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She didn’t move for a long time. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest told him she was breathing at all. Her fingers twitched, like they always did when she was stressed.
After a long time, she nodded. ‘You win … again,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll stay.’
Tears ran down her cheeks. Her soft golden-brown skin had drained of all colour until it looked like alabaster. As her head drooped, her hair slowly fell over her face, a toffee-coloured curtain hiding her emotions from him.
Withdrawing into the world she’d wandered the past year, lonely and grieving and lost. She looked exactly as she had the day Adam had died, and he’d sent her back there so he could win, so he could have what he wanted. At Anna’s expense …
‘God help me, what have I done?’ he muttered beneath his breath.
Every part of him ached to take her in his arms, say he didn’t mean it, that she could have the blasted baby or anything else she wanted—but when he took a step, she rose to her feet. Head still lowered, she lifted a hand. ‘You can force me to stay with you, but you can’t make me want to be here. You can force me to be your wife, but you can’t make me love you.’
The half-whispered words froze him where he stood. The one thing he’d gambled on this whole time was that she loved him still, that all these months of denial was grief talking … but somehow, now, he felt it.
It was over. She didn’t love him. She didn’t want to stay.
Stooping down to gather Melanie into her arms, she walked out of the room with an unsteady step—but at the door, she paused.
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered through a throat so thick he barely heard her. ‘Everything I ever did was for you, in an effort to make you happy. I even left so you could have Jarndirri, and find a real woman, someone to have sons with. I gave you your dream and freedom. Why can’t you let me go, Jared? Why can’t you let me be happy without you?’
Until now he’d never have believed there was worse suffering than losing his son, but she’d just taken his heart from his chest while it was still beating, and walked right over it. After what seemed like hours, she still stood there, demanding answers in her silence, and he finally answered. ‘It’s always been you and me at Jarndirri. We belong here, together, for life. You’re my wife.’
She looked up then—but her beautiful dove’s eyes burned with fury and betrayal. ‘The one thing I’d held to all these years was that you never meant to hurt me. You have no idea what you just said, do you?’ She laughed, but it was an ugly sound, sad and bitter.
Moments later he heard the key turn in the lock of the room she shared with the baby.
Jared stood in the middle of the kitchen, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. After all the hard work he’d done to bring her closer, he’d just pushed her away and he didn’t even know why. She was in his life, but it was the last place she wanted to be.
Why? If only he could understand what he’d said or done! He loved Jarndirri with a dreamer’s passion, sure, but everything he’d done had been for them, for the family they could still have, if only she’d listen …
You can’t make me love you.
At least he hadn’t said the three fatal words. How many times had he heard his father say them to make his mother stay in an unendurable situation, or to ask her to fix what he’d broken? I love you, Pauline, please make this right, make us all happy again.
He thanked heaven he hadn’t repeated history, trying to fix the unfixable with three words. If he had, Anna would only despise him for it, and rightly so.
With all his being he burned to go to her now. With a word he could make her open the door, come back to eat the forgotten lunch, or touch him—he had the power over her, until Melanie was adopted at least—but she was right. He couldn’t make her want to be here.
He couldn’t force her to love him. What was her staying worth without that?
The phone began ringing at that moment, and he knew it was Lea; it was only a matter of time before Lea called looking for Anna, especially as Anna’s cellphone was switched off. ‘Perfect timing,’ he muttered wryly. On feet as uneven as hers had been, he crossed the room to face the tiger.
In the Wet, there were no pretty blue and violet twilights, only damp, dark shadows creeping around the clouds growing deeper by the moment. Night didn’t fall, it just happened. Anna waited that long to leave her room, though she was amazed Jared hadn’t forced her out long before now. He’d proven his ownership, his power over her. Was he waiting to starve her out, so she’d have to come to him like a supplicant? She was blowed if she’d go begging …
But when Melanie was no longer satisfied with the bottle of water, and began whimpering for her dinner, Anna knew she had to face him. She changed the baby again, and left the room with her head high. He might have what he wanted, but he’d never own her again.
She smelled the rich roasting cheesy smell, the garlic in the bread baking, and her stomach howled. Entering the kitchen, she saw it was empty—but there was a bowl of cereal for Melanie covered with plastic wrap, and a bottle of her favourite red wine from the Barossa Valley open and breathing.
He’d bought the wine she’d always loved?
Sounds of scraping on the front verandah led her that way. Picking up Melanie’s bowl first—it even had a little spoon in it—she walked through the screen door.
Soaking wet, Jared was scrubbing the rust off the legs of the travel cot; the inside was already clean, the thin pillows sewn together to make a mattress, a sheet over it. He looked up with a grin when she came out. ‘Hey. Have a good rest?’
Anna blinked. What was he doing, acting as if nothing had happened? Opening her mouth to say no, she heard an uncertain ‘Yes, thank you,’ escape her lips.
Maybe her heart was wiser than her mind. She was tired of the arguments, of the constant struggle to win when she only ended up losing.
‘That looks better,’ she remarked, noting he’d done the work on the side of the house where the Buttons wouldn’t see or hear him.
‘I couldn’t put Melanie in something that dirty, she could get sick.’
It was the first time he’d used Melanie’s name without hesitation … and he was showing concern for the baby’s welfare. Touched despite the lingering anger and humiliation roiling through her, she smiled.
Then the baby howled, and Anna sat down quickly, Melanie on her lap, and took the plastic cover from the bowl. ‘Thanks for having it ready.’
‘It was the least I could do.’
She had to keep her eyes on Melanie as she fed her, but the note in his voice, curiously humble, distracted her. She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘I don’t like being blackmailed.’
‘I didn’t know any other way to keep you with me.’
In all the years she’d known him, she’d never heard such an open admission from the great Jared West; he’d always been so sure of himself, so strong. ‘It won’t work,’ she said quietly, soothingly for Melanie’s sake. ‘It won’t make you happy, Jared, if I don’t want to be here.’
He left off scraping rust, and came to her. He was still soaking wet, his black hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes like the deep indigo twilight hidden by the clouds. ‘Give me a chance, Anna. I want to get it right. I can’t stand to think you’re going to walk away from me when I know all we could have been, if only I hadn’t taken you for granted.’
His honesty compelled her to be open in return. ‘I never wanted your solutions, Jared. I wanted you to listen to me, to care about how I felt.’
His gaze searched her face. ‘Are you so unhappy at Jarndirri, Anna—or was it me that made you unhappy?’
Having Melanie’s mouth open for more food gave her a moment’s respite to think. She spooned more cereal into that little rosebud mouth, with a rush of love and joy that confused her, given Jared’s question and her certainty until now. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last.
‘You said you were tired of being alone. Did I make you feel so lonely?’
Strange that, when Jared was asking her the right questions at last, when he seemed to be listening after all these years, it felt so surreal, like she was having one of those dreams so vivid and real, she almost believed it was true. She’d wanted this for so long, but now it was here, she wasn’t ready to answer. ‘Melanie’s dribbling her food,’ she said, for something to say. ‘Could you get one of her bibs? I forgot.’
She waited for one of his teasing comments, such as What would you do without me? but he merely nodded and went inside, giving her space, time—and he took longer than he’d need to find the bib in the baby bag. When he came back out, he had a container of wet wipes as well as the bib, and a damp cloth. ‘I didn’t know which you’d want, so I brought them all.’
Anna felt as if the world had slowed down, turned the other way. Jared was giving her choice. ‘Thanks … um, the damp cloth, I think.’ She wiped down Melanie’s front and her face, put the bib on and put another spoonful into her mouth when she wailed. ‘You really bought a lot of things today,’ she said. Lame, Anna, so lame! ‘The wine, the wet wipes—the pillows for the travelling cot. You were really busy.’
‘I wanted to make you happy.’
The simple words, filled with all the emotion she’d once have given her life to hear, somehow became the last straw on this roller-coaster of a day. ‘Stop it, Jared. I’m not ready—
I don’t know what you want me to say. You’re confusing me. All these years of no talking at all from you, and now…’ She shook her head. ‘I just want to feed the baby and have dinner.’
A loud grumble of her stomach came louder than the drumming rain. Jared laughed—with an effort, it seemed to her. ‘Stupid male, throwing hard questions at a hungry woman and expecting answers. I’ll go serve our dinner. Want to eat it here?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said, more confused than ever.
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.’
