Page 4 of Return to the Waratah Inn

Reeda understood, placed the discman on a nearby chair, and squatted beside Kate.

“I’m here, Katie. It’s all going to be fine.”

Kate didn’t respond. Her eyes were still shut as she rocked back and forth. Reeda took Kate’s hand.

“Is she okay?”

Mima nodded. “She’s focusing on what she needs to do. And we’re here to support her.”

Bindi returned with a small blanket. “I thought this might do to wrap the baby in. And I called for an ambulance. I tried the school again, and they said Alex had already left. So, that’s good news.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, Reeda, will you please go behind Kate to cradle her and hold her up in a seated position? Bindi, you sit beside her and encourage her. I’m going to catch the baby.”

Ten minutes later, with one final push and a grunt, the baby was born. He was a good-sized little boy, pale at first, but soon pink with the life of his first breath. Kate reached for him with a cry of delight and held him to her chest. Reeda helped Kate unbutton her dress, and within moments, the boy was feeding. Everything had gone well with the delivery, and Mima was glad to see that the baby looked healthy and strong. She didn’t have sterile equipment like she’d used when she worked as a nurse decades earlier, so she didn’t do more than watch with a joyful countenance and help cover the baby with the blanket.

All of the women exchanged a look, beaming with happiness.

“Congratulations, Katie!” Reeda said, with tears in her eyes. “You were amazing.”

“That was incredible,” Bindi added with a sob. “So beautiful.” She leaned over to kiss Kate on the cheek.

Kate’s voice wobbled as she spoke. “I can’t believe it. He’s finally here. Isn’t he perfect?”

They all agreed that he was as perfect as a baby could be. Mima thought she might burst with the pure joy of the moment. She couldn’t sit on the floor any longer, so she lumbered to her feet and found a chair, grunting with the effort since she’d lost feeling in her feet about ten minutes earlier. But it’d been worth it. Kate was well, the baby was healthy, and all was right in the world.

Alex arrived a minute later and instantly became a doting father. Bindi retrieved a camera from the office and took photographs by the dozen. Reeda stood back to watch, letting Alex and Kate have their moment together. Before long, an ambulance pulled up beside the inn, and Reeda hurried to meet the paramedics to show them where to go. Within minutes, Kate had left in the back of the ambulance with Alex and her new baby. Reeda and Bindi followed behind in the Land Rover. They’d offered to drive Mima, but she said she’d wait for Jack, and they would go together. Then she found herself alone in the quiet, her adrenaline quickly fading.

She cleaned up the towels and carried them to the laundry. Then she put away the discman and tidied the verandah, using a bucket of water to wash it clean as best she could. She returned inside to find that the staff had mopped the dining area, cleaned up after lunch and left. The entire inn was peaceful and still. No guests in the downstairs area, no one in the kitchen. It was as if everyone had simply vanished, and she was grateful for the quiet—she needed a few minutes to herself to decompress after everything that’d taken place.

It’d been a long time since she’d delivered a baby, and it had brought back so many memories. Some happy, others painful, all dredged up within her a sense of nostalgia for a past she’d never revisit and loved ones she’d never see again. A ball of emotion was lodged in her chest that made her want to cry, but she didn’t have time for that. She had to get to the hospital to be with her adopted family.

In the office, she made a phone call to Jack’s cottage to let him know what was going on. He said he’d pick her up just as soon as he finished getting dressed. He’d been fishing and couldn’t show up to the hospital smelling of fish guts. She quite agreed with him on that. Besides, there was no rush now. The hard part was over.

As she sat there in Kate’s desk chair, she looked around the office space, marvelling at how much things had changed over the past year. Yet this room looked almost exactly the same as it had for decades—the walls were newly painted, but the framed photographs that hung on them had been there for as long as Mima could recall. An image of Edie, Paul and little Keith when they’d first arrived at the empty block of land, then another of them in front of the freshly constructed inn. Still more of Keith learning to ride, and then him and Mary with their three girls on the beach, salty hair dripping down the sides of their faces. Those were happy days, before the car accident that took Keith and Mary away from them all.

When the phone rang, the jangle made Mima startle and set her heart racing.

“Heaven’s above!” She pressed a hand to her jittering heart as she picked up the receiver to answer it. “Hello, Waratah Inn. Mima speaking.”

“Is this Jemima Everest?”

“Yes, it is,” she replied, a frown creasing her forehead.

The voice turned jovial. “I’m glad I found you. This is Susan from Find My Family on Channel Seven. I’m calling to find out if you’d be willing to come on the show to be reunited with a long-lost family member.”

Mima’s heart stood still. “What? Who? What are you talking about?”

“The son you gave up for adoption has contacted us forty-four years later, and he’d like to be reunited with you. Are you willing to come on the show to meet him?”

The receiver dropped from Mima’s hand to the desk with a thud. She stared at it as the heat drifted from her body, leaving her cold and shaking. Her son? Was this a prank call? How could it be true? Her son was dead, and no one else knew he’d ever existed.

Chapter Three

January 1998

Cabarita Beach

Kate Cannon lay tucked up in a hospital bed, clean from a hot shower, with her baby neatly wrapped in a bunny rug, resting beside her in a tiny cot with wheels. She peered across at his sweet sleeping face, dark eyelashes as crescent moons on his pale cheeks. She hadn’t been able to stop looking at him since the moment he was born. Thankfully, he hadn’t left her side other than when she took a shower. Alex had held him and sung to him the entire time she was gone. And when she’d walked back into the room, she’d stopped for a moment to watch them together with her throat tight.