felt the colour drain from her face at the questions she’d never thought he’d ask. ‘How could you even think I’d—I’d do that…’ she couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘kidnap’‘…knowing how I’ve been since we lost Adam? Do you think I could put another set of parents through the loss we endured?’ She said it almost as indignantly as if he hadn’t read her mind every time she’d seen a little boy or girl Adam’s age in the past few months and put an unerring finger on the pulse of her secret shame. Because, oh, if she could get away with it…to hold a precious baby in her arms, to have chubby arms around her neck, to watch it grow, and hear it calling her Mummy…
He sighed and released her arms. ‘Thank God,’ he muttered, wiping at his brow. She saw the beads of sweat there, and she knew it hadn’t been caused by the heat.
‘You honestly think I could be capable of such an act?’ she shot at him, but her voice wobbled. Guilt, shame, passion, craving, loneliness…
Why couldn’t I just say yes to Rosie’s impassioned proposal of last night? If I had, right now I’d have all I’d ever dreamed of…
‘After a night in the slammer, and you desperate to get rid of Bill, it wasn’t a big leap in logic once I saw the kid.’ He paced over to the back door and opened it, breathing in a silence of relief, fear released. ‘So whose baby is she?’
She gulped down the pain; her hands fluttered up. ‘I told you, she’s Rosie’s child—and she needs our help for a few weeks.’
‘Right, got it. So where is this mysterious Rosie?’ he queried dryly. ‘And who is she?’
‘Rosie Foster. You remember her, Maggie Foster’s girl? She grew up here, but left for university two or three years back.’ Anna sighed when he shrugged; she was sure he did know, because everyone knew everyone else here. The Kimberleys might be bigger than France, but had a population about the size of Liechtenstein. ‘She’s asleep in the spare room, I guess, or packing. She’s heading to Perth today. I—She’s got postnatal depression, and nobody to turn to. We’ve become good friends in the past few months. She asked me to take Melanie for a few weeks while she gets help.’
Jared frowned again. ‘Hang on. That makes no sense. Those places take the mother and child. Why isn’t she taking the kid with her?’
‘Melanie. Her name is Melanie,’ Anna repeated with icy patience, but Jared merely shrugged, waiting for her to answer. ‘Look, we can talk about this in the plane to Jarndirri, and, first, Rosie needs to get to the station. There’s just one train going to Perth this week, and it leaves today…’
‘No,’ he replied, with a quiet inflexibility that told her this wasn’t up for negotiation. He wasn’t taking her anywhere until he had the details. ‘That kid is not coming to Jarndirri. I’m already facing court for your sake, Anna. I won’t be an accessory to kidnapping a child—and in the eyes of the law, that’s what taking her to Jarndirri would be. Taking her one step out of this house without calling the cops means serious prison time—and it looks to me like Bill would love any excuse to lock me away, at least,’ he added with a penetrating look.
Anna felt herself flushing, feeling almost as guilty as if she’d accepted any of Bill’s many offers to have dinner, coffee or watch a DVD together. ‘I didn’t ask you to break any laws in getting here,’ she snapped, exasperated and uncomfortably aware that her pleading tone over the phone had been its own request to a take-charge kind of man like Jared. ‘I haven’t broken any laws either. Taking Melanie to Jarndirri in no way constitutes…abduction. We have the mother’s written permission to look after her for a few weeks.’
‘Will you just tell me how the kid got here?’ He spoke with a frown, with an exaggerated kind of patience that made her flush—and stop beating around the bush. She answered him in a crisp, cool voice that hid her defensiveness.
‘Rosie came to me last night. She’s been struggling to cope since she had the baby. But she’s just been diagnosed with postnatal depression. She wants me to mind Melanie for a few weeks while she gets help.’
‘Hasn’t she got any family?’ Now the tone was leashed; she felt the impatience straining from him. Wanting to know why—and what it had to do with him—but he must have picked up on her reluctance to tell the story all at once. Felt her longing to run, hard and fast, at the same time she yearned to look after a baby, even if it would never be her own.
‘Her ex-boyfriend disappeared when she began showing, told her he had a wife and kids he’d already left. He didn’t like being a father. He’d hooked up with her because she was a medical student, and wouldn’t want kids for years. And her mother—remember Maggie?’ she repeated with emphasis.
‘Yes. What about her?’
Anna gritted her teeth, hearing that exaggerated patience again, the reluctance in listening, wanting her to get to the point. To Jared a story was just a vehicle to him finding the solution, and drawing it out with unnecessary hesitation or embellishment was useless.
Just as well I didn’t want to become a writer, she thought wryly, before she answered. ‘Rosie doesn’t remember her father, and you know how Maggie was so intensely proud of Rosie being at university and becoming a doctor. She hates that Rosie chose to give up her medical studies and come home to have the baby. She threw her out and though she only lives an hour from here, she hasn’t even seen Melanie. If Rosie leaves Melanie with Maggie, she’s afraid the mother will use her depression as an excuse to get Child Services involved, or try to put the baby up for adoption.’
‘Nice woman,’ was his only comment, with a world of dryness. Hiding what they were both thinking. Some people would give anything to have a beautiful, healthy baby, and she only sees it as a hindrance…
‘The train leaves in forty minutes. I need to wake Rosie right now if she’s going to make it. The point is, Rosie wants me to take the baby to Jarndirri for the few weeks she’s gone—away from her mother’s influence, and interference by the ex if he knew,’ she said in a rush. ‘We don’t have much time. Will you do it?’
He looked at her for a long time, and Anna wanted to squirm. After all these months of him coming here, demanding she return home or seducing her into it, she’d thought—hoped—
‘Go wake her. I’ll meet her and make up my mind,’ was all he said. His face was expressionless as always, and she wished for the hundredth time that she could see or feel anything from him—anything at all. That he could actually talk to her and say anything so she’d know this enigma she’d lived beside for half her life, the husband she still didn’t know.
Squelching the hurt for the hundredth time, she turned and walked to the spare room.
And she ran back into the kitchen a minute later, panting, ‘She’s gone. Everything’s gone!’
‘What?’
‘She’s done a runner,’ Anna said helplessly. ‘She’s left the baby, given her to me.’
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