Sisterchicks Down Under Read online

  Praise for Robin’s Sisterchick novels … from one Sisterchick to another

  “I read Sisterchicks in Sombreros, and I couldn’t put it down. Every time I pick up one of Robin’s books, the theme seems to speak to exactly what I am going through in my life at that exact moment!”—KELLI

  “I just discovered the Sisterchick novels, and I love them! I identify in so many ways with Robin’s characters. Her books have not only taught me about myself, but they’ve taught me so much about the personality of our wild and wonderful God.”—ANDREA

  “While I was reading Sisterchicks on the Loose! I realized I had shut God out of my life for far too long. I got my heart right with God, and a week later I met a new friend who has almost instantly become my Sisterchick! My life would be so empty right now if your book hadn’t showed me what was missing. Thank you, Robin!”—DARLA

  “I just finished Sisterchicks do the Hula! and had to tell you how wonderful it was! I really can’t put into words how this book touched me, deep down in my soul. Like I was thirsty for something and your book was a cool drink of water. As I was reading the last page, I had tears in my eyes, not wanting the story to end and thankful that I could come along on the journey also. Thank you so much!”—LISA

  “I just had to write and tell how much I love your Sisterchick books. My best friend and I love reading them together. Your books go into a place deep in my spirit and remind me that God IS a faithful and a loving Father. We both agree that you have a way of saying things that express exactly how we feel but didn’t know how to say it!”—MELISSA

  “I just finished Sisterchicks do the Hula! and I loved it! Actually, I found myself sneaking into the bathroom away from my loving husband and ever-present children to read more. You have written marvelous fiction that leaves me feeling closer to God.”—MARY

  “A coworker has me hooked on your books, and they are fabulous! A bunch of us at work decided that we’re Sisterchicks, and we can’t wait for the next adventure, because we’re all going to read the book simultaneously and discuss it at lunch. Thanks for making work a fun place to be all of a sudden!”—LAUREN

  “I am from the UK. Last weekend I bought Sisterchicks on the Loose! I can honestly say I never in my life read a book so fast! I laughed out loud, even cried in places, and struggled to put it down. It made me realise I, too, have a Sisterchick who should be treasured.”—TRACEY

  “A friend gave Sisterchicks do the Hula! to me for my birthday. I couldn’t put it down. I’m thirty-five and feeling way too old for my age. Thank you for the breath of fresh air. I felt like God had you write it just for me!—KARA

  “I just finished Sisterchicks on the Loose! and loved it. In fact, I devoured it. I hated to see it end. It had to be one of the best books on friendship that I have read. Love your sense of humor; I laughed out loud many times reading it. You have such a heart for Jesus and a wonderful spirit.”—DEBBIE

  “Thank you for the return trip to Oahu this morning! [Sisterchicks do the Hula!] It is snowing and sleeting outside, but I was enjoying the beautiful blues that only Hawai’i has. Thank you for giving me a ‘garland of hosannas’ and for reminding me to do the hula with God’s rhythm of grace.”—MARBARA

  OTHER BOOKS BY ROBIN JONES GUNN

  Gardenias for Breakfast

  SISTERCHICK NOVELS

  Sisterchicks on the Loose!

  Sisterchicks Do the Hula!

  Sisterchicks in Sombreros!

  THE GLENBROOKE SERIES

  Secrets

  Whispers

  Echoes

  Sunsets

  Clouds

  Waterfalls

  Woodlands

  Wildflowers

  GIFT BOOKS

  Tea at Glenbrooke

  Mothering by Heart

  Gentle Passages

  www.sisterchicks.com • www.robingunn.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SISTERCHICKS DOWN UNDER!

  published by Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

  © 2005 by Robin’s Ink, LLC

  Sisterchicks is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

  Scripture quotations are from:

  The Message

  © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002

  Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group

  The Holy Bible, New King James Version © 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Holy Bible, New Living Translation © 1996

  Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  HOLY BIBLE: EASY-TO-READ VERSION

  © 2001 by World Bible Translation Center, Inc. and used by permission.

  Multnomah is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

  and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  The colophon is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication 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 written permission.

  For information:

  MULTNOMAH PUBLISHERS, INC. • P.O. BOX 1720 • SISTERS, OR 97759

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gunn, Robin Jones, 1955-

  Sisterchicks down under! : a Sisterchicks novel / Robin Jones Gunn.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56344-6

  1. Canadians—Australia—Fiction. 2. Women travelers—Fiction. 3. Australia—Fiction. 4. Sisters—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3557.U4866S5625 2005

  813’.54—dc22

  2004029514

  v3.1_r1

  Acknowledgments

  With a grateful g’day to the wonderful people who contributed to this story:

  Ross, my one true love.

  Bill, my visioneer.

  Don, Doug, Brian, and Kevin, who sent me down under in search of a good story.

  Bruce and Paul, who met me in Sydney and gave me a bag of Cheerios to feed the kangaroos.

  Mike, Noel, and Ted, who showed me the best of their beloved New Zealand.

  Susanne, you are a gifted hostess. Thank you for opening your heart and home to me. Loved your Pavlova!

  Frances, thank you for taking me to corners of New Zealand that will never leave my heart.

  Carol, Joanne, Penny, Robin, Tania, and Tracey you amazing women proved my theory to be correct: Sisterchicks are everywhere!

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  Mostly what God does is love you.

  Keep company with him and learn a life of love.

  Observe how Ch
rist loved us.

  His love was not cautious but extravagant.

  He didn’t love in order to get something from us

  but to give everything of himself to us.

  Love like that.

  EPHESIANS 5:2

  Age is just a number, right?

  That’s what I thought until three years ago when my younger brother opened his big mouth. He was on his way to Mexico to settle the legal details on some property his wife had inherited when he stopped by our home in southern California. His life seemed brimming with new adventures, while Tony and I were riding the overly-committed-to-the-schedule freight train we had been on since we got married.

  Over dinner my brother joked about his receding hairline. “You know, Kathleen, you’re halfway there yourself.”

  “No I’m not.” I pulled at the strands of my straight brown hair to prove that my dependable mane wasn’t falling out.

  “I meant your age,” he said. “You turned forty-five last month, right? You could be halfway done.” He seemed to wait for me to do the math.

  I always hated math.

  I felt as if an equation had etched itself on the chalkboard of my mind: 45 + x = ?

  I didn’t know the answer.

  What had my forty-five years added up to so far? What was the value of x that would fill the remaining years? What would the sum of my life be? And what risks was I willing to take to solve the equation?

  Apparently God can use all things—including math—to prepare a hurried heart to respond to Him when He’s about to do a new thing. If I hadn’t been pondering the “value of x” for so many weeks after my brother’s visit, I don’t think I would have been ready for what followed.

  In the middle of the night, Tony’s old boss, Mad Dog, called from Wellington, New Zealand, to offer Tony a three-month position film editing at Jackamond Studios. Ever since the success of The Lord of the Rings, Wellington had become the location for up-and-coming filmmakers. Tony saw the job as the big break he had been waiting for. I saw it as an opportunity to step off the edge of my well-padded nest and take a free fall into the unknown.

  After all, our daughter was in college, and we were no longer financially responsible for my mother-in-law’s convalescent care. Tony and I could do this. We could leave everything for three months and have the exotic travel experience we had only dreamed about during our college days.

  I always do my best thinking while shaving my legs in a tubful of bubbles. The two weeks prior to our departure for Wellington, I had the smoothest legs and the most wrinkled fingers in all of Los Angeles.

  I’d thought through every detail and confidently arrived at the airport with everything I needed. Everything, that is, except one item I hadn’t tucked in my suitcases or sent ahead in the boxes. I didn’t pack a single friend. After spending most of my life in the same city, same church, and same circles, I suddenly was minus my built-in community of friends.

  Looking back, I now see how unnatural it was to change a well-established migratory route in the middle of life and expect my wings to start flapping in rhythm as soon as I took the free fall. It shouldn’t have been such a surprise that I fell so hard. After all, everything in my world had flip-flopped.

  I think it was necessary, though, for me to tumble as far down under as I did. Otherwise, I never would have stumbled into the Chocolate Fish on a fine fall Friday in February with feathers in my hair. And that’s where I found Jill.

  If Jill were the one telling this story, she would say that’s where she found me. But I’m saying that’s where I found her. It had become clear that to solve the math problem written over this season of my life, I needed one more whole number. That little number was one. One new best friend. Jill.

  Jill likes math. She sees math in art and nature and isn’t afraid of the unknown equations. Two years ago when she and I stood in front of a painting at an Australian art museum in Sydney, she opened my eyes to the beauty of balance and symmetry, and that’s when I began to make peace with math.

  But before I flutter through our story, I will add one more important point. I believe the reason I found Jill wasn’t so much because I was looking for her, but because she was waiting for me, hanging by her painted toenails on the edge of her own empty nest.

  During the two weeks before we left for New Zealand, every day felt like a storm at sea. My husband turned into a ruthless commander, as the intensity of it all swept us through our final days in California. When the storm subsided, I found myself washed up at an unfamiliar airport on the underside of the globe.

  The only comforting sight was the grinning face of Tony’s boss, Marcus, aka “Mad Dog,” who met us at the baggage claim in Wellington. He punched Tony in the arm. “What did you think of that flight? Was I right about its being a marathon film fest? How many did you watch?”

  “Five. No seven. No, I think it was five.” Tony’s adrenaline-induced gaze seemed frozen on his face.

  Mad Dog adjusted his frayed corduroy cap. “Do you want to eat something first or go right to your new place?”

  “Home,” I said, as if it were a secret password that would lead me into this new world. All I needed was my new space around me so I could start fluffing up things the way I liked. Then I would be ready to remind myself why this had been a good decision.

  “Home it is. Hope you guys like this place. I told you how hard it is to find housing near the studio, didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Tony said. “And we really appreciate all you did to find us a place. I’m going to owe you big time.”

  “You can pay me back with a few hours of overtime.” Mad Dog loaded our luggage into the back of a van he had borrowed from Walter Jackamond Studios.

  “How many hours are a ‘few,’ Marcus?” I asked.

  He let out a single gut sound that resembled a cross between a cough and a guffaw. In the twelve years we had known him, I still hadn’t gotten used to his laugh.

  “You have to start calling me Mad Dog,” he said. “No one here knows me as Marcus. And when I say a few hours, I mean …”

  He didn’t finish his sentence, but I realized I already knew the answer. For the next three months, Jackamond Studios would occupy my husband’s every waking hour. Not only because they were behind schedule on the project for which they had hired Tony but also because my husband never did anything halfway.

  “Hey, it’s Gollum!” Tony pointed to the roof of the terminal. An enormous model of the bald, grim-faced Middle-earth icon peered down on us, looking like a gigantic alien that had fallen to earth and gotten his foot stuck through the roof.

  “I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I said.

  Tony gave me a gratuitous wink at my attempt to make a joke. I gripped the car door’s handle. Not because of Tony’s wink or Gollum’s glare, but because Mad Dog was driving on the left side of the road.

  Tony laughed. “This is wild!”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Mad Dog said. “Only took me a week when I moved here. Maybe less.”

  I expected an oncoming car to ram into us any moment. Everyone was going the opposite from what my brain said was correct. Mad Dog drove past a row of low-rise buildings, and I tried to take it all in. Stop lights, a normal-looking city bus, lots of small cars, billboards—and all of a sudden an Esprit store. All the evidences of Western civilization were here; yet it felt so different.

  “There’s the Embassy,” Mad Dog said with reverence. He pointed to a pale yellow vintage square building. Fixed on the roof was another creature born in Tolkien’s imagination. This one looked like a swooping black dragon with a long neck.

  “How strange that the U.S. Embassy would have a dragon movie prop on top of it,” I said.

  Mad Dog and Tony both looked at me as if I were an alien creature, who had just stuck my foot through the roof and landed in the same car with them.

  “What?”

  “Kathleen,” Tony said patiently, “that’s not the U.S. Embassy. That’s the Embas
sy Theatre. And on the roof that’s a fell beast ridden by a Ringwraith.”

  I kept a fixed expression and didn’t blink, waiting for Tony to give me a few more hints as to why that should ring any bells.

  “Remember the photos we saw of the premier? Opening night?”

  “They still had Gollum on the roof of the Embassy for the premier,” Mad Dog said. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t recognize it.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m sure that’s the reason.” I diverted my gaze out the window. I hoped I wouldn’t be tested on any more Lord of the Rings trivia before we completed the last few miles of a very long journey to our new home.

  We turned onto a narrow road and followed a pristine bay that skirted Wellington like a fancy azure petticoat. Thousands of houses dotted the low, rolling green hills that rose from the bay.

  I noticed that some of the trees were beginning to drop their leaves. Autumn was coming to the globe’s underside. At home I had left budding jacaranda trees. My going away party at work had been decorated with fresh tulips and spring daffodils. Here, the leaves were turning gold.

  I was in a flip-flopped place, inside and out.

  Mad Dog slowed the van as we entered a residential area. “See that house over there?” He pointed at a tidy bungalow that was about eight hundred square feet big.

  “That place just sold for the equivalent of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. U.S. dollars. Not New Zealand dollars. Like I said, it was amazing I found a place near the studio for the exact rent you said you wanted to pay. And it comes with a refrigerator.”

  I should have known when he listed the refrigerator as a plus that I should brace myself.

  “If you don’t take it, another guy at work wants it.”

  “I’m sure we’ll want it,” I said.

  Tony voiced his agreement.

  Mad Dog stopped the car. “This is it. What do you think?”

  I peered out the car window at another bungalow-style house. The first thing I noticed was the grinning figurine standing his post in front of a narrow row of yellow and orange mums. I’d seen a number of lawn gnomes in my day and a pink flamingo or two, but this was the first ceramic hobbit I’d ever seen guarding a flower bed.