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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.
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.
