Maybe Baby: One Small Miracle

She frowned at him. ‘Why? Where are … the things we had for Adam …?’ She almost choked, saying it. Her arms and heart ached with useless longing.

In the ten seconds that followed their son’s name she heard every beat of her heart.

‘I gave them away.’ His voice was taut.

Her heart jerked, and one shoulder moved forward, not a shrug but a tiny movement that showed too much. ‘When?’

‘Three weeks ago.’ Jared had turned back to the horizon, watching where he flew. The flight path was one he knew like his own skin, but he wasn’t looking at her. Jared could always look her in the face as he talked about her emotions, but she doubted he even acknowledged his own existed. ‘The Lowes needed some new things for their baby.’

That was it, all he had to say about destroying their son’s nursery? The last vestiges of their son’s life had been pulled apart … the Lowes had eight kids now, by her count. It was so unfair. They had the kids and the things she’d made or painted for Adam with her own hands.

She nearly choked on the fury, the gut-level jealousy she’d never lose. ‘And you never thought to ask me about it?’

Her pulse beat so hard against her throat, she heard it beating. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six … boom-boom, boom-boom … ‘You hung up on me.’

She turned to look out the window. They were flying over the mining community of Tom Price. The scattered houses and gaping holes in the earth looked so lonely from up here. ‘I see.’

After a long silence, he said in a quiet voice that hid all emotion, ‘Say it, Anna.’

She shrugged, as if she didn’t care. ‘What’s the point? It’s done.’

He said nothing in response, and she refused to make it easy for him. She kept looking at the world below while everything they weren’t saying grew legs and arms, put a timer device together on the bomb of silence and set it ticking down. The unseen contest had no winners because he never spoke, and she had nothing to say—or too much. Fury, jealousy, betrayal and all the useless regret.

She had to stop this, find accord with Jared somehow, or they’d never survive the next few weeks together. Why didn’t Melanie wake up? If she’d make a single sound …

Three, two, one—

‘They’re in danger of losing everything.’

It took her a moment to realise what he meant. He’d taken the safe option, talking of the nursery furniture and the Lowes. She should have known he would. Jared had never had to reach out to her—he waited for her to come to him, to tell him what she needed, so he could fix it. She had always gone to him—until she’d had nothing left to say, nothing left to ask him to fix.

Countdown reset, defences built, places of refuge established. Husband and wife stared out of separate windows, facing each other down from either side of a silent battleground. It was Christmas detente, meeting in the middle for a meaningless game of football, knowing hostilities would soon be resumed. Too much had been left unsaid between them, too many emotions buried in the trenches of memory. The fragile cobweb of deception for the sake of a baby was the only thing holding them together.

‘Fair enough,’ was all she said in response, trying to dull the sharp edge of the bayonet she’d been stabbing him with. What was the point? His armour was impenetrable.

Three, two, one—

‘I thought you’d understand. People matter more than things. Isn’t that what you always said every time you gave our things away to someone in need?’ he growled out of nowhere.

‘I’m surprised you remember that,’ she replied without inflection.

‘I remember everything.’ His gaze was cold, and again she shivered. When she didn’t answer, he sighed with the exaggerated patience she hated. ‘Tell me what’s going on in your head, Anna. We’ve got to find a way to put this right, climb out of this crazy mess we’re in.’

At least he was finally asking, instead of telling her to come home, or using his body to bring her to capitulation; but didn’t he know that, if he had to ask what she wanted, it was useless to her? ‘There’s nothing either of us can do, Jared. There’s no solution. Nothing can change what’s done. It’s over.’

‘Obviously—that’s why you called me, why you’re here now.’

The frozen tone put her on the defensive. ‘I don’t know any other man who keeps secrets the way you do, who hides emotion so well. If you have any emotion.’

He made some adjustments to their flight path. He frowned hard at the horizon, as if there was imminent danger. ‘One day you’re going to have to face that what happened last year happened to us both, instead of thinking it was only your pain, your sorrow. One day you’ll know running from it does nothing.’

‘I didn’t run from anything. I left you.’ She felt her nostrils flare as she dragged in air. ‘Just because we aren’t together any more doesn’t mean I haven’t faced it—all of it.’ What I lost—and what I am. Cold and shivering to her soul, she’d faced it. She had no choice: Adam came to visit her nightly, that cold, sweet, sleeping face. Eternal sleep in a cold white casket instead of the sky-blue cradle they’d made for him, with stencils of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse … the pretty mobiles dangling above for him to laugh at, to reach for.

‘You never talked about it.’

Anna heard a disbelieving laugh, a half-sneer in it, and part of her didn’t believe it had come from her; she’d never heard it come from her lips before. Yet she was glad for the distraction. ‘So which are you in this scenario, the pot or the kettle?’

Very quiet, so quiet she barely heard him over the plane’s rumble, he said, ‘The doctors told me to wait for you to start.’

‘And of course that was the only thing stopping you,’ she retorted. ‘You’re just a pillar of communication. Always so open with what you feel.’

He didn’t answer that—and in the silence something in her snapped. ‘That’s it, Jared, retreat into your own head, don’t tell me anything. I always made it so easy for you, didn’t I? I did the talking, the loving, and you didn’t have to try. That’s what’s getting to you, isn’t it? For the first time in twelve years I’m not blurting out my every feeling and emotion to you, so you can work out how to fix it all. I walked out, and didn’t want or need your solutions or to make things right—and you couldn’t handle it. For months you’ve been the one coming to me, but I didn’t come home as you expected. How embarrassing has it been for you? The Great Jared West is a failure with his own wife. Is everyone laughing at you—or, worse, pitying you?’

She waited, her heart pounding hard. After long moments, he spoke without emotion. ‘It’s nothing I’m not used to. And I’m still here.’

Anna blinked, blinked again. What did that mean? The cold, emotionless Jared West, the King of Jarndirri, had actually felt like a failure at some point in his life?

A little wail came from behind as she tried to work out what he was trying to tell her. As ever, his verbal economy hid a wealth of secrets, but she didn’t have the tools to dig for it.

The baby’s wail grew in decibels. She sounded frightened. Relieved to have something to do, she unbuckled her seat belt and moved to Melanie. She picked her up and cuddled her, crooning to the baby, but Melanie’s cries grew stronger. As Anna sat in a back seat, Melanie began head-butting Anna, screaming now, pulling at her ears and staring at Anna in pleading and indignation combined.

Helpless, she said out loud, ‘What’s wrong with her? She seems really upset. Maybe she’s hungry, or her nappy needs changing?’

She didn’t really expect an answer—so she started when Jared said, ‘The unfamiliar surroundings probably confused her, and cabin pressure in planes often upsets babies. They don’t know how to pop their ears, so the pressure grows until it hurts. Give her a bottle, or a pacifier. The sucking motion will pop her ears, and stop the pain.’

He was right. The moment Anna unwrapped the warmed bottle from the foil—a makeshift warmer—and put the teat in Melanie’s mouth, the baby sucked frantically, and the mottled colour in her face faded. She left off pulling her ears, and grabbed at the bottle, sucking hungrily. Then she smiled at Anna around the teat, making a milky mess of her face, and Anna’s heart nearly exploded with joy and love. Beautiful, darling girl.

‘Give her a teething rusk when she’s finished with the bottle. Chewing or sucking relieves the pressure on her ears,’ Jared called back a minute later.

Anna didn’t even want to question his authority—a course of wisdom proven right when Melanie grabbed at the hard-baked bread called a teething rusk with a gurgle of happiness.

‘Thank you,’ she said much later, as the baby sat back in the adapted car seat, nappy changed, making a gruel-mess all over her face with the rusk. ‘How did you know?’

‘Dad taught me to fly when I was twelve,’ he said briefly.

‘And?’ she pushed, when he didn’t embellish. Jared so rarely spoke of his father, who’d died when he’d been fourteen.

‘Nicky was about that age. Mum asked me to take him up with Dad and Andie one day when he was teething, and she needed an hour’s sleep. She loaded us up with bottles and teething rusks for the cabin pressure—but though she packed one, she forgot to tell us to change his nappy.’ Jared chuckled. ‘She gave us all a serve about his nappy rash that night.’

Taken aback by the unexpected intimacy of the memory shared, Anna couldn’t help wondering why he’d told her—he’d never once shared anything meaningful or joyful about his childhood with her. ‘So who grovelled to her the most?’ she teased, keeping it light, hiding her intense curiosity. She knew so little of him outside the work yards and bedroom.

‘Dad.’ That was it, no embellishment. She ought to have known he wouldn’t say more—and yet the single word held cadences in all shades of the rainbow: resignation, bitterness, anger and a world of pain unhealed. The numbness of endless loss—

Maybe he’d understand how she felt more than she’d assumed?

She’d heard the rumours that his father had killed himself when he’d lost the West property, Mundabah Flats … but Jared had never said a word about it to her, either in denial or confirmation. As if it hadn’t happened … or it hadn’t affected him in the least. He’d just come to Jarndirri, found a new father, a new property to run, and he’d gone on with life as if nothing had changed.

No. They stood looking at the same rainbow, but from opposite ends. He kept digging for the pot of gold when she’d long ago decided there was nothing left to find.