Secrets in Pelican Crossing (Pelican Crossing #2)

Five

Liz stared at the note. Should she, shouldn’t she? Why now? She thought back to that time all those years ago, a time which was etched on her memory.

She’d only been fifteen, and like all fifteen-year-olds had never considered the consequences of her actions. When the captain of the school footy team invited her to a party, a real grown-up party with alcohol and other substances, it never occurred to her to refuse. All she could think of was that John Barr had noticed her , invited her , that the boy she’d spent the past year pining over had finally asked her on a date.

Knowing her parents wouldn’t approve, she’d told them she had a sleepover with her friend, Chrissie. And she had gone to Chrissie’s, but only to dress in the outfit her parents would never have let her leave the house in, the one she’d bought with the Christmas money from her grandparents, the money she told her parents she’d banked. In this dress and with her makeup, she knew she looked older, old enough for anything.

The party was wilder than she’d anticipated, but she’d joined in the drinking, even agreed when John led her into a bedroom, willing to do anything to please him, even…

After the party he’d dropped her, telling her she was too young, and only a week later was seen with one of the senior girls. She remembered how humiliated she’d felt.

But it was nothing compared to how she’d felt a couple of months later when she discovered she was pregnant .

Her parents had been wonderful. After the initial shock, they’d decided to move from the small country town where everyone knew everyone’s business. Liz left school, her dad got a transfer to the city, and Liz agreed to give the baby up for adoption. Until she held her baby girl in her arms, she hadn’t realised what a wrench it would be, how she’d never forget the sight of her tiny features or the feel of her soft skin against her cheek.

After the birth they moved again, this time to Pelican Crossing where Liz was enrolled in the local school for her final years. It was as if it had never happened, but it had. And now her daughter had contacted her.

She’d always known it was a possibility when she’d added her name to the contact register. But as the years went by – her daughter’s eighteenth birthday, her twenty-first, her thirtieth – she’d given up hope. Now it had happened, she felt numb.

She stared at the note again as if she could conjure up the image of the girl who had written them, no longer a girl, a thirty-four-year-old woman. What would Tara and Mandy think? They had no idea they had an older sister, the result of their mother’s youthful indiscretion. Would they be horrified or accepting? Liz had no idea. Then there was her mother… Liz’s dad was gone, but her mother lived in comfortable retirement in The Haven , a retirement village on the outskirts of town. How would she react to the news that the daughter Liz had given up for adoption had been in touch?

It would be easy to ignore it, but what if Julie decided to turn up in Pelican Crossing? Could Liz wait for that to happen?

It was all too difficult. Placing the card back in the envelope before dropping the envelope back into the drawer and slamming it shut, Liz changed into a pair of three-quarter pants and a tee-shirt and headed to the beach.

The beach was almost deserted. Liz had spent more time lost in the past than she’d realised, and by now most beachgoers would have gone home or to somewhere to have dinner. The tide was out, and she pounded along the hard sand at the edge of the ocean, her thoughts still with the past and the girl who she only remembered as a baby. Julie. It was a nice name. It made Liz think of Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music which she’d watched on television recently with Mandy .

By the time she arrived home again, Liz was exhausted but no further forward in her thinking. Pouring herself a large glass of red wine and lighting the scented candle Tara had given her for her birthday, Liz carried both into the bathroom and ran a hot bath into which she sprinkled a few drops of the relaxing oil she’d received from Mandy at Christmas – one of her younger daughter’s better gifts. Maybe a relaxing soak would help her decide what to do.

But as she took a gulp of wine and laid her head back against the end of the bath, she knew she didn’t have a choice. She needed to meet Julie, to find out what her life had been like, to discover why she had waited till now to contact her, to see what she looked like. Would she resemble Liz, one of her other daughters… or would she look like the boy Liz had tried so hard to forget?

She dried herself off, pulled on a robe, poured another glass of wine, took the envelope out of the drawer, opened her laptop and began to type.