Their Newborn Gift Read online

  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 outr
ight 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.’

  He’d managed to find the perfect gift for Molly and give Lea one too: a future. The illusion that everything really was going to be okay. She swallowed the tears and just nodded. In the corner of her vision, she saw Reilly glance down at his boots, and then she heard him clear his throat too.

  They watched Molly play in silence. Poor old Max the cat chose that moment to wander in to check out all the early-morning commotion, and Molly immediately scooped him up and disappeared into the straw cubby-house with her reluctant best friend.

  Lea had recovered her composure by then. ‘Thank you, Reilly,’ she said simply, her voice thick. ‘It’s a wonderful Christmas gift.’

  Every day that passed she found it harder to ignore his goodness, the thoughtful things he did. The way he watched out for Molly. For her. It was completely at odds with the man who had handed her that contract. It made it harder to keep the line safely drawn in the sand.

  Max exploded out of the cubby-house with Molly in hot pursuit and Reilly swooped in to rescue him, scooping a wheezing Molly up into his arms. She settled there happily then flung her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth hard against his face.

  Reilly’s eyes fell shut and he brought his other hand up to press his daughter harder to him. Lea’s throat constricted. It was the first kiss Molly had ever given him.

  A charged moment passed before she whispered to Reilly, eyeing Lea the whole time.

  Oh, that little minx…

  ‘Yes it is, Molly.’ Reilly spoke with exaggerated loudness. ‘It’s a perfect time to give Mummy her Christmas gift.’

  Molly bounced in Reilly’s strong hold but he didn’t put her down. He leaned forward and placed his hand on Lea’s shoulder, then gently turned her to the back stalls. Two long, familiar faces stared back at her from adjoining stalls, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Goff. Pan.’ Lea rushed to their stall, pressing her face between them and running her hand up their necks to tangle in their manes. They stood obligingly for her affectionate assault. The tears threatened again. ‘When did…?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ he said simply while Molly beamed in his arms. ‘While you were resting. We snuck them in.’

  Oh, I’ve missed you. Lea didn’t know how much until she felt another tiny piece of her heart heal over. She breathed in their familiar, horsey scent.

  Her throat tightened dangerously and she called on her birth breathing to keep the tears at bay. Confusion washed over her. Why did he keep doing such kind things? Wasn’t this going above and beyond the terms of their arrangement, Christmas or no Christmas? It really wasn’t helping her patrol her emotional fence-line.

  ‘Lea? Are you okay?’

  The gentle query in his voice as he lowered Molly back to the ground was her undoing. She turned away from his eyes, from her horses, from her child, and walked straight out of the stables. Tears almost blinded her but she forced her feet to keep moving.

  ‘Hey, Lea.’ He jogged after her.

  ‘You can’t do this, Reilly. It’s not fair.’ The words were almost a sob, back over her shoulder.

  ‘Do what?’

  Her chest squeezed hard. ‘This.’ She waved her arms at the stables, at the house, at herself. ‘Doing lovely things. Being so kind. You need to stop.’

 
Complete confusion bathed his face. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It doesn’t help me.’ She turned and nearly shouted at him, pressing a hand to her belly as though it would protect the child within from the tumult of emotion. ‘You’re making it too hard.’

  She turned and struck out for the house again, miserable and horrified at how much she’d already said. What it implied. He caught up with her and circled her shoulder, pulling her to a sudden halt. His eyes appealed. ‘Explain it to me, Lea. What am I doing?’

  She spun around, the thick mud of her tears choking her. ‘I’m bonding, damn it!’

  He reeled back from her anger. ‘With the baby?’

  ‘With the baby. With you.’ Disgust dripped from every word. ‘I can’t bond with you, Reilly.’

  He froze and stared. When he spoke it was quiet. Simplistic. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ Her voice squeaked the question. ‘We have three months to get through, and then you walk away with my baby. It’s going to be hard enough to—’

  Her mouth snapped shut. Idiot. She’d said too much. She’d just handed him the perfect tool to hurt her. The sounds of the morning dropped completely away, leaving only the thrumming of Lea’s blood past her ears. She fought desperately not to close her eyes against the inevitable.

  ‘Then don’t.’

  The breath punched out of her. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t hand the baby over. Don’t walk away. Stay.’

  She stared at him, horrified.

  ‘We can be a family. You, me and Molly. And the new baby.’ He made it sound so insanely simple. ‘Stay, Lea.’

  ‘You want us to stay? How long?’

  ‘For ever. Molly’s grandchildren could grow up here.’

  For ever. The parts of her that were tired of being lonely responded unanimously to that idea. Yes, yes, yes.

  ‘We’re compatible.’ Reilly brushed her hot cheek to make his point. Her skin leapt at the caress. ‘We get along well enough. We both love Molly. We could make it work.’ He reached up and smoothed her hair from her damp face, his eyes appealing. ‘Molly could have a proper brother or sister and the baby could have a full-time mother.’