“Karl—” I began again.
“Not now, Kate,” he said softly. “Just get better. We’ll be here when you’re well.”
I should have had a difficult time falling asleep after the call, but the pain medication wouldn’t accommodate panicked insomnia. I fell asleep with the phone still at my ear and didn’t wake up again until almost noon the next day. If I dreamed, I didn’t remember it.
• • •
Derek had been right; the Darwin Private Hospital was indeed quite proper, with its teams of specialists, its slick technology, and its pomegranate and kale salads for lunch. The doctors had told me they could discharge me the next day. Derek had already gone ahead to his farm. Mia was flying in and would take me there. She promised it coincided with a leave she’d already planned. She was required to take four weeks off at least once a year. Mia explained that it was designed to make sure the directors of refugee camps didn’t go stir-crazy, or fully native.
“Our farm is the perfect place to recuperate and rest. Stress will make a head injury worse. I promise you,” she said. “Derek will be there and my dad will probably just ignore you the entire time. You’ll go home better than when you left. Wasn’t that always the plan?”
I did want to be in better shape than I was in now, especially when I saw the girls. I could hardly even lift my own phone. I napped like a baby every couple of hours and got dizzy if I stood up for too long. This was hardly an ideal time to reunite with my husband and children and figure out what our future looked like. Once again, I needed more time.
The next morning I was still groggy as the nurse wheeled me to the hospital’s exit. “We’re driving to your ranch in this?” I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the sun as Mia waited for me, leaning languidly against a dusty yellow taxi. My heart lifted seeing my friend standing outside the hospital. It seemed impossible that we’d known one another for only a few months. I felt like I’d known her my entire life.
She crossed the space between us, gave me a strong hug that was careful to avoid my ribs, and threw my duffel bag into the trunk before returning to help me out of the wheelchair. I hadn’t been in a wheelchair since I was released from the hospital after the last time I gave birth. Karl had thought it was hilarious that Lenox Hill forced me to be in a wheelchair until the second we left their property and jogged in front of Tilly and me, videotaping our slow journey down the hospital corridors and onto Seventy-Seventh Street. I still had that video somewhere on my phone. My purple-faced newborn screamed the entire way. I could hear Isabel laugh at her little sister from her perch on her father’s shoulders.
Mia fussed over me and insisted I lean on her while getting into the taxi.
“I’m so happy they’re releasing you. I talked to your doctors. You’re going to be fine. You just need some rest. How do you feel?”
The truth was I still felt shattered and weak.
“Much better,” I said, and conjured a smile. “It’s so good to see you.”
“We’re going to the bush airport,” Mia said as the driver started the ignition. My friend wore a baggy white tank top. A red bandanna flopped lazily around her ponytail.
“I thought we were an hour’s ride away?”
“We are. In a prop plane. This is the Northern Territory. Nothing is drivable.”
I moved my hand up to my head.
“We don’t fly that high, so no need to worry about the pressure. Does it hurt much?” Mia asked, shifting seamlessly from friend to medical professional.
“I need to take another pill in about fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll have you in bed in just over an hour.”
I slumped down in the seat and let my head fall onto the ledge of her shoulder.
Darwin was a small city, and it felt like we were on the outskirts of it in no time at all. It was lush and more tropical than I expected. Soon enough we were on a single lane of asphalt. I wanted to ask if I would see a kangaroo hopping alongside the road, but I worried that would sound ridiculous. Then again, I never thought I’d be in the middle of an elephant traffic jam in a Thai jungle.
“They sure put the airport far outside the city.”
“We aren’t going to the airport.” We turned down a red dirt path, dust billowing up to the windows.
The taxi stopped at a long metal hangar. A few dirty planes were parked in front.
“Get as close to that yellow one as you can. I don’t want my friend to have to walk far,” Mia instructed the driver. He continued driving the extra ten yards through the dirt.
Mia pulled out our bags and paid the driver. She let me hold on to her as I pulled myself to stand, and then Mia slung an arm around my hip to keep me steady.
“Your chariot, madam.” She pointed to the two-passenger plane.
“Where’s the pilot?”
Mia grinned. “You’re looking at her.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Mia was a licensed bush pilot, and a damn good one at that. She expertly maneuvered her yellow Piper Cub off the ground in less than thirty seconds. I closed my eyes on takeoff and must have dozed because thirty minutes later I looked down to see nothing but deep red earth.
“Wow.” I breathed in. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
I realized Mia couldn’t hear me from the pilot’s seat so I leaned back and let myself enjoy the view.
I saw Mia make a commotion in front of me. I realized she was gesturing for me to look down below the plane. I shifted my weight slowly to avoid any twinges of pain and craned my neck a little. We weren’t too far off the ground. What I saw made me laugh out loud like a delighted child. Dozens of tawny kangaroos were moving directly under the plane, hopping around our small shadow. I saw Mia look back at me in her mirror. I gave her a wide smile and a thumbs-up.
As promised we landed less than an hour later on a narrow strip of cement surrounded by nothing but dirt and a blue pickup truck.
“Not much farther now.” Mia helped me out of the plane. I leaned into her wiry frame for support the entire walk from the plane to the truck and realized for the tenth time that day that I never would have been able to travel back to New York by myself. It was the broken ribs that crippled me more than anything else. Most standing positions made me feel as though a hot knife were slicing me through my middle.
“It looks like The Thorn Birds,” I murmured.
Mia threw her head back and laughed. “Book or movie?”
“Both.”
“Richard Chamberlain didn’t too it for me. Chamberlain seemed like a wet blanket . . . and you know . . . a pedophile.”
“You’re wrong. But then, I did love him when I was a little girl and way too young to be watching it.”
“Grown women want someone who can throw them over their shoulder and carry them off to bed and spank them.”
“Was your ex-husband like that?”
“Not in the least.” Mia laughed again and pulled a Toblerone bar out of her backpack and handed it to me. “He was a Chamberlain.”
I ripped open the candy bar and savored the sweet chocolate as I sighed long and low and took in the scenery. It reminded me a little of Zion National Park in Utah, with its grand red cliffs falling off into long swaths of desert. Karl and I went to a wedding close to Zion right after I came back to the States. We camped overnight in the park in a tiny two-person tent and hiked the entire Observation Point trail in a single afternoon. On the way back down, Karl pulled me into a crevice in the canyon just big enough for two bodies. He pressed my body against the hard rock wall and pushed himself into me right then and there. I hadn’t thought about that day in ten years. I smiled at the memory.
“So Karl called,” I said to Mia. I proceeded to tell her everything. By the time I’d finished, the sun had sunk closer to the horizon, turning the soft red earth a blazing orange.
She listened to me recount the entire phone call before saying anything in response. “What do you want to happen when you go back?” Mia asked.
<
br /> It was a relevant and reasonable question, but it still made my pulse quicken. I was going home. The doctors had said it would be safe for me to fly in just a couple of weeks. I had officially run out of runway, it was time to end this interminable adventure. But it was very surreal—the day you knew was coming but still aren’t prepared for. Yes, I was beyond excited to see my girls, but everything else—Karl, my friends, his mother—that was all more complicated. I still needed to figure out exactly what I did want to happen, and how much of it would be within my control. I ran away from my life in order to clarify what I wanted out of the next half of it, and I felt fueled by that clarity: I wanted more meaning. I wanted time to write. I wanted authentic friendships. I wanted to feel a real connection with my husband.
I had changed on this trip, fundamentally, for the better, but I had to remember that my life back home had stayed largely the same and that I was going to have to navigate a minefield of judgment and hurt feelings. Still, I was determined to keep this perspective when I went back and to live a life that I wasn’t just proud of but that I enjoyed. I didn’t give a damn that I was starting to think like an inspirational Pinterest meme.
“I want Karl to see how much this trip has changed me, how happy it’s made me. I want to be with my family without losing myself again. I want to be happy.”
Mia grinned at me and reached over to put her hand on my leg. “I’m happy that I’m a part of your journey. It makes me feel good that I could do anything to help. But what about the writing? What happened with that story you submitted to that literary magazine? Is it getting published?”
I hadn’t written back to Ben Hirsch. Being published in Zoetrope seemed insignificant once I got the e-mail from Karl’s lawyer and set out to help Htet. But now I had more time and I was determined to do as much writing as possible before I went home.
“They asked me to revise one of the stories. If they like the new version, they may publish it in the fall.”
“Yahooooo!” Mia took both her hands off the steering wheel and threw them over her head in a V, her palms smacking the roof of the truck. I quickly grabbed the wheel to keep us on the road.
“That’s incredible. That’s something to be happy about,” she said, grinning madly as she retook the wheel and gave it a hard slap for emphasis.
“I know.” It was something to be happy about. I’d worked hard and I deserved it. I vowed then to respond to Hirsch as soon as I could get to a computer. I might not be able to do much for the next few weeks, but I could still write.
Five different times Mia stopped at rustic fences made of wood and barbed wire, stepped out to swing open a gate, drove the car through, and then stopped to close it. I offered to help, but she dismissed me. “You’re a cripple,” she said.
I finally spotted a faint light in the darkness about a half mile down the road. We passed beneath a wooden arch with a hanging shingle that announced the name of the property: BAHLOO STATION.
Mia paused for a moment and stared up at the sign. “My mom named this place. Bahloo. It’s an old folktale. It might have started with the native folk. My mom’s dad was part aboriginal. Bahloo was the name of the moon. He wasn’t really a god, not the way my mom told it, at least. He was really more like the man in the moon.” Mia’s eyes began to tear up. I placed my fingers on top of hers on the steering wheel. “She always told us that Bahloo was looking out for us. Sometimes she told us he was checking up on us and he knew when we did something bad. We grew up convinced the moon was spying on us.”
“I think I would have liked your mom,” I said.
“Oh, everyone liked her. That was just one of a thousand stories she used to tell.”
Mia put the car back into gear and drove below the arch to the house.
“Dad and Derek are probably still out with the herd. There’s a cottage out back for you. It was Mom’s studio. She did watercolors back there. There’s a bathroom and the most comfortable bed in the world and a minifridge, and you never have to leave if you don’t want to. You hungry?”
I nodded and let Mia carry my bag. I took in the lovely three-story Victorian farmhouse with a grand wraparound porch. The inside was neat and well loved. The walls of the entrance hallway were covered in photographs in mismatched frames of Derek and Mia and another boy with blond hair and Derek’s eyes.
“That’s Jack. He’s in between Derek and me. He lives in Bondi, right on the beach, works at a bank. Makes a gazillion dollars and loves talking about it.”
I searched for pictures of Mia’s parents, but there only seemed to be photos of the children. I wondered if I would keep walls like these in our homes once my girls were grown and out of the house. Finally, I spied one wedding photo, but both the bride and groom were facing away from the camera, gazing off into the red desert, the sun setting in front of them. It was clear that Mia had inherited her perfect supermodel frame from her mother. The wedding dress was an ivory color, soiled by maroon dust along the train. It had a low sweetheart back. The groom’s hand fit perfectly into the curve of her hip. I saw nothing of him except his sturdy build, wide shoulders, and thick dark hair that curled just below his ears.
“How old were your parents when they got married?” I asked Mia.
“Practically fetuses. Both eighteen. Straight out of high school. My mom was up the duff, but you can’t tell in that picture. It’s why she isn’t facing the camera. If she turned around you’d see me in her belly.” I did the math in my head. That made Mia’s dad about fifty-six, much younger than I had expected.
Mia stared at the photo for a moment, and I could tell she was remembering her mother again by the quiet smile that lingered on her lips. I took her hand and gave it a squeeze to let her know I appreciated the picture as much as she did.
“Your mother is beautiful in that photo. Does Jack have kids?”
“Nope. My poor mum and pop—three grown kids and no grandkids. Broke my mom’s heart. Jack will at some point, though, once he stops dating teenagers. It’s not too late for him. His ovaries haven’t shriveled up and died.”
“Stop it.” I whacked her on the arm. “Your ovaries haven’t shriveled up and died.”
She gave me a nudge and pushed me farther down the hall to the kitchen. “Well, no, but they are on life support. I’m in half menopause, or early meno, according to my gyno. I’m lucky I haven’t grown a mustache yet. The upside is I bleed only once every six months, which is handy in the jungle. So, what can I make you? I can bet you there are eggs and some cheese and some rib eye in the fridge and that’s about it. So it’s really an omelet or a steak. We don’t worry too much about cholesterol here.”
“A steak seems like a lot of trouble.”
She shook her head and pulled a steak the size of my head out of the refrigerator along with an entire stick of butter. “You’re on a cattle farm. I can fry you a steak in ten minutes.”
Headlights beamed in through the short red-and-white-checked curtains covering the kitchen windows.
“Steak it is.” It was easy to make myself at home. I began opening creaky old cabinets looking for a glass to fill with water to take my pain meds when I heard the front door open.
“Well look what the cat dragged in,” I heard a man’s deep voice call out to Mia as I found a tall pint glass. When I turned to meet her and Derek’s dad the glass slipped from my hand and shattered on the kitchen tiles.
Standing in front of me, kicking mud from the sides of his boots, a lit cigarette still dangling from the edge of his lips, was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen in my entire life.
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
If you’d asked me a year ago if an Australian version of the Marlboro Man with a two-day beard and dirt under his fingernails was my type, I would have laughed in your face.
But Dusty Williams is probably most women’s type, even women, like me, who have long claimed they cared more about a man’s intellect, sense of humor, and sensitive side than his muscles or
his wide, strong hands.
Where had I gotten the idea that Mia and Derek’s father was a little old man? I knew he was a rancher who still rode out with his herd every day. Yet when I heard the word dad spoken by someone my age, I pictured my own suburban father in the later years of his life, his gray hair mostly gone from his head and now growing out of his nose, snoring in a recliner when he wasn’t complaining about his arthritis. My own dad was only a few years older than Dusty when he died, but the difference between the two of them was night and day.
I only looked away from the door when Mia plunked my steak on the table and flashed me a knowing smile that said, He gets that a lot.
I kneeled on the floor to hide my embarrassment, picking up the big shards of glass and placing them in my napkin. Mia stooped down with a handheld broom and dustbin to sweep up the tiny pieces. She gave my backside a smack to indicate I should get back in my chair and eat the steak before it got cold. She looked up at her father, who seemed amused to see us scrambling on the floor.
“I’m making steak. Want one? Where’s Derek?”
“He’s chasing Mikey. That bogan ran off again and got mixed in with the sheep when we lost the light. Throw one on for me.”
“Mikey’s the dog,” Mia offered by way of explanation. “And this is my dad, Oliver. But everyone calls him Dusty. Even me . . . because he’s never been a big fan of proper showers.”
“Your friend made it.” Dusty walked across the room and placed his massive palm on the top of my head and ruffled my hair like I was a five-year-old. “Derek and Mia have been bringing home strays since they were knee-high.” Like a child I tried to wriggle from his grasp.
“I’m Kate.” I stood with a wince and offered my hand instead.
He wiped his own palms off on his dirty Levi’s, and gripped my hand. When he released it he ran his fingers through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. It was shorter, but still curled at the edges the way it had in his wedding photo from four decades earlier.
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