Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle

She shuddered at the thought of the man who’d always been hers belonging to anyone else—having the children he’d craved from her, and she’d yearned to give.

This was a sacrifice she had to be prepared to make. Part of her would always care about Jared, would always ache and burn when he moved on and had those children, but she couldn’t live the life he loved any more. Why shouldn’t he find happiness with a woman who wanted the life she’d abandoned?

‘Yes, I have everything packed, and given notice to my landlord.’ She kept her tone cool, reserved. ‘I’ve closed the store until further notice.’

‘Good. So drink the coffee. I assume we wait until the baby’s awake.’

‘Her name’s Melanie,’ she amended through clenched jaws.

He shrugged and reached for his coffee, downing it in a gulp. He never minded drinking it however he found it, hot or cold. ‘I’m heading out. I have my phone. Call me when she wakes.’

He was out the door before she could speak. A chill raced down her neck, leaving her shivering with cold in the oppressive Kimberley heat. He was withdrawing from her at last, giving up—and though she ought to be celebrating, although she should think ahead to her life with Melanie, all she felt was a curious regret, an unfathomable emptiness.

Jared made it as far as the other end of the path leading to the beach from her place, safe from her sight, before his legs couldn’t go farther. He heaved in breaths that seemed to take no air in because he kept wheezing. He held onto one of the thick trunks used for fencing posts along the track, bent almost double over it, dizzy and sick. He’d made it to the end of their deal without showing her what she’d done to him. He wouldn’t be weak, like his father had been with his mother, using love to make her stay, pleading for her to fix the unfixable …

I’d never go back to you willingly.

He kept his eyes squeezed tight shut. He hadn’t realised how much hearing the words would hurt, because Anna wouldn’t lie to him. If she said it, she meant it.

‘No. It’s grief speaking. She doesn’t know what she wants,’ he gasped through gritted teeth, between gasping breaths. ‘It’s not over. She’ll come back to me. She’ll love Jarndirri again once she’s there. Everything will be like it used to be. I just—need—to stick to the plan.’

That was it: he needed to focus on the final result. This was no different from his other long-term plans. He’d had no results from planting the saltbush until two seasons had passed. He’d planted crops every year, not knowing if they’d be harvested or fail. He’d plant seeds with Anna now, give her everything she wanted, and wait to reap the benefits.

But what did she want? He knew squat about women’s emotional needs, but some gut-deep instinct told him he hadn’t reached the heart of her need to run from Jarndirri. Or why she’d needed to run from him.

Their loss should have brought them closer. Why hadn’t it? Why had she never shared her loss with him, and allowed him to comfort her? Adam had been his son, too.

Adam …

He set his jaw so hard his teeth hurt, but it stopped the stinging of his eyes. He wasn’t weak like his dad. He’d be strong for her, no matter what.

He hadn’t won her back to him with all he’d tried. The past two weeks it felt as if he’d run slam into the boulder of limitations he’d never known he had—the eternal lack of understanding that stood between man and woman.

I can’t stand being alone any more, she’d said in her note. Something about that sentence haunted him. He couldn’t get everything she’d said—or was it what she hadn’t said—out of his mind. Unable to understand, unable to forget them, all he had to do was find a way to bring her home. By now he was desperate enough to seduce, kidnap, bargain—whatever it took. Everything would be fine once they were home.

She wants a baby … and now she’s got one, his mind whispered, but only if I help her. She needs me now.

Maybe all she needed was an excuse to come home?

Step one achieved, thanks to a dumped baby. Was that tiny scrap of humanity the small miracle he needed to get his life, his wife back?

CHAPTER FOUR

‘THAT’S what I said, Ollie. Take a week off—everyone. Go away somewhere on full pay. Anna’s coming home with me, and we want the place to ourselves,’ Jared said to the station’s foreman over the chopper’s radio, sounding clipped, just a touch embarrassed. Outback men did not do emotion, and especially not in front of other men.

‘How’re we gonna get out of here now, Jared?’ The surprise was clear in Ollie’s voice, but the curiosity was under tight control. This was personal stuff, and the one thing the Jarndirri men did well, besides work from before dawn to after dusk, was keep their own stuff locked under a tight drum. Following the example set them for years by her father: real men did not share their feelings; they worked, played football and drank beer. Bonding, talking was what women did. ‘The Wet’s about an hour from starting—’

‘Take the other plane—the Jeeps are too dangerous with the Wet coming. Stay at a town or resort, take the wives and girlfriends—it’s on me.’ He spoke in a light tone, but he kept throwing glances back at a sleeping Melanie.

Anna was similarly anxious. If she woke up and Ollie heard the wails.

‘John and Ellie Button won’t want to go anywhere,’ Ollie argued, while Anna became more and more nervous. ‘Jarndirri’s their only home unless they visit their kids, which they don’t do in the Wet.’

‘Then make it clear they’re on paid leave. I can’t leave Jarndirri, but we want time on our own.’ He was back to that stiff awkwardness that told Ollie to back off.

‘You’ll need help, even in the Wet—’

‘Anna will help me. She knows the place backwards, and it’s only for a week. Will you stop arguing, Ollie, and take the holiday?’

Filled with urgency, Anna leaned to his ear. ‘Don’t say any more to him, or it will look suspicious,’ she whispered, feeling the heat of him warm her shivers, relieving her fears just by being here. Jared was so good at thinking on his feet, and finding the solution to any emergency—as perfect at it as he was at flying. Though the winds were fickle and lightning flickered in the distance, the Cessna hadn’t so much as wobbled. He was in full control, plane and life.

He nodded at her warning. ‘We’ll be there in a few hours. Feed the animals and corral them first.’ He signed off without saying anything as sappy and uncharacteristic as Have a good holiday. Like the harsh red land they flew over, massive monolithic rocks that looked like God’s marbles, the deep, inaccessible rivers and impossible waterfalls spread across Jarndirri, the men were silent, rugged, remote—and strangely unforgettable. Haunting her soul: they were her men, her land. She could leave, she could run, start a new life anywhere, but a part of her heart would always be here in the Kimberleys.

Turning, she looked at the sleeping form in the car seat—Melanie had a dreaming smile on her face—and Anna felt that gaping, shell-blasted hole inside her soul touched again with balm, sweet as baby powder, absolute as the trust this baby girl gave her.

It would never heal. She could never forget Adam, would never stop aching for the other babies that never had the chance to live because of her thin uterus walls. But when this beautiful baby was with her, she felt alive again. Even if it was for a few weeks, a few months, she’d take the time with Melanie … and then, maybe, she’d find the strength to walk away from the only real home she’d ever known, to divorce the only man she’d ever loved and still wanted, even if she wasn’t in love with him now—

‘Don’t think about it.’

She started and pulled herself together. ‘What?’

His gaze met hers, his strong, calm. ‘You’ll be a mother—either of this baby, or another. Don’t give up hope. It’s going to happen.’

His eyes held the depth of a thousand words unspoken. Anna felt a juddering shiver touch her neck. Again he’d known her heart was bleeding, and he was always there.

There finding a solution for her, because he had to make everything right and he didn’t do emotion—and she’d held onto his solutions like a lifeline for too many years. We can do IVF, Anna. We can try again, Anna. Just one more try for a baby, Anna. I know it’s been tough on you, but think of the end result—the baby you’ve craved for years.

That was what he’d always say: It’s been tough on you, the baby you want, as if losing four babies hadn’t affected him at all.

Had any of it hurt him, made him feel the loss as acutely as she had? Until Adam, she hadn’t truly known. He’d never shown any emotion during those years. He’d kept on working, planning for the next child. But when Adam had died, he’d cried in her arms; and the echoes of his cry when she’d collapsed the next day still rang in her heart.

Anna! For God’s sake, someone, help us!

But the feeling, the emotional connection she’d yearned to know in the man she’d loved all her life seemed to be no more than a day’s aberration. The old unemotional Jared had returned the moment he’d been back on Jarndirri soil a week later, working from four in the morning till six at night as usual. The only hint of emotion he’d showed had been a state of repressed anger and the sense of exhausted patience at her ongoing grief and refusal to touch him, or share their bed.

Even today, when she was close to the sharing he claimed he wanted to hear, it was no different. Don’t get depressed, Anna, you’ll be a mother.

He’d been dry-eyed at his father’s funeral, at her father’s funeral. Even after the hysterectomy, he’d been calm, focussed on her pain, her loss. We’ll find a way, Anna. But he’d cried when Adam had died. For a whole hour, he’d cried …

‘Thank you.’ Stilted words through a tight throat; she didn’t know what else to say. Like her dad, Jared held to the old code of honour: Never back down, never surrender. Always keep your word. He’d married her, so he’d stick to her for life. She knew he’d do his best to never show her the resentment, how cheated he was that she’d never given him a son.

Regret was weakness to Jared; divorce would be seen as the ultimate failure.

She’d already been through a failure, a loss and madness so deep and profound that divorce could only be dessert after a heavy main course—it would almost feel like sweet relief.

Almost.

‘She’ll have to make do with a bed pushed against the wall with chairs for a day or two, until I can fly to Geraldton to get some baby things,’ he said, his voice flat.