The Australians' Brides

Or else I’m kidding myself to think our kiss was that important to him, even in a negative, let’s-forget-it-ever-happened way, and he’s just building a mustering yard.

Whatever that was.

Going outside to find Carly several minutes later, she saw that Lockie and the two men were ready to leave. They were taking the chunky four-wheel-drive truck that Jac had seen garaged in a shed, and its rear tray was filled with the pile of heavy fence posts that Callan had warned Jac and Carly away from last week because of the snakes that might be living underneath.

Callan stood on top of the posts, tanned legs braced and broad shoulders working loosely as he casually caught the tools that Pete tossed up to him. He wore sturdy work gloves—possibly as a concession to the snakes—khaki shorts that came halfway down his thighs, heavy boots and the ever-present hat.

He looked so gorgeous like that—so physical, so strong, so much in his element—it made her ache.

Last night made her ache.

He waved at her and she waved back, starting to smile.

Then he turned away.

She stood like a marble statue, rocked by the strength of her response to the sight of him, stomach dropping at the brevity of that wave, hoping none of it showed. He was saying something to Pete, whose full head of white hair contrasted in the sunlight with skin that looked like hot chocolate fudge, dark and shiny.

Callan was definitely avoiding her.

Leaping down from the rear tray, he went around to the driver’s side of the vehicle and climbed in, calling Lockie at the same time. “We need to get going, mate.” Lockie scrambled into the middle of the front seat, Pete climbed in after him and Callan revved up the engine.

The truck circled out of the yard in the usual boiling mass of dust, bouncing its cargo of fence posts noisily up and down. Pippa and Flick stood in the back like sentinels and barked at the rush of air that increased as the vehicle picked up speed. Carly and Josh ran from the dust, shrieking as if pretending it was chasing them like a monster, up the veranda and into the house.

Callan waved at Jacinda again through the dry, choking curtain. Lockie and Pete did the same, and then they disappeared from sight heading down the track that headed toward the alleged road to Adelaide.

Jacinda’s breathing went sharp in her chest and she was shocked at how vulnerable she felt. Because of one kiss? Because it hadn’t ended with the promise of more? Because Callan’s wave and turn told her he’d meant what he’d said, last night, and the fact that he hadn’t stopped to introduce her to Pete only served to emphasize his state of mind?

Or just because she wasn’t going to see him all day?

“I’m too emotional. It’s just stupid,” she muttered, moving aimlessly around the yard as she listened to the ebbing sound of the engine.

But she’d always been this way. She knew it. Could manage to pep talk herself out of it sometimes, if she was really careful about it. Today it might be tough, because there was so much going on inside her. Yesterday, she’d felt so alive. Exhilarated. Proud of herself. She’d jumped into that water hole. She’d heard the echo of her voice thrown back from the rocks like a battle cry.

All of that was still there in this potent mix of feelings, but she didn’t know what to do with it, how to match it against Callan and his apparent rejection.

There was more to his reaction than met the eye. She felt sure of it. With time, she would understand and it would be all right.

Give it time, just give it time.

Turning to go back inside the house, the sudden certainty calmed her spirit, gave her direction, but then she hit the shade of the veranda and the certainty ebbed just as suddenly as it had come, the emotional transition as sharp as the physical one between heat and shade.

Callan wasn’t Kurt.

Kurt was the king of complex, incomprehensible reactions, shifting layers that you had to peel back and pick apart. Callan was probably as simple and uncomplicated as he seemed. He’d kissed her. He’d defeated that initial impulse of curiosity and chemistry between them. He’d decided that any kind of involvement was a mistake. He’d stopped. He didn’t want it to happen again, and he’d told her so.

Get a grip, Jacinda.

In the kitchen, Kerry was kneading bread dough, while Carly and Josh bickered over LEGO in the next room. Josh still acted more protective of his territory than Lockie did. He wasn’t quite convinced that Carly’s presence at Arakeela Creek was a plus. “I need all the curved bits for my tower,” Jac heard him say.

“But I’m making a tower, too.”

“I started making my tower, first. You’re not old enough for LEGO. Your fingers aren’t good enough.”

“Yes, they are.”

“They’re not, and anyway, I started my tower, first.”

Kerry and Jac looked at each other, wondering about intervention. “Give it another minute?” Kerry suggested.

“Can you teach me what to do with the bread, while we listen and hold our breath?”

Kerry laughed. “That’s about right, isn’t it, holding our breath?”

“I wonder why Carly and Lockie do so much better together. He’s that much older, I guess, and she’s less of a threat to his space.”

“More than that.” Kerry paused for thought and thumped away at the elastic ball of dough, flinging it with some violence onto a floured wooden board. The nearest store was several hours away, so if you wanted fresh bread out here, you made it yourself. When Jac smelled it baking, every second day, she practically drooled.

“Josh is like Callan, I think,” Kerry said after a moment. “He works hard to get his life just the way he wants it, and then he doesn’t like it to change.”

“That’s Callan?”

“It’s a part of Callan.” Kerry paused in her thumping and began to knead, pushing the dough away from herself so that it stretched into an oval, then folding it toward herself again and rotating it ninety degrees. The fluid efficiency of the movement said that she’d done this thousands of times before. “Which makes him sound too rigid, doesn’t it?” she added, shooting a sharp look at Jac.

“I wouldn’t say he was rigid, from what I’ve seen of him,” she answered carefully.

“No, he’s not. I’m glad you can see that. He just … needs time with some things.”

They were both silent for a moment, and the air felt a little too heavy, too full of meaning. Kerry seemed extra alert to nuances today, watchful somehow.

Watchful of me. Watchful of Callan and me, and the way I react to his name.

Jac didn’t know if that was a good thing, or not. What had Kerry thought about the two of them taking so long to retrieve Lockie’s Game Boy last night? What had she sensed in the air between them?

“Want to have a go at this, then?” the older woman said eventually.

“Can I? Will I ruin it? I’ve never made bread before. Should I thump, or knead?”

“I’ve done enough thumping. It releases the gluten in the flour, makes the bread lighter and more elastic. And it’s good for working out your aggression.”

On cue, they heard Carly’s voice rise in an angry scream. “You did that on purpose!”

“Somebody else is working out some aggression, I think,” Kerry drawled. She strode out to the children, the firm rhythm of her feet signaling a no-nonsense approach. “Joshie, we need to work this out,” Jacinda heard.

She began tentatively kneading, thinking that Kerry was probably the best equipped to handle the situation, in this instance. Kneading bread dough was tougher than it looked, however.

Push, fold, quarter turn. Push, fold, quarter turn. Tougher than it looked, but it felt good. The dough was like a baby’s skin, satiny smooth and warm from its first rising. The dusting of flour slipped across it like talcum powder on that same baby’s tush. Push, fold, quarter turn. Physical, creative, satisfying. Human beings had been doing it for thousands of years.

Kerry and Josh discussed LEGO towers in the next room—the possibility of two towers, of coordinated efforts to make a whole village of towers, square ones as well as curved, of Carly being the assistant and Josh helping her with bits that were too fiddly for her fingers. Eventually hurt feelings were soothed and territorial impulses reined in.

“We’ll see how long it lasts,” Kerry drawled again when she returned.

“And that’s what Callan was like?” She couldn’t help talking about him, despite what Kerry might think.

“Actually, no, he was pretty good at sharing,” the older woman answered. “They’re close in age, him and his sister. Nicky’s only fifteen months younger, so he never had to adjust to her as something new. As far as he was concerned, she was always there.”

“And she lives in Adelaide, now? Is that right?”

“A couple of hours north of there, the Clare Valley. She studied agriculture and married a farmer, but he has vineyards, not cattle.”

“You must have found it hard when she moved so far away.”

“To be honest, Clare was better than I’d hoped. I was afraid she might end up in Sydney or Perth!”

“Still, is it hard to keep in close touch?”

“Not with a bit of effort. We e-mail a lot, and take turns to phone each other every week. Sundays usually. Tonight it’s my turn. I send her drawings from the boys and she sends me magazine articles and newspaper clippings and we gossip about those. Silly things like celebrity marriages. We’re big fans of Prince Frederik and Princess Mary! But I’d communicate with Nicky by carrier pigeon if I had to. I don’t think it really matters what you talk about, either, if it helps you stay close. And I’m getting my first granddaughter in two months! I’ll be going down to stay with them, then.”

“That’s wonderful.”

Except that Jacinda was a little regretful that she’d nudged the conversation away from Callan. She had an itchy, secret urge to talk about him that she couldn’t remember feeling since her teens, when telling her friends, “I don’t even like Matt Walker,” had given her the delectable excuse to say a certain male classmate’s name out loud.

“If Callan doesn’t like change, we’re probably imposing on you even more than I’d realized, with our visit,” she said after another moment of silence.

“I shouldn’t have said it. I’m not putting it the right way.” Another pause. “I’m thinking about Liz, not about you and Carly.” The words came out in a rush, as if Kerry might regret anything she said too slowly.

“Oh, okay.”

Kerry divided the ball of dough in two and began shaping each piece into a log, ready for the greased loaf tins she had waiting on the countertop. “You see, thinking about the future, about the boys, about how lonely Callan must sometimes feel—how lonely I know he feels—I worry that any woman who’s not Liz is going to scare him too much. He’s never been any good at asking for help. Which means he’s going to have to get past the fear on his own, and I’m not sure how he’ll do it. Or if he can.”

She opened the oven door and it squeaked. After putting the tins on a lower shelf, she spread a damp dish towel on the top shelf. Jacinda knew that in the moist, tepid space of the oven, the loaves would rise to a high dome shape over the next hour. Squeak went the oven door as Kerry closed it again. Neither she nor Jacinda had spoken.

It’s my turn, though.

Talking like this, in the middle of routine household chores, made it easier to tackle tough subjects, she decided. When you were silent as you gathered the right words, other activity was still going on and the silence didn’t seem so difficult.

“I think … I wonder if …” she tried after a moment. “I think he’s stronger than that, Kerry.” She thought about what he’d said yesterday about yelling and jumping to get rid of the fear. He had his own strategies. They might not be the ones suggested in the hospital leaflets—he didn’t want them to be the ones in the hospital leaflets—but they were strategies, all the same.

Kerry looked eager, as if she itched to talk about Callan, too. “Has he said something to you? Has he talked much about Liz?”

“Not much. A little. He’s said—”

“No, please!” She warded off Jac’s words with her hands. “Don’t tell me what he said. I’m not asking for that. But I do worry.”

“Of course you do.” Jacinda was a mother, just as Kerry was. She knew. “But I think Callan at least does know what he’s fighting in himself.” He’d talked about the fear, and this made more sense now. The fear of change. The fear, if Kerry was right, of there being no one in the whole world to match Liz. “And you know, Kerry, when you understand the enemy, that’s always an advantage.”

“True. He is a fighter. In his own way. Always in his own way!” She laughed, and ran water into the electric jug, which she then placed on the countertop and plugged in.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.”

“The boys do him a lot of good. Lockie, now that he’s getting older.”

“It’s funny,” Jac said. “Before I had Carly, I always assumed I’d be the big influence on her. That I’d make her who she was. And of course I am doing that. But I think she’s changed me more than I’ve changed her. I never realized that would happen, that kids had such, oh, influence. Kerry, does that make sense?”

“It does.”

They talked about it a little more—kids and change, Callan and Liz. Nothing earth-shattering. Some of it a little tentative, still. But nice.

“Are you having coffee?” Kerry asked. “It’ll only be instant.” The electric jug was about to boil.

“Instant is fine. I’d love a cup.” Jac got the coffee down from the shelf while Kerry found two mugs and poured the boiling water in, leaving plenty of room for Jacinda’s big dollop of milk. Kerry had filled the jug just an inch or two higher than she needed, and rather than waste the precious water, she poured it in to soak the mixing bowl she’d used for the bread dough. Jac made a mental note to take more care with saving water from now on. Her shower, this morning, for example …

“Is it a pain in the butt, doing that?” she asked suddenly.

Kerry looked surprised. “Doing what?”

“Thinking about saving water all the time. Every drop. Pouring the dregs from the electric jug into the dough bowl. Piping the shower and laundry water out to the garden so it gets used twice.”

“I guess I don’t think about it, it’s such second nature. It’s part of living here, and I love living here.”

“Teach me, won’t you? Don’t let me do the wrong thing, here, without thinking. Make sure you teach me.” All at once, for some reason, the words meant more. She wasn’t just talking about saving water. She was talking about Callan.

Teach me about Callan.

Don’t let me do the wrong thing with Callan.

If Kerry understood, she didn’t refer to the fact directly. Instead, she poured milk into the two mugs, gave Jacinda’s the extra zap in the microwave that she liked. Handing Jac the hot mug, she took a big breath.

“Callan and Liz were too alike,” she said, at the faster pace she seemed to use when she wasn’t quite comfortable with what she was saying. Her voice had dropped, too, in case there was any chance of Josh listening in the other room. “I don’t want to say that, because it sounds critical. I loved Liz. I was so happy that Callan had found someone like her, someone who belonged here and belonged in his life. If I could have, I would have gone in her place. People say that. But I really would have gone in her place.”

“I know you would.”

“They were the kind of couple that grows together. Like two trees, the way trees shape each other sometimes. They would even have looked alike, after fifty years. She was the kind of wife a man should have for fifty years. She was so safe for him, though. It made it even harder when she died.” She looked across the top of her coffee mug, her expression appealing for Jac to understand. “Does that make any sense at all?”

“You mean, if their marriage had been more of a challenge …?”

“Yes. Callan would have been equal to a more challenging marriage. And it might have left him …” She slowed and stopped, stuck for the right words. “Better prepared.” She shook her head impatiently. “It still sounds wrong. I can’t put it right. I can’t say it without it sounding like I’m criticizing him, or her, or their marriage.”

“No, but I understand.”

And I wonder what it is that you’re not saying. I’m not used to this, Kerry. I haven’t had a woman like you in my life before, to talk to. I lost my mother too soon, and I was never close enough to my aunt, so, no, I’m not used to this.

Are you telling me that I could be good for Callan, even if I’m nothing like Liz? Because I’m nothing like Liz? Do you want me to be a part of his awakening from grief, Kerry? Or are you warning me away because I could never truly belong? I’m only here a few more weeks ….

Despite her best hopes, despite the creative act of helping with the bread, despite playing with Carly and Josh, and working in the garden, Jac stayed restless and uncertain and churned up inside all day.

At four, she needed more air and space than the homestead and its garden could provide. “I thought I’d go for a walk down to the creek, Kerry, if that’s all right with you,” she told Callan’s mother. “I’ll take Carly with me.”

“Leave her if you’d rather,” Kerry answered. “She’s quite happy with her drawing, and I’m making them a snack in a minute.”

“Thanks. All right, then. I will leave her.”

Not knowing how long it would take her to walk this restlessness away, Jac was happy that Kerry had suggested leaving Carly behind. She really wanted to stride, breathe, think uninterrupted thoughts. She drank a big glass of water, found her hat and sunglasses and set out, following the fence line down to the wide swathe of dry creek bed, the same way they had gone yesterday on horseback.

When she reached the creek, however, she turned north along it instead of south, wanting to explore some new ground. Keeping to the creek bed itself, she covered the distance slowly because the sand was deep in some places, uneven in others, and there were stretches of rock and smoothly worn river stones as well.

The late afternoon was pleasantly still—cool in the shade and hot in the sun. She heard birds overhead, and disturbed a couple of lizards. If there were snakes, they had sensed the vibration of her footfalls and disappeared before she caught sight of them, as Callan had said they would.

She didn’t want to think about Callan.

“Five days down, twenty-three to go,” she said aloud to the eucalyptus trees. She had to make some decisions about the future. At least examine the possibilities.

It was frightening how little pull she felt toward home. Pull? More like dread. Running through a mental list of California friends as she’d done many times before, she couldn’t think of a single one who would risk alienating Kurt by taking her side, or by helping her in any way. They’d support her with lip service as they’d done since her separation from Carly’s father, but nothing more.

Lip service wasn’t enough.

And who did she have farther afield?

She thought about her two brothers, and her father, back east, and knew she’d let those relationships slide more than she should have done. She could have phoned or e-mailed more often, over the past few years. She should have made more of an effort to see her brothers for holidays.

It wasn’t enough of an excuse to say that they hadn’t met her halfway, even though it was true. If she’d worked harder at it, kept pushing, giving something to the relationship, they surely would have seen some value in getting closer to their little sister after a while. Their kids were almost grown, but teenagers might have loved a cute baby cousin.

She thought about the way Callan and Kerry had stayed so close yet still managed to give each other space, thought about the love in Kerry’s voice when she’d talked about Nicky hundreds of miles away, her coming baby, all the ways they found to communicate, and the determination when Kerry had said that she would contact Nicky by carrier pigeon if there was no other way. Families didn’t just chug along like magic, maintenance-free engines. They had to be worked at like anything else.

Jacinda had never made a conscious decision that working on her relationship with her brothers was important to her but she could make that decision now.

Was it too late?

If she’d had a pen and some postcards in her pocket, she would have scribbled greetings to her brothers on the spot. If she’d had a car, she would have jumped into it and zipped to the nearest—

Store.

What “nearest store”?

It was well over a hundred miles away.

Still, the idea of making contact, even with such a trivial, tentative first step as an e-mail or a postcard from outback Australia, stayed with her and felt important. She’d have to ask Callan. Maybe he or Kerry had some cards. Or maybe they were planning a trip into Leigh Creek soon—they did that fairly often, she thought—so she could buy some, to replace the ones she’d left in Sydney in a panic. She felt more confident about being able to write postcards, now.

But how did the mail plane work? Where did you get the postage stamps? Definitely, she needed to talk to Callan.

And it was probably about time to turn around and start heading back.

The journey back along the creek bed seemed farther than she would have thought, and she realized that she’d lost track of time while she’d been thinking about her future and her family. The color of the sky had begun to change. If she didn’t soon reach the line of fence marching at right angles into and across the creek, she might miss it in the fading light.

No, here it was, at last, just visible. In the distance, as she climbed through it and up out of the creek bed, she saw one of those familiar trails of dust. It marked the track that led from the main road to the homestead, which meant it had to be Callan, Lockie and Pete returning from their long day’s work just in time for a good wash before the evening meal.

Her heart lifted and lurched at the same time.

Callan.

Who’d kissed her last night and then turned away.

Callan, who got his life the way he wanted, and then resisted change, which was pretty much the opposite of what Jac needed to do. Her life wasn’t the way she wanted it, right now, but changing it was easier said than done.

Thinking about this and not about where she was going—it was getting hard to see the detail of the terrain, despite the huge yellow full moon rising—she tripped on a loose rock and instinctively grabbed the top line of fence wire for support.

It was barbed.

In the front seat of the truck, Lockie slept, his head lolling onto Pete’s shoulder. At some point, Pete had lifted the head gently and placed his own felt bushman’s hat there for a makeshift pillow. Callan himself was tired enough to consider that the squashed hat looked darned comfortable. The dogs were flung out on the now-empty rear tray sleeping, too, and when Pete lowered Lockie’s head back down, he didn’t even stir. He’d worked well today, and he’d learned some new skills.

At the wheel, Callan blinked several times to keep himself alert. His eyes felt gritty from the dust and his head ached from squinting in the bright light for hours, even though he’d worn sunglasses. They’d made some good progress on the new mustering yard, but they’d need several more days yet. Pete wasn’t as strong or quick as he used to be. And they might run out of supplies before they were done. He had a new shipment to pick up sometime this week in Leigh Creek.

Turning in front of the homestead, he felt a surge of well-being at the sight of the lights, and his aching muscles began to relax. There would be dinner waiting. He might have a beer with the meal. Jacinda could cook, he’d discovered. Maybe she would have convinced Mum to let her do so today and they’d get to taste some new California creation or an Asian stir-fry. His stomach growled in anticipation, and he knew a shower would feel pretty good, too.