Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle

The lasagne was rich tomato and strong cheese, with a Parmesan and chives top—and irresistible to the baby. Melanie kept reaching for it, delighted with the cheesy texture until the heat bit into her fingers and she screamed.

‘Wait,’ Jared said as she used the damp cloth to cool Melanie’s fingers. He ran into the driving rain, coming back two minutes later with an article of furniture she’d thought had gone to the Lowes: the wooden high chair she’d bought, but painted herself in sky blue for a boy, with a slightly crooked Donald and Daisy Duck. ‘I didn’t give it all away,’ he said huskily, seeing her expression. ‘I tried to. I couldn’t stand seeing them around the house, knowing he was gone … but I couldn’t make myself give it all to them. It felt too much like I was throwing Adam away.’

The simple honesty of his grief—the first time he’d said anything so true about their son—unlocked something in her soul. Tears stung her eyes, ran down her face. ‘Jared.’

‘But I think he’d like us to go on,’ he murmured as though the words choked him, ‘and for another baby to use what he couldn’t, if she makes his mummy happy.’

He wiped down the high chair, and lifted Melanie into it. ‘Here we go, little girl,’ he crooned, and as he held her, he rubbed his nose gently into her belly. Melanie promptly forgot the remnants of her pain and chuckled. Jared blew a raspberry into her neck, and Melanie shrieked with joy, tugging his hair with tiny fists. With a low laugh that almost rang true, Jared put her in the chair, and strapped her in safely.

Needing to add to the atmosphere, Anna ran inside and grabbed two of Jared’s arrowroot biscuits, came back out and handed Melanie one.

‘Now we can eat,’ Jared said, pouring wine into two glasses as if he hadn’t just moved her to the soul with his words about Adam. It felt too much like I was giving Adam away.

She should always have known why he’d given their baby things away—and she understood why he hadn’t given them all away.

And just when she needed the sustaining power of her anger against Jared, it drained away.

I didn’t know any other way to keep you with me.

He kept the conversation light through dinner, playing with Melanie whenever Anna lapsed into silence, trying to think her way through the confusion he’d created in her.

They bathed the baby together. Jared played with Melanie, tickling and blowing raspberries, while Anna hunted out clean pyjamas from the clean load of washing.

Jared did the dishes while Anna folded the washing and put the baby in her new cot, safe and snug. There was a curious sense of unity as they worked around each other in a way they’d never seemed to achieve before. And why that added to her nerves, she had no idea.

And the clock ticked towards the time when she’d have to answer his questions, a slow, relentless march that still went too fast. He was giving her time, but it felt like there wasn’t enough time in the world for her to know what to say.

Then Melanie fell asleep over her night bottle, exhausted because she hadn’t had much of an afternoon nap, and the clock stopped. The pulsing beat of rain stopped. A hush fell over Jarndirri, as if the world waited for what she had to say.

And there was nothing. Her mind was blank.

‘Let’s go back to the verandah,’ Jared said quietly when she came into the kitchen, wishing she was anywhere but there. He put out a hand, and after a moment punctuated by a far-off rumble of thunder, a distant fork of lightning, even knowing what would come if she touched him, she still put her hand in his.

As they passed through the wide screen door, he flicked a switch on the remote control he held, and soft music filtered through the windows and open door. ‘Dance with me?’

Anna felt her head lift; she stared at him for a moment, almost wonderingly. Her favourite song—’Stand By Me’, from the Urban Cowboy soundtrack …

‘Has it been that long since we danced?’ he asked, with a little, wry smile as he drew her into his arms.

She felt her shoulders rise and fall, even as he moved her, slow and tender, around the damp, covered space of raw wooden flooring between the dining set and the painted wooden rails. ‘Apart from obligatory dances at weddings and rodeos, I don’t think we’ve danced since our wedding. And this song—I didn’t think you’d remember …’

‘We danced to this song the night we became engaged. You whispered to me that it was our song.’ His mouth twitched. ‘You really don’t think much of me any more, to think I could forget that.’

Her lips pressed tight for a moment, controlling the emotions he so hated. ‘I always knew why you married me, Jared. I had no right to expect romance, or for you to dance with me, or remember my favourite song.’

His eyes haunted, he said in her ear, ‘You had every right, Anna. If I’d thought you wanted it from me, you’d have had it all along.’

Through a tight throat, she whispered, ‘It’s useless if I have to ask.’

Slowly he nodded. ‘It’s about as useless as me asking you to come back, or expecting you to stay.’

It’s so strange—I’m in his arms, dancing to a song that means everything to me, our marriage and love, and I feel like a stranger, as if I don’t belong …

And yet, for the first time, he seemed to understand how she was feeling without jumping in with a solution, a direction. Maybe he finally understood that there wasn’t one. Accepting it was over—and yet here they were.

‘Blackmailing isn’t asking,’ was all she said as they moved in tiny circles, almost not moving. Aching so much with love and loss, in his arms, yet seeing only an ending and no real beginning. Was there a life without Jared? He’d been her love since her first memory of him, thinking He’s so dusty for a prince.

Soft and slow, he twirled her out, and in, bringing her to his chest, his heart. ‘I’ve never known any other way but to win, Anna. I fight to keep what’s mine.’ He put a finger to her mouth when she began to speak. ‘But I don’t want to win this way. You’ll stay, but hate me.’

Her throat a ball of pain now, she managed to whisper, ‘I couldn’t hate you, Jared.’

‘Do you hate Jarndirri?’

Anna sighed and shook her head.

‘Then what?’ he murmured in her ear, making her shiver.

‘It … haunts me,’ she whispered, shivering again. ‘I feel bound by my father’s legacy, by what you want from me. But everywhere I go, I see where my parents have been, where they lived and loved and died, where Adam could have been … the happy places where all those babies should be.’ She choked as she went on. ‘The ghosts of those I love walk with me, but I can’t see them, I can’t touch them. I feel so cold here, never knowing what could have been, and I’m so alone with the pain.’

‘You couldn’t talk to me?’ The rough mutter resonated through her hurting heart, an echo of her endless loss.

She couldn’t look at him as she parroted, with sad irony, ‘“Don’t go there, Anna”’. You never wanted to know—and it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’ll never understand how I feel. None of you can understand.’

‘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.’