Nikki Logan - Maybe Baby - One Small Miracle

Even today, when she was close to the sharing he claimed he wanted to hear, it was no different. Don’t get depressed, Anna, you’ll be a mother.

He’d been dry-eyed at his father’s funeral, at her father’s funeral. Even after the hysterectomy, he’d been calm, focussed on her pain, her loss. We’ll find a way, Anna. But he’d cried when Adam had died. For a whole hour, he’d cried …

‘Thank you.’ Stilted words through a tight throat; she didn’t know what else to say. Like her dad, Jared held to the old code of honour: Never back down, never surrender. Always keep your word. He’d married her, so he’d stick to her for life. She knew he’d do his best to never show her the resentment, how cheated he was that she’d never given him a son.

Regret was weakness to Jared; divorce would be seen as the ultimate failure.

She’d already been through a failure, a loss and madness so deep and profound that divorce could only be dessert after a heavy main course—it would almost feel like sweet relief.

Almost.

‘She’ll have to make do with a bed pushed against the wall with chairs for a day or two, until I can fly to Geraldton to get some baby things,’ he said, his voice flat.

She frowned at him. ‘Why? Where are … the things we had for Adam …?’ She almost choked, saying it. Her arms and heart ached with useless longing.

In the ten seconds that followed their son’s name she heard every beat of her heart.

‘I gave them away.’ His voice was taut.

Her heart jerked, and one shoulder moved forward, not a shrug but a tiny movement that showed too much. ‘When?’

‘Three weeks ago.’ Jared had turned back to the horizon, watching where he flew. The flight path was one he knew like his own skin, but he wasn’t looking at her. Jared could always look her in the face as he talked about her emotions, but she doubted he even acknowledged his own existed. ‘The Lowes needed some new things for their baby.’

That was it, all he had to say about destroying their son’s nursery? The last vestiges of their son’s life had been pulled apart … the Lowes had eight kids now, by her count. It was so unfair. They had the kids and the things she’d made or painted for Adam with her own hands.

She nearly choked on the fury, the gut-level jealousy she’d never lose. ‘And you never thought to ask me about it?’

Her pulse beat so hard against her throat, she heard it beating. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six … boom-boom, boom-boom … ‘You hung up on me.’

She turned to look out the window. They were flying over the mining community of Tom Price. The scattered houses and gaping holes in the earth looked so lonely from up here. ‘I see.’

After a long silence, he said in a quiet voice that hid all emotion, ‘Say it, Anna.’

She shrugged, as if she didn’t care. ‘What’s the point? It’s done.’

He said nothing in response, and she refused to make it easy for him. She kept looking at the world below while everything they weren’t saying grew legs and arms, put a timer device together on the bomb of silence and set it ticking down. The unseen contest had no winners because he never spoke, and she had nothing to say—or too much. Fury, jealousy, betrayal and all the useless regret.

She had to stop this, find accord with Jared somehow, or they’d never survive the next few weeks together. Why didn’t Melanie wake up? If she’d make a single sound …

Three, two, one—

‘They’re in danger of losing everything.’

It took her a moment to realise what he meant. He’d taken the safe option, talking of the nursery furniture and the Lowes. She should have known he would. Jared had never had to reach out to her—he waited for her to come to him, to tell him what she needed, so he could fix it. She had always gone to him—until she’d had nothing left to say, nothing left to ask him to fix.

Countdown reset, defences built, places of refuge established. Husband and wife stared out of separate windows, facing each other down from either side of a silent battleground. It was Christmas detente, meeting in the middle for a meaningless game of football, knowing hostilities would soon be resumed. Too much had been left unsaid between them, too many emotions buried in the trenches of memory. The fragile cobweb of deception for the sake of a baby was the only thing holding them together.

‘Fair enough,’ was all she said in response, trying to dull the sharp edge of the bayonet she’d been stabbing him with. What was the point? His armour was impenetrable.

Three, two, one—

‘I thought you’d understand. People matter more than things. Isn’t that what you always said every time you gave our things away to someone in need?’ he growled out of nowhere.

‘I’m surprised you remember that,’ she replied without inflection.

‘I remember everything.’ His gaze was cold, and again she shivered. When she didn’t answer, he sighed with the exaggerated patience she hated. ‘Tell me what’s going on in your head, Anna. We’ve got to find a way to put this right, climb out of this crazy mess we’re in.’

At least he was finally asking, instead of telling her to come home, or using his body to bring her to capitulation; but didn’t he know that, if he had to ask what she wanted, it was useless to her? ‘There’s nothing either of us can do, Jared. There’s no solution. Nothing can change what’s done. It’s over.’

‘Obviously—that’s why you called me, why you’re here now.’

The frozen tone put her on the defensive. ‘I don’t know any other man who keeps secrets the way you do, who hides emotion so well. If you have any emotion.’

He made some adjustments to their flight path. He frowned hard at the horizon, as if there was imminent danger. ‘One day you’re going to have to face that what happened last year happened to us both, instead of thinking it was only your pain, your sorrow. One day you’ll know running from it does nothing.’

‘I didn’t run from anything. I left you.’ She felt her nostrils flare as she dragged in air. ‘Just because we aren’t together any more doesn’t mean I haven’t faced it—all of it.’ What I lost—and what I am. Cold and shivering to her soul, she’d faced it. She had no choice: Adam came to visit her nightly, that cold, sweet, sleeping face. Eternal sleep in a cold white casket instead of the sky-blue cradle they’d made for him, with stencils of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse … the pretty mobiles dangling above for him to laugh at, to reach for.

‘You never talked about it.’

Anna heard a disbelieving laugh, a half-sneer in it, and part of her didn’t believe it had come from her; she’d never heard it come from her lips before. Yet she was glad for the distraction. ‘So which are you in this scenario, the pot or the kettle?’

Very quiet, so quiet she barely heard him over the plane’s rumble, he said, ‘The doctors told me to wait for you to start.’

‘And of course that was the only thing stopping you,’ she retorted. ‘You’re just a pillar of communication. Always so open with what you feel.’

He didn’t answer that—and in the silence something in her snapped. ‘That’s it, Jared, retreat into your own head, don’t tell me anything. I always made it so easy for you, didn’t I? I did the talking, the loving, and you didn’t have to try. That’s what’s getting to you, isn’t it? For the first time in twelve years I’m not blurting out my every feeling and emotion to you, so you can work out how to fix it all. I walked out, and didn’t want or need your solutions or to make things right—and you couldn’t handle it. For months you’ve been the one coming to me, but I didn’t come home as you expected. How embarrassing has it been for you? The Great Jared West is a failure with his own wife. Is everyone laughing at you—or, worse, pitying you?’