‘Thank you for coming over last night. It was very thoughtful of you.’ Stella gushed a little and Ava stared. Her mother caught the look. ‘Lorenzo and I met at last year’s races. Do you remember, Ava?’

Ahhh. Now she remembered seeing him in the crowd. ‘I did think you were familiar.’ Her mother had been flustered and unlike herself at the time. Behaving pretty similarly to this, actually. She’d thought then that it was just not her mum’s scene in her unaccustomed heels, though there’d been a small crowd she’d stood with. A merry crowd. ‘How lovely.’ This delightful man obviously remembered Stella very well.

‘Have you decided to settle in Australia, Lorenzo, or are you having an extended holiday?’ And her mother worried about her future with Zac. Italy was a long way away, so did this even have a future?

‘My son is settled, so I will not be far. I retain my villa in Italy, but my plans are fluid for the moment. It is not the place that is important but the people.’ This was said with a long look at her mother.

Her mother actually blushed and Ava caught Mim’s look. Her grandmother’s satisfaction dusted the situation with another layer. If Mim was happy, and Hana avidly interested, then this situation had a history she’d been unaware of. But then that was fair. She hadn’t talked to her mother about the true situation with Zac.

By the time Lorenzo had left, Ava was pretty darn sure her usually sober mother was slightly drunk with infatuation. Of all the left-field occurrences, this was the biggest she’d seen for a while, Zac notwithstanding.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Stella

It was after morning tea, on the fifth day since Ava had arrived home, when Stella May climbed the rocky hill to calm the agitation in her chest. The others were out in the back paddocks somewhere, and she’d cleared the benches and tidied. But the tablecloth of her family stability felt as if it were fraying at the edges on all sides and her own inner turmoil wasn’t helping anyone.

For the last few days, Stella had watched her daughter battle to keep the heartbreak out of her eyes and her hands to herself. Stella knew just how that felt. She never saw Ava touch Zac, except for that day of hand-holding that never returned.

She saw that Zac listened to Ava with intent concentration and appeared to soak up everything about the world that was Setabilly Station with avid interest, but the distance between them was growing and Stella suspected it was a kindness of Zac’s doing that he had taken a step back.

In Ava, Stella saw the aching loss, and the gradual acceptance that while Zac had no memories, he would return to Sydney and the relationship would progress no further than the making of a ‘lovely’ friendship.