Red Dirt Heart 04 - Red Dirt Heart 4 (22 page)

I snorted. “Did you bribe her?”

He looked offended, but his blush gave him away. “I might have paid her over and above her going rate.” He frowned. “Trav, I don’t care where we are. I don’t care where it’s legal, it doesn’t matter to me. I’ll have my solicitors draw up papers that will make you my executor. It will give you—”

I kissed him again, this time with smiling lips, to stop his rambling. “Don’t we have a wedding to get to?” I turned my head, listening for any sound of people, but couldn’t hear anything. “Charlie, you said ‘on the way’. What did you mean?”

He grinned. “Come this way.” He took my hand and led me down the hall to the back door. We walked outside, where I was expecting to see people, but there was no one. There was, however, near the shed like it was waiting for us, the chopper.

“Your chariot.”

“Charlie?”

“Come on.” He was excited now, his eyes glittering. Still holding my hand, he leapt off the veranda and all but ran to the chopper. We got ourselves buckled in, Charlie started her up, and as soon as we were in the air and heading northeast, I knew where we going.

I laughed, and he looked over at me and grinned right back at me.

“Really?” I asked.

“Where else?”

I don’t think I could have loved him any more than I did in that moment.

It was becoming late afternoon, the sun giving us a glorious display of colour that only she could, and the desert was the prettiest I think I’d ever seen it.

A line of parked trucks came into view, and then I saw it. The lagoon, our lagoon, was littered with tiki oil lamps and white flowing material. There were tables and seats—and people.

I was stunned, unable to look away, unable to think. “You did all this…?”

“Me and your mum,” he said. “Ma and Nara helped too. And George and, well, everybody really.”

Charlie put the chopper down just as the Cruiser with my parents and George pulled up. I watched as they walked up the path lit by oil lamps, my mother holding on to my father’s arm as they climbed the rocky outcrop.

“You okay, Trav? You don’t have to go through with it.”

I turned to face him. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t what I was feeling. I was overwhelmed and stunned.

“Trav, you’re starting to freak out, aren’t you?” he asked quickly. “I knew it was too much. I should have pulled the pin.”

I shook my head. “I want to remember this moment forever. This feeling.” I put my hand to my hammering heart. “This… You.”

Charlie unbuckled himself and got out of the chopper. The rotors had come to a complete stop, and he walked around the front of the chopper to my side. I undid my seatbelt and he held his hand out to me. “You ready?”

I got out and walked to him, quick to slip our fingers together. “I am so ready for this.”

And together we followed the lamps and walked up the familiar path to the lagoon where everyone was waiting.

And I mean everyone. Trudy, Bacon, little Gracie in a very pretty dress, Nara and Amos, Ernie, Greg and his wife Jenny, Allan and his wife and their three sons. Even Scott and his wife was there. Then I saw Mom and Dad and Ma and George, all of them smiling, standing near the minister.

Charlie and I walked through them, hand in hand, to the front.

I’d stood here once before and swore to Charlie I’d love him forever. And now I would do it again.

The minister smiled at us both. “Can I just start by saying,” she said, waving her hand to the backdrop that was the desert, “I’ve never seen such a beautiful place.”

And she was right. The lagoon was on an elevated platform, raised against the side of a limestone ridge, and the view over the desert was spectacular on a bad day. Today it was magnificent. The colours of the sky were cast over the red earth, the green trees highlighted the horizon.

The Outback was certainly showing off today.

The minister continued, “And we’re here to celebrate this union, this marriage, of these two men today.”

She talked for a short while, about what I couldn’t say. I was lost, completely lost looking at Charlie, distracted by the way he was looking at me. Like no one else was there, like it was just us here, in our special place, and I couldn’t help it, I had to— just had to—kiss him. I put my hand to his face and slowly pressed my lips to his.

Someone laughed, breaking the silence, making me realize where we were. I looked around to find everyone trying not to smile, and then at the minister. I think she might have been the one who laughed. “Am I going too slowly for you?” she asked with a smile.

I nodded. “Yes.”

I still had my hand to Charlie’s face, and he put his hand over mine and brought it between us. His cheeks were pink, and his smile was adorably shy.

“Shall I just skip and get to the good part?” the minister asked him.

Charlie snorted, but then he nodded. “Yes, please.”

After a few stifled laughs from our crowd, the minister said, “Right, then. Let’s get down to it. Charles Sutton, do you take this man, Travis Craig, to be your lawful wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“Will you care for him, love and cherish him, respect him, for as long as you both shall live?”

He nodded and lifted his chin. “I will.”

Holy shit.

“Travis Craig, do you take this man, Charles Sutton, to be your lawful wedded husband?”

“I do.”

“And do you promise to care for him, love and cherish him, respect him, for as long as you both shall live?”

“Yes,” I said. “I will.”

“Well, then,” the minister said.

“Wait,” I interrupted. Her eyes flashed to mine, and there was a deathly silence across the desert. “I have something to say first.”

Charlie looked alarmed, to say the least. “Trav?”

“I want to say something.” I squeezed his hands and smiled. “A bit of warning would have been good to, you know, prepare something, but I wanna say something if that’s okay.”

Charlie nodded, clearly nervous about what I might say in front of everyone we loved.

“Charlie, I stood here before and promised to love you forever, and that will never change.” I smiled at him. “I’ll watch your stupid football and even suffer through cricket. I’ll bear a hundred-thirty-degree summers and below-freezing winters, days that start at four a.m., and I’ll kick your stubborn ass if it needs kicking.”

Everyone laughed.

I was grinning at him now. “And you will watch gridiron, and you’ll learn the rules to baseball. And you will call a cookie a cookie, not a biscuit. And there’s a pretty good chance I’ll bring home more stray animals, and you’ll be okay with that.”

Charlie laughed. “I will.”

“I’m not just marrying you, Charlie,” I said quietly. “I’m marrying this land as well, because you are as much a part of this place as it is of you. You have a love as infinite as the horizon, and a heart of red dirt. And I would be honoured”—I put my hand to my heart—“truly honoured, to marry you.”

Charlie barked out a laugh as tears spilled down his cheeks. My mom was crying, as was Ma. Even George was misty-eyed. The minster closed her little book and shrugged. “I can’t beat that.”

Charlie laughed again and wiped his face. “Yeah, I got nothing.”

I pulled him against me, and the minister smiled and said, “You are husbands. You may kiss your groom.”

So we did.

And there against the perfect landscape and setting sun, two red dirt hearts became one.

Two years after the wedding…

“Charlie,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “It’ll be fine.”

Truth be told, I was as nervous as he was, but a nervous Charlie could very quickly become an about-to-lose-his-shit Charlie, and I couldn’t let that happen because today was important.

We were in Melbourne, of all places, waiting in a café. It had been warm and sunny just an hour ago, but now it was miserable and raining as though the weather and Charlie’s moods were in sync.

“What if she doesn’t like us?” he asked. “What if she says no?”

“Then we try again,” I said, trying to mollify him, which was a waste of time.

Before he could argue, and Lord knows he was about to, a woman walked into the café, and after seeing us, she smiled.

She was maybe five foot four inches tall with red hair and dark brown eyes. “Charlie and Travis?” she asked. There was an accent. Irish? Scottish? I wasn’t sure.

Charlie stood up and went to tip his hat that he wasn’t wearing, so he stuck out his hand instead. “Charlie Sutton. And this is my… husband Travis Craig.”

“Ryanne Evans,” she said. The accent was definitely Irish. After she shook our hands, we ordered her a coffee and she took a deep breath. “So… How was your flight?”

“It was fine,” Charlie said. Then because he rambled when he was nervous, he couldn’t shut up. “Though you can keep Melbourne. It’s too wet and grey for me. Give me the sun and desert any day.” He cringed. “Not that there’s anything wrong with Melbourne, of course. If you like wet and grey that is. I mean, they weren’t kidding when they said four seasons in one day.”

Ryanne surprised me by laughing. “Bit nervous, huh?”

I slid my hand onto his knee and squeezed, but smiled at her. “Yes. We are.”

We had spoken to her on the phone a few times, and after deciding to proceed to the next step, we’d arranged a time and place to meet.

“Well, don’t be nervous,” she said, her accent thick and her smile wide. “Meredith told me a bit about you. But how about you start at the beginning. What’s the Charlie and Travis story?”

Meredith was the Irish exchange student who’d done a diversification program like I had. She’d spent some time travelling before her month at Sutton Station, and some of that time had been spent here in Melbourne. When she’d learned that Charlie and I were looking into options for having kids, she gave us Ryanne’s name and number.

“She helped another couple like y’selves have a baby,” Meredith had said. “Can’t hurt to call her. You got nuthin’ to lose.”

So we called. And three months later, there we sat in a café in Melbourne, telling this Ryanne Evans, our potential surrogate, the Charlie and Travis story.

Ryanne was loud, funny, opinionated and had a spark of fire in her eyes. She was a spitfire of a woman, who I imagined also had a helluva temper. I was pretty sure Ma would love her.

When we’d explained all that led us here, she asked if we had any questions. “Can I ask why you do it?” I hedged. “For strangers, for us?”

“Because I can,” she replied seriously. “And because I’m able. And because I won’t have no government official tell me how to live my life. It’s mine to live, not theirs.”

Well, if Charlie wasn’t convinced she was the right woman for us before, he was now. He nodded and his eyes got all shiny, and he was squeezin’ my hand ’til the bones near broke.

But I knew. I just knew it. She would be the one who would make this family complete.

The day we met Amelia…

Charlie and I took turns pacing. It had been a long year; from jerking off into a cup to delivery day, the whole process had been drawn-out, stressful and, of course, completely amazing.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t Charlie who freaked out the most. It was me. Ryanne was in Melbourne, some fourteen hundred miles away. It didn’t feel real enough or right enough. It felt removed, like it wasn’t happening at all.

Charlie had reasoned that we would have no control over anything that happened whether Ryanne was in Melbourne or our living room, which, of course, I thought was a much better idea.

He took my hands in his. “She can’t live here, Trav,” he’d said. “She has a life in Melbourne. Not to mention that we’re three hours away from the hospital. At least in Melbourne she has state-of-the-art medical facilities.”

I knew what he was saying made sense, but this was our baby! All those miles away, and all we got was sonogram pictures and doctors’ bills. “I don’t feel a part of it,” I had tried to explain. “I wanna see the growing belly. I wanna hear the heartbeat and feel the baby move.”

Charlie had kissed my lips and nudged his nose to mine, finally making me smile. But before I could completely die of stress, Charlie had asked and Ryanne agreed—thankfully—to have the baby in Alice Springs Hospital.

Which is where we sat, stood, paced, slow-breathing, hair-pulling, and waited.

Well, actually, we started in the delivery suite, but when the anaesthesiologist stuck a needle in Ryanne’s spine, Charlie passed out.

Literally.

Me and another nurse caught him before he hit the floor, but Ryanne thought it might be best if we both waited outside. And with the string of four-letter Irish words that followed with a poorly timed contraction, we didn’t argue.

So we took turns pacing, all decked out in surgical scrubs.

The waiting room was full. Ma and George, Trudy, Bacon, Grace and her little brother Lachlan were there. Laura, Sam and Ainsley and their new son Jack.

It had been the latest two additions, Lachlan and Jack, in Charlie’s life that was the final push for us to do this. Charlie
wanted
it. He wanted it like he couldn’t believe, and when Sam and Ainsley had Jack last year, Charlie was upset and pissed off that the federal and Territory governments didn’t allow same-sex couples to adopt, and our Irish exchange student had overheard him ranting. That was when she’d given us Ryanne’s contact details.

The woman who would give us the greatest gift.

“Mr Sutton? Mr Craig?” a nurse said from the waiting room door.

Everyone stood up and stared at her. My heart was in my throat, but Charlie and I answered together. “Yes?”

“Ryanne asked for you. There’s someone she wants you to meet.”

* * * *

It was like an out-of-body experience, walkin’ into that delivery room. There was no sound somehow, just my heart hammering in my ears. I took one step after another, following Charlie. He seemed to walk so easily, where I thought I might break with each step or forget to breathe or something…

And there she was. Ryanne was in the bed, the blankets pulled up, and she was holding a wrapped up bundle of baby. I had a gut-awful fleeting fear that she was about to say sorry, she’d changed her mind… I felt hot and cold all at once, and it was hard to breathe.

Then Ryanne smiled and said the most amazing four words I would ever hear. “You have a daughter.”

A daughter.

We had a little girl.

I imagine we both looked in shock and awe, probably a little ill, and mostly scared. She smiled again at us. “Now for the important part.” Ryanne looked down at the baby and said, “Little precious one, I want you to meet your two daddies.”

Of course, we both just stood there.
Two daddies.

“Here.” Ryanne laughed. “You can hold her.”

Charlie pushed forward, taking the wrapped-up bundle from her. He turned to me and we both looked down. She was all pink and wrinkled and had a shock of red hair.

She was perfect.

I could barely see her through my tears, and I leaned down and kissed her forehead.

“So?” Ryanne said. “Does she have a name?”

We’d talked about so many names and had made a short list of both boys and girls names, but now that we’d finally met her, there was only one name that was right.

“Amelia,” I said. “Amelia Sutton.”

Charlie nodded. “Little Milly Sutton,” he whispered.

And then he wept.

* * * *

Two days later, we brought her home. Charlie carried Milly inside, and we stopped just inside the door. There was pink everywhere, banners and balloons, but what choked me up was a fourth hook had been added for our hats, and tiny pair of pink boots stood in line with ours.