Carry Me Home

  Praise for Carry Me Home

  “In Carry Me Home, Dorothy Adamek gives a familiar tale a fresh Australian twist. With gripping characters, a playful romance, delightful writing and heart-rending moments, this novel held me tight and wouldn’t let me go. Why, this gifted writer even makes mud romantic! A sterling debut!”

  –Sarah Sundin

  Award-winning author of Through Waters Deep

  “As irresistible and winsome as a Phillip Island sunset, Dorothy Adamek’s Carry Me Home is beautifully written and a lyrical portrayal of the power of forgiveness.”

  –Siri Mitchell

  Author of Like A Flower In Bloom

  “Reading Dorothy’s debut novel is a walk with friends from the cliffs to the sea. The first steps take your breath away by the beauty, the next leave you laughing at calamity at hand, and the rest leave your heart full for the good company. Each word is profound – shells lovingly placed by the author to be gathered and kept. When you reach the shore, you do it with tears in your eyes and a realization that you are changed.”

  –Joanne Bischof

  Award-winning author of This Quiet Sky

  Carry Me Home

  Dorothy Adamek

  Carry Me Home

  Crabapple House Publishing

  © 2015 Copyright Dorothy Adamek

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Author: Adamek, Dorothy, author

  Title: Carry Me Home / Dorothy Adamek.

  ISBN, e-book: 979-0-9944572-1-9

  Subjects: Historical Fiction. Phillip Island (Vic.)—Fiction. Australia—Fiction

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  First Edition, 2015

  Kindle Edition

  Cover design by Kelli Standish, PulsePoint Design

  Cover images by BigStockPhoto

  Cover photography by Jason Lau Photography

  www.dorothyadamek.com

  Dedication

  To my parents, Bill and Sophie Tassios.

  Thank you for letting me read past my bedtime.

  You knew when to hold me, and when to let me go.

  To my darlings, Sophie, Tom and Matt.

  Thanks for offering to tattoo Finella and Shadrach onto your arms. That won’t be necessary but I so appreciate the way you’ve cheered your mama’s crazy author ride. You three are the very best.

  To my Beloved, John.

  You knew when you married me that writing was a part of my world. You had no idea how much it would become a part of yours. Thank you for believing in me, sending me away to write, to grow, and become who I am today. None of that would have happened without your strength and generosity. I am blessed to see the world through the endless possibilities you joyfully share with me. Embracing the author dream is but one of these joys. Doing life with you is all the joy.

  Acknowledgements

  “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.” Benard Meltzer

  Rel Mollet, you are this friend. You kept the song alive. You saw the storyteller in me and there’s no part of this book you have not added to with your wisdom and instinct. I don’t know how God decided two Melbourne Bretho-girls should meet in an Indianapolis hotel bar, but He did, and I am richer for it.

  Catherine Hudson, not a day goes by when I don’t thrive on your love and wise encouragement. Narelle Atkins, you never let me forget my writing always belonged to me and fought like a mother bear to keep it that way. Alison Tassiou and Christian Daly-Thomson, no one does legal high kicks like you two.

  Kerryn Tepe, you listen and make me laugh more than anyone can, and there’s no way I could ever measure your place in my world.

  Preslaysa Williams, Elaine Fraser, Jalana Franklin, Alexandra Marbach, you critiqued early versions of Carry Me Home. Margie Lawson, you taught me to write. And edit. Jason Lau, you captured the setting with your camera. Julie Gwinn and Kelli Standish, you edited and created cover art and clothed my book for the marketplace. Thank you, each one.

  Sarah Sundin, Siri Mitchell and Joanne Bischof, you blessed me with your reading time and endorsements. You opened that door for this debut author. And I thank you.

  And to the many who’ve prayed and invested their hearts, to those who’ve shared in my anticipation, I owe you my most humble thanks.

  And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

  Which watch not one another out of fear;

  For love, all love of other sights controls,

  And makes one little room an everywhere.

  The Good-Morrow

  John Donne

  1

  July 10, 1875

  Aboard the Aurora

  Departing Liverpool for Australia

  Aunt Sarah says I must mark the days.

  She says they are, each one, touched by God and I must look for His fingerprint at day’s end.

  Each afternoon while Father naps in his adjoining cabin, Aunt Sarah says I am to listen for coughing and attend to him, as always. And in the stillness of our ocean crossing, I must write in this journal Aunt Sarah calls my Everlasting.

  Wrapped in organza remnants from my wedding ribbons, this journal is nothing of my mother’s by which to remember her. Bound with a leather spine, it’s a clean book of alternate parchment and tissue sheets. Each turn of the page brings the whispered lift of a translucent veil, the crackle of stiff paper. And perhaps, even permission to confide more than I care to speak aloud.

  Charged to fill it with the evidence of God’s goodness, Aunt Sarah insists I add pressed petals from my new homeland. Something beautiful. Worthy. At least in her eyes.

  Already I dare to disobey.

  With England disappearing through my porthole in sea mists of grey and blue, I fear I may never again see God against the backdrop of my birthplace. So I entrust this parting thought to my Everlasting.

  I, Finella Mayfield, promise to look for and collect God’s fingerprint in a strange land chosen for me by my father. I promise to become wife to a man I’ve never met, and live the life designed for me since my girlhood. My motherless girlhood, which already stretches six long years since my fourteenth winter.

  And I promise to never forget the days I leave behind and the mother stolen from me by a wretched thief.

  May God have mercy on the sinner. For I have none.

  Phillip Island, Australia

  September 21, 1875

  Shadrach Jones lugged a small crate of spring potatoes from his wagon to the little church house.

  Not that their bachelor preacher, George Gleeson, would know what to do with them. Still, George would be grateful, and there wasn’t much Shadrach wouldn’t do to repay the debt he owed.

  “Brother!” His sister Molly ran ahead, her boots clapping against the verandah boards. “Brother, come quick. Bad things.” She beckoned with her rag doll, a flag of waving calico.

  Accustomed to her simple-minded ways, Shadrach took his time crossing the yard. The beach twinkled like a tempting emerald through the tea tree gully, and somewhere not too far off, seaweed steamed in the sun.

  “We’ve only just arrived, Molly. What could possibly be wrong?” Dust still swirled in the churchyard fro
m their ride into the village. “We don’t say ‘bad things.’ We say, ‘I need some help, please.’ Remember?” He juggled the crate and patted her rosy cheek. The cheek of a little girl trapped inside a young woman’s body.

  “But, it is bad things.” Molly pouted. “Something bad happened. In George’s house. Look.” She pointed to an upturned chair on its side in the kitchen doorway, and a trail of wood chips that snaked across the normally spotless kitchen floor.

  Shadrach stepped inside. The starched tablecloth hung askew and dangled like a lopsided grimace, exposing the well-scrubbed tabletop. Molly followed and righted a cup from a tea-stained pool of spilt brown sugar.

  Muffled voices echoed from the front of the house and fear needled the hair on Shadrach’s neck. What had happened in the little church house?

  A fire withered in the grate, and along the brick hearth, kindling lay scattered like an abandoned game of pick up sticks.

  Louder voices escaped the front room, followed by a tortured cry, the kind of cry only uttered by the wounded. Shadrach dropped the potato crate. More than spilt sugar threatened the morning and he wanted to rush to the trouble, but Molly whimpered. And Molly always came first. She folded her rag doll under her chin, and a pinch of regret tumbled somewhere in his gut like the vegetables rattling in his box.

  He knew better than to spook his sister. He drew her close.

  Mrs. Lawson, the plump housekeeper, appeared in the doorway. She fanned her sweat-flushed face with her apron. “It’s young Mr. Gleeson. Snakebite.”

  Molly squeezed Shadrach’s hand, and his lungs tightened in reply.

  “Snakebite?”

  “Probably copperhead, but doc’s not sure. You two stay right here. Snake must’ve been sleeping in the woodpile, but who knows where it is, now? I found him on the floor when I got here, already delirious. Mumbling about a ship in Melbourne.” She stabbed the fire with a poker and dragged the chimney crane and cast iron kettle over the wakening flames.

  “But he’ll be fine. Won’t he?” Shadrach spoke the words as if no other answer applied. Not with Molly listening.

  “Doctor’s in there now. Almost did my heart in. Running all that way to fetch him.” Mrs. Lawson wheezed, but nothing slowed her efficient service to their beloved village preacher. She folded the tablecloth and teacup into a tidy bundle.

  “Sit here, Molly.” She patted a chair. “We don’t want a repeat of your last visit, do we? It’s beyond me why a girl like you gets dragged all over this island.”

  This old story? Now, of all days? Shadrach knotted his arms across his chest, but it didn’t keep his heart from sinking. He blew out a slow breath. “Molly’s perfectly happy with me on my errands. Last time was an accident, you know that. She was meant to stay indoors.”

  “Meant to and did are two different things, my boy.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “The girl nearly fell in Spencer’s well. Word is, you let her stumble from one disaster to another.” Her frown mellowed. “May not be the time to say so, but a young farmer like you needs a better plan if you hope to keep your sister out of harm’s way.”

  Shadrach didn’t know what Mrs. Lawson had heard about Molly this time, but if his gut could be trusted, today was not the day to try to undo village gossip. He looked beyond the kitchen door. But the room held him in like a fox in a trap.

  The housekeeper swept the dust and wood chips into a pile. “Poor Mr. Gleeson. I found him halfway between this life and the next, right here.” She tapped the spot by her feet with the broom bristles.

  Molly pumped his hand. Mouth open, she hung on every frightening word. Shadrach squeezed back.

  Why was it that whenever he needed to get cracking with urgent farm work or make a simple trip to the village of Cowes, he also needed one eye fixed on his sister?

  You know why.

  One guilt-filled glance told him exactly why he’d always protect her. Molly shared his black hair, blue eyes, and love of mischief. But unlike Shadrach, the world of grownups did not await her.

  A gentle breeze from the doorway tugged her hair, already loose at her temples, and she brushed it away with the back of her free hand. A well-known ache dragged across his chest like a rusty anchor tangled in a reef.

  He saw it every day, but the scar from cheekbone to hairline shattered his heart each time he spied it. At fourteen, Molly still looked like the young girl he’d played with when they were children. He couldn’t get her long black plait to sit like their mother used to, but given the number of sleepy-eyed-smiles she wore when he did it his way, he was doing something right. Most days he managed to keep her out of the well, the bush, and the sea. And that was good enough for him.

  Mrs. Lawson arranged herself in a chair with an enamel pan in her lap to peel potatoes and carrots. “I best get a pot on to boil. Doctor may let George take a little vegetable broth.”

  Shadrach exhaled, his stomach fist-hard at the mention of food. How many times had he warned George about snakes in the bush? Had he ever told him they came right into the house? Mrs. Lawson peeled a potato in one unbroken curl and he watched mesmerized. Had he warned his friend properly? Had George even seen the menace at his door?

  “Mrs. Lawson?” The doctor’s low voice boomed from the bedroom. “I’m almost done. But our patient is making an almighty fuss about something. If that’s Shadrach Jones we hear out there, you’d best send him in before our preacher boy crawls out of bed. If he comes looking for him, that’ll kill him faster than the snake bite.”

  *

  Shadrach squeezed past the doctor, who took leave of the sick room with a cheerless shake of his head. The iron bed took up most of the floor with a large chest of drawers against one wall. Draped by a green velvet curtain, a narrow centered window faced the sea. Bloody cloths filled the corner washstand, and an acrid smell crowded Shadrach’s throat.

  “I hear you’re converting snakes, now.” He tried to smile.

  George beckoned. “Help me sit.”

  Shadrach drew him up as if he were Molly’s rag doll. Fresh vomit stained the preacher’s shirt and sweat beads darkened his blond hairline. Shadrach dragged a chair closer to the bed and sat on its edge.

  “Shad… you’ve got to get to Melbourne. My mentor, Reverend Mayfield, and his daughter arrive sometime today….tomorrow….” George winced and closed his eyes. “I wish I could go, but…” He turned his bandaged wrist over as if an iron manacle clamped him to the bed frame, to the floor, and to his fate.

  Shadrach gnawed the inside of his cheek. Nothing would happen to George. Would it?

  “Do something for me, will you? Open that trunk under the window. Get that wad of envelopes. They’re letters from the Mayfields.”

  Shadrach found the parcel wrapped in a thin leather strap.

  “Two years ago, when Rev. Mayfield’s daughter turned eighteen, he suggested we correspond.” George managed a half-baked smile. “Miss Finella was a child when I left Chingford Green. But she’s not a girl I left in the village anymore and our friendship’s blossomed to an agreement of marriage.”

  An unfamiliar blush pooled against the preacher’s neck. “I thought it best to wait for her arrival to share our news.”

  Shadrach pressed his back against the chair. Since when did George have himself a girl? Any other day he would’ve slapped his friend on the back and whistled through smiling teeth. But not today. Not with limbs wrapped tight and hopes unraveling fast.

  George closed his eyes. “They’re coming,” he whispered.

  Shadrach leaned in. Was he delirious with fever? He looked down at the letters, unsure how to continue. “Now, listen—”

  “I want to marry Finella.” George ignored him. “But if something happens, I need to know they’ll be cared for. Rev. Mayfield’s frail. He’s chosen Australia for the better climate. For the sun and …” He looked at Shadrach, a newfound alertness in his eyes. “Please look after them, Shad. I think of them as family, and there’s no one I trust more than you.”

&nbs
p; Shadrach hardened his grip on the letters. He didn’t like where this was heading. “No need to trust them to anyone but your good self.”

  But George wasn’t listening. “The top letter will tell you where to find them. In Melbourne. There’s a photograph, too. Miss Finella, she’s beautiful, and all you need to know is in those letters. Promise me you’ll look after them.”

  “I won’t have to, because you’ll be—”

  “Please, Shad.” Their eyes locked. “Don’t fob me off. I need to hear you say it. Will you look after Finella, as if she were your own?”

  Shadrach stared at his friend. One by one he gathered the meaning of George’s words, like a man forced to decipher his fate in a foreign language. As if she were… his own?

  George extended his bandaged hand. “Promise?”

  From outside the door, the scrape of Mrs. Lawson’s footsteps pressed Shadrach to answer. His heart tripped, as if he were the one with venom in his veins. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, brother. You know that.”

  George relaxed his shoulders a little. “Good. Because, I especially mean Finella. Would you care for her, as I would?”

  Astonished at the madness of such promise making, Shadrach grabbed the outstretched palm of his friend. Once again, he had no choice. And once again, he would promise. No matter what the cost.

  “As if she were my own.”

  2

  Finella slid the Everlasting into her traveling bag and breathed in something new. The ever-present smell of the sea held a hint of land today. Something earthy. Green and grassy.

  Wind off the Australian coast gathered the memory of sickness from her father’s empty cabin. It blew through the very chamber where he’d died and stormed the ship’s canvas in a cleansing puff.

  Finella would have liked to puff. Even just a little. To shake the grief from her frame and blame the sea for taking the only man she’d ever loved. Instead, she braved the arrival without him. Her neck held high. Her hopes a little lower.