All The Little Moments (45 page)

Anna sat for a minute longer, hand stilled on the sleeping Ella’s forehead, and
watched her.

The relief that Ella was back and in her bed, that Anna could touch her, was almost overpowering. Ella was like a doll when she slept, an adorable mix of Sally and Jake—gangly limbs, the soft curve of her nose, and the smattering of freckles that
covered it.

The sick sense that she’d failed her brother and Sally had started to disappear now that the kids were back under the same roof as her. Anna still ached to have Jake there, to ask him how she was doing, if everything was how he would want it. And then the sick feeling would wash over her again, because what Jake would want would be to be alive with Sally and
his kids.

As she watched Ella sleep, she thought about how she had Jake’s slow smile, his inherent curiosity about everything, and a serious, introspective side. This was balanced by the sheer energy she’d taken from Sally, along with the way Sally would look at someone and sometimes know exactly what they
were thinking.

What would fade without their influence? What
would stay?

Anna kissed Ella’s cheek and pulled the blanket up. The light that washed over the bed dimmed as Anna pulled the door over. She listened in at Toby’s door and heard soft
sleeping sounds.

Finally exhausted, Anna fell in to bed next to Lane, sighing contentedly as warmth
enveloped her.

“Ella and Kym are going to be ganging up on us from
now on.”

Anna attempted a laugh at her comment, but choked
on emotion.

“Hey,” Lane whispered.
“What’s up?”

Burying her face in Lane’s neck, Anna kissed the skin there, then kissed her lips with more fervour than she’d realised she
had building.

An hour later, they fell asleep, wrapped in each other. Anna had to poke Lane awake enough to pull clothes on, reminding her that Ella sometimes liked to crawl into
her bed.

It was a habit she’d have to get Ella out of, or she’d at least have to teach her to knock first and wait. However, with the fragile state she was in, Anna wasn’t going to give Ella any hint that she couldn’t come to her whenever
she wanted.

If Anna had anything to do with it, Ella would never feel
like that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Crying rang out and Anna’s
eyes
snapped open.

The loud groan that came from behind her made
Anna chuckle.

“What is that?” Lane’s voice was choked
with sleep.

Anna pulled Lane’s arm tighter around her middle as Lane curled more snugly against her back. “That,
was Toby.”

“Na!”

Lane groaned again, and the arm slid away as Lane rolled onto
her back.

The sheets rustled, and Lane pulled a pillow over her face. Her muffled voice floated out. “Why is
it Toby?”

“Cause he’s
a baby?”

“He’s
almost two!”

“He’s
eighteen months.”

Lane made a grumbling noise, then pulled the pillow up and looked at Anna. “What time
is it?”

Anna grimaced. “Five.” Any earlier and she might have had hope of getting him back to sleep for another hour or so, but this late, he could be up
for good.

“Ugh.” Lane pulled the pillow back over
her face.

“Welcome to your first sleepover when the kids are here.” Anna sat up, resting her hand on Lane’s stomach. “I’ll be
right back.”

Lane just grunted from under
the pillow.

Amused, Anna padded down the hallway to get Toby before he woke up Ella. Often, he’d sleep much later than this. On the odd occasion, however, he woke up bright and early, ready to go. And while Anna didn’t hate mornings as much as Lane clearly did, she found it was always easier to cope with one cuddly toddler rather than a cuddly toddler and his six-year-old sister. It
 
was
 five
a.m.,
after all.

Stifling a yawn—she’d only gotten four hours sleep—she pushed Toby’s door open to find him sitting up, looking even sleepier than she felt. The grin he aimed up at her melted her. Maybe he would go back
to sleep.

He pushed himself up to stand, unsteady on the softness of the mattress, and she scooped him up before he could
fall over.

“Na,” he
said happily.

She pulled him against her, his little legs wrapping around her and his head resting heavily on
her chest.

“Morning,
little man.”

Chubby fingers grasped her shirt, as they always did, and he yawned against
her neck.

“It’s very early,
you know.”

He burrowed
into her.

Anna turned to carry him through to her room when he sat up straight in her arms, hair sticking out every which
way. “Blank!”

“Of course.” Anna turned back to his cot. “Can’t forget your blanket.” The second she held it out to him, Toby grabbed it and settled against her, clutching it to his chest. His head thunked back down against her chest and he
cuddled in.

Another yawn and Anna could practically feel him falling back to sleep in her arms. She carried him through to the bedroom, rubbing his back. A lump was all that Anna could see of Lane in the bed. The pillow was still over
her head.

Whispering in Toby’s ear, Anna pointed,
“Who’s that?”

Curiosity coloured Toby’s features as he sat up straighter in Anna’s arms. He looked at the lump, then back to Anna, then back to the lump. Toby pointed at it, then looked to Anna to make sure she’d
seen it.

“I know! Who
is it?”

When he craned forward, she stepped towards the bed to plop him down. Blanket in hand, he crawled across the mattress and sat down heavily, then smacked his hand down on the pillow. Nothing happened, and he looked at
Anna, concerned.

“Try
again, Tobes.”

So he did. And he jumped when the pillow moved, then looked delighted as Lane emerged from under it, hair a cloud around
her head.

Lane, even half-asleep and hating everything at five a.m., smiled at the delighted toddler.
“Hey, Tobes.”

As Toby fell down in a full body cuddle, Lane manoeuvred him under the covers
with her.

Comfortable, Toby snuggled in, then suddenly sat up, grabbed his blanket and lay back down, cuddled right into Lane’s chest. Toby turned his little head to look at Anna, who was trying not to explode with the cuteness of
the scene.

“Na.”

She took the hint and slipped back under the covers. Anna threw one arm over Toby, resting her hand on Lane’s hip, effectively encasing Toby in a sandwich. He burrowed in
and yawned.

Lane caught Anna’s eye over the top of his head. “Is he always this cute in
the morning?”

“About nine times out of ten. Every now and again, he’s
a nightmare.”

“Never! Look
at him!”

Right then, cuddled between the two of them, he looked like
an angel.

Anna pressed her face into the back of Toby’s head, breathing in his baby smell. “Mm. He’s good at looking innocent. You slept through the one a.m. thing this morning.” She caught sight of Lane’s guilty look. “Or you pretended
to sleep?”

Lane had the decency to
look sheepish.

Unable to feign being indignant, Anna yawned, and Lane caught it, yawning too. Toby joined in, and Lane chuckled, slipping her arm over him so her hand mirrored Anna’s, fingers stroking the skin at
Anna’s hip.

They all drifted back
to sleep.

“Wake up!”

The bed lurched and Anna opened one blurry eye. Lane groaned and rolled onto her back, pulling the pillow over her head, while Toby sat up, clapping at the sight in front
of him.

Ella stood on the end of the bed, with Kym kneeling next to her. Their hair was wild around their heads, and both
looked ecstatic.

Kym was the one chanting: “Wake
up, guys!”

“Hi, Aunty Na! Kym told me to yell and wake you up, but I said I wasn’t meant to, so she said she’d
do it.”

“Way to drop me
in it.”

Sensing an opportunity as Kym mock-glared Ella, Anna sat up, grabbed a pillow, and threw it, hitting her right in
the face.

The glare Kym had been directing at Ella turned onto Anna. “Well, that was
just rude.”

With a loud, “Morning!” Ella half sprawled in Anna’s lap. Anna smoothed her crazy bed-head off her forehead. “Morning,
Ella Bella.”

“El! Lan!”

“Morning, Toby.”

Desperate to share his news with his sister, Toby smacked his hand down on the pillow over Lane’s
head. “Lan!”

“Hi,
Nurse Lane.”

Finally emerging from her hiding spot, Lane gave a wiggle of her fingers.
“Morning, Ella.”

“I
slept in!”

Anna looked at the clock. “It’s barely after
seven, Ella.”

“That’s totally
a sleep-in.”

“Well, I appreciate you waking Kym
up first.”

Kym, who had flopped down on her back at the end of the bed, turned her head. “Happy to be of assistance. Why’s the tot in
your bed?”

Toby was crawling his way over to Kym. Soft hands patted her stomach, and then he lay his head on it, fat fingers gripping
her shirt.

“He woke
up early.”

Unable to hold back a smirk, Kym looked at Lane.
“How early?”

Lane answered through gritted
teeth. “Five.”

“Nice
work, Tobes.”

Toby giggled.

The week passed and became the next week too quickly for Anna to keep up. In some ways, it was like their routine was never broken. In the mornings, Anna dropped Ella at her mother’s and Toby to day care. After work, she picked Ella up and they had dinner. During the day, she visited Toby in day care, had coffee with Kym, and paged Lane to her office at
inappropriate times.

However, some things made it glaringly obvious that they’d had six days of hell—and other things were subtle, barely noticeable unless you knew to look
for them.

At night, Toby’s cries when he woke were the hysterical ones of the first few days. By the end of the first week, it turned to just a desperate cry of Anna’s name and tears, but was a long way from the twice-a-week, half-asleep cry of before. The blanket still went everywhere, and he clung more than ever when she dropped him off at day care. He spoke a little less, words he’d picked up no longer yelled out
in delight.

The real mystery was Ella. At times, she was the Ella that had started to re-emerge right before she’d been taken into foster care. Other times, she was quiet, contemplative. She clung for longer when Anna tucked her in at night. When Ella heard tyres over the gravel in the driveway, her whole body tensed and she stared at the door as if she expected to be dragged
through it.

Four times in ten days, Anna had gotten up to comfort her after a nightmare, and, in the end, had taken Ella to her bed. One night, Ella had been almost inconsolable. Her choked cry of “I want Mummy” had made Anna’s chest ache and her own tears fall. She had rubbed Ella’s back, wanting to give her whatever would comfort her, and unable to give the only thing that would truly make
everything okay.

Lane was a ray of sunshine for all of them. She had stayed over twice more, and she and Kym had joined them for dinner even more times than they stayed. The kids loved waking up to Lane in the house, and, thus far, Anna and Lane had remembered to put clothes on before falling asleep
each time.

There were days Anna felt like she was exactly where she wanted to be, Lane moving around the kitchen and Ella telling them about the baby bird they’d saved at recess. Toby would sit on Anna’s lap, leaning into her and sucking at a sippy cup they
were trialling.

And then there were days Anna felt like pulling her hair out
and screaming.

Ella would be sullen and refuse to pick up her toys. Toby would be clingy and whiny, hanging off Anna until she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be alone for more than thirty seconds. Work would get hectic, and she’d be running around, trying to finish in time to get Toby from day care and stop by the grocery store and get Ella from her mother’s and, God, what was she going to do for dinner tonight and there were six loads of laundry she had to get done and, if Ella whined she wanted another bowl of ice cream one more time, Anna was going to
lose it.

Moments would rear up out of the blue so solid and painful in which Anna wanted to talk to her brother, to ask Sally questions, to giggle with her over wine, to punch Jake in the arm when he said something annoying—to have her brother, her
best friend.

But without everything that had happened, Anna wouldn’t have the life she had now. And that would mean no Toby and Ella. And
no Lane.

Toby would look at her sometimes, head cocked and forehead all scrunched up, and she would swear Jake was looking at her with his “you’re insane, little sister” look, and it made her chest ache until she couldn’t breathe. Giggling, Ella would tell her a story from school like a conspirator, leaning forward so her hair fell around her face, and she was the mirror image of Sally doing
the same.

Without the distraction of the trial, missing her brother and Sally seemed to drop on Anna like a tonne of bricks; she couldn’t
explain why.

One day, hands clasped around a coffee, Kym looked at her from across the cafeteria table, eyes intent. She leant across the cool metal tabletop and rested a hand on
Anna’s forearm.

“Don’t beat
yourself up.”