Snowy River Man

by Lizzy Chandler

  Sandra had left for the day, a copy of the tender on his desk with a note to say she’d emailed it off to the council. He checked the message pad. Already, one of the councillors had rung; Gus Tarranto, a local man Jack knew well. Apparently he’d received a copy of the tender and wanted to discuss it as soon as possible. He’d left his home number.

  Jack could barely bring himself to think about the project now, even though he knew it was important. The trail rides and cabins would bring tourists to the area, and they would give much-needed jobs to the locals. With the long drought and the drop in the lake level, the area wasn’t attracting the number of fly fishermen it once had. As a community, they needed to find alternative sources of income.

  He switched on the computer and checked his emails. There was one from Eriksson himself. He opened the document and began to read. According to the lawyer, there were two signatories to the bank account bearing Katrina’s name. One of them was Robyn Delaney, Katrina’s mother. Evidently, until her death, she’d had her daughter’s Power of Attorney.

  He stared at the words on the screen.

  He couldn’t believe it. It looked more and more as if Katrina’s mother had arranged for him to take custody of the baby in exchange for money, the very thing Jack had believed Katrina guilty of. Yet how could the woman have done such a thing to her own daughter?

  At the end of the email was the name and phone number of a psychiatrist at Cammeray Private.

  Jack punched in the psychiatrist’s number. He was in luck. She was still at work. His heart hammered as he was put through. Initially the woman was adamant. There was no way she could tell him anything about Katrina’s stay there. She had to respect patient confidentiality. But when he explained why he wanted to know, and his fears for Katrina once she learned the truth, he obtained a different response. When he got off the phone, he felt sick.

  It wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear.

  Chapter 11

  After his bath, Nick came looking for Katrina and asked whether she could read him a bedtime story. With Jack still busy in his office, she happily agreed. They climbed the stairs together and went down the long corridor into the boy’s bedroom.

  ‘Your foot’s all better now, Katina?’

  ‘Nearly,’ she said with a smile, realising she’d forgotten her cane. ‘What story would you like?’ she asked, once the little boy was snuggled up in bed.

  ‘You pick.’ He lay back on the pillow, still rosy-cheeked from his bath. She scanned the bookshelves, her gaze settling on a title she remembered from childhood.

  ‘How about The Silver Brumby?’ she suggested.

  He smiled. ‘That’s my fav’rite!’

  She took down the picture book which that been adapted from the classic children’s novel and began to read. Lulled by the turning pages and rhythm of the story, it wasn’t long before the boy’s eyelashes fluttered and his breathing deepened. She smoothed a hand over his silky, dark curls.

  Jack’s son.

  The painful irony struck her. A boy whose mother had died. And herself, whose son hadn’t lived. Did Nick miss his mother as much as she still missed her child? She wondered whether he could ever learn to love another woman as his mother. Or would there always be something missing? Looking down at Jack’s son, she was sure she could learn to love another woman’s child.

  Given time.

  Unable to resist, she bent over and kissed the boy’s forehead, breathed in the fresh-soap smell of his skin, her heart aching. If only —

  ‘He’s asleep already?’

  She jerked back. Jack was standing in the doorway. Heat flushed her face. She knew she’d overstepped a boundary. She shouldn’t have kissed the boy. Jack would think she —

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I…’ she said, swallowing. ‘He just looked so…’

  ‘Don’t apologise, Katrina.’

  He crossed round to the other side of the bed, kissed his son on the forehead and tucked the colourful quilt up around his chin. As he turned off the lamp, she withdrew to the corridor.

  He stepped out behind her. ‘Do you still want to see those stars?’

  Her heart jolted. She knew she should turn him down. It would be far safer that way. Hadn’t she already had enough disruptions in her life without adding another heartbreak over Jack Fairley? But her rational, logical side didn’t stand a chance. She wanted to be with him.

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Better bring a coat,’ he said. ‘It’s getting cold outside. There are jackets in the tack room if —’

  ‘Don’t worry. I came prepared.’ She smiled at his concern. His manner seemed changed toward her. He had a new protectiveness, as if he was worried for her in some way. Shrugging off the feeling, she followed him downstairs, retreated to the guest room and fetched her coat from her suitcase.

  Jack was waiting for her outside, an overhead lamp splashing yellow light down the stairs. He’d put on a sky blue sweatshirt over his t-shirt, the contrast making his skin look darker, his hair more sun-bleached. The top stretched taut over his muscles, his broad chest and shoulders intensely masculine. He smelled of dust and the outdoors.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘No cane?’

  ‘It must’ve been just a twist,’ she said, her breath forming a cloud of vapour. She buried her hands in her coat pockets, glad of its warmth. ‘Or it’s this healing mountain air.’

  Switching on a torch, he led the way. They wandered down the dirt road, well away from the house, the circle of light from the torch bobbing ahead of them. Over the rise, a wooden gate barred the way. Beyond, the road disappeared down the hill toward the river. When he switched off the torch, darkness wrapped round them.

  Katrina leaned on the gate, arms folded across her chest, and looked up. On the eastern horizon, moonlight etched the mountains with a soft silver haze. Overhead, the night was as intensely black as a jeweller’s cloth. The dense cluster of stars spread like diamonds, brilliant and lustrous, scattered on velvet.

  For just this second, she could imagine — she could believe — that everything was exactly the way it was meant to be. She wished this moment would last forever.

  ‘So beautiful!’ she said, her voice breaking the still night air.

  ‘Very,’ he agreed, looking straight at her.

  * * *

  Jack gazed at Katrina, her face only faintly visible.

  Somehow she looked even more mysterious, more desirable than ever. With her dark hair and lustrous eyes, she looked as if she belonged to the night. He wanted to kiss her, to drink in her mouth’s softness. He wanted to take her in his arms and feel her body against his. But he couldn’t. Too much stood in the way.

  The past. Nick. What had happened between them, and to her.

  His heart contracted at the thought of what he’d learned.

  Katrina was not only beautiful, she was also an intelligent, kind, sensitive young woman. Hard to believe that six and a half years ago she had been so ill that her mother had thought it best to give Jack her child and let her daughter believe that their baby had died.

  According to the psychiatrist, Katrina had suffered a psychotic breakdown during her pregnancy. Having little sleep for days at a stretch, she had reported seeing visions and hearing voices. Afraid she was a harm to herself and the baby, Robyn Delaney convinced her daughter she needed to be hospitalised and put on medication. It had been voluntary; but, even so, Katrina seemed to have no understanding of how sick she had been. Although she had stabilised, her mother had believed there was no way she was well enough to look after a newborn child once it came time to deliver. That’s why it had been Robyn, not Katrina, who’d approached him about making arrangements for him to have custody, an agreement the psychiatrist believed Katrina had agreed to.

  None of which lessened Jack’s guilt. For getting her pregnant, for going through with his engagement to Ann-Marie.

  It could hardly be a coincidence that her breakdown had happened while she was pregnant. In her eyes, he had us
ed her and abandoned her. She’d had no way of knowing that, despite all appearances to the contrary, he had cared for her, had intended to make good on his promises — if she hadn’t run away. And what chance now that she would ever believe him, considering everything that had happened?

  Yet that wasn’t what stopped him from telling her.

  Katrina appeared to have made a full recovery. But how stable was she really? Was she mentally and emotionally strong enough to hear the truth about her child? That her mother — well-meaning as she may have been — had lied to her. That her baby was alive and well, and had been living unaware of her for all these years as his son.

  No one could predict the impact such news would have. Not him, not the psychiatrist. Before he took the risk, he had to get her to open up, to hear her side of the story about what had happened. Only then might he be in a position to judge when would be a safe time to speak.

  Stepping up beside her, he leaned against the wooden rail and took a deep breath.

  ‘Katrina, I know this must be a difficult subject for you, but…’

  ‘You mean, about the baby?’ Even in the darkness, he felt her body tense.

  ‘I mean the whole story. How you ended up in hospital so heavily medicated you didn’t recognise me.’

  * * *

  Katrina braced herself. This was it. Jack wanted to know the truth.

  Maybe it was just as well. If she couldn’t stop herself from falling for him again, maybe she could protect herself this way. She would tell him her secret and watch him recoil. He would think she was crazy, just as her own mother had done. He wouldn’t want to know her, and then she’d be safe.

  But another part of her wanted him to have a different reaction, wanted him to understand. The feeling she’d had at Murray Tom’s returned. She was sick of trying to pretend she was just like everyone else, that nothing bad had ever happened. It was part of her. It had made her who she was. She didn’t want to run away from it now. Besides, Jack had a right to know. He deserved to know the full circumstances in which their baby had died. Even if he judged her for it.

  ‘Do you promise to keep an open mind?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  She stepped back from the fence and looked up at the stars, searching for words that would help him understand.

  ‘When I was very little,’ she began, ‘I used to dream. They were psychic dreams, although I didn’t know it then.’

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  ‘There was an old lady who lived in the flat upstairs. Mrs Parrish. When I wasn’t much older the Nick, I had a dream about her. Mrs Parrish said she was going away and asked me to look after her cat. I told Mum and she got the strata manager to open the apartment. The old lady had died in her sleep and her poor puss was locked inside, miaowing for food.’

  ‘You don’t think you heard the cat and put two and two together?’ Jack suggested.

  ‘Maybe. But there were other things. Little things, mostly. Like dreaming where a Mum lost her keys. She hated it. She said I’d better be careful or I’d grow up mad, like my grandfather.’

  ‘Her own father?’

  ‘I guess so. I never knew either of my grandfathers.’

  ‘Did your mother ever…I don’t know…take you to see someone about it?’

  ‘You mean a psychiatrist? She probably wanted to. But I didn’t want to talk about the experiences. And they went away for a while. Until I was pregnant.’

  ‘When you had your breakdown?’

  ‘It wasn’t a breakdown, Jack,’ she said, seeking out his face in the shadows. His features were faintly visible now that the moon had risen above the horizon. ‘It wasn’t postnatal depression, either, like I told you. All this happened before I had the baby, not after.’

  ‘What did happen exactly?’ he said softly.

  She swallowed, butterflies twirling in her stomach.

  ‘After I fell pregnant, I didn’t dream so much as…’ She struggled for a way to explain it. ‘When I went to bed at night, my head would barely touch the pillow before I’d be having some spontaneous out-of-body experience or vision. Sometimes, I’d hear voices or beautiful music. Other times I’d see bursts of light. Often, I’d have this sensation of flying far off, as if to other worlds and distant galaxies. And I wasn’t alone. There was always someone — some being — with me. Sometimes flying alongside me. Sometimes standing beside my bed. I saw things, Jack. Amazing things. Beautiful things. I know it sounds crazy, but —’

  ‘Had you been taking drugs?’

  ‘No,’ she cried. ‘I mean, I used to share a joint at a party occasionally, but no more than that.’

  ‘So what do you think caused these…hallucinations?’

  Hallucinations? Was that what he thought? She felt like crying. How could she get him to understand? She recalled all the reading she’d done after she started to dream about the lost boys, when she’d tried to make sense of what had been happening to her. It was the first time she had begun to see that her experiences were part of the awakening of the psychic gift she’d first felt in childhood.

  ‘Western society is quick to medicalise experiences of the kind I had. But, in some tribal societies, people used to be encouraged to go through this kind of thing. It was seen as a spiritual awakening, a sacred rite of passage. Often, such people became powerful healers or shamans in their communities. It was normal for them to temporarily lose contact with reality, and the community rallied round to support them. But when something like that happens in our culture, it’s often diagnosed as mental illness and treated with medication.’

  ‘Is that what you believe happened to you, Katrina?’ he asked, his voice low. ‘Some kind of spiritual awakening?’

  ‘Yes. Only I didn’t have the language to understand it then. It frightened me, and it frightened Mum even more, because of her history with her own father. I wanted it to stop. And because it happened at night, I began to be frightened to go to sleep. That was how I ended up getting so sleep deprived.’

  She could sense his frown in the shadows. ‘But if it was all part of some natural process, why did you agree to go to the hospital?’

  ‘I didn’t know all this back then, Jack. Only later, years later when I researched it. When I started dreaming about the missing boys. At the time, I was scared.’ She swallowed painfully. ‘I was afraid it might hurt the baby if I didn’t get some rest. That’s why I agreed to take the medication.’

  But the medication had been worse. Much worse. It had zonked her out, robbed her of her memory of her baby’s birth, and the days and weeks after.

  ‘It’s an incredible story, Katrina.’

  ‘It’s not just a story. It happened.’

  ‘It must’ve been hard for you,’ he said, ‘finding out you were pregnant, being on your own. It’s understandable that you ended up feeling overwhelmed.’

  ‘I was more than overwhelmed, Jack. I was scared out of my wits. It still scares me, having dreams and visions. Despite the good I’ve been able to do with my gift, I’m still afraid I’ll lose control. It’s like walking on the edge of madness. Sometimes I think I might tip over.’

  ‘Yet you still came down here to help find Nick?’

  ‘I saw him in my dream. I had to help.’

  ‘And today, when I asked you to use your gift again, that was why you hesitated?’

  ‘Partly. But it’s different now. It’s just me taking the risk. And I handled it. I didn’t lose control.’

  She watched as he stood profoundly still, looking out across the moonlit paddocks into the night. The silence of the dark night wrapped round her. She had no idea whether what she was saying made any sense to him, whether he believed any of it. But she forced herself to go on, to admit the hardest part, where she had failed their child.

  ‘I took the medication to protect the baby, Jack, but…’ She hugged herself, feeling a sudden chill. ‘I didn’t realise it till later, but they were powerful anti-psychotics I was taking. Memory los
s wasn’t the only side effect. I’m certain they’re the reason why…why our baby died.’

  * * *

  Jack struggled to come to terms with what he was hearing, and how best to respond. Clearly Katrina was under the impression that she had somehow contributed to her child’s death. With a few words he could take all that grief and guilt away.

  But things weren’t that simple.

  By her own admission, her mental state was precarious. Even after all this time, she had still been scared something might tip her over the edge. What might it do to her to find out her son was alive?

  ‘Jack?’ she said softly.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t risk telling her. At least, not until he knew for certain she would be able to cope.

  ‘What can I say, Katrina?’ he said, his throat tight. ‘I can’t pretend to understand all you’ve been through, how hard it must have been for you.’

  She turned away in the darkness.

  ‘I know,’ she said, with a bleak note of resignation. ‘If my own mother didn’t understand, I can hardly expect more of a virtual stranger. You hardly know me.’

  A stranger? His gut clenched tight. He wanted to be a whole lot closer than that, despite her fragility. Maybe, in part, because of it; because of that special quality of vulnerability she had. But what chance did they have after so many secrets and half-truths?

  Suddenly the night seemed too dark, the stars too far away.

  ‘It’s getting late.’ He stepped back onto the road. ‘We should head back.’

  He switched on the torch and they walked back toward the homestead in silence. As they approached the home paddock, he stopped, listening.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked.

  She tilted her head. ‘No, what?’

  He put his hand up, concentrating. A faint whinny in the distance, then the dull thud of hooves. He turned toward the stables, down the slope of the hill. For a second, he thought he saw the flicker of a light. Then nothing.

  Darkness.

  ‘The brumby?’ she suggested.