The Australians' Brides: The Runaway and the Cattleman

Carly thought those names were great. Callan and Kerry could both hear her little voice saying, “Tell me which one’s Frodo, again, Mommy?”

“Well, I know it was one of the black ones ….”

The boys had gone, now, having shown Jacinda and Carly the chooks’ favorite laying places. They were working on the quad-wheeled motorbikes in the shed, changing the oil. Most outback kids of their age got to ride quad bikes around the property when they helped with the cattle, but Callan was pretty strict about it. If Lockie and Josh were going to ride, they had to know how to take care of the bikes and they never rode one unless he was there.

“How long are they staying?” Kerry asked.

“Their return flight is a month from now, she said. I don’t know how it’s going to work out, Mum, to be honest, but I couldn’t say no.”

“Of course you couldn’t! Do you think I’m suggesting it?”

“You seemed a bit doubtful.”

“I could tell something was wrong, that’s all. That she wasn’t just a tourist friend wanting an outback stay.”

“She’s been having panic attacks. That was what happened with Lockie’s book report before lunch. She doesn’t know what she’ll do for an income instead of writing, if the … you know … drive and hunger and inspiration never come back.”

He knew nothing about writing. Couldn’t imagine. How did you create a plot and action out of thin air? How did you dream up people who seemed so real that they jumped off the page or out of a TV screen like best friends? How did you string the words together, one by one, so that they added up to a story?

And yet he understood something about how she felt. He knew the same fear that the drive might never come back. He knew the huge sense of loss and failure, now that the hunger was gone. He had the same instinctive belief that without this certain special pool inside you, you were physically incomplete, even though the pool wasn’t something tangible and solid like a limb.

“She probably just needs to rest her spirit,” Kerry said. “Take the pressure off and forgive herself.”

“I guess,” he answered, not believing it could be that simple. Not in his own case.

Take the pressure off? Rest the spirit? Forgive yourself?

Was that all it took?

His mother didn’t know.

Hell, of course she didn’t! And Callan would never tell her.

He hadn’t breathed a word about the freckled blonde at the Birdsville Races three years ago. When he’d gone down to chat to the Scandinavian backpacker camping at the water hole a few months later, Mum had thought he was only protecting their land. He’d reported that he’d told the young woman about where it was safe to light a campfire and where best to photograph the wildlife that came to drink at the water hole at dusk.

Mum had no idea that he’d seen a phantom similarity to Liz in both those women, and that the women themselves had picked up on the vibe. As Jacinda had said before lunch, however, when she’d told him about the woman at Carly’s preschool, it was more terrifying to confront the differences when someone bore a passing resemblance to the person you loved.

They hadn’t been Liz’s freckles, her kind of blond, her skin, her body, her voice.

Why had he gone looking for something that he could never find?

No one, but no one—not Brant or Dusty, no one—had known about the Danish girl’s open-eyed seduction attempt, or Callan’s failure. No one ever would.

“We got eggs!” Carly shrieked out, coming out of the hen run. “Look, guys, we got eggs! Six! Mommy has four and I have two because my hands are too little. I have one brown one with white speckles and one brown one with brown speckles.”

“Carly? Don’t run so fast, honey,” said her mum, coming up behind her, “because if you trip and fall, they’ll break.”

“But I want to show ’em to Callan and—” She slowed and looked back at her mother for guidance, asking in a stage whisper, “What’s the lady’s name?”

Jacinda looked at Callan and shrugged, asking a question with her face. Kerry or Gran? They’d discussed it—that joke about Goldilocks—but Jacinda clearly didn’t know what to say. She had that vulnerable look about her again—the loss of grace, the slight slouch to her shoulders. It made her look thinner. And it made him want to give her promises about how he’d look after her that she would be bound to read the wrong way.

Before he could answer, Kerry stepped off the veranda.

“It’s Gran, love,” she said, in her usual plainspoken way. As she spoke, she leaned down to admire the eggs that had made Carly so excited. “You can call me Gran.”

Jet lag crept up on Jacinda and Carly a short while after the evening meal. Jac tried to hide her yawns and droopiness, but Carly wasn’t so polite. “Mommeee! I’m so tired! I wanna go to bed right now!” They were both fast asleep before eight o’clock.

At midnight, according to the clock on the table beside the bed, Jac woke up again. At first she couldn’t work out why, then she saw the pale child-size shadow moving near the door. Carly was sleepwalking, and subconsciously she’d heard her daughter’s familiar sounds.

She caught up to her in the corridor and tried to steer her back to bed. Carly wouldn’t come. “Honey? This way … Come on, sweetheart.”

“Butter banana on the machine in the morning.” She talked in her sleep, too, and it never made any sense.

“Let’s turn around and come back to bed,” Jac repeated.

Carly’s eyes were open, but she wasn’t awake. She had a plan. She wanted something. And as always when sleepwalking, she was hard to dissuade. “I’m coming in the morning up,” she said, pushing at Jac with firm little hands.

“Well, let’s not, honey.”

“No!” Carly said. “Up in the, in the out.”

Maybe it was best to let her walk it off. The doctor had said that it wasn’t dangerous to waken her, contrary to popular myth, but it did always end with Carly crying and talking about bad dreams that she would have forgotten by morning if Jac could get her back to bed while she was still asleep.

“Okay, Carly, want to show me?” She took her daughter’s hand and let her lead the way.

They crept along the corridor, through the big, comfortable living room and out of the front door, first the solid wooden one and then the squeaky one with the insect-proof mesh. Oh, that squeak was loud! Would it wake Callan and the boys? Jac tried to close it quietly behind her.

Carly looked blindly around the yard, while Jacinda waited for her next move. An almost full moon shone high in the sky, a little flat on one side. It didn’t look quite right, because it was upside-down in this country. Even with the moon so bright, the stars were incredible, thousands of pinpoints of light against a backdrop of solid ink. No city haze.

Carly went toward the steps leading down from the veranda, and Jac held her hand more tightly. She didn’t stand as steady on her feet when she was asleep, even with her eyes open. She could easily trip and fall. At the last moment, she turned. Not going down the steps after all. There was a saggy old cane couch farther along the veranda, with a padded seat, recently recovered in a summery floral fabric with plenty of matching pillows, and she headed for that.

Jac thought, Okay, honey, we can sit here for a while. There was a mohair blanket draped over the back of it.

Carly nestled against her on the couch. “Yogurt, no yogurt,” she said very distinctly. Then her face softened and she closed her eyes.

“No yogurt. I’ll carry you back to bed in a minute,” Jac whispered.

She unfolded the blanket and spread it over them both because the night had chilled considerably from the moment the sun had dropped out of sight. The blanket was hand-knitted in bright, alternating squares of pink and blue, and it was warm and soft. No hurry in getting back to bed. So nice to sit here with Carly and feel safe.

Callan found them there several minutes later. He’d heard that screen door, had guessed it was probably Jacinda, unable to sleep. They didn’t lock doors around here at night. If anyone showed up with intentions good or bad, you’d hear their vehicle a mile off and the dogs would bark like crazy.

Still, after thinking about it and feeling himself grow more and more awake, something made him get up to check that everything was all right.

Yeah, it was fine. The two of them were dead to the world, snuggled together under the blanket. The fuzz of the fabric tickled Carly’s nose and she pushed at it with her hand in her sleep. He moved to go back to bed himself, but the old board under his foot creaked and, coupled with Carly’s movement, it disturbed Jacinda and she opened her eyes.

“Was she sleepwalking?” he asked.

“Yes, and we ended up here. I didn’t mean to fall asleep myself. Did we waken you?” She looked down his body, then back up. He wore his usual white cotton T-shirt and navy blue pajama pants—respectable, Dad-type nightwear that couldn’t possibly send the wrong message.