Twenty #3
A humourless laugh tumbled from her mouth. ‘If I could just turn back time, you know?’ She contemplated the fountain again. ‘I’d have been less laissez-faire. I was so … stupid. So careless.’
Lachlan slid his hand onto her shoulder, her guilt a force field around her. ‘You were fifteen.’
She shrugged his hand away, which only made Lachlan feel more wretched. ‘I was old enough to know what I was doing.’
‘Yeah, but age is just one part of it, right? Adolescent brains aren’t fully matured until their early twenties.’
‘I was pretty mature.’
‘So was I. And yet still, at the age of fifteen I was at the billabong drinking cartons of beer with my mates on the weekends, then getting in our cars pissed off our skulls and doing burnouts all over the paddocks.’
And that was just the tip of the iceberg where dumb was concerned. One time he’d almost started a bushfire fooling around with his mates.
‘It was monumentally stupid,’ he continued, ‘but we never stopped to think how dangerous and irresponsible it was. What the consequences might be. It was just fun so we did it.’
Teenagers acted on impulse. Most times things worked out okay. Occasionally they didn’t. And he couldn’t bear the thought that Rowena was still suffering for a mistake she made as a teenager.
‘Maybe you should cut fifteen-year-old you some slack?’
She gave a half laugh as she turned her head to look at him. ‘You sound like my therapist. She thinks I should be kinder to her. Fifteen-year-old me.’
Lachlan blinked, surprised that Rowena, who played her hand so close to her chest, would so readily admit to seeing a mental health care professional.
Maybe that was a city versus country thing.
People out here—aided and abetted by distance and lack of health care funding—soldiered on, often well past the point of breaking.
People in the city, however, with availability on their side, tended to seek help. And for sure, it was a fuck-ton healthier.
‘She sounds very wise.’ He shifted so he was half facing her, too. ‘Was somebody with you?’
‘My mum was there. She didn’t say anything but I knew she was disappointed in me. Not as much as I was, but … I guess it made the decision easier at the time, and I really did think I was doing the right thing. And then—’
Rowena looked away, but not before Lachlan caught a shimmer of brightness in her eyes. ‘I lost Archie a few years later. So when I was actually ready for a baby with my second husband and I couldn’t get pregnant and needed IVF, which failed time after time, I thought maybe the universe—’
Lachlan’s gut squeezed as she cut off, as if the words were too awful to speak, and he shut his eyes briefly. ‘You think the universe is …’
Part of him didn’t want to say it either, to even think it, because it broke his heart. But he had to. If he wanted to convince her she could talk to him about anything, it was imperative that he didn’t shy away from the hard stuff.
‘Punishing you for the abortion.’
It wasn’t a question, because of course she did. That’s what this was all about. Lachlan knew it as surely as he knew Reggie would have his breakfast on the table at six-thirty tomorrow morning.
Because she’d made a deeply difficult, deeply personal decision at the age of fifteen to end a pregnancy, she didn’t believe she deserved a baby.
‘Well … yeah.’ She glanced at him. ‘I know it doesn’t make much sense. It’s tenacious, though.’
‘Brains can be weird like that. For a few years after my parents died I was convinced that if I’d been in the plane with them it wouldn’t have crashed, which somehow made it my fault. Dad always called me his lucky charm, and I couldn’t shake the feeling.’
‘Oh, Lachy.’ Her forehead crinkled. ‘That’s awful.’
‘Yeah.’
‘How’d you get past it?’
‘Time played a part. And Reggie let me read the report into the investigation when I was thirteen, which outlined everything in great detail. The causes were printed out in black and white. I never thought it again after that.’
‘I guess if I had a report outlining the exact causes of my inability to either get or stay pregnant, that might have helped. The problem was, the doctors could never say for certain, which only fed my internal narrative.’
Lachlan nodded. ‘Yeah. I can see how that could happen.’
He sighed, wishing he had the words to give her some peace of mind. The problem was, even with a positive ultrasound result and the likelihood of miscarriage at this stage being greatly reduced—according to his research—he couldn’t give her a hundred per cent assurance.
And that’s what she wanted.
But, damn it, he had to try, because he knew this was going to work out okay. He didn’t know why he felt so sure that their daughter was going to make it all the way to the end—he just did. He knew it in his bones.
So maybe Rowena could lean into his certainty for now.
He slid his hands onto her arms, sought her gaze and held it, because he wanted her to hear this and to know that he believed it, that he was confident.
Even if she wasn’t.
‘I know I have no basis for this other than an unshakeable feeling that I’m right, but I’m going to say it anyway and hope you can believe, too.’
Her big green eyes met his, bright with unshed tears, wary and uncertain but looking straight at him. She took a shaky breath. ‘Okay.’
‘Look at us,’ he said, giving her arms a gentle squeeze.
‘Here we are, you and I. You—not able to get pregnant even with the help of science. Me, not supposed to be able to get someone pregnant at all. And yet, somehow, we made a baby. This feels … blessed. Not like in a god way but … like you and me are the right combination somehow.’
Lachlan smiled. It felt ordained.
‘And that’s why I have a really good feeling about this baby.
About our little girl. I’m sure it’s going to work out okay.
And I’m absolutely certain we’ll be meeting our beautiful, living, breathing little girl in about five months’ time.
That’s what my gut tells me, and it’s never led me wrong. Not as a cop or as a farmer.’
A tear trekked down her face. ‘I wish I could be’—her voice broke but she pushed on—‘so sure.’
Lachlan leaned in and kissed the tear away. ‘It’s okay. I can be sure enough for both of us,’ he promised. ‘When you start to worry and doubt and fret, I want you to lean into me. Lean into my sureness. I’ll have enough for both of us.’
She nodded, another tear squeezing out as she shut her eyes, and Lachlan drew her against his chest, desperately hoping he was right. Because if something did happen, and she went on to lose this baby, she might never recover.
She’d certainly never trust him again, and there definitely would never be a them. And the longer he hung out with her, the more he wanted there to be a them.
With or without a baby.