Sundown Crossing Read Free Page B

company in the Barossa. I believe it’s a fair one, according to the property agent I’ve been in contact with.’
    Carla’s head was beginning to spin. Property in the Barossa, offers to sell it. A new link with family other than the Bardolinos in Italy. It wastoo much to take in, especially an hour or two after her father’s funeral.
    ‘May I?’ Angie asked, looking at Carla for her permission to read the offer.
    When she did, her lips formed an ‘O’ and a low whistle came out. ‘My God, are they serious?’ She passed the letter on to her friend. ‘They’re offering you a small fortune.’
    Carla’s eyes rounded at the sum of money being offered by a Mr Luke Michaels of the Michaels Realty Marketing Company. If she sold, her financial worries would be over. She could move up to Valley View and continue to develop her father’s dream—something he had wanted her to do, though when Derek had been alive, such a move had not been possible. Her late husband had had no interest in vineyards and they’d stayed in Christchurch, so Derek could be near his beloved ocean. She, being a dedicated landlubber, had never quite understood Derek’s passion for the sea but she’d respected it.
    ‘Will you sell Krugerhoff?’ a curious Peter asked Carla.
    ‘I’m not going to rush into making any decisions until I’ve thought everything through. Perhaps I’ll even go to the Barossa and check the place out for myself.’
    ‘Why would you do that?’ Tom wanted to know. A steely glint flickered in Carla’s eyes and he recognised it because it was a carbon copy of the way her father would look when he was determined on a particular course of action.‘You’ve just told me I have family, Tom. Family I never knew about. I’d like to meet them and I’d like Sam to have the opportunity of knowing them, even if Dad was the black sheep of the family. Australia’s considerably closer than Italy, and less expensive to get to, where I have lots of cousins. But first I intend to read my father’s journal and then I’ll decide.’
    Carla wriggled into her bed attire, an extra long T-shirt that had belonged to Derek. On the nightstand stood her father’s journal. It was thick—more than two hundred pages of her father’s neat, spidery writing. For a few seconds she was tempted to open it and start reading but her heart wasn’t in it. She was too emotionally drained from the day’s events to concentrate on what it contained. She would look at it first thing in the morning.
    Yawning, she looked across at Sam in the other single bed, and studied his sleeping form. She moved towards him, took his thumb out of his mouth, his habit left over from babyhood, and smoothed back his straight, ginger hair before tucking the doona up around his shoulders—he was a restless sleeper and tended to throw the covers off during the night.
    He had been good today. At the cemetery and later, helping with the food and being so polite. Dear, brave little mite that he was. Hadn’t shed a tear either. Her dad would be proud of that. But this, another sadness after the death of his father.It was making him grow up too fast and shortchanging him of his childhood.
    ‘I’ll make it up to you, Sam, that’s a promise, son,’ Carla whispered. ‘One day you’ll have the best of everything and if I have my way, other family members to love you…’

CHAPTER TWO
    D awn was peeping over the window sill, lightening the spartanly furnished room when Carla woke. Her sleep had been filled with strange, disturbing dreams and she knew she would not rest, or be able to make any decisions, until she read her father’s journal. She shivered as she got out of bed. The morning air was decidedly cool. Wrapping her dressing gown around her she checked to see that Sam was fast asleep then picked up the journal and tiptoed over the polished timber floors out to the living room in her father’s small house.
    He and Angie kept a very neat home, everything in its