An Epilogue …Three
Twelve weeks later, bang on the due date
‘Stop! Pull over!’
Lachlan shook his head, his pulse hammering like a train. ‘We’re ten minutes away.’
From the hospital. Who knew they were on their way. And where there were doctors and nurses and a fucking bed!
This was all happening too fast.
Rowena’s first contraction had been ninety minutes ago. Her water had broken as they’d hurried out the door, Lachlan asking Albert to call ahead and alert the hospital to their imminent arrival in advanced labour.
‘Lachy!’ Rowena bellowed. ‘This baby is here now, and unless you want to give our daughter a head injury as she catapults into the footwell, you need to pull over!’
Lachlan’s heart rate hit the stratosphere as he glanced at her in alarm.
Her face was red and sweaty and strands of her hair stuck to her forehead.
Screwing her eyes shut, she grunted through a contraction, one hand braced flat against the ceiling, the other holding tight to the towel she had crammed between her legs.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered as he jerked the wheel and pulled the car off the road. ‘We’ve got to stop with these roadside emergencies.’
For a man who’d assisted hundreds of lambs into the world, Lachlan was very much out of his depth. Stabbing at the release button on his seatbelt, he said, ‘I don’t know how to deliver a baby.’
‘Trust me,’ she panted, her eyes opening, ‘you’re just going to need to catch this one.’
Rowena was right. By the time Lachlan got around to her side of the car and she’d managed to turn and recline enough to give him access, the head was already out. A slippery body followed and then he was holding his daughter, her lusty indignant cries probably loud enough to be heard in town.
Lachlan stared at her, shell shocked at the rapid-fire sequence of events, his pulse still erratic, but already smitten. ‘She’s here,’ he said, voice wondrous as he took in his bawling daughter. ‘I’m a girl dad.’
‘Oh … Lachy,’ Rowena murmured as she sat, tears streaming from her eyes.
He moved in, placing her in Rowena’s waiting arms, staying close as she cradled the baby between them.
‘I’m a mother,’ she whispered as the crying dwindled and their daughter blinked up at them blearily.
‘Welcome to the world, Regina,’ Lachlan crooned and, with their foreheads pressed together, they stared down at their perfect little girl.
*
The next morning
At almost the same time they’d left in a state of flight the day before, Rowena stepped into the kitchen at Blairgowrie, more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life—thanks to one very hungry little miss—but so elated she felt like she could exist in this state of euphoric tiredness forever.
She’d given up on ever having this in her life, and now she did.
With this man, in this place, and it was overwhelming.
Lachlan had tried to convince her to stay another night in the hospital, but she and the baby were doing well and she just wanted to be back at Blairgowrie.
Albert, who’d been given a heads-up by Lachlan, was putting the teapot on the table when they entered. His gaze went straight to the swaddled bundle in Lachlan’s arms.
‘That’s her?’ he said huskily, with a tip of his chin.
Lachlan nodded. ‘Sure is.’
With a lump in her throat the size of the bunkhouse, Rowena watched as Lachlan strode across the kitchen to Albert, their finally sleeping daughter blissfully unaware of her surroundings.
‘She looks just like her,’ Lachlan said, his voice also husky, as Albert sat and he placed the precious cargo in the older man’s big, capable arms.
Their newborn baby did look remarkably like her great-grandmother.
The same frank gaze, as though she wasn’t scared of anything.
The same nose, the same chin. And already showing a definite predilection for bossiness.
Albert stared for the longest time, his glassy eyes roving all over her face as though he was trying to memorise every single skin cell.
She stirred for a beat, mewling in her sleep as her hand broke free of its confines, and Albert took it in his, her tiny, new fingers wrapping around his thick, gnarly thumb.
‘Hey, Reggie girl,’ he murmured. ‘Welcome home.’
*
Two years and three months later
The air was sharp and cold as Rowena divided the freshly picked sprigs of wattle into two.
The warm stream of her breath fogged into the air, joining the lingering mist still shrouding the gums in the glade, the beams of early morning winter sunshine not yet strong enough to pierce the wraith-like haze.
Rowena visited once a week at this hour, her favourite time to visit, with the world only just waking up.
Like her dad, little Reggie was an early riser, so it was easy to slip away when Lachlan was giving her breakfast and visit before the day got too hectic with chasing after a two-year-old who was always up to some mischief or other.
The call of a lone whipbird provided the soundtrack as she crouched to place the glorious puffs of yellow at the base of both headstones.
Albert had passed three months ago, peacefully in his sleep, one week after little Reggie’s second birthday and two weeks after she and Lachlan had married at Blairgowrie.
He’d accompanied his favourite little miss, relishing her flower girl role, down an aisle festooned in wattle, carrying her basket for her so she could concentrate on the most important part—tossing rose petals.
He’d told Reggie he’d watch out for Lachlan, and he had.
He’d seen him through the early days and months and years of fatherhood, and he’d seen him married and joyful and settled.
It hadn’t made his passing any less wrenching, but knowing that Albert felt secure in Lachlan’s happiness enough to let go and be with Reggie again had helped.
‘I’m looking after him now,’ she whispered to the headstones, running her hands over both of the curved tops before she stood.
Blinking back tears that neither of them would want her to be shedding, she departed, Blue at her heels. Hunching into her coat, Rowena headed for the homestead, the stop-start sound of bagpipes reaching her well before her booted feet hit the dewy grass.
She smiled as she saw Lachlan patiently showing Reggie how to blow into her miniature toy bagpipes but, bossy as ever, she was stamping her welly-clad feet wanting to do it mineself, Daddy.
The boots dwarfed her sturdy little legs to the knees and did not match her tutu, but Reggie had her own sense of style and determination to not be dissuaded from her choices.
It was hardly winter attire but her warm woollen jumper—one of the many items of clothing Reggie had knitted—was at least keeping her chest and arms warm.
‘Oh, that was good that time.’
Reggie beamed at her clapping grandmother’s praise, soaking it up. Rowena’s parents had been regular visitors since the birth of their granddaughter and they’d all become much closer. To see them here this morning, doting on Reggie, made Rowena’s heart happy.
The whole scene made her heart happy. It wasn’t even seven in the morning and yet everything she loved in the world, and thought she’d never have, was right there in front of her.
Red barked, running to play with Reggie—who he adored—and Lachlan glanced up, smiling a smile that even from twenty metres away lit up his eyes and warmed the cockles of her soul. Just when she thought she couldn’t love him any more, her love got bigger.
‘Mummy’s back,’ he said to their daughter and Reggie turned.
‘Mummy!’
Rowena laughed at her excited little squeal as if Rowena had been gone for days rather than thirty minutes. She did that after Rowena came home from a shift at the hospital—she worked two early shifts a week—and it made her feel utterly revered.
Reggie dropped her pipes on the ground and ran across the grass in her wellies and tutu, her arms extended, Red at her heels, and, once again, as Rowena caught her boisterous daughter and spun her around and around, listening to her laugh, her love got bigger.
‘I love you,’ she mouthed to her husband over her giggling daughter’s head.
‘I love you, too,’ he mouthed back.
And she knew this was exactly where she was supposed to be. Here at Blairgowrie with Lachlan and Reggie, forever.