Read Online The Ripple Effect by Elisabeth Rose - Free Book Online

like to go?” he asked.
    “The café down there is fine.” She pointed to the left where a blackboard advertising a coffee and cake special stood on the footpath. “I don’t have a lot of time.”
    “Lead on.”
    He’d prepared his tactics in the intervening hours, sitting on a bench high on the headland overlooking the sea. Don’t offer information unless she asks. Be vague but truthful as far as was possible. The more he sat and thought about the situation the more unreasonable and difficult it seemed. Natalie and William had effectively ensnared him in their lie and the longer it was perpetuated the worse it would become. Dad was right. The burden was heavy already and could only become more and more crushing. Ripples spreading out in ever widening circles.
    Leaving without meeting Joelle was an option quickly discarded. He wanted to sit and talk to her. He’d waited far too long to pass up this opportunity. She fascinated him and he wanted to explore her, discover any similarities they may share, personality quirks, likes and dislikes, tastes, passions. Everything he’d missed throughout his childhood. And that she’d missed albeit unknowingly.
    Did she feel she was a good fit with her family, her sisters? The physical similarities were superficial at best. Already he could see she was nothing like Natalie despite the blonde hair and blue eyes. Her mouth curled up at the corners where Natalie’s was a straight line. Joelle’s eyebrows arched naturally. Natalie’s were plucked into submission.
    She didn’t resemble William at all, apart from a slender build common to all of them. Her features were far more delicate. Had she questioned the differences? And what about the sisters? Were they alike?
    “What brings you to Sunshine Point?” she asked as they began walking in the direction of the café.
    “Family,” he said.
    “Family you don’t know? You said you’d never met the woman you bought the flowers for.”
    “The connection is distant. I’m trying to trace someone. Through my mother’s side of the family.”
    They reached the café and Joelle stepped inside ignoring the outdoor tables with their shade umbrellas. Shay followed, glad she’d chosen indoors where there was less chance of being spotted. All he needed to complete the guilt was William or Natalie to see them together. He had to take the risk of being reported by the waitress. But so did Joelle, apparently. The girl was giving her some very strange looks.
    “Hello, Jo,” she said. She placed menus on the table.
    “Just a flat white, please,” said Shay. “How about you, Joelle?”
    “Cappuccino please, Annie.”
    “Sure.” Annie scooped up the menus and retreated to the counter where she eyed them both from behind the espresso machine.
    “Friend of yours?” he asked.
    Joelle shrugged. “We went to the same school. Not really friends. She’s younger, knows my sister, Melanie.”
    Shay nodded. “I suppose everyone knows everyone pretty much here. My home town’s the same.”
    “I thought you were a Sydneysider.”
    “I live there now but I grew up in a little country town called Birrigai.”
    “I’ve never heard of it.” She smiled. “Sorry.”
    “It’s up north in the Tamworth area.”
    “I’ve lived here all my life and I definitely want to leave.”
    “Do you? Where do you want to go?”
    “I want to travel overseas. Japan, mainly. I took Japanese at school.”
    “To study Ikebana in Japan?”
    Joelle gasped. “Yes, exactly. How did you guess?”
    Shay smiled. “An educated guess. I put two and two together. Flower arranging plus travel to Japan.”
    “I want to do that and I want to run my own business one day. I’d like to do something more artistic too…” She smiled tentatively as if she expected him to laugh at her dream. “Have you travelled much?”
    “I’ve been to New Zealand.”
    “I haven’t even done that,” she said.
    “You can one day, you’re nowhere near thirty yet.”
    “How