Miracle in Bellaroo Creek

No need to get sentimental, she warned herself as she drove forward.

Before she’d parked the car, the front door opened, spilling puppies and a rosy-cheeked little girl. Heidi followed close behind, waving and grinning as she hurried down the steps and across the lawn. As Milla clambered out she found herself enveloped in the warmest of welcoming hugs.

After weeks of loneliness, she was fighting tears.

* * *

Ed had tried to ring his father several times, but the arrogant old man had a habit of ignoring phone calls if he wasn’t in a sociable mood. Which happened quite often, and went part-way to explaining Gerry Cavanaugh’s multiple marriages and divorces and why his three sons had been born to three different wives, who now lived as far apart from each other as possible.

Today, when Gerry finally deigned to return his son’s call, Ed was in the Business Lounge at JFK, sending last-minute business emails.

‘Glad to hear you’ve tracked Milla down.’ His father always jumped in without any preliminaries. ‘And you know what you have to do when you catch up with her, don’t you, Ed?’

‘Well...sure. I’ll tell her about Harry.’

‘If she doesn’t already know.’

Ed was quite sure Milla couldn’t know that Harry had died. Even though she’d run away, she would have been upset. She would have contacted them if she’d heard, and come back for the funeral.

‘And I’ll set up the trust fund for the baby,’ he went on. ‘Make sure Milla signs the necessary papers.’

‘That’s not all, damn it.’

Ed sighed. What else had his old man up his sleeve?

‘Your main job is to bring the woman home.’

‘Home?’ This was news to Ed. ‘Don’t forget Milla was born and bred in Australia, Father. And she still calls Australia home,’ he added with a grim smile at his joking reference to the popular song.

‘Like hell. My grandson will be born in America.’

‘What are you suggesting? That I kidnap a pregnant woman? You want extradition orders placed on your pregnant daughter-in-law?’

His father ignored this. ‘You’ll find a way to persuade her. You’re a Cavanaugh. You have a knack with women.’

Not with this particular woman. Ed squashed unsettling memories before they could take hold. ‘Just remember, Father. Milla ran away from Harry and from our family. It’s obvious she wants as much distance between us as possible. She’s unlikely to come back willingly.’

‘Trust me, son, as soon as she hears she’s a widow, she’ll be back here in a flash. Of course, she won’t get a goddamn cent of Harry’s money unless she lets us raise the child as a Cavanaugh, as my grandchild.’

‘Got it...’ responded Ed dispiritedly. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

His offer was received with an expressive grunt that conveyed the full brunt of his father’s doubts and displeasure.

Ed gritted his teeth. ‘Anyway...I’ve briefed Dan Brookes and everything’s in hand as far as the business is concerned, so I guess I’ll see you in a couple of days.’

Ending the call, Ed sat staring bleakly through the wall of windows, watching the busy tarmac and the endless streams of planes taking off and landing.

He wasn’t looking forward to the long, twenty-hour flight, but he was looking forward even less to the task that lay ahead of him. After all, Milla had returned to Australia because she’d planned to divorce Harry, and she’d clearly been so disenchanted with the Cavanaughs that she hadn’t told them about her pregnancy.

It was only while Ed and his father were going through the painful process of sorting through Harry’s paperwork that they’d discovered the medical forms.

Slam!

A small missile crashed into Ed, sending his BlackBerry flying. Rascal-faced yet cherubic, a little boy looked up at him with enormous and cheeky blue eyes that peeped from beneath a white-blond fringe.

‘What’s your name?’ the kid lisped cutely as he gripped at Ed’s trouser leg for balance.

‘Ethan!’ A woman dived from the right, sweeping the child into her arms. ‘So sorry,’ she told Ed, her eyes widening with horror as she saw her son’s sticky, chocolate-smeared fingers and the tracks he’d left on Ed’s Italian suit trousers.

The kid squirmed in his mom’s arms, as if he sensed that his fun was about to end. And Ed couldn’t help remembering Harry as an ankle-biter.

For ages after the woman and her boy disappeared, Ed sat, thinking about his younger brother. Milla’s unborn baby would probably be just like that kid—an angelic rascal, full of mischief and charm, stealing hearts and creating havoc. Another Cavanaugh...a new generation.

Memories washed over him as they had many times in the past few weeks. Growing up with different mothers, he and Harry hadn’t spent a lot of time in each other’s company, but his younger brother had always been the wild child, the prankster, the kid who hadn’t done his homework, but still passed his exams with good grades.

As an adult, Harry had wasted his talents on gambling and flying his private jet and he’d contributed almost nothing to the family firm. And yet, they’d all loved him. Despite his faults, the guy had been a born charmer.

Ed was the conscientious son, the hardworking eldest, the one who’d carried on the family’s business so that all the others could continue to live in the manner to which they’d become accustomed.

Admittedly, their youngest brother, Charlie, the son of Gerry Cavanaugh’s third wife, was still in college. He was a good student, from all reports, more serious and focused, more like Ed. But they’d both known that Harry had always been the Golden Child, their father’s favourite, and Harry’s son would be the apple of his grandfather’s eye.

Ed would have to deal with the full force of his father’s wrath if he failed to bring Milla and her unborn baby home.

* * *

Sitting at Heidi’s scrubbed pine table, drinking coffee and talking nineteen to the dozen, Milla made a surprising discovery. She felt calmer and happier than she had in...ages...

Looking around at Heidi’s honey-toned timber cupboards and simple open shelving, at the jars of homemade preserves and pots of herbs on the window sill, she realised that she’d completely forgotten how very comforting a farmhouse kitchen could be.

This room had such a timeless and welcoming quality with its huge old stove pumping out gentle warmth, with Heidi’s home-baked cookies on a willow-pattern plate...a yellow jug filled with bottlebrush flowers...dog and cat bowls in the corner...

It brought to mind Milla’s childhood here in Bellaroo Creek. She’d been happy back then.

Chatting with Heidi was so very different from socialising in LA, where the women’s conversations had been more like competitions, and the topics centred on shopping, facials, pedicures, or gossip about affairs.

Heidi simply talked about her family, who were clearly the centre of her world. She told Milla about Brad’s farming innovations with the same pride she displayed when she mentioned her son’s success in his first year at school or her little daughter’s playful antics.

The conversation should have been boring, but Milla found to her surprise that she was fascinated.

It was all a bit puzzling... Heidi’s hair was still exactly the same as it had been in high school—straight, shoulder length and mousey brown. She spent her days working on the farm with Brad and growing vegetables and raising chickens, which meant she lived in jeans and cotton shirts and sturdy boots.

She had freckles and a few lines around her eyes, and her hands were roughened, her fingernails chipped. But Milla, looking at her friend, knew she was as happy as a pig in the proverbial...

‘I’m doing exactly what I want to do,’ Heidi happily confessed. ‘Maybe I’m totally lacking in ambition, but I don’t want to do anything else. And it might sound crazy, but I don’t have any doubts.’

This was a major surprise, but to her even greater surprise Milla found herself opening up to Heidi telling how she’d clocked many, many miles and tried a ton of different jobs in exotic locations, until eventually, she’d arrived in America and fallen head over heels for a charming and handsome multimillionaire adventurer, who had, incredibly, asked her to marry him.

She told how those first years of her marriage had been such a heady time. Harry had so many celebrity friends in his social circle and he’d flown his own plane. ‘He used to fly me to Paris for a dinner and a show, or to Milan to buy a dress I could wear to the Oscars.’