Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family

Rowdy?

That’s right. He hadn’t been speaking.

Why hadn’t he been speaking?

So they hadn’t known his name, the medical personnel who’d rescued him and checked him and brought him in, and the nickname they’d given him had apparently stuck. Luke found he quite liked it. It took care of the adversarial relationship in his own mind between Felixx and Frankie Jay, and provided a compromise that everyone could live with, at least for the time being.

Rowdy looked towards the doorway and saw him at last, then nodded slowly in answer to Georgie’s question. He’d had enough to eat was the impression. Well, maybe. Because if the word supper happened to be mentioned a little later on, he wouldn’t say no…

‘Hi, Rowdy,’ Luke said to him. He couldn’t believe it was such a quiet moment when there should be trumpets sounding or a huge orchestra reaching a crescendo. In the back of his mind he realised it was no accident that so few people were around. Charles and Georgie had engineered this whole scene by sending everyone else away.

To protect my child? Or to protect me?

Both, he decided, and was grateful. It was good of them. Not something he had the right to expect when he’d kept so much to himself since he’d come to Crocodile Creek. Janey wouldn’t believe that the charmer with the major ego from Royal Victoria Hospital could have morphed into such a workaholic loner.

‘This is Luke, Rowdy,’ Georgie said. ‘He’s…’ She threw him a panicky look. What did Rowdy know?

‘I’m a friend of your Auntie Janey,’ Luke supplied.

Rowdy smiled. Apparently he liked his Auntie Janey.

‘I’ve just been to see her.’ An image flashed into his mind of the way she’d looked against the hospital white of her pillow. Vulnerable yet calm. Lips a little dry. Eyes huge and shadowed. Never anywhere near as beautiful as Alice, but a lot more grounded and with an intelligence she could never hide. ‘She’s still pretty tired, but she’s doing a lot better.’

Rowdy pressed his lips together and nodded, and you’d have thought from his expression that Janey’s recovery was all down to him, that possibly the entire universe would end if this one kid didn’t breathe in the right way, or wipe his plate clean with the correct licked finger, or something. He had an air of crushing responsibility about him, and the pleasure of the hamburger was apparently already too far in the past to be of any help.

‘Hey…’ How did you reach out to a kid who didn’t speak. Why didn’t he speak? How did you create a bond, and trust, and a relationship?

Luke felt completely at sea. He’d been holding himself back for so long, he just wanted to unleash his emotions right now, on the spot. Crush his child in his arms. Say all these fervent, dramatic words.

I love you. I would die for you. I have missed you every single day. I taught you to laugh, do you know that? I used to blow raspberries on your tummy when you were three months old, and you used to gurgle and gurgle and laugh and laugh…

But he knew he couldn’t.

What the hell should he do instead?

He turned back to Georgie, helpless and close to tears. ‘I…uh…’

‘Hey, shall we head outside for a bit before it gets dark?’ she said cheerfully to Rowdy, who stood up at once. The weight on him seemed a little lighter again, but his silence was just as complete. She told Luke, ‘We had a team clearing up around the pool area yesterday, so the kids would have somewhere to play. The whole town is doing it—creating tiny pieces of order in the chaos. The beach is still a mess, the sand half cut away and covered in debris, and the surf is brown.’

He grabbed her arm just as she was about to follow Rowdy outside. ‘I don’t know what to do, Georgie.’

She stopped in her tracks. ‘You mean about the momentous reunion?’

‘Yes.’

‘Momentous isn’t what he needs, I don’t think.’

‘I know it isn’t, but what is there instead? It’s momentous for me, and I’m having a hard time getting past that to what else I could—’

‘Just…child care. Fun stuff. Minute by minute. Throw him a ball. Read him a story tonight. We have kids’ books here. Take it slow. We can’t swim yet, unfortunately, because the pool’s still full of debris and muck and chairs.’

‘I’ll clean it out tomorrow,’ Luke said. It was a resolution and a promise. He knew he hadn’t made himself a full part of the Croc Creek medical community in the months he’d been there. This felt like something he could grab hold of, something concrete that he could do. For Rowdy. For his fellow doctors. For himself.

‘Big job.’ Georgie sounded sceptical. ‘It’s pretty gungy.’

‘I want to.’

‘I’d better dust off a bikini, then.’ She grinned, then disappeared onto the veranda for a moment and brought out a big red ball. ‘Here. Catch.’

With Georgie effortlessly starting the game, Rowdy was soon involved, throwing back and forth to Luke. He smiled, ran to retrieve dropped catches, followed instructions, once even laughed. But he said not a word, and that was hard. The game fizzled out after about ten minutes, and Georgie’s pager went off.

‘Rats! If this is that bloody Henderson baby, deciding to be born…’

Yep, apparently it was.

‘I’ll have to go, guys…’

‘Where is everybody anyway?’ Luke asked. It was getting dark now.

‘At Christina and Joe’s, having been told to eat their hamburgers somewhat faster than Rowdy did, and then we hustled them off. We thought—’

‘I know what you thought. And thanks.’ He dropped his voice. ‘But it leaves us in a bit of a hole at this point, because…Would he stay with me, on our own?’

‘You’re a friend of Auntie Janey’s. Does he trust…?’

‘He doesn’t know her that well either, but you saw his face when I said I was her friend. She counts for something, in his mind.’

‘I’ll get Alistair and Max to come back. You won’t be on your own for long. He can get into his pyjamas and brush his teeth and there’s a bookshelf in my room with those kids’ books. I’m getting the impression he likes anything about trains.’

Rowdy had disappeared while they’d been talking.

They found him inside a few minutes later, in Emily’s room, crouched by his camp stretcher and wolfing chocolate.

‘Oh, sweetheart! You could have told us if you were still hungry!’ Georgie said, stricken by the sight. He ate like a stray animal, as if he didn’t know where his next meal was coming from. ‘There’s plenty more to eat in the kitchen.’

Rowdy looked scared and frozen, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.

‘Told us?’ Luke said quietly.

‘I treat him as if he talks, in the hope that soon he actually will,’ she answered, even more quietly. ‘We’ve taken a good look at him. There’s nothing physiologically wrong. And he communicates. Doesn’t usually initiate much, but nods or shakes his head, points.’

‘He’s so thin.’

‘They have a vegan diet at Mundarri.’

Luke swore. ‘It’s hard enough for an adult to get a balanced intake that way, let alone a child. From the look of him, I’d say they didn’t do enough.’

‘Here, we’re letting him eat what he wants so far. Don’t want to turn him into a junk-food addict, but his protein and calcium and iron intake could certainly use a boost, and a bit of fat. For this week, chocolate is a health food.’ She took a closer look. ‘At least…Hmm, not sure about this chocolate.’ She said to Rowdy, ‘Where did you get it, sweetheart?’