by Lilian Darcy
‘I don’t have to give her up, do I?’ Marco said, his expression torn between a smile and a frown. ‘You’ll always be my brother. I can see her whenever I want.’
‘It’s not the same. Think ahead. If you only see her once a year, she can’t call you Dad. Do you want to be Dad, or do you want to be Uncle Marco?’
‘You can’t mean you wouldn’t tell her!’ Marco dropped his hands from the swing, and Bonnie twisted around to see why she wasn’t going so high any more. Gian stepped closer, and took over.
‘That she’s adopted, yes,’ he said, as he pushed. ‘As soon as she’s old enough to start to understand—and that’s only a few months away.’
‘I guess it is.’ Marco looked at his daughter and frowned.
His behaviour with her was tentative and uncertain. He didn’t know much about children, and had been quite startled to find how she’d grown and changed in the many months since he’d seen her. Understandably, she was wary of him, sensing his ill-ease, and they wouldn’t succeed in forming a meaningful bond during such a short visit.
‘But I’m not telling her who her biological father is until she’s old enough to understand that,’ Gian went on. ‘And that point is a lot further away. I’m conservative, Marco, in certain areas. I have a reputation for it. If you sign those papers, she’s calling me Dad, and I want you to think about whether you can live with that. You may marry, and settle back in Australia eventually. Or maybe somewhere else. If you send for her in five years, or ten, she’s not going. If we agree on this, and I’ve adopted her, she’s staying with me.’
‘I’m not sure why the decision has to be made now. Things have been working fine with the arrangement we’ve got,’ Marco said.
‘Tell that to Mum on a bad day! She’s getting more and more tired, and Bonnie’s getting harder to manage. Mum loves her to pieces, and she’d never give her up willingly. But you’re her father. If you decide that you want her with you, Mum won’t stand in your way.’
‘Are you trying to argue me into this decision, or out of it? A moment ago, you were asking if I could stand to give her up!’
‘I just want you to spend some time with Bonnie, and think through what you really want, and what’s best for everyone. One way or another, a permanent, workable decision has to be made.’
‘Bonnie has to come first,’ Marco said firmly. ‘That much I do know.’
Gian agreed with all his heart, but he didn’t say so.
‘Have you come for eggs?’ Kit asked.
Gian had just driven into the yard, with Bonnie strapped in her seat in the back of his car. It was eight-thirty on a Friday morning, eight days after the birth of Megan Ciancio’s baby girl, and Aunt Helen was cleaning the bathroom at the far end of the house. Wearing jeans and a light sweater, Kit had washed the breakfast dishes and prepared a lamb casserole for tonight. Gian should surely have been at work, but he wore clothes as casual as her own.
‘No,’ he answered her. ‘I’ve come for my handkerchief.’
‘Oh.’
‘But I’m sure Bonnie wants eggs, too.’
‘I’ll grab a carton and come out with you. And I’ll—The handkerchief is—’
‘Forget the handkerchief,’ he growled.
‘Now you want me to forget it.’ She was tense and on edge, after days that had dragged with painful slowness. She’d known he wanted to see her once his brother’s visit was over, but still had no idea what he would suggest about their future. The phantom marriage proposal that he’d never made hung in the air between them like a ghost. Even thought he hadn’t said it, it had changed things.
‘You know it’s not important,’ he answered her. ‘You know it was purely an excuse. I want to talk.’ He took Bonnie’s hand and walked towards the hen run. Kit walked beside him. ‘I’ve got some news,’ he said.
For some reason, her heart started to pound. The news was significant, she could tell from his tone. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m adopting Bonnie.’
She gasped. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting, although what she had been expecting she couldn’t have said. ‘Adopting her?’ she echoed foolishly. ‘Formally? Legally?’
‘Yes.’ He looked at her, his eyes steady on her face. ‘Marco has agreed, and Mum’s happy, and we’ve talked to a lawyer. It shouldn’t take long to finalise. I’ve been thinking of this as a solution to the whole issue for a while, but didn’t want to say anything until Marco had been here, and until we’d fully talked through what it meant.’
‘That’s…that’s wonderful, Gian!’ It left her head spinning.
They reached the hen run and Kit opened the gate with half-numb, clumsy fingers to let Bonnie inside. Bonnie was very good about not frightening the hens, now, and always went quietly and carefully, knowing exactly which tricky hen hiding places to check.
Gian and Kit both watched the little girl in silence for a moment—Kit with her brain feeling as if it was stuffed with the wool from Aunt Helen’s sheep—then Gian wrapped an arm around her body and pulled her against him.
‘So,’ he said in an odd tone. ‘There you go. Now I can say it, at last. You wanted us to be able to have a child, and now we’ve got one. Marriage, as soon as we can arrange it. Instant family. Problem solved.’
His dark eyes glittered. There was anger and challenge in them, radiating out at her with powerful force, and his body contact wasn’t warm and gentle, it was imperious and hard.
Kit remembered his pinpoint-accurate understanding of how she’d felt the night they first slept together, and the way he’d started using contraception after that first time, so that she didn’t have to suffer through the on-going agony of faint, false hope. Today, he seemed like a different person, and the understanding she’d come to rely on had gone.
He couldn’t be serious! He couldn’t seriously suggest that darling little Bonnie was nothing more than a final, convenient peg to slot into the intricate puzzle of their relationship. That would be disastrous and wrong. For all of them.
She pulled sharply out of his arms. ‘That’s crazy!’ she said, and her voice was shaking.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, struggling for the right words. There was a breeze today, sharp and cold and strong, and she felt a chill ripple down her spine.
‘Bonnie’s herself,’ she went on. ‘She’s not something you can reach out and grab, to solve a problem, like a—like a surgical dressing on a wound. She’s a unique, gorgeous little person, and I love her, and if you’re adopting her purely as some sort of cure-all for the impasse we’ve reached…!’
She blinked back tears of outrage and disappointment.
‘No. I can’t believe this, Gian!’ she exclaimed. ‘Bonnie’s far too important and precious to be used as a substitute for some abstract, non-existent baby of our own! You couldn’t think that way. And I absolutely couldn’t!’ She dragged her fingers down her face, bristling and distant and hardly able to look at him. ‘It’s impossible. And wrong!’
‘Ah, hell, Kit, exactly!’ he answered. There was a new light in his eyes, and it was blazing bright. ‘You’ve said it. You’ve said everything I hoped you’d say. Oh, dear God, I’m so glad!’ He stepped forward, and this time, when she felt his arms around her, she found that he was shaking.
‘Don’t,’ she told him, not understanding. He’d never played games with her before, and surely this wasn’t the time to start. What was this about?
‘Of course I’m not adopting Bonnie as a substitute or a cure-all,’ he said.
‘Then—?’
‘I’m adopting her because that’s the best solution for Mum and Marco, and for Bonnie’s own well-being and security. As far as I’m concerned, you take what life gives you and you turn it into something good.’
‘Do you? Yes, that makes sense, but—’
‘I’m sorry to have played devil’s advocate like that.’ His mouth brushed hers briefly, confusing her more than ever. ‘But it was the only way I could think of to force the issu
e, to break the deadlock we’ve somehow got ourselves into.’
‘I still don’t understand, Gian.’ Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘Even though I want to. I want this to be OK.’
His arms tightened around her ‘Bonnie could never be a substitute, and neither could you. I love you. You. Not just you-if-you-could-have-a-baby. Or you-as-long-as-we’ve got-Bonnie-so-we-get-to-be-parents. I love you with no add-ons, and no reservations. And I want to marry you.’
‘Why?’ she blurted. ‘Tell me why.’
‘For all the reasons.’
‘Tell me! You’re the only one who can make this all right. I can’t.’
‘Because I love you now. Because I know I’m going to love you for the rest of our lives.’
‘Oh…Oh!’
‘Because I want the rest of the world to recognise what we have. Isn’t that enough? I’ve been torturing myself over the past few days—weeks, probably—trying to come up with something that was enough, since love, for you, so clearly wasn’t. But I’ve had to accept that there isn’t anything more than love. There isn’t anything better. There’s just love. That’s our best weapon for dealing with everything else that might come into our lives. Adjusting to life with Bonnie, pursuing fertility treatment, anything. And love is all I’ve got to offer, Kit. If that’s still not enough—’
‘Oh, Gian, it is enough!’ she answered him shakily at last. ‘I’d started to understand that myself, but I wasn’t sure about you. When it’s expressed like this and felt like this, you’re right. Love is enough. Love is everything.’
‘So will you marry me?’
‘Yes, oh, yes!’
He touched her face and looked into her eyes. ‘There’s a lot to sort out. We’ll live at the farm, if that’s OK with you. Mum wants to swap with me and move into my unit in town. We’ll juggle the arrangements for Bonnie’s care between the three of us, and it’s up to you whether you go on working full-time, or whether you cut down your hours. I’d support you in whatever you decide. And if you want to try some more treatment for a baby of our own, at some point, you know I understand what that involves, and that we’ll handle it together, all the way.’
‘Gian, that’s too hard even to think about. I want to. Of course I do. But I’m scared, too.’
‘There’s time. No decisions on that till we’re ready to make them. We’ll make this work, Kit.’
‘We will. For the rest of our lives. Oh, Gian, when you promised me that, just now, everything else seemed to fade away.’
Kit lifted her hand to touch his face, and a kiss hung in the air between them like fairy dust.
It didn’t happen.
‘One two three twenty-six forty eggs!’ Bonnie called out proudly.
‘That many, sweetheart?’ Kit answered, turning to her. She felt Gian give a shuddering sigh against her body, and the smile he gave to his little girl was turned upside down. He didn’t particularly want to have to count eggs, right now.
There were five eggs in the open carton, which tilted dangerously in Bonnie’s hands as she approached the gate. Gian let her out of the hen run and took the eggs quickly. Aunt Helen appeared in the kitchen doorway, at that moment, and came down the steps.
‘Hello, Gian,’ she said. He still had one arm around Kit, who was leaning into his shoulder with no desire ever to let him go, and when Helen saw this, she smiled and understood. ‘Freddie’s going to be over the moon,’ she told them softly.
‘I’m already there,’ Kit answered in a wobbly voice. ‘And loving it.’
‘Bonnie, would you like to help me make a cake with some of those eggs?’ Aunt Helen asked. ‘I think it might be appreciated, in certain quarters, if I kept you busy for a while. A chocolate cake, maybe?’
‘Choccy cake!’ Bonnie said, and tried to pull the egg carton out of Gian’s hands.
Helen came and rescued it, took Bonnie’s hand and led her towards the house.
Gian didn’t wait until they’d disappeared. He bent his head closer before Bonnie had even reached the steps. ‘Because she’s going to have to get used to the sight of her new parents doing this very often, isn’t she?’ he said softly to Kit, and then his mouth came down on hers.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5762-0
THE MIDWIFE’S COURAGE
First North American Publication 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Lilian Darcy
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