Christmas at Waratah Bay Read Online Free PDF

silence.”
    “I can imagine,” she said faintly. “Thirteen . . . ”
    “They’re okay,” he said, with satisfaction. “All of them. I’ve helped out—the youngest have been able to go to university—but I don’t interfere with their lives and they know not to interfere with mine. Here, I listen to wildlife at night. Here, no one barges into my headspace and demands I take responsibility for things I had no hand in creating.” He shrugged, thinking of the past chaotic Christmases and the Christmas he’d envisaged this year. More silence. He still valued it above all else, but now . . . he had to share. It was only for a couple of days, though. He might as well make an effort to be sociable.
    “So what about you?” he asked. “What’s your story? You don’t seem to be doing family for Christmas.”
    “Why do you think I’m here?” Harold was her family, she thought, or the closest thing she had to it.
    “So, where have you been for the last ten years?”
    “Not here, and of course I should have been. Moving on, Mr. Ramsey.’
    “Hey, I got personal.”
    “Yeah and I asked, but there was no deal about reciprocation. Are these the pines?”
    “Yes, they are.” He glanced at her face but she was looking resolutely impersonal. Don’t go there, her look said. Okay by him, he decided. He was the last to push personal boundaries, but he would like to know.
    Her face said he wouldn’t get an answer.
    Right. Pine trees. Christmas trees. Moving on. “You choose and I’ll chop,” he told her.
    She glanced backward into the truck tray, at the massive chain-saw, and suddenly the wooden expression on her face disappeared. Mischief took its place.
    “With that?”
    “That’s the idea.”
    “Can you choose and I’ll chop?”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Harold taught me to use a chain saw.” She beamed at the memory. “It was awesome. Harold was the coolest teacher. I’ve chopped trees down that were at least ten feet tall!”
    “Wow!”
    “We were working up to the big guys when I . . . when I had to leave, but I know the techniques down pat. I cut a wedge out of the side where I want it to fall and then I slice from the other side and I yell before I do. I need to be very careful or I’ll brain someone. If I promise not to brain anyone and you hold onto the dogs, I’d love to try.”
    “You’ll get your shoes dirty.”
    She looked down at her pristine white trainers and wriggled them in front of her.
    “Excellent,” she said, sounding supremely satisfied with the way this Christmas was working out. “That’s what I’m here for.”
    *
    So he stood and watched her as she chopped down her Christmas tree. It wasn’t exactly a dangerous job. The tree was barely four inches thick at the trunk, but Sarah was taking no chances. She worked with a precision that would have done Harold proud. Her only problem was controlling the great beast of a chain saw. It roared into life and she rocked. Max would have supported her—or better yet, taken it away from her—but she shook him away.
    “This is girl’s work. Stand back, Mister.”
    So he watched as somehow she guided the massive beast into cutting a neat wedge on her decreed felling side, then stood back, set the chainsaw down on the bed of pine needles around them, spat on her hands and wiped them on her jeans, checked the dogs were well behind Max—and then moved forward for the final cut.
    The chain saw touched, and Sarah’s yell of “Timber!” made Max and the dogs practically jump out of their skin. Even over the noise of the chainsaw, her yell was blood curdling.
    And her tree fell, exactly where she wanted it. She swiped her hands once more, grinned a grin of supreme satisfaction and then went forward to examine her “kill.”
    And Max had a sudden vision of Harold teaching a much younger version of Sarah how to do this. Harold must have loved it, he thought. He must have loved Sarah.
    Max was starting to see