“Not to go under the veranda. Not to play on the pile of fence posts by the big shed. If she sees one in the open, just stand still and let it get away, because it’s more scared than she is. If she gets bitten—or thinks she might have been, because snake bites usually don’t hurt—tell someone, stay calm and stay still.”
“If she gets bitten, what happens?”
“She won’t get bitten. I’ve lived on this land my whole life, apart from boarding school, and I never have.”
“But if she does?”
“We put on a pressure bandage, keep her lying quiet and call the flying doctor.”
“Which I’m hoping is not the same as the School of the Air, because I’m not sure what a doctor on a computer screen could do about snake bite.”
“The flying doctor comes in an actual airplane, with a real nurse and real equipment and real snake antivenin.”
“And takes her away to a real hospital, with me holding her hand the whole way, and she’s fine.”
“That’s right. But the pressure bandage is pretty important. I’ll show you where we keep them in the morning. And I’ll show you how to put one on, just in case.”
She nodded. “Got it. Thanks. So you’ve done some first-aid training?”
“A couple of different courses, yeah. So has Mum. Seems the sensible thing, out here.”
“And is that how you run your land and your cattle, too? Sensibly?”
“Try to.”
They kept talking. He was wide, wide awake and so was she. The moon drifted through its high arc toward the west, slowly shifting the deep blue shadows over the silver landscape. It was so warm under the blanket, against the chill of the desert night. Carly shifted occasionally, her body getting more and more relaxed, encroaching farther into his space.
Jacinda was a good listener, interested enough to ask the right questions, making him laugh, drawing out detail along with a few things he hadn’t expected to say—like the way he still missed Dad, but thought his father would be proud of some of the changes he’d made at Arakeela, such as the land-care program and the low-stress stock-handling methods.
Callan thought he’d probably spooked Jacinda more than she’d admitted to regarding the snakes, but she hadn’t panicked about it, she’d just asked for the practical detail. If it happened, what should she and Carly do?
And the fact that she hadn’t panicked made Callan think more about her panic over Kurt. The last piece of his skepticism dried up like a mud puddle in the sun, replaced with trust. Whatever she was afraid of from her ex-husband, it had to be real or she would never have come this far, landed on him like this. She wasn’t crazy or hysterical. She needed him, and even though he didn’t know her that well yet, he wasn’t going to let her down.
“Do you have any idea of the time?” she asked eventually. She hid a yawn behind her hand. “Has to be pretty late.”
“By where the moon is, I’d say around three.”
“Three? You mean we’ve been sitting here for three hours? Oh, Callan, I’m so sorry! You have work to do in the morning. I’m a guest with jet lag, I should never have kept you up like this.”
“Have I been edging toward the door?”
“No, because Carly has both feet across your knees!”
“True, and who would think she’d have such bony heels?”
The little girl must have heard her name. Her eyelids flickered and her limbs twitched. Callan and Jacinda both held their breath. She seemed to settle, but then her chest started pumping up and down, her breathing shallow.
“I think she’s having a bad dream,” Jacinda murmured. Carly broke into crying and thrashing, and had to be woken up to chase the dream away. “It’s okay, sweetheart, it wasn’t real, it was a dream, just a bad dream. Open your eyes and look at me. Mommy’s here, see? We’re sitting on the porch. The moon is all bright. Callan is here. Everything’s fine.” In an aside to Callan, she added, “I’m going to take her to the bathroom and get her back to bed, but you go ahead.”
She stood up, struggling to gather Carly into her arms at the same time.
“You’re carrying her?”
“She’ll get too wide awake if I let her walk.”
“She looks heavy for you. Would she come to me?”
“It’s fine.” She smiled. “There’s nothing builds upper-arm strength as effectively as having a child, right? Better than an expensive gym. Thanks for sitting up with me, Callan.”
“No problem.”
For some reason, they both looked back at the couch, where the mohair blanket had half-fallen to the veranda floor, then they looked at each other. And suddenly Callan knew why she’d asked that question about his mother sleeping in the cottage, three hours ago, even if Jacinda herself still didn’t.
She’d unconsciously imagined how it would have looked to Mum if she’d happened to waken and find them sitting there together, under the same blanket, sharing the warm weight of Jacinda’s sleeping child.
His mother had given him a particular kind of privacy when he and Liz had been married, moving over to the cottage. When Liz had died, Mum hadn’t moved back. Somewhere in her heart, although she never spoke about it, she must hope he’d someday need that kind of privacy again. He should tell her gently not to hold her breath about it.
Chapter Five
“Saturdays and Sundays we don’t have school,” Lockie told Jac. He added, “It’s the weekend,” as if maybe Americans didn’t know what weekends were.
His explanation covered the wilder-than-usual behavior of both boys this morning, which Carly had latched on to within minutes of waking at six. They kept early hours at Arakeela Downs. This was Jac’s fourth awakening on the vast cattle station, and she had discovered that the dawns here were magical.
And chilly.
There was something satisfying about it. She would beat the predawn bite in the air by scrambling into layers of clothes, along with Carly, and head straight for the smell of coffee luring her toward the kitchen. Lockie, Josh and Callan would already be there, making a big, hot breakfast. Toast, bacon and fresh eggs with their lush orange yolks, or oatmeal and brown sugar, with hot apple or berry sauce.
They’d start eating just as the sun slid up over the horizon, and the colors of the rugged hills Jac could see from the kitchen windows would almost make her gasp. She and Carly would go out into the day as soon as they could. “To feed the chooks” was the excuse—Carly constantly referred to the hens as chooks, now; she’d be speaking a whole different language by the time they got back to the U.S.—but in reality, Jac just couldn’t bear to miss the beauty of this part of the day.
The bare, ancient rock glowed like fire, slowly softening into browns and rusts and purples as the sun climbed higher. Dew drenched the yellow grass, the vegetable garden, the fruit trees, and made spiderwebs look like strings of diamonds. Flocks of birds in pastel pinks and whites and grays, or bright yellows, reds and greens, rose from the big eucalyptus trees in the wide creek bed and wheeled around calling their morning cries. The air was so fresh, she felt as if simply breathing it in would be enough to make her fly.
When Lockie had managed to sit down at the table, after teasing the dogs along with Carly and Josh at the back door, Jac asked him, “So what happens at weekends?”
“We get to go