It was as though they’d been doing it for ever instead of just weeks. It was now their default activity as soon as the bruising of the sky heralded rain. He’d never looked forward to a downpour so much. He’d hoped a month would be enough to get Lea—that kiss—out of his system. Spending more than a few days with a woman tended to do that, in his experience.
He’d thought it would be enough to sort his feelings about Molly out, too. But the sound of little feet pattering on timber floors was already as familiar to him as the rain splattering steadily down on Minamurra’s tin roof. Loading pixie-sized bowls and cutlery into the dishwasher just felt right. Having a second breakfast with Molly after a couple of hours of early-morning outdoor work had become a pleasant ritual. The more time he spent with his daughter, the more he wanted.
Not occasionally—not once a month, not on access visits—always.
But ‘always’ was going to be a problem.
He stood rapidly and moved to the window, cutting Lea out of his vision and staring out to where God’s Gift circled the
paddock, still very much his obstinate self, even as gallons of the purest Kimberley water tumbled relentlessly onto him from the sky. It did nothing to dampen the stallion’s ardour for the one female remaining in season in the next paddock.
If anything, the rain enhanced it. Every living creature out there was synchronised to the seasons and, as the air grew increasingly laden with moisture, hormones raced and every species started twitching with the sudden imperative to reproduce.
He closed his eyes and breathed in air rich with Lea’s scent. Every single part of her radiated fertility. Her skin was smoother, her hair was glossier and her eyes were brighter. Her body, despite its changing shape, was fit and firm and so damned
woman
that he was cold-showering every single day.
Had he ever felt this way before? It was ridiculous to be responding to the metre of the land himself as though he’d walked its hard, red surface for thousands of years instead of just thirty-one. Knowing his child grew in Lea’s fertile belly was messing with his head. The pregnant land around him was making him think things, want things, he never would have otherwise. See things that weren’t there. Feel things that weren’t real. Teasing him with possibilities that just wouldn’t eventuate. The attractive woman, growing with the child he’d never thought he’d have. The instant family.
Lea was in this for one thing only: the stem cells that would save Molly. But it was getting complicated for her too. In the reflection of the window, he watched her hand absently stroking her rounded belly. She was bonding with their baby, whether she recognised it or not. How would she manage when the time came to hand over the child? Her heart wasn’t nearly as hard as he’d always imagined, it was soft and vulnerable and liable to tear right open. The parts that weren’t so obviously scarred over from a life with Bryce Curran.
He frowned. What kind of father would he be to his children? He looked at Molly again, and then let his eyes slide to the mantel above her, to the one photo in the house of the people that had raised him—a hard, emotionally distant mother and a father too tightly bound by her influence to protect his struggling
son. That kind of example didn’t bode well for his chances of success as a dad.
His chest tightened.
They made quite a pair—he with absolutely no idea where to begin being a good father, and Lea who’d lost her mother so young, been estranged from her father and was double-reinforced with layers of protection against any possible hurt. Both of them were hell-bound to give their child a better start in life than they had had themselves. His lips twisted on the realisation.
Just when he’d thought the only thing they had in common was Molly.
He glanced at the sky, still grey-packed but thinning out at last. He turned as he murmured Lea’s name. Her eyes lifted, still guarded, but not like they had been—another change he was sure she wasn’t aware of. ‘Can we keep Molly up a bit later this evening? There’s something I’d like you both to see.’
It was true—he did want Molly to see what he loved about Minamurra—but it was also an excuse. Just another misguided chance to spend more time with her mother.
‘You’ll need to bring a raincoat.’
‘R
EILLY
, this is crazy. I’m nearly six months’ pregnant.’
Reilly peered over the roof of his feed-shed and smiled down at her. ‘This from the woman who can do anything? It’s just a ladder, Lea.’
One minute he wouldn’t let her open a can of spaghetti without a support team, and the next he was hauling her up onto a rooftop during an electrical storm. The man was as unpredictable as the Kimberley weather. But he was impossible not to trust.
Lea caged in an excited Molly with her torso as they climbed the first few rungs of the ladder. Reilly reached down and engulfed the two little hands that stretched towards him and pulled Molly up onto the rooftop. A moment later two happy faces reappeared back over the edge.
The smaller one beaming, and as dear to Lea as her own life.
The other one rapidly catching up.
She frowned and had brief words with herself; self-lectures were become a regular necessity. Reinforcing the reality of her situation was the only way she could keep herself grounded, not buying into the temporary, happy-family fantasy she was living.
‘Give me your hand.’ He stretched sure fingers towards her, smiling as he saw her glance nervously at the ground. ‘We haul sacks of feed up these ladders, Lea. I don’t think your slight weight will trouble it too much.’
Another flattering comparison, but not far off how she was feeling two thirds of the way through her pregnancy. She made
a joke of it before he could. ‘Not so slight these days. Better hold on tight.’ She slid her clammy hand into his warm one.
‘Mummy hates heights.’ Molly dropped her right in it. Some reward for a lifetime of motherly service.
Reilly looked uncertain for the first time in a week. His hand closed around hers. ‘Is that true, Lea?’
‘I have no problem with the height,’ she lied, moving cautiously up the ladder. ‘It’s the falling-to-certain-death part I’m less enthusiastic about.’
He chuckled and loaned her his strength as she got to the top, helping her up onto the tin roof. Molly threw small arms around her thigh.
‘You did it, Mummy.’
Lea cupped her hand around her daughter’s head and acknowledged Reilly’s intense expression on a deep, fortifying breath. ‘What?’
He shook his head, his eyes growing cryptic. ‘I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.’
‘Respecting the true nature of something is not the same as being afraid of it. Unenclosed heights, by their nature, are dangerous.’ She glanced to ensure Molly was well back from the edge.
‘You’ll find danger anywhere if you go looking for it. The trick is to be open to all the possibilities, not just the negative ones.’
Maybe in the world you come from.
‘Such as?’
He steered them to the centre of the roof where three deck-chairs and an esky were set up facing west. Molly hopped straight into the smallest of the three chairs. Reilly took Lea’s shoulders and turned her to the coastal horizon. ‘Such as the amazing view an unenclosed high place might afford you when it’s not trying to kill you.’
Lea’s breath caught and she sank down onto one of the chairs. From the rooftop, they had a completely unobscured view across Minamurra to the coastal ranges, where the gods of electricity and earth battled it out in spectacular fashion.
The sky was a deep, dark orange as the last fingers of the setting sun reached across it. Brilliant forks of light split the horizon, streaking bright patterns down towards earth. Strike
after strike compounded into a blazing, criss-crossing light-show that eclipsed anything humans could create.
Lea sighed and stroked Molly’s hair as she squealed and laughed, knowing they were making yet another unforgettable memory. She was pleased that Reilly featured in so many of them.
Molly would need those when they parted.
So will you,
a tiny voice whispered.
As the sun disappeared finally to the west, the lightning was all that lit the sky; a thousand little forks caused the thick, gathering clouds to glow into a luminous, cumulative mass. Deadly, but beautiful. She turned slightly towards Reilly and her eyes widened to find him already looking at her, lightning bolts reflected in their dark depths.
A hint of heat crept up her throat. ‘Is this wise?’
Static charge filled his eyes. They flicked to her lips. ‘Probably not. But it feels good, doesn’t it?’
The heat doubled. ‘I meant sitting on a tin roof during an electrical storm. It can’t be safe.’
His eyes skipped away briefly and when they returned they were more guarded. ‘The storm is over the coast. Miles away.’ He paused. ‘You really expect the worst from life, don’t you?’
Lea chose her words carefully, aware of the little ears so close by. ‘I’ve seen what life can do.’
Reilly considered that in silence. ‘How many beautiful experiences will it take to outweigh all the negative ones you hold onto?’
Lea bristled. ‘I don’t hold onto them. They just
are.
’
He shook his head. ‘You’re missing so much.’
She straightened in her seat. ‘I find my own beauty. My own way.’
In my own time.
His eyes were unrelenting. ‘I’m glad. Everyone deserves some happiness.’
Lea wrapped her arms around her body despite the cloying heat of the night. ‘We aren’t talking about happiness, we’re talking about life. I’m happy.’
‘You think so?’
She burned to answer him more directly, but was critically
conscious of Molly sitting so close by. She kept her voice light, calm. ‘Everyone experiences happiness differently, Reilly.’
He conceded that. ‘What makes you happy? I’d like to know.’
She slid her eyes sideways to her daughter.
His narrowed. ‘There must be more. What brought you joy before?’
Before Molly, after Molly. She remembered accusing Anna of measuring her life the same way with Jared, remembered trying to tell her how unhealthy that was. Yet here she was doing the same thing. Except she was putting that load on a five-year-old child.
She turned her face back to the sky-show on a frown and didn’t answer. The storm was too far away to bring much more than a distant rumble, but the night was thick with the amphibian chorus, hundreds of barking, croaking, whooping frogs.
Reilly sighed and then spoke over the cacophony. ‘We’re sitting up here in front of the most beautiful show in nature and we’re arguing. How can that be?’
Because you’re judging me. And finding me wanting.
Her instincts told her to stay silent, to let it go, avoid it. But something else egged her on. She turned back to him.
‘I’ve spent my life disappointing people, Reilly. Trying to live up to expectations I didn’t have a chance of meeting. Yet here I am finding out—once again—that my definition of happiness, the way I find it and demonstrate it, isn’t enough for you.’ She turned back to the horizon, keeping her voice casual for Molly’s sake. The effort exhausted her. ‘You’re measuring me by your own standards instead of letting me just live my own.’
The lightning show went on. Finally, Reilly spoke again. ‘What do you want, Lea?’
She stared at him, deeply saddened, and whispered furiously under the rumbly thunder so only he could hear. ‘I want a miracle. I want a miracle that means that Molly gets to live and I don’t have to give up my child. I don’t want to see this baby once a month and then hand it back to you. Some days I think I’d rather not see it at all once it’s born. And then I wonder what would happen if I didn’t hand it over—if I just ran off into this enormous country with both my children and disappeared.’
Her voice broke. ‘But I don’t want you to be alone either. You’re a good man, Reilly Martin, and you deserve your miracle too. I can’t take that from you.’ Anguish thickened her voice, and compounding lightning-flashes turned his face into a living modernist painting. ‘I want a solution where everybody wins. And I know that’s never going to happen. That’s not how life works.’
The intensity in his stare rivalled the natural show playing out on the horizon. ‘What if miracles don’t happen?’
‘Then one of us is going to be in agony in three months’ time. I really don’t want it to be me.’ She dropped her head, flushing, then continued, whispering. ‘And I really don’t want it to be you. What should I do, Reilly? Tell me what to do.’
He shook his head mutely.
‘And you have to ask why I don’t expect the best from life?’ She stood and gave a yawning Molly a gentle nudge. It killed her to have to wait for Reilly’s help over by the ladder, but she wasn’t about to risk the baby—Molly’s future—just to make a point. She stood quietly at the roof’s edge. Reilly took Molly’s hand in his and then gave Lea his other hand to steady her onto the ladder.
For the briefest of lightning flashes the three of them were connected as a family and Lea’s heart squeezed. She took a firm hold of the ladder with both hands, breaking the connection.
What they had was so transient, the comfortable togetherness born out of necessity and convenience as the wet season got into full swing. The idea of them being a family was a pretty, fleeting show, just like the lightning.
It was an insubstantial illusion.
‘Merry Christmas, Mummy.’ Molly’s serious face where she stood, tiny, by Lea’s bed was level with her own. Despite her exhaustion, Lea let her lips spread in a welcoming smile for her daughter.
‘Merry Christmas, baby.’ She struggled up onto her elbows, noticing the tiniest hint of light outside. ‘What time is it?’
Little brown eyes lit by the bedside lamp widened. ‘I don’t know.’
Lea chuckled and reached for her watch. She laughed outright then. ‘Molly, it’s four-thirty in the morning.’ Then she noticed her daughter’s face, paler even than her usual anaemic porcelain. She sat up, wide awake. ‘What’s wrong?’
Serious, round eyes were yet to blink. ‘What if Santa can’t find us?’
She wasn’t sick.
The adrenaline-burst played out in Lea’s system, trembling her hands. Santa-related crises she could deal with.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. ‘Let’s go check out the living room, see if he’s left anything under your tree.’
Reilly had insisted on a proper tree—a strapling eucalypt in a giant pot—and on decorating it from boxes full of designer decorations he’d had flown in. It hadn’t occurred to Lea to pack any of their Christmas things, and Molly had been unexpectedly upset at not having her little wooden soldiers to hang. In the end, Reilly had put away most of the expensive baubles and tinsel in favour of some older ones that Agnes Dawes had ferreted out of a back shed.
Molly had fallen on the family hand-me-downs like they were Kimberley diamonds. In a crazy way, they were worth more. The resulting tree was bottom heavy, the bulk of the wooden decorations applied too far to the left and at five-year-old height, but it was the first tree Molly had ever decorated herself and that made it perfect.
She skipped over now to look under it. Even in the early-morning light, Lea could see there wasn’t much there. A simple gift from Lea herself—a practical selection of new clothes—and one or two other festive-looking boxes. No toy-store selection. She breathed a sigh of relief.
He’d remembered.
Molly picked up an oversized envelope from the tree and ran towards Lea. She could see from the letter that it was addressed to
Miss Molly Curran
in big, cartoon letters. She bent down to take it from her daughter, but she ran straight past.
‘What’s this, Reilly?’
Lea stiffened, suddenly conscious that she was in her pyjamas, ungroomed and sleep-deprived. The baby had kept her up late. Her hand got halfway to her hair before she steeled herself to smile him a good-morning. Her belly flip-flopped; disgusting how good he could look before dawn. Then again, he was probably used to getting up at this time.
‘I don’t know, but it’s addressed to you,’ he said. ‘Shall I open it?’
Molly squealed, jumped up and down and then doubled over in a hacking cough. It took her a moment to recover but, when she did, she just wiped her mouth carefully and then gave Reilly a huge grin.
Lea saw the despair flit across his eyes and then he, too, put on a brave face.
‘It’s from Santa,’ Reilly read out with exaggerated care. Lea smiled at their daughter’s barely contained excitement. ‘“Dear Molly. I was surprised to find you not at Yurraji but, fortunately, a passing bandicoot told me where you were and I was able to follow his directions to Minamurra”.’
Molly’s enormous eyes were never going to recover from the excitement of this Christmas morning.
‘“I could barely fit your gift through the door,”’ he read on, ‘“So I’ve left it outside for you. I hope you don’t mind”.’
He read Santa’s sign-off as Molly sprinted for the door. He and Lea both called at the same time, ‘Walk!’
Reilly’s grin was as big as the house as he followed her outside, as though this was his first Christmas instead of his thirty-first. Molly’s search-light gaze darted around, looking for clues. Reilly’s eyes went to the stables.
Lea froze.
No…
‘Why don’t we try over there?’ he suggested casually and set off in a straight line to the stables.
He’d got Molly her own horse! Anger bubbled up deep inside Lea. Hadn’t they been through the whole ‘big gift’ thing back in October? Her lips were tight as she caught up with him striding towards the building. ‘Reilly…’
He ignored her hissed whisper and led Molly into the dark
of the stables. A switch-flip later the building glowed into bright light. A stone formed where her heart should be. She turned to berate him just as Molly let off the kind of eardrum-splitting squeal only a five-year-old could produce. Every horse in the place shied in its stall. Lea followed her eyes to the back corner of the stables to a cubby-house made of straw bales. It had a big, hand-painted sign above the door that said: MOLLY’S PLACE.
It was simple, thoughtful, safe…and utterly, utterly perfect.
Lea watched through tear-washed eyes as Molly scampered through the front door to explore the tiny interior. Her chest ached.
‘You told me about all the hours you spent hiding out in the hay store when you were younger. I thought it would be good for Molly to have her own space when she visits. Somewhere she can play without wearing her out.’