Sarah's Baby (6 page)

“I have my faith to sustain me, Sarah. I believe in God. I believe in an afterlife. I don't know how I'll do getting through those pearly gates, though.” He briefly closed his eyes. “I lost myself for a few years there along the way.”

“You mean Ruth McQueen?” Sarah asked as gently as she could.

Joe laughed wryly. “Ruth had—still has—a certain technique for mesmerizing people. She mesmerized me from the start. I know it sounds weak, but for years she had an uncanny power over me. I knew she was only using me—Ruth had a very strong sex drive. In fact, to my shame, she threw me over.” He shook his head. “This is old stuff, Sarah. I know you chose not to believe it, but… The point is, I never neglected my patients.”

“I know that, Joe. You've made a real difference. The town owes you a great debt.”

Joe shrugged that away. “Caring for people, trying to cure them, is our role, Sarah. What I'm trying to get to is—Forgive my shaky hands. It's the drugs I'm on. Would you consider for one moment replacing me? I hear all about you from colleagues. You're a fine doctor and there's plenty of doctoring to do in this town.”

“I couldn't, Joe.”

“What's your biggest obstacle? Unfinished business with Kyall?”

Sarah dropped her eyes. “I was over Kyall McQueen half a lifetime ago.”

“I don't think so.” Joe reached a hand across the table, his voice so strange Sarah lifted her head to stare at him. “You've never told me, but did Ruth threaten you?”

Sarah almost broke down. “Ruth McQueen has been a very threatening presence in a lot of people's lives.”

“I know she was desperate to break you and Kyall up. I wasn't happy about that and told her so. She used to talk to me. She doesn't any longer.”

“Does she really talk to anybody, including Kyall? I hate that woman.”

“Why?”

“Because she ripped me from Kyall's side. I know it sounds extravagant, but Kyall meant the world to me. He was the sun, the moon, the stars. He was my brother, my soul mate, my very best friend.”

“Forgive me, Sarah. There's so much I don't know. Was he your lover?”

“It doesn't matter now,” she said.

“I'm dying, Sarah, so your secret is safe with me. I'll file it away and take it to the grave. Somewhere inside me, I feel a terrible guilt, as if I failed you and your mother.”

“No, my dear friend.” Tears sprang to Sarah's eyes. “Don't punish yourself, because there's nothing for you to punish yourself about. Ruth McQueen persuaded me that I had to be brave and give Kyall up.”

“So she made you leave Koomera Crossing. I know you wouldn't have gone easily.”

“She was afraid we would become lovers.”

“Are you telling me the truth? I won't let Ruth hurt you.”

Sarah looked at him levelly. “What would you do, Joe? Kill her?”

Joe answered in a shaking voice. “Ruth doesn't entirely have the whip hand. I've long suspected she was somehow involved in Molly Fairweather's death. I've never told anyone. There was nothing substantial to go on. Just a feeling.”

“Good God!” Sarah revealed her shock. “Who's Molly Fairweather, anyway?”

“Oh, I remember. You wouldn't have met her. She came to town a year or so after you left. Big woman. Very gruff. People used to think she was crazy. Sure acted like it from time to time. ‘Mad Molly' the kids called her.”

“Mum never, ever mentioned her.”

“No reason to, I suppose. She kept to herself. Had everything delivered to her door. She bought the Sinclair family home from Ruth, I believe, so I suppose she had private money. She was a trained nurse, but apparently she'd injured her back.”

“What has this got to do with Ruth McQueen?”

“I might go straight to hell for suggesting such a thing, but Mad Molly died of snakebite. Somehow a desert taipan got into her house.”

“How did it get there? They don't usually choose someone's doorstep.

Joe shrugged. “It was a bad year for snakes, but no one else in town spotted one in their garden. By the time I got out there—the postie raised the alarm—Molly Fairweather was dead, lying facedown in the hallway with the front door open. Later when I spoke to Ruth about it, I knew in the blink of an eye—or thought I knew—that she'd had something to do with it. Molly Fairweather's will handed the house back to Ruth, which I thought decidedly odd.”

There was something else, Sarah felt, about that terrible story. In a sudden flashback, she remembered the midwife who'd brought her little Rose into the world. A big woman
with an aura of competence, but taciturn with rigid dark eyebrows. A woman who had appeared consumed with the desire to serve Ruth McQueen any way she could.
Why am I thinking of her?
she wondered in dull surprise. All these years, she'd never been able to rid herself of the sight of Ruth McQueen's face, yet she'd all but forgotten the midwife. Mad Molly couldn't be the same woman, could she? Still, Joe's story was disturbing. She stared at him.

“How could you use a mere feeling against someone like Ruth McQueen? There must've been some inquiry.”

“There was an autopsy. I performed it myself. The verdict was bloody bad luck. But the whole business got to Ruth in some way. Don't forget, I knew her very, very well. Or as well as anyone could know her. For all her fine family name, her power and influence, Ruth McQueen wouldn't hesitate to walk on the wild side.”

“Kyall and Christine are nothing like her. And they only resemble Enid a little.”

“Enid's just a shadow of her mother.”

“She certainly knows how to be cruel,” Sarah offered, feeling as though she had a splinter in her throat.

Joe nodded and put a trembling hand to his chest.

“Are you all right, Joe?” Sarah stood up abruptly.

“It comes and goes. Sit down, Sarah.” He spoke like a father. “I'm not quite sure why I feel this way, but I believe you were destined to return to this town. I've never given much evidence to dreams, but I've been having some odd ones lately. I know—” he held up a hand “—the medication. But the voice in my dreams tells me to beg you to take my place. There are unanswered questions surrounding you, Sarah. I believe the only way you're going to find the answers is to return to Koomera Crossing. The way has been paved for you. Muriel is at peace. And here I am, dying, ready to hand over the running of the hospital to
you. I don't suppose it was ever what you had in mind. But for a few years? Would you mind so much leaving the city and the medical center you work for?”

“Joe, it's not possible,” Sarah said. “Ruth McQueen drove me out of town. She'd do it again. Lest we forget, they own the town. They built the hospital. The dedication stone bears Ewan McQueen's name.”

“Aren't you forgetting Kyall is a man now? Not a boy. A lot of the power has passed to him. He's enormously popular, not only in the town but the entire southwest. If you spoke to Kyall about taking over, what are the chances he'd say no? He'd back you to the hilt. I know Ruth's been trying and trying to marry him off to India Claydon, but with no luck. The girls have always been after Kyall, but for him, it appears, there is only you. Unless there's someone in your life?”

“No.” Sarah shook her head. “I've had a few relationships that didn't work out. One almost came to something but in the end, I couldn't commit myself. We're still friends, though. He's a fellow doctor.”

“Would you think it over for me, Sarah?” Joe looked at her out of strangely light-filled eyes. “You'd have plenty to do. Probably much more than at your city surgery. Challenges, too. You're the kind of doctor who could run this place. You could manage the nurses. People warm to you, Sarah. They always did.”

“I'm afraid of coming back, Joe,” Sarah confessed. “There's so much grief inside me. So much anger.”

“There always will be until you exorcise the pain.” Joe's almost messianic gaze locked on to Sarah's. “Don't say no, Sarah. Talk to Kyall about it. You're going to see him, aren't you?”

“How do you know that?” Sarah stared at Joe, taken aback.

“I saw the two of you together, Sarah. God, I've known you both from babyhood. Ruth may not have considered you grand enough for her grandson but in my opinion she'll never break you up.”

Sarah's tone came out more harshly than she intended. “Wouldn't your plan to bring me back to town put me in danger, Joe? You've as good as accused Ruth of conspiracy to murder.”

“I've never spoken a word of that to anyone other than you, though I nearly did to Harriet. Maybe I've found my calling as a psychic,” he said with a quiet laugh. “Either that or when you're dying, you give your whole life a good going-over.”

“I see it like that, too, Joe,” Sarah said much more gently. “But although McQueen money assisted me, nothing's changed behind the scenes. I only spent two minutes in their company, yet I felt their clear message.
Go away. Go far away.
”

Joe slapped his hand on the side of his swivel chair. “Listen, you've got the right stuff, Sarah. You've got plenty of guts and, I'm betting, a lot of resilience. You're not afraid of Ruth, are you?”

Sarah knew in her soul she wasn't. “I'm more afraid of Kyall,” she said after a long moment. Of his condemnation if he ever found out the true story. “I've gained some peace of mind, Joe. I don't know that I can handle opening old wounds,” she added bleakly.

“Think about it, Sarah,” Joe urged, coughing a little. Sarah heard the rattle in his lungs. “That's all I ask. I think I can hang on here for another few months. After that, I'm not sure. You know how difficult it is to get doctors for rural areas, let alone a place as remote as Koomera Crossing. Could you manage it for just a few years? You'd not only be doing the community a great service, you'd be doing something I feel is absolutely crucial for yourself.”

N
OT UNTIL THE LAST MOMENT
, when he saw her exit the shop, put on her sunglasses, then look toward where he was parked across the street, was Kyall sure she was going to come at all. He saw the town nosey parker, a woman he disliked, Ruby Hall—Muriel's helper in the store—peer through the blind. She obviously figured he couldn't see, so he gave her a little salute.

It would be all around town within minutes that he and Sarah had driven off together. Ruby couldn't keep a secret to save her life. At least she wouldn't know where they'd gone, but he wouldn't put it past her to jump into her little shoe-box car and follow them, ducking and weaving down the main street. She should've been a private eye. She would have loved it. The trouble was, there was no excitement in Ruby's life. She was in her forties, uneducated and unmarried; her sharp tongue had put off the odd admirer. Ruby's idea of excitement was loitering for the purpose of spying on other people. She wasn't exactly harmless, either. It was Ruby who'd told Vera Saunders that her husband was having afternoon trysts with a certain young woman who used to work at the pub.

Sarah was moving gracefully in his direction, so Kyall abandoned himself to simply staring at her. Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid, those glittering little ringlets springing in an airy halo around her face. She looked little
more than a schoolgirl, her body slender and supple. For a moment he was swept by nostalgia.

Sarah! Why did you do this to me? Why didn't you write?
How many years was it before he finally gave up? Surely what they'd felt for each other hadn't completely died? He never ceased to marvel at what a poor, deluded fool he was. Whoever said women were the romantics had got it all wrong.

She wore yellow jeans that showed off her slim hips and long legs. Instead of the usual T-shirt India favored, albeit with designer label, Sarah was wearing some gauzy cream top that had bands of cream lace on either side of the low V front. Very feminine and sexy enough to make him catch his breath. There were boots on her feet, a yellow leather bag slung over her shoulder. Sarah had always had style. Not something she'd learned but something that must have been with her from birth.

“Hi!”

She nodded briskly. No smile. “Could we please go, Kyall? Ruby—I had to let her open the shop—has her nose poked through the blinds like she's on to something important.”

“That's okay. I've already spotted her.” He lifted a nonchalant hand, waved again. “I have complete confidence in Ruby to inform the town that Sarah Dempsey and Kyall McQueen have picked up where they left off.”

“Then she'll be pointing them all in the wrong direction.” Sarah stepped into the Range Rover. “So where are we going?” she asked tautly when he was behind the wheel, so dynamic in that confined space she didn't know whether to jump out, cry with frustration or both.

He placed both hands against the wheel. Beautifully shaped hands, strong, darkly tanned, long-fingered. She
considered them for a moment, remembering their unique touch, then looked away.

“Listen, I'm not trying to kidnap you, Sarah,” he said mildly. “I just want to grab a few minutes of your valuable time. What do you say to getting out of town?” He searched her face for understanding. “How about our old pocket of the creek, or does that have too many traumatic memories?”

“I don't care.” Her face twisted a little as she said it. In her body, perhaps, she'd always be fifteen.

“Oh, yeah, I'm sure you scarcely remember.” He was silent until he pulled out of the parking bay and drove to the end of the main street, which was, in fact, the only street of any significance. People conducted their business there. It was called O'Connor Street after an intrepid young adventurer who really didn't know a lot about adventuring. Or not in the Australian outback, at any rate.

Dominating one side of O'Connor was the shire council building, pristine white, surrounded by palms and beds of decorative grasses. It had been built with McQueen money and designed by a talented architect. It looked impressive enough. Air-conditioned for the comfort of the mayor, his mother (Kyall hadn't been a bit surprised when she was elected) and the councillors, ten at last count. The pub on the other side. The Sweeney. Version three. Two had burned down, but photographs of the original quaint old building with its corrugated iron roof lined the current pub's walls. The hospital had half a block to itself. The theater stood on the corner—the Endeavour. That was Harriet's baby. It served as a cinema, as well. Again, mostly McQueen money. In some respects his grandmother was generous. In others? Well, she was miserly as hell.

“How are you, anyway?” he asked Sarah, at the same time lifting a hand to hail another driver, someone Sarah
didn't know. A big man with a large, handsome head, and probably a body to match. Normally she would've asked who it was, but didn't. Not the way she felt.

“How would you expect me to be?” she asked. “My world will be a different place without Mum. We mightn't have seen each other all that often, but we always kept in touch. I knew she was there.”

“I'm sorry, Sarah.” He glanced at her lovely wounded face. “It was obvious to everyone how proud your mother was of you. How proud the town was. Harriet in particular. So my grandmother did
some
good things. You'd never have become a doctor without her. Takes a lot of money.”

“And we had none.”

He sighed. “I meant gifted people sometimes need a helping hand with the practical realities—like medical-school fees. You always were good at healing. Remember how you used to find berries and fungi in the bush? Water roots? You used to rub them on my cuts and scratches.”

“Loaded with antiseptic properties. I found them because I used my eyes. And I listened. There's so much to be learned from the Aboriginals. They're the ones with the special relationship to this land.”

“They never plant gardens,” he mused, thinking how denuded the homestead would look without its gardens. “They're not interested in cultivating gardens at all. Even vegetables to fill out their diet. I know they look on the whole natural environment as their garden, but to me and the rest of us who spend a lot of money and time surrounding our houses and public buildings with beautiful gardens, it seems they're somehow deprived.”

“They don't see it like we do,” she said simply. “Nature
is
their garden. Ancestral beings left them enough to eat. They have intimate knowledge of all the plants and trees. What they can eat, what they can use to heal. They use
everything to the full. They can find water where we see a barren desert. Remember old Jalgura showing us how to extract water from the roots of the mallee? We were just kids and he must've been nearing a hundred.”

Kyall nodded. “I also remember that you became interested very early in the healing side of it. I was more interested in bush tucker for survival.”

“We had a wonderful childhood.” Her gaze blurred with tears and she tilted her head away slightly, pretending to look out at the town's buildings.

“You were my shining light.” His voice deepened. “You always wore your gold hair the way you're wearing it now. Exactly the same. Except for special occasions, when you let that glorious mane loose. You always knew how to look wonderful. Remember that last time when everyone for hundreds of miles around was invited to Bonny Hatfield's wedding?”

“I'll remember it all my life.” After that, everything had changed.

“So will I. Lottie Harris made you that beautiful dress. What was it made of, moonbeams?”

She couldn't speak for a moment. “Tulle over a silk slip with little rose appliqués,” she managed eventually. “So pale a blue it was almost silver. How wonderfully generous Lottie was. Mum paid for the material, but Lottie made the dress for nothing. And she made the rose trim for my hair. I felt like a princess the night you stole my heart away.”

“And your honor,” he responded harshly. “Do women still think of their virginity as their honor?”

“It matters,” she answered carefully. “Perhaps to some more than others. It's the moment of changing from a protected child to a vulnerable woman. Self-esteem is affected by the experience.”

“Did the loss of your virginity give you so much grief?”
He threw a brilliant blue glance at her. “God, Sarah, I didn't rape you. I hope—I can't remember exactly, because I was so crazy about you—but I would've stopped if you'd uttered one word of protest. Whatever happened to account for your subsequent behavior? You not only went beyond my reach, you treated me like a…like a criminal.”

That was the truth, and in its way dreadfully cruel. “Please, let's not talk about it, Kyall. It's so long ago. What can be gained from going over the whole thing again?”

“Because it matters, Sarah,” he muttered, echoing her earlier words. “To me, anyway. You're an intelligent woman. You're also a doctor, used to dealing with trauma. What was it about your first experience of romantic passion that made you want to cut me so violently out of your life?”

To tell him would be playing with fire. “It was all too much for me to handle.”

“So you hated me for it—even though no grown woman could have responded more passionately,” he said. “Then, almost overnight, you had no greater wish than to be separated from me. You might as well have left me stranded in the middle of the Simpson Desert.”

“I'm sorry.” She looked down at her shaking hands.

“Why did you come with me today?”

“I thought I owed it to you.”

“Now, doesn't that beat everything!” he heard himself saying in a hard, derisive voice. Then he blew out a calming breath. “It's not really the time, is it, to get anything out of you. Losing your mother has hit you hard. I'm sorry, Sarah. I don't want to hurt you, but I'd be lying if I said you haven't hurt me.”

Neither of them spoke on the journey out to their old haunt, a hidden and beautiful pocket of the creek that was always filled with volumes of opalescent green water. The
water swirled whitely around and between a handful of large, oddly shaped rocks that stood up from the creek bed like primitive sculptures. When they were children, this had been a fairyland to them, full of beauty and mystery. The bauhinias always seemed to be in bloom, pink, white and cerise, along with the flowering kurrajongs and the tall pink masses of mulla mullas. Their secret place had been a haven for large butterflies, too. Beautiful species that fed on the blossoming shrubs.

He helped her from the vehicle, acknowledging her thank-you with a curt inclination of his head. The native boronia was in flower. The heavenly scent, so filled with old memories, wrapped around them. In the old days they'd maintained a twisting track down the slope to the glittery sand. Now the track had long since overgrown with grasses and trailing vines covered with tiny mauve flowers.

It was a mistake to come, Sarah thought, torn between melancholy and a knife-edged excitement.

“Let me go first to clear the way,” Kyall said in a businesslike voice. “It amazes me that other kids haven't found this water hole.”

“How do you know they haven't?”

He gave her a half amused, half scornful smile. “Sarah, look around. No one's been here for years. The whole area is totally undisturbed. Watch those vines. They're inches deep. They might trip you up.”

“I'll follow you.” Hadn't she always?

Nearing the bottom of the slope, she gained an unexpected momentum, slamming into his broad back. It was too late for regrets now. She was here alone with Kyall.

“Steady.” He caught her around the waist.

Don't let me go. Don't ever let me go.
She wanted to say the words aloud, but they were stuck in her chest.

“It's uncanny,” he said. “It's like we were here yesterday.”

She didn't answer, moving to the water's edge. There was a subterranean spring in the center that kept the water deep. One section of the oval pool was aglow with a flotilla of blue lotus, the water so clear she could see the sandy bottom in the shallows. She couldn't begin to count the number of times they'd swum here, racing one another from end to end.

Try to catch me!

The memories kept breaking out all around her.

Careless of her boots and the hems of her jeans, Sarah waded in a little way, dipping her hands in the cold, flowing water. Cold even in the shimmering heat. Gratefully she splashed her face several times, throwing back her head to send a silvery spray of water into the air. She would've liked to wade out to the rocks. She and Kyall used to sit there, with her perched on one rock, him on another, having one of their endless conversations, sometimes arguments. Her mother had jokingly called them “the twins.”

Impossible to shake off her nostalgia, but this beautiful place, so important in her life, was diminishing her grief. It had changed so little that time might've stood still. She dared to chance a look back over her shoulder, feeling the sensual intensity gathering inside her. Desire was such a powerful force. She could feel her nipples harden and the muscles of her stomach tighten. Kyall was watching her from the shade, his tall, powerful body elegant even in a relaxed slouch. She didn't want to know what he was thinking. No—not true. Of course she did! There was always that thread of apprehension mixed up with the longing.

Across the stream, the wilderness blossomed and beckoned. One starry night, she and Kyall had sought shelter there in the wild bush. A place for young lovers to meet,
curtained off from the world. There their child had been conceived.

Suddenly she was crying—afraid of revealing herself, afraid of pity, anger, condemnation. But she couldn't help it. She hid her face in her hands, allowing her hair to fall forward like a shield.