildren. So he grabbed his prosthesis from where he’d rested it up against the bedside table and placed it beside him on the mattress. Sliding the cotton sock over his stump, he skilfully eased the prosthetic leg on – more than half a lifetime of doing so had afforded him the experience to make it sit perfectly. He was grateful for the advances in the medical field over the years; this prosthesis was much more comfortable than his last few.
One single second.
One wrong move.
Boom.
The life he’d known was well and truly over.
Fate, hope and desire collide for one special couple in a way they never would have expected. An epic love story, in the tradition of Nicholas Sparks, from bestselling Australian author Mandy Magro.
One split-second choice. A spark of magic. What if your life could be completely different?
Grace Burrows knows her seventieth birthday celebration is going to be an enchanting affair. And she can’t wait to immerse herself in an evening surrounded by family and her closest friends, to waltz across the dance floor as she used to and reminisce over shared memories gathered across the decades. But it’s also the evening she’ll have to finally reveal a secret that she knows will devastate her family – her time left with them is too short to be fair…
Scarred by his war-time experiences and losses, Charlie Wilson knows he’s made a lot of mistakes. Too many. But none greater than ruining his marriage to Grace when they were young. Tonight, as they dance, Charlie is determined to tell her he’s always loved her. But when old feelings and resentments are drawn to the surface, tempers fray and Charlie and Grace are left on opposite sides of the same old argument.
Fate, however, will give them one last chance to be truthful – and as a touch of magic sparks, everything changes…