Winter's Bite

Chapter 17

'So, where will we go today?'

Aunt Louise looked across the table, expectantly. I gazed out the kitchen window at bare fields beyond the farm-yard. A weak winter sun shone, bright, if with little warmth. Black birds wheeled across a cloud-covered sky. I'd had a lie-in. Everyone else had breakfasted and departed. Only my aunt and I remained. I stared at her, blank-faced. I'd forgotten she'd said we could do something on Saturday. That conversation seemed like a year ago, so much had happened since.

'Um.'

I wrinkled my forehead in thought, then remembered something I wanted.

'You can tell me who Jeb is.'

The smile dropped off Aunt Louise's face.

'Why?'

I considered telling her about the strange man at the accident that killed my parents and how my mother shouted 'Jeb.' But I remembered how the police had looked at me when I told them. They hadn't believed me. Why should Aunt Louise?

'Uh, my Mom mentioned him, but she didn't say much,' I prevaricated.

Aunt Louise sighed. 'I suppose I should have expected this. Its natural you'd want to know all you can about your mother.'

She hesitated, eyes distant, recalling old memories.

'You're mother was beautiful,' Aunt Louise began.

I nodded. I knew that.

'Boys liked her but although Erin had many friends, girls and boys, she didn't seem attracted to anyone in particular. She liked spending time alone too.'

That sounded like the Mom I knew. She had friends, most teachers like herself, and sat on several charity boards organising fundraisers, but she also liked shopping trips alone. 'Me time,' she'd call it, or 'Thinking time.'

My Dad had teased her about abandoning us. We knew he didn't mean it. Remembering how happy they were together choked me up. My aunt saw my eyes fill.

'I'll stop if it's too painful.' She reached across the table, covering my hand with hers.

'No, don't stop. I want to know.'

Aunt Louise waited while I recovered.

'Erin began coming home smiling for no reason. Daydreamy, head always somewhere else. Or with some-one else,' Aunt Louise smiled. 'I knew those signs. I nagged her to tell me his name but she wouldn't. I couldn't understand it. We'd been close. I thought Erin told me everything but now I had to drag from her even the information she'd met him around here. I thought Erin meant he was a local lad. Eventually I got a name. Jeb. I didn't know any local lads called Jeb.'

Aunt Louise took a deep breath. Pain flitted across her face.

'A few months later Erin disappeared. Then it come out she'd been seeing a Haimon boy named Jeb, meeting him in the hills. I got up courage and asked a Haimon woman about him. I thought he might know where Erin had gone. But she said Jeb had left. I thought maybe he and your Mum had run off together.'

Aunt Louise sat back.

'That's all I knew until years later Erin sent me a postcard telling me she'd married your father and about you.'

I thought hard. So Jeb had been Mom's old boyfriend. Then the man from the car crash couldn't be Mom's Jeb. He'd been too young. So why had my Mom shouted 'Jeb' twice before she died?