Page 54 of Return to the Waratah Inn

Mima stared, uncomprehending, as her heart hammered. “What? No, I want to see him. Where is he?”

“I’m sorry, Jemima.” The doctor shook his head. Then he walked away.

A nurse took his place. She took Mima’s cup of tea and set it on the table. “I’m sorry, love. These things happen sometimes. It wasn’t your fault.”

“What was it? Why? I don’t understand.”

“We don’t always know. He wasn’t breathing—he was stillborn. You’re a midwife. You know how it goes.”

Bile rose up Mima’s throat. She began to gag, and the nurse hurried to slip a bucket beneath her. She threw up into the bucket with the nurse stroking her back.

“There, there, get it all out.”

Mima wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Here. Sign these papers for your discharge, and you can leave first thing in the morning, and never look back.” The nurse set the papers on the bedside table and handed Mima a pen.

Without thinking or looking at the paper, Mima scratched out her signature. Her head spun. Her thoughts had stopped entirely. She wanted to scream, to cry, to hurt them all. But she was so tired.

The nurse took the papers and tapped them into a neat pile, then slipped the pen into her skirt pocket. “You know, it’s all for the best. You weren’t a fit mother. How would you feed the baby, raise him? There was no one to take care of you. Now you can leave here and go on with your life as if this whole unfortunate incident never happened. It’s your chance to start your life again. No one knows you were pregnant, do they? And now they never will.”

The young woman’s pretty eyes crinkled at the corners, and then she left the cubicle, pulling the curtains shut behind her.

Mima stared after her in horror. Her heart twisted in her chest. She buried her face into her pillow so no one could hear, then screamed at the top of her lungs. She beat the pillow with her fists, one by one, until she couldn’t anymore. She could hear them murmuring outside her cubicle, no doubt wondering what to do with her, if they should sedate her or let her be. But she didn’t care. Let them sedate her. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel this excruciating pain in her heart. Maybe then she could forget what had happened.

She was all alone in the world, and she’d believed that finally, she would have someone to love her unconditionally for the rest of her life. But he was gone, and there was nothing anyone could do to fix that. The people she loved kept leaving her—it was her destiny. If only she didn’t love so deeply, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

She lay on her side, knees bent up as far as she could manage against her still-swollen stomach, and cried until she had no more tears left to fall.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

January 1998

Cabarita Beach

The hot sun sparkled off the surface of the swimming pool. Afternoon shadows lengthened from the Waratah Inn across the blue water, providing shade for Reeda, who sat on a banana lounge beneath an oversized black straw hat. She sipped on a margarita mocktail as she watched the three children play. At first they’d been reluctant to go into the pool, so she’d joined them in her one-piece black suit. She’d made sure that the older two could swim well enough to make it to the side of the pool and put the youngest in a flotation vest. Then she’d climbed out of the pool, exhausted by the effort the whole thing had taken, the tears, the tantrums and the splashing, to rest on a comfortable chair and watch.

A few other guests sat around the pool. One swam laps up and down the length of it. The children splashed on the steps and in the shallows close to Reeda. She’d brought a picnic basket with afternoon tea and various drinks. She was overcompensating, she knew. So many options, but she wasn’t sure yet what they liked and didn’t like, and she hated for any of them to go hungry.

It’d been a challenging three days since they arrived. Each of the children had taken turns being more taciturn and disagreeable than the last. But she hoped that a visit to the inn to meet her sisters, enjoy the swimming pool and maybe even build a sandcastle in the sandy cove, might improve their attitudes.

Carly climbed out of the pool, her arms raised slightly by the puffy inflated vest she wore. She padded over to Reeda, dripping water as she went. She pouted and her eyes were still red from the crying fit it’d taken to get her into the pool ten minutes earlier.

“I’m hungry,” she said in a soft voice.

Reeda reached for the zipper on the girl’s vest. “Come here, and I’ll take this off. You can have some afternoon tea.”

She pulled everything out of the picnic basket and laid it on the small wicker table beside her chair. “Here you go. We have scones with jam and cream, choc-chip biscuits, savoury muffins, caramel slice, fresh vegetables, biscuits with cheese… What would you like?”

“I want chips,” Carly said, her brow furrowed.

“I don’t have chips. Sorry, sweetheart. But you can have anything on this table. And I’ve got some poppers, too. Apple or orange—which do you prefer?”

“Apple,” Carly replied.

Before long, she was happily sipping her drink and eating a piece of caramel slice when her siblings noticed and joined them.

“What is this?” Marc asked.