Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle

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.