‘That’s fair enough. I dragged you away from your friends in Brisbane, so you can’t harass anyone else but me.’
‘You didn’t drag me out here. I chose to come. It’s no hardship.’
‘Okay. You chose to come.’ But she still felt guilty. ‘What do you want to know?’ Callie waited patiently for her sister to start, in no hurry as the sounds of magpies and butcherbirds – birds that would be thinking about sleep in the city but still sang late in the cool outback evening – floated to her as the moon rose.
She could even hear the crickets down by the creek. She shied away from thinking about the creek, especially with Eve here, but her belly warmed anyway.
‘You’ve had a really tough couple of months and I haven’t wanted to pry. But you said once that you’d lost a baby, and if you think you could talk about it I really want to know what happened. And how someone as gorgeous and caring and just plain motherly as you hasn’t got any other kids?’
Callie wished she hadn’t encouraged Eve to ask, that she could call her words back. She looked into her almost empty glass and wished she had wine to loosen her tongue. As the silence lengthened she knew this was going to be hard.
‘Bethany. A little girl.’ Callie tried to keep her voice even but still it came out just above a whisper. ‘I never saw her.’ If only . . . She closed her eyes for a moment. Move on. Away from the thought that always pierced her.
Her voice flattened like the unending plain out there in the darkness. ‘I had severe pre-eclampsia at the end of my pregnancy and she died while I was in a coma. That’s why I don’t deliver babies any more.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Callie heard the shock in Eve’s voice. She didn’t look at Eve. Couldn’t. Her eyes stung anyway. That’s why she didn’t talk about it.
‘Have you any photographs of her? Bethany?’ A question Callie hated, but the tone said, Don’t answer if you don’t want to.
The pain that never really went away glowed again like sleeping embers fanned in a sudden hot breeze.
‘They didn’t take pictures because Kurt didn’t want them to. When I woke up she’d already been cremated. All I had was a jar of ashes.’
‘Shit!’ Eve crossed to her and slid her arm around Callie’s shoulders. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’
‘Eve!’ Callie dragged herself out of the past and glanced at her sister in mock surprise. ‘That’s a lot of poo happening there.’
‘I need a lot . . . a truckload. I’d like to put your husband in it, head-first.’
Callie almost laughed. Kurt. Lord. She wasn’t going there.
‘He didn’t know what to do. Thought he was doing the right thing. Sparing me the trauma of a funeral.’ Callie sighed. ‘She had Down syndrome, you know. They told me she had a heart defect incompatible with life.’
She stopped. Held the silence and finally had to fill it. ‘But you’re right. I think I would have coped better if I could have just held her for a while. Not just imagined what she looked like. Spoken to her, even if she couldn’t hear me.’
Eve’s face, so easy to read, was for once blank with shock. ‘I think so too.’
But Callie wasn’t hearing now. She was feeling. ‘I’ve never been able to bring myself to make a place for the ashes.’ Maybe she could make that plot now she was home, where she belonged. That idea grew.
‘How about I help you make one for Kurt?’
Callie blinked. Smiled damply at her new champion. ‘Stop it.’
But she could see Eve was genuinely upset. And not a little angry. Her new sister’s eyes were narrowed like she wanted to confront someone. Even her fingers were tense and clenched. Callie felt a measure of comfort that someone really did care that it had happened to her.
She could hear the struggle in Eve’s voice. ‘What were the staff doing, not taking photos? Have you checked with the hospital? Any midwife would take pictures if the mother was unconscious. Keep a lock of the baby’s hair. Put a packet in the medical records. It’s what we do in case parents change their mind ten years later.’
‘It’s seven.’ She’d never asked the hospital. Kurt had said no, they hadn’t taken any. Seven long years.
‘Maybe they still have something somewhere.’
Callie swallowed the sudden fear in her throat. A catch of excitement she couldn’t bear to allow to grow.
‘Eve, don’t! Please don’t say that.’ Her skin felt tight across her face like a mask as she turned to face her sister. ‘What if I start to think they have but when I ask them, they don’t?’ She shuddered. ‘No. I’m not going to ask. It would be like losing her all over again.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Eve ran her hand through her hair. Put her glass down and gripped the rail with both hands. ‘I’m sorry. I’m making it worse. I don’t know what to say.’
Boy, did Callie know all about that. How you couldn’t retrieve the irretrievable. How sometimes silence was all you could manage.
At least the conversation was over.
‘So what did you do?’
She almost laughed. Conversation not over. Apparently Eve didn’t subscribe to that theory. She so should have known that about her new sister.
‘I went back to work as soon as I could and put my head down. I wanted to try for another baby but Kurt said no. That it was too dangerous health-wise, and he didn’t want to lose me. But I think he was scared we’d have another disabled child. So I went on the pill, until we stopped having sex.’
She laughed but it was a bitter, sad little sound. Even she could hear that. ‘Now I’m forty and he’s having a baby with someone else.’
The tiny silence that followed vibrated with all the words unsaid.
Then Eve shattered the silence in typical Eve fashion. ‘Well, you have to feel sorry for that poor bitch.’
Callie lifted her head in shock. And, finally, with a reluctant smile, she shook her head. ‘Eve. Your language.’
‘You wait. If I ever meet your husband you’ll hear language. Now pour yourself a real drink and we’ll toast to our sympathy for that other woman. Then let me tell you about me.’
Callie did what she was told and, incredibly, she did feel a little better. It was good to have it out in the open, she guessed. But a change of subject would be even better.
‘Now that I’d like to hear.’
‘Ha. Boring stuff.’
‘Anything but boring, I’m sure.’
‘Well, as you know, Dad left our house when I was about two. So basically I never met him. But after meeting you guys, I don’t get why he left here in the first place. Your mother is much nicer than mine was.’
Callie had to laugh. ‘Hush. My mother said your mum was very beautiful and that he’d never stretched his wings. My parents were married at nineteen, you know, and I was born six months later.’
‘Explains a few things, I guess. How people can have a thought in their head about the grass being greener . . . Though by all accounts my mum preferred living without a man around the house. A bit like Sienna. She’s very like my mother was.’
Callie had to smile with Eve. Both were obviously thinking about Sienna’s brief visit for the reading of the will.
‘Do you know how they met?’
Callie had asked her mum once. ‘Apparently your mother stayed at the pub to write an article. When she wrote to say she was pregnant, Dad was torn. Finally he decided on a new life. Mum said to go.’
‘Sylvia is one amazing woman.’
‘It was a long four years later before he came back. He never left town again.’
‘But your poor mum.’
‘She never said much about it. I remember I was around eight and suddenly this laughing hero of a guy was gone. And Mum was stoic, still is, but I remember her crying that night. That was the only time I ever knew she cried.’
Callie straightened her shoulders. ‘She might have been fatalistic, but I think I just got angrier and angrier with my dad. When he came b
ack I didn’t talk to him for a month. But over time he wore me down. Looking back now, he was incredibly patient with me, and he never stopped making it up to Mum.’
Callie gazed out into the darkness. ‘I think she was happier than she’d been before he went away.’
Eve’s voice was hesitant. ‘But why would you bother to sign a birthday card to a half-sister who took him away from you?’
She looked at Eve. ‘Mum said I had to. Reminded me that you and your sister had lost what I’d lost. I actually understood that. As things settled and I began to believe he wasn’t going away again it began to feel so important to sign the cards.’
Eve nodded. ‘I liked getting them. They meant I really did have a dad out there somewhere. And another sister. I created very involved fantasies of why I didn’t see you. I wanted to come visit but Mum just said no. I don’t remember him at all so I guess I didn’t miss him. But I liked that my surname was different to my mum’s. Sienna hated it.’
Callie wondered if Eve was as unaffected as she claimed.
As if in answer, Eve continued. ‘But I regret not coming sooner. I was always going to and then life got in the way.’
‘What about Sienna?’
‘Sienna says she vaguely remembers him. I nursed my mum when she was dying and one thing she said stuck in my brain: fall in love, enjoy, but don’t get married if there is a voice in your head saying “run”.’
The more Callie heard about Eve’s mum the less she understood her father following her. ‘Funny advice for a mother to give her daughter.’
‘Maybe. But I see some of my friends unhappy a few years down the track and wonder. I’m thirty now and if I don’t find a soulmate I’m not getting married.’
‘So she didn’t regret not marrying him?’
Eve shrugged. ‘So she said, but she never denied she fancied him from the first moment she saw him. She gave Sienna his name and then she had to do the same for me or it would have been odd at school. But maybe it was lust and not love, though apparently they tried to work it out for Sienna. I think I was an accident that delayed his return.’
‘So you spent your whole childhood without a father figure?’
‘Not really. My grandfather was there. He understood me the best and we used to go fishing, just him and me, every now and then. I loved that. He worked a sixty-hour week in business but that paid for Sienna to go away to boarding school. I refused to go. Kept running away until Mum let me stay home. I think the phone calls from the school wore her down.’
Callie looked at her and smiled. ‘I can see the determined little girl.’
Eve laughed. ‘I didn’t fit at home but I certainly didn’t fit at boarding school. Sienna thrived and went on to med school, where she found her niche.’ She looked at Callie. ‘Funny. You seem almost the total opposite of Sienna. Did you enjoy med school?’
Callie thought about that. ‘Some parts. I loved the knowledge. The riddle of medicine. But I was lonely. Missed Red Sand. Missed my mum and dad. And Bennet. Until I started to go out with Kurt.’
‘So why did you marry Kurt and not Bennet? Bennet’s gorgeous.’
Her belly flipped again. Yes, he was. Why the heck had she married Kurt? ‘Kurt courted me. Made me feel like a princess. I’d never felt that before.’
‘So what about Bennet?’
Callie looked away. Blushed in the darkness. ‘There’s nothing to tell about Bennet. He was my friend and sweetheart when we went through school. I idolised him a bit because he’d stick up for me if someone teased me.’
Eve mumbled a disbelieving swear word and Callie had to smile. ‘Come on. The room gets cloudy when you two share space. He makes your mum laugh. He makes you laugh.’
‘Yeah, well, I might have blown that. But I think that’s why I couldn’t settle down with Bennet. I was terrified the same thing that happened to my mum would happen to me if I married my childhood sweetheart. So I went for someone totally different to my dad, and look where that got me.’
‘Yeah. Don’t start me on the Kurt I’d like to hurt and I haven’t even met him.’
‘No.’ Callie laughed. ‘I don’t think I’d let you.’
‘Well, anyway. I want to know about Bennet.’
Callie could feel the heat getting higher in her cheeks. She was feeling very silly about Bennet and there was Eve, watching her with that perceptive smile, knowing Callie wasn’t immune to Mr Kearney’s charms.
‘Bennet is a friend. I hope he becomes a good friend, like he was when we were kids, but there’s a lot of water under the bridge for both of us and a lot of grief for his wife on his side.’ And now some history down by the creek.
Eve’s eyes brightened. ‘Still waters run deep. I think you should dive in and let Bennet have his wicked way with you.’
‘Good grief.’ Again? She didn’t say it but her belly fluttered. ‘I’m a married woman.’
‘No. You’re permanently separated prior to divorce from a nasty little man who has already thrown away his wedding vows.’
God bless new sisters. ‘You certainly have a way with words.’ Callie shook her head. ‘But this is a small town. We don’t do affairs unless we want everyone to know about them.’
Eve shrugged. ‘I do get that. But how about mutual healing in secret?’
‘Seriously, Eve, stop it! Or I’m going to blush like crazy when I see him next. But yes, okay, I do fancy Bennet a bit. We’ll just have to see what happens.’
‘I’m pretty sure he fancies you too.’
‘Enough about me.’ Callie looked at Eve. ‘You said you were going to talk about you. What about you and Henry? He seems to head straight for you every time he sees you.’
‘Henry? No way.’ Eve rolled her eyes. ‘They’d call me Cougar Eve. But he came in this morning and I’m going for a fly with him tomorrow. Some errand that needs doing in Charleville for his mother and he asked if I wanted to come.’
‘Ooh, helicopter love.’
‘Don’t even think about it. But he’ll give me a laugh. I’m meeting him down at the airstrip at 7 a.m. so I’d better not drink any more or Sergeant McCabe will have me for DUI.’
They both looked and mimicked the other’s expression.
‘I have to admit,’ Callie murmured, tongue in cheek, ‘crime has dropped to zero since that particular law-enforcement officer has arrived. He even makes Blanche nervous.’ They both grinned again.
‘What’s his story?’
‘Not common knowledge. I think Mum knows something that he told Dad but I haven’t got around to asking.’ Callie swirled the remains of her drink in her glass and tossed it over the verandah. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll stay long.’
FOURTEEN
Eve was cold. It was a different winter to Brisbane. Stinking hot through the day and chilly at night. She huddled into her scarf and watched the sky lighten. The sunrise painted its pastel path across the barren paddocks as she waited for Hotshot Henry. This had been a bad idea. But it was only her second weekend off and the prospect of her first helicopter ride had seemed like fun.
Then she heard it.
The helicopter approached faster than she expected and within thirty seconds it had created a mini dust storm as it landed in the paddock a hundred metres away.
She’d have thought Henry was the type of guy to land right beside her like a show-off.
She walked towards the rotors and a hand appeared where the door should have been and gestured her across. She bent her head like she’d seen people do on TV, but seriously, it was also out of a natural instinct to avoid being decapitated. Her hair whipped around like a windmill as she stretched her hand out to hold onto the edge of the door frame so she could she look across at . . . Lex?
‘Where’s Henry?’ She couldn’t hear his voice so there was no way he could hear the stupid little tremor in hers.
She saw his mouth move. Looked like he said, ‘Jump in.’ She contemplated running. The guy had serious hunkability but there was not a lot of welcome
in the hand that beckoned. The last thing she wanted to do was spend the morning trying not to drool over Lex McKay while he ignored her.
But she didn’t get up at this ungodly hour on one of her only two sleep-in days just to freeze – physically or metaphorically.
By the time she’d struggled inelegantly into the seat she already regretted the decision, thanks to the cheeky glimpse of humour in Lex’s eyes. He gestured to the bulky headphones and microphone set hooked on the central support in front of her, and she pulled it on.
‘Good morning.’
She jumped. It was louder than she’d expected, even though Lex’s voice came through tinnily in the headphones, but the background thumping of the rotors was blessedly reduced to a hum.
‘The headphones are automatically switched to receive so if you want to say something, just push this button here.’
She eased out her breath and nodded. Took another one in and breathed out slowly, forcing the tension from her shoulders. She pushed the button.
‘Good morning, Lex.’
‘Henry sends his apologies. Something came up. Hope you don’t mind me stepping in?’
So Lex had grounded him? ‘The attraction was the helicopter, Lex.’
Crikey – did she just say ‘was’? She’d meant ‘is’. Though now she sat in it she didn’t feel particularly reassured. The aircraft was smaller, less sturdy than she’d expected, and doorless. Only the seatbelt that she was hastily pulling across her chest would save her from hurtling to death through the open door.
‘We still going to Charleville?’ she asked.
‘Yep. Errand for Blanche. Shouldn’t take long. About 400 kilometres.’
‘At how fast?’ She could work that out. How long till she could get away?
‘About 80 knots.’
Like she knew what that was. ‘In kilometres per hour?’
‘About 150.’
That was a lot of time sitting next to Lex. She shivered.
He didn’t miss much. ‘You cold?’
‘It was freezing out there.’
‘Not quite. Two degrees.’ His teeth showed white. Eve was glad someone was amused.
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