become partners in every sense but one, but that one was what was bothering Tom now. Tom was Lily’s legal guardian. He had six kids by two marriages and he didn’t want his niece, but he’d become increasingly unhappy about her current living arrangements.
‘Charles and Jill have both loved having her,’ Wendy reiterated, taking in Charles’s grim stoicism and Jill’s obvious distress. ‘And it’s great for Lily to stay in Croc Creek. She was born here. She’s friends with the local kids. Her father’s prize bulls are housed locally and Lily still loves them. Crocodile Creek provides continuity of identity, and that’s imperative.’
But it wasn’t an imperative with her uncle.
‘The wife’s been onto me,’ Tom retorted, sounding belligerent. ‘People are asking questions. Why don’t we take her? The wife’s feeling guilty. Not that we want her, but I’m damned if I’ll keep saying she’s fostered. I want her adopted, and the wife says whoever gets her has to be married. We’ve got to be able to say she’s gone to a good home.’
Gone to a good home… Like a stray dog, Charles thought bleakly. Lily wasn’t a stray. She was Lily, a chirrupy imp of a six-year-old who warmed the hearts of everyone around her.
But there were scars. He remembered the crash. The truck had been a write-off. They’d had to cut the cab open to get to the bodies of Lily’s mother and father, and only then had they discovered the little girl, huddled in a knot of terror behind the seats.
‘She needs us,’ he said roughly. ‘Tom, outwardly Lily’s a bundle of mischief, cheerful and bouncy and into everything. But she’s too self-contained for a kid her age, and almost every night she has nightmares.’
‘We’re only just starting to get through to her,’ Jill added urgently, and Charles looked across at his director of nursing and thought the process was going both ways.
Jill, damaged by a brutal marriage, had escaped to Crocodile Creek and was only now beginning to relax. Jill was starting to give her heart to this waif of a little girl.
And Charles…
He’d been a loner for twenty years. It had been no small thing for him to knock a hole in his living-room wall and let Jill and Lily into his life. To give Lily up now…
‘We want her,’ he said, watching Jill, and he knew by Jill’s bleak expression that Jill was expecting the worst.
‘Get married, then,’ Tom snapped.
‘We can’t,’ Jill whispered.
‘Yes, we can,’ Charles said, spinning his wheelchair so he was facing Jill directly. ‘For Lily’s sake…why can’t we?’
It seemed they could. When the shock of the question faded, Wendy was beaming her pleasure, seeing in this a really sensible arrangement that meant she didn’t have to relocate a child she was still worried about.
Tom was satisfied.
‘But do it fast,’ he growled. ‘I want her off our hands real quick. A month’s legal? I’ll give you a month to get it done or she’s gunna be adopted by someone else.’
He bade them a grim goodbye and departed. No, he didn’t want to see Lily before he went. He never did. He might be her uncle but he didn’t care.
‘This is wonderful,’ Wendy said as the door slammed behind him. They were sitting in Charles’s office at the Crocodile Creek medical base. The hospital was wide and long and low, opening out to tropical gardens and the sea beyond. Wendy looked out the big French windows to where Lily was swinging on a tyre hanging from a vast Moreton Bay fig tree. ‘This is fantastic.’
‘It’ll mean she can stay here,’ Charles said, casting an uneasy glance at Jill.
‘It means more than that,’ Wendy said warmly. ‘What Lily needs is commitment.’
‘We are committed,’ Jill said, startled out of her silence, but Wendy shook her head.
‘No. You’re doing the right thing. Neither of you give yourselves. Not really.’
‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ Charles demanded.
‘I mean you two are independent career people. Both of you have been hurt in the past. I’m no mind reader but I can see that. You’ve gone into your individual shells and you’ve figured out how not to get hurt. Both of you are lovely people,’ she said, gathering her notes with an air of bringing the interview to a close. ‘Otherwise I’d never have let Lily stay with you. But both of you need to learn to love. That’s what that little girl really needs. Children sense—’
‘We do love her,’ Jill interrupted hotly.
‘Yes, you do,’ Wendy said, smiling. ‘Enough to marry. It’s come as a surprise to me—a joy.’ She stooped to kiss Charles on the forehead and then she hugged Jill. Jill stood rigid, unsure.
‘You’ll figure it out,’ Wendy said. ‘You and Charles and Lily. It’s fantastic. Get yourselves married, learn to expose yourselves to what loving’s all about and then I can rip up Lily’s case file. Oh, and invite me to the wedding. Tom’s not leaving you much time—I guess you’d better start organising bouquets and wedding cake now.’
She left them, skipping down to say goodbye to Lily with a bounce that was astounding for a sixty-year-old, grey-haired social worker.
Jill and Charles were left staring after her.
Not looking at each other.
‘What have you done?’ Jill said finally into the stillness, and the words sounded almost shocking.
‘I guess I’ve just asked you to marry me,’ Charles said.
‘I… We can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘In a month?’ she whispered, and he nodded. But he was frowning.
‘It’s a problem,’ he agreed. ‘We’ve got so much on.’
They did. Six months ago a tropical cyclone had ripped a swathe of destruction across the entire coastline of Far North Queensland. The damage had been catastrophic, and only now were things starting to get back to normal. Here on the mainland things were reasonably settled, but their base out at Wallaby Island—a remote clinic plus Charles’s pet project, a camp for kids with long-term illnesses or disabilities—had been decimated. With government funding, however, and with the sympathy and enthusiasm of seemingly the entire medical community of Queensland, they had it back together. Better. Bigger. More wonderful. The first kids were arriving this week, and the official opening was on Saturday.
‘I guess it doesn’t take long to get married,’ Charles said cautiously. He wheeled out to the veranda. Jill followed him, unsure what else to do. They stood staring out to sea, lost in their own worlds.
‘I shouldn’t have said it without asking you,’ Charles said at last, and Jill shook her head.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You do want Lily.’
