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?’
