Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle

‘Because we can still have children.’ It wasn’t a question.

A tiny sigh, a nod, and she waited for it, the cutting off.

‘I can’t change that. Even if I had a vasectomy it’s not the same thing, is it? Because then I’m giving it away. I can never know what it’s like.’

The truth in his words surprised her into saying, ‘I know.’

‘What will leaving me achieve, Anna?’ he asked quietly, holding her against his heart, as if imprinting her there.

She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing he wouldn’t make this so hard. ‘I barely have a memory without you in it. Every time I hurt, every time I cried, you were there.’ Breathe in, breathe out. ‘I want to be happy—I want to forget it, all of it.’

‘You won’t forget.’ Stark words. ‘You’ll spend your life running from everything you see, from everything you don’t see, and it’s still there.’

‘Is it?’ Without warning the fury was back. Wrenching her hands from his, she pushed against his chest to get away. ‘I wouldn’t know, would I? Because you never tell me what’s haunting you. In all these years, you’ve never once let me in, Jared. It’s always “Don’t go there!”’ With a shove, she loosened his hold but didn’t break it; he refused to let her go. She turned her face and said, huskily, ‘I went into the marriage knowing you didn’t love me, but the day before I left, Lea told me I should talk to you—that you knew about loss because you found your father the day he died …’

Jared dropped his hands from her as if she burned him. ‘She told you about my father?’ Hard words, cutting her like a knife. One step back, two—and the abyss between them widened as he removed his heart from her, just as he always had.

‘She assumed I knew—that of course you’d tell your wife.’ She lifted her chin, reliving that humiliation to keep her strong, and not cave in under the threat of his rejection. ‘The day I left I asked you about your father’s death, and you pushed me away. “Don’t go there, Anna.’”

His voice sounded like metal scraping over rock, raw and burning-hot, but he didn’t acknowledge what she’d said, or the depths of her betrayal. ‘I never thought she’d tell you, break my confidence.’

He’d told her sister his darkest secret, but not her. It was a betrayal as strong as infidelity, and he didn’t even know it. She looked up, feeling dead inside. ‘You’d have married her if she’d wanted you, wouldn’t you? You love her, you really do. There’s a connection, an ability to talk that you and I have never had.’ Suddenly, realising she was free of his hold, she turned—but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Pelting rain only slowed her down, and separated her from Melanie; he could follow her no matter where she went. She sat down on the top step, feeling the rain cool her heated feet. ‘The water will cover the bottom step soon,’ she murmured, feeling the inconsequentiality of it.

‘I never wanted her either.’

They came from close behind her, the words she’d waited so many years to hear—but now it was a case of too little reassurance, and far too late. She sighed. ‘But you love her. You really do. You might want me in your bed, but it’s Lea you care about. She’s the one you’ve always talked to.’ She wiggled her bare toes in the rain. A reminder that she was alive.

He sat down beside her, pulling off his shoes and socks. ‘These days I barely talk to her. She called this afternoon, but she was looking for you.’

You don’t talk to me at all. Then, tired of thinking and not saying, she said it aloud. ‘That might make a difference, if you ever talked to me at all.’

As if he knew she didn’t want to be touched, he remained those few inches away—but she felt something in him straining, trying to get close, to see inside her. ‘I’ve been the one talking the past few days.’

‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘you haven’t said one single thing that tells me about you. You’ve done everything in an effort to get me to talk. You don’t tell me anything unless it has the ultimate purpose of making me feel, making me speak. Keeping The Curran on Jarndirri. Do you think I’m blind?’ Small tears slipped from her eyes. ‘Even the high chair—our son’s chair—you used it, and your feelings, to make me open to you, so I’d connect to you, and stay. But you won’t open to me. You never have.’ When he didn’t answer after five seconds, she dipped her feet in a little puddle in the dip in the old bottom stair; when he didn’t speak in thirty seconds, in a minute, she stood. ‘I’m going to bed now.’

Jared jerked to his feet then, and twisted her round to face him. ‘What do you want from me, Anna?’

Expecting life and fire and command, all she saw in his eyes was hopeless confusion. Something in her cried out, wanting to help; but she had nothing to give. ‘I’ve told you what I want. Melanie, and no more. Goodnight.’

‘No. That’s not all you want. I know it, can feel it.’ He was in front of her before she could make the door and safety. In his eyes, his whole face, was a desperate kind of resolution. ‘For years I knew when you had something hard to say—and whenever I didn’t want to hear it or deal with your feelings, I told you not to go there. Now I’m seeing it, and I’m saying it. Do it, Anna. Go there.’

His body quivered like a bowstring pulled tight, unleashing what had always been held back before—but now it was she that felt the confusion. ‘Why?’ She spread her arms wide. ‘Why now, Jared, when it’s too late, when it can’t matter?’

‘It isn’t too late, Anna.’ He grabbed her by the shoulders, alive, vivid and blazing with all the emotion she’d wanted to see for so long. ‘And it matters to me.’

‘Why didn’t you want to know when it mattered to me?’ she whispered. ‘Why did you always push me away when it mattered to me?’

The life and eagerness dimmed; he frowned, and slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I wish to God I knew, but I don’t. I thought we had it all. I couldn’t see what you could lack in our life, when I was so happy with what we had.’ Low, he added, ‘I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to change anything for you.’

She’d always known that. Her head fell, and she stood before him, like a candle snuffed as she told the truth. ‘Love, Jared. I lacked love. Sex and Jarndirri was never enough for me. I wanted talk and cuddles, laughter and jokes and a friend, not just a lover. I don’t want a man who takes me or my love for granted. I wanted—no, I want—someone who cares about how I feel before I walk out.’

His hands fell from her, ripping through his hair. ‘God help me—I didn’t know, Anna. I could promise to change, but I don’t think I can—’

‘I know you can’t.’ She nodded with infinite sadness. ‘That’s what hurt the most. You see Lea—you always saw her, cared for her, went out of your way for her—but you were blind to me apart from your own needs. You didn’t see me until I was gone.’

‘No,’ he corrected her, his voice dead. ‘I saw you when you collapsed. I saw you every moment on the operating table. I saw you when the doctor told you about the hysterectomy.

I’ve seen you every day, every hour since. Even when you weren’t here, I saw you.’

‘And still you said “Don’t go there”. You still didn’t want to know how I felt, the day after I almost died,’ she retorted, gentle and remorseless.

In the dim light hanging from the eaves, she saw him pale. ‘Yes.’ A hand passed over his brow. ‘I did say it. I closed off. And I’ve regretted it every day since. For what it’s worth, Anna, I’m sorry, so damned sorry I shut you out.’

Her chin lifted. ‘Prove it. Tell me about your father’s death, how you found him. Tell me why your father haunts you.’

He jerked back so fast he staggered into the screen door. He didn’t have to say no. Every line of his body said it for him.

She nodded again. ‘I didn’t think so.’ With careful deliberation she turned and walked around the side of the house, to where wide French doors opened from the room she shared with Melanie, opened them and walked in, locking herself in on both sides.

She lay dry-eyed through the night, hearing all the ringing death knells of her marriage she’d missed, so young, so in love—so blind and wilfully stupid. Missing every sign, she saw them now—but what she couldn’t see was any way to fix them.

And in the warm, wet half-darkness of the deserted verandah, Jared finished the sentence she’d interrupted. ‘I don’t think I can ever tell you in words how much you mean to me.’

Then he turned and walked into the driving rain. The animals, practise the words again on the animals. I love you, Anna.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SOME time before dawn, grizzling screams made Jared jerk awake in his bed. Melanie sounded distressed. He pulled on the pyjama pants he hadn’t bothered with before, and moved to the room Anna shared with the baby. A crack of brightness beneath the door showed the light was on.

He waited a few moments to see if Anna could get the baby under control, but when the crying grew more indignant, he opened the door very quietly.

Anna was holding the baby over her shoulder, rocking her back and forth, patting her downy little head and whispering, ‘Come on, sweetheart, sleep time, it’s sleep time …’ Two empty bottles and a wet disposable nappy lay on Anna’s bed. Anna was pale, with black rings beneath bleary eyes, and a deeper distress coming from her failure as Melanie screamed afresh.

She must be exhausted, he thought with a shot of tenderness and self-recrimination. Had the baby cried earlier, tonight or the night before, and he’d missed it?

‘Give her to me,’ he said softly, so he didn’t startle her.

Anna blinked and stared at him, blinking over and over.

‘What?’

Compassion filled him. Exhaustion was written over her face like an unspoken poem. ‘How long has she been crying?’

She frowned, patting the baby’s bottom through the nappy. ‘I don’t know. What time is it now?’

He checked his watch. ‘Nearly five.’

She sighed and patted Melanie again as she wailed. ‘Oh. Um. About three or four hours. I think it’s her teeth, but there’s no paracetamol or anything for her in the baby bag Rosie gave me.’ She swayed on her feet.

‘You need to sleep,’ he said gruffly. ‘Give her to me.’

He saw the torn look in her eyes—did she admit failure for the need of sleep? Then her expression became one of pure longing. She needed sleep that badly.

He felt the storm of anguish, loss and fear of losing her again, raging in him for two days, quiet and still as he waited. Anna needed him now, but she needed to recognise it herself.

‘Has Melanie been waking every night?’ When she hesitated and nodded, he chided gently, ‘You should have called me.’ He’d always managed on four to five hours’ sleep a night. Anna had never coped without a full eight hours.

He saw it again, the longing for rest, the fear of failure. ‘It’s not your problem …’

About to take the baby from her anyway—Anna was swaying on her feet—he saw the word mistake flashing at him in neon letters, and he kept his distance. ‘If Rosie goes through with the adoption, the adoption people will need to see I’m comfortable with her, and vice versa. That’s not going to happen if you do everything—and they won’t think much of us as a family for her if you’re falling down with tiredness. Let me help you, Anna. Please,’ he added, with the melting tenderness filling him.

She blinked again and shook her head, as if doubting her ears. Had it been so long since he’d asked anything of her, let alone said ‘please’? He couldn’t remember.

Then she nodded, handing the baby to him. ‘Thank you.

She’s had two bottles already, and she has a clean nappy,’ she whispered, falling asleep standing up. ‘Wake me in an hour …’

With a hand at her back he turned her around, and helped her onto the bed. She was asleep before she hit the pillow.

Then he realised the wails had stopped. He looked at Melanie, and saw the flushed face wet from crying, the star-blue eyes looking at him in pleading and trust. Help me.

Resent her as he had for taking Anna’s focus from their marriage, taking her love from him, never in his life had Jared been able to resist a cry for help. Anna deserved the rest, and Melanie was so little, so helpless.

He gathered her up, grabbed a clean bottle, a spare nappy and cleaning stuff from the bag, and slipped back outside the door, closing it behind him. He carried her through to the kitchen, and automatically filled the kettle with water for a bottle—and a coffee. ‘Now what’s wrong, little one?’ he asked softly as he jiggled her on his shoulder.

As if in answer, Melanie began crying again, pulling on her ears in obvious pain … and it came to him, a memory floating up from nowhere. ‘Are those nasty teeth bothering you?’ he crooned, trying to think. His mother had always given the kids baby paracetamol or some herbal drops. He didn’t have either here, and Anna said there were none in the bag. If he didn’t stop her crying soon Anna would wake up and try to take over.

He handed the baby a teething rusk, but knew that, though she gurgled happily as she bit down hard with her gums, it was only a temporary measure. She needed pain relief to return to sleep. He changed her nappy again and put her pyjamas back on, knowing he was running out of time.

He needed expert help here, and there was only one person he knew who had both the knowledge of babies and could be trusted to keep their secret, no matter what. He picked up the phone and dialled Lea’s number.

Within moment’s Lea’s voice, rough and growly with sleep, answered. ‘This had better be good, West.’

She’d obviously checked caller ID—and Lea always called him West when she was in a mood. He grinned, liking it as usual, but got to the point. ‘I need to know, without questions asked, what I can use to stop a baby’s teething pain. I don’t have paracetamol for babies or the herbal drops Mum used. Anything I can use that’s in the cupboard?’

‘A baby?’ Lea wasn’t asking, she was demanding to know—same old Lea.

‘I don’t have time now, Lea. If I don’t help her soon, she’ll start crying and wake Anna, and she hasn’t slept properly in days.’

‘Anna? She’s back with you?’

Melanie was beginning to grumble. Jared gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Can we do this at some decent hour, Lea? I’ll call you some time tomorrow and give you the story. Right now I have a crying baby, and I need my question answered. The poor kid’s in pain here.’

‘She needs chamomile,’ she answered promptly, having picked up on the one ‘she’ he’d used regarding Melanie. ‘Use tea bags if you don’t have drops. Add a touch of honey—just a bit—or she’ll spit it back out. It doesn’t taste the best.’

‘Drops?’ he asked, feeling stupid—then a thought occurred to him. If Anna hadn’t known what they were for. He put Melanie down and ran back to the room, grabbed the baby bag and ran out before he could disturb Anna. ‘What would they look like?’ he asked, rummaging in the bag while Melanie screamed louder.

‘Boy, she really needs help.’ Lea’s voice was filled with sympathy for the baby’s pain. ‘They’re usually in a little dark bottle with a squeeze-top dropper. You put a few drops in watered-down juice—the water has to be boiled first.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he mumbled as he started tossing out stuff that wasn’t what he needed; he knew the water needed boiling. In a little, sealed separate bag, he found a small dark bottle, and held it up to read—’Thank heaven,’ he muttered, ‘I’ve got the chamomile drops. Can I add it to the formula?’ he asked, wondering if they had any tetra bricks of juice left. The nearest store was two hours’ flight away, and juice wasn’t his thing. He drank coffee and beer.

‘Ick, no! Would you drink chamomile tea with milk?’

He chuckled in half-relief as he found a tetra brick of 100 per cent apple juice, and ripped it open. ‘I wouldn’t drink that stuff at all.’

‘Oh, sure, you’re a real Outback man, beer and meat only. You don’t eat quiche or drink herbal teas,’ she mocked, laughing now. ‘Just get the juice and water ready with the drops, and make it gently warm so she can drink it right away. But this takes quite a bit longer to work than medication, so soak a rusk in the juice and drops—she can chew on it and get faster relief.’

‘Thanks, mate,’ he said softly, with a rush of affection, putting the phone on speaker so he could pick up Melanie, who was at ear-splitting level now, and make the bottle at the same time.

‘Yeah, whatever. I’ll send you a baby rescue package by priority—email me a list of what you need, and I probably have it somewhere from when Molly needed it. But I want that call tomorrow, West—today, in fact. I want details. And I want to talk to Anna.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ He chuckled, putting the juice into the bottle with half water. He hesitated for a moment before he said, ‘Lea—about the baby …’

‘I get it, Jared,’ she said quietly, without the acerbity that was so much a part of her nature. ‘I don’t know whose kid she is, but I know you—and I know my sister. Anna will tell me when she’s ready. I’ll keep the secret. But this had better not be illegal, or some trick. Anna deserves better than that.’

Lea was blunt, but could give great hints when she chose. Anna deserved better than he’d been giving her in years. He got it. ‘It isn’t either one, and I knew you’d keep it to yourself.’

‘Yeah, whatever, West. Just fix the baby, get some sleep, and call me today. Look after my baby sister.’ The click of disconnection followed.

Melanie fought against drinking the juice at first, pulling faces and spitting it out. Jared firmly kept putting the teat back in her mouth. ‘Come on, little one, work with me here,’ he crooned as she still resisted, wanting the milk she was used to. His scrambled brain went into overdrive as he tried to find a way to distract her. He hid behind the bottle for a second, popped around it with a crazy face and said, softly, ‘Boo.’

Melanie gurgled, and swallowed a mouthful of the drink.

He played the game over and over with her, making a different face every time for her, and she drank in response. When the bottle was empty, she still wasn’t sleepy, so he handed her the soaked rusk to chew. Melanie shoved it in her mouth, but looked at him with an expectant what game do we play now look in her bright eyes. Though he’d done little to deserve it, Melanie liked him—and she trusted him without words to make her happy.

He only wished Anna could do the same beyond tonight—or that he knew what would make her happy, so she’d want to stay.

Jared scrubbed at his own weary eyes, and thought. ‘You’re a girl, and your new mummy seems to like dancing … maybe it’s a girl-thing. Okay, little one, how about we dance you to sleep?’ He walked her into the living room, found the CD remote and clicked on the player.

It was an album of Anna’s she hadn’t taken, a compilation she’d made of her favourite songs from CDs she’d bought. He didn’t particularly like them—or thought he hadn’t—but he found, as he waltzed the baby slowly around the room, he knew every word of the songs. He sang ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, ‘True Colours’ and others without even thinking about it. His voice was rough, but Melanie didn’t seem to mind. She tweaked his nose, pulled his ear and his hair, and giggled with the delicious, rich joy in living only children have the secret of knowing, and adults wished they could find again. ‘It’s true,’ he assured a slightly sleepy baby during the melody. ‘This house isn’t a home without her.’

Then Melanie fell forward in the movement of the dance, and wet, rusk-covered lips brushed his cheek by accident. A slushy baby-kiss touched with magic. Moved, he looked at Melanie, and couldn’t take his gaze from her. Dancing around the room, singing to a kid he’d only tolerated until now, or pretended to like to make Anna happy, the tough Outback man was lost in a baby’s eyes, fixated on a drooling smile …

And suddenly he knew: in one of those flashes of truth that came rarely in life, Jared knew. He saw in a silly midnight dance and baby-kiss all the mistakes he’d made with Anna—and he knew what to do. He only prayed to God he wasn’t too late.

‘Let’s walk on some sunshine, little one,’ he murmured as the song began.

From behind the half-closed door of the living room, Anna, who kept waking up anxious, wondering how Jared was coping, hearing the gravelly voice singing and the baby giggles, watched as a man who’d always seemed as cold and remote as the stars melted for a tiny girl that wasn’t his. And even as she smiled, she ached for what could have been. If only he could have been this man for her.

Then she heard the words he’d never have said if he’d known she was there: This house isn’t a home without her. And deep inside her, something she’d thought was shut down for ever clicked softly back to on.

She turned and crept quietly back to her bed. Melanie was safe and happy, in strong, trustworthy arms. And she, Anna, needed a safe place to let her heart overflow.

He was gone again the next morning when Anna woke, but had left the breakfast for Melanie and coffee for her. He’d even made a breakfast muffin for her, with bacon and eggs kept warm.

There was a note on the bench.

Back soon. We still have the stables to muck out.

Strangely, Anna found herself smiling and singing to herself—the songs he’d sung to Melanie last night—as she fed the baby.

She found delight even in Melanie spitting the food at her, because the baby shrieked in happiness at the mess she’d created. Tiny fingers wiped the mush into Anna’s face and hair, and Anna just sat there laughing, touching that sweet, flushed little face, petting the spiky hair, all damp from the extreme humidity outside, as well as in.

Within days Adam and Melanie seemed to be merging into one face, a single entity of adorable baby, and she loved them both. Motherhood, to have a baby to love, was worth any sacrifice. Any sacrifice.

Jared walked in two hours later, as Anna finished cleaning the house with the baby crawling around after her, making a mess of what she’d cleaned. He lifted his brows, pointing. ‘Has Melanie begun crawling? She’s pretty young for that.’

Even looking at him reminded her of the man she’d seen last night, so moved by a baby-kiss. Aching with wistfulness, longing and regret, Anna made herself laugh. ‘Yes. I sat her down on the floor with some toys so I could sweep—she doesn’t seem to like the portable cot when she’s awake—and the second she saw the dust and dirt, she got down on hands and knees and came after me.’ Awe and joy swept through her, thinking of it: she’d seen a milestone in Melanie’s life … her first crawling step.

He grinned. ‘Has she been crawling behind you, making mess, all morning?’

She chuckled. ‘The things they don’t tell you about the joys of parenthood.’

‘So it seems.’ Eyes shimmering with humour met hers. ‘So do we dare take her out to the stables without the cot?’

This time she burst out laughing, and snorted. ‘Oh, the fun she’d have with the animals—and the dung!’

‘Yeah,’ he said softly. ‘I remember the best times of my childhood were chucking the stuff around—especially at my sisters and brothers—and Mum running around with a wooden spoon, trying to catch me, for all the work I caused.’ He chuckled. ‘She never did catch me. She always said I drove her up the wall, so I’d make car engine sounds and run to walls.’

He was talking about his family life again, and it felt as if she couldn’t stop smiling, laughing—and that felt so good. For the longest time she’d wondered if she’d forgotten how to laugh spontaneously. ‘I see my future before me. Melanie already painted my face with her breakfast. If Rosie does let us adopt her, I somehow don’t think I’ll be getting the decorous little girl I was.’

‘Except when you stole chocolate,’ he reminded her, his eyes still laughing, not sensual—but still she caught her breath for a moment.