slumped. “No. I suppose not.”
“Leith Carew isn’t prepared to accept it. Understandable enough.”
“Yes,” she bit out, concentrating fiercely on tearing up lettuce leaves. The Leith Carews of this world weren’t good at accepting anything they didn’t like. But he had to, she thought grimly, when he had no other choice.
Whether that triggered the next thought that came into her mind, Suzanne did not stop to consider. She turned impulsively to Brendan and the words spilled from her lips. “I think it’s time we started a family. Are you ready to be a father, Brendan?”
The change in his expression lifted Suzanne’s heart. His grin was a glorious beam of delight and his eyes sparkled with happiness. “More than ready if you are, my darling,” he said as he swept her into his arms.
There followed a night of sweet plans and intense loving that comprehensively wiped Leith Carew from Suzanne’s mind.
The idea of having a baby was still a warm glow inside her the next morning as she checked the progress of the babies brought to the clinic by their proud mothers. Suzanne had always loved this part of her work at the community services complex.
It had taken a while for the aboriginal people to accept her as someone who could give helpful advice on health problems. It had probably been easier for her than for any other nurse, because both she and Tom James had been adopted into the same family, and although there was no blood link between them, she was accorded the status of his sister.
They trusted Tom. It was he who had persuaded the government to build this facility, and he had been the driving force behind establishing the progressive programs that not only focussed on their present and future welfare, but kept their ancient culture a positive and proud force in their lives.
Here their art and folklore were practised and preserved for future generations. Community councils were held to settle disputes and set goals that concentrated on self-sufficiency rather than a reliance on government funds. In former years there had been much misunderstanding about the social system of the indigenous Australians but it was given more respect now, thanks to people like Tom, who formed a bridge between the old world and the new.
Since she had married Brendan, Tom had been teasing Suzanne about starting a family of her own, but it wasn’t something she had wanted to rush into. She enjoyed her work and the sense of sharing it gave her with Brendan. Now, the decision felt very right to her. She was twenty-six years old and ready to be a mother.
When the clinic was over, she couldn’t resist dropping by Tom’s office to tell him her plans for the future. He could stop teasing her from now on, and start looking forward to being an uncle. She was grinning over the pleasure that would give him as she entered his secretary’s office. Before she could inquire if Tom was free, Suzanne heard the raised voice of Leith Carew, its tone terse and angry.
“What’s this about?” she asked the secretary.
A shrug and a helpless gesture pleaded ignorance.
Suzanne looked at the door into Tom’s office. Every self-protective instinct urged her to leave right now, avoid any further involvement with Leith Carew. But anger meant he wasn’t getting his own way, and he probably didn’t realise that his way was not Tom’s way, and never would be. If he was looking for trackers to continue the search for his niece...
Suzanne shuddered. Despite the police interpretation of the clothing found near the dingo’s lair, she knew in her heart that if this was her family, she wouldn’t give up, either, no matter what the odds against finding the child alive. She could well imagine the endless torture of wondering if enough had been done to find her. Not to have a decisive resolution would be very hard to live with.
Compassion fought with common sense and won. Or perhaps something else drew her to the door, something Suzanne did not want to recognise or acknowledge. She was aware of her pulse quickening as she turned the knob and pushed. Fear, she told herself, fear of how her life might be irrevocably linked to Leith Carew’s.
As she stepped into the room Leith Carew’s hand slammed down on Tom’s desk. “What more do you want?” he thundered in frustration.
Tom’s face wore the imperturbable look that was so deeply etched in his heritage, and Suzanne instantly knew that Leith Carew had inadvertently attacked values and beliefs that were sacred to her adopted brother, sacred to the ancient Pitjantjatjara tribe to which he belonged. Leith Carew could rage at him all day and Tom would maintain his ageless dignity, as little bothered by the other man’s words as he would be by flies buzzing around his head.
He saw her in the doorway and rose from his chair to greet her. “Suzanne...”
Leith Carew spun around, the energy he was expending suddenly focussed on her, enveloping her with electric force. The initial incredulity on his face was swiftly replaced by a look of satisfaction as though her appearance in his life answered some question that had disturbed him.
I shouldn’t have come in here. The thought flashed through Suzanne’s mind. A ripple of panic coursed through her body as her gaze was caught and held by the man she didn’t want to know. The feeling was stronger this time, the feeling that they had to mean something to each other. It must have to do with the child, Suzanne reasoned frantically. She couldn’t let it be anything else.
She tore her gaze from his and quickly addressed her brother. “Tom, please do whatever is necessary to continue the search for the little girl.”
He gave Leith Carew a look that clearly said the man had no understanding of what was involved.
“Do it your way,” Suzanne urged. “Please, for me, for all of us. She’s a lost child, Tom.”
He knew what she meant. Each and every one of their brothers and sisters in the James family had been a lost child in one sense or another before being adopted. Tom was the only exception, and Suzanne was not sure the appeal would strike home.
No-one knew Tom’s exact age. He had possibly been as young as nine or as old as twelve when he had been spotted alone in the desert by a scouting aeroplane for the Bureau of Mineral Resources. He had not been lost. He had been at home in territory that was familiar to him. But government welfare officers had subsequently found him and taken him to the Warburton Mission, believing it was for his own good.
There he had observed and despised how the ways of his people were corrupted by government hand-outs. When Suzanne’s adopted parents offered him a home with them, Tom took the opportunity to get out of the mission, determined to learn the white man’s ways, then use them for the benefit of his people.
He was doing a marvellous job of it, too, Suzanne thought proudly, but whether his commitment to his ancient culture would be swayed by the underlying ethos of the James family, a caring response to those in need, despite colour, race or creed, she truly did not know.
Leith Carew would never emit that kind of need to a fellow man. He was too arrogant, too inured in the power of his family’s wealth. But Suzanne had not appealed to Tom for the sake of this man. It was for the child, the helpless, innocent child who was in the desert through no fault of her own.
Tom slowly nodded acceptance. “For you I will do it. What can be done will be done, Suzanne,” he promised her.
She gave him a brilliant smile of relief, then without so much as glancing at Leith Carew, she stepped back and drew the door shut after her. She
