“We’ll see how long it lasts,” Kerry drawled again when she returned.
“And that’s what Callan was like?” She couldn’t help talking about him, despite what Kerry might think.
“Actually, no, he was pretty good at sharing,” the older woman answered. “They’re close in age, him and his sister. Nicky’s only fifteen months younger, so he never had to adjust to her as something new. As far as he was concerned, she was always there.”
“And she lives in Adelaide, now? Is that right?”
“A couple of hours north of there, the Clare Valley. She studied agriculture and married a farmer, but he has vineyards, not cattle.”
“You must have found it hard when she moved so far away.”
“To be honest, Clare was better than I’d hoped. I was afraid she might end up in Sydney or Perth!”
“Still, is it hard to keep in close touch?”
“Not with a bit of effort. We e-mail a lot, and take turns to phone each other every week. Sundays usually. Tonight it’s my turn. I send her drawings from the boys and she sends me magazine articles and newspaper clippings and we gossip about those. Silly things like celebrity marriages. We’re big fans of Prince Frederik and Princess Mary! But I’d communicate with Nicky by carrier pigeon if I had to. I don’t think it really matters what you talk about, either, if it helps you stay close. And I’m getting my first granddaughter in two months! I’ll be going down to stay with them, then.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Except that Jacinda was a little regretful that she’d nudged the conversation away from Callan. She had an itchy, secret urge to talk about him that she couldn’t remember feeling since her teens, when telling her friends, “I don’t even like Matt Walker,” had given her the delectable excuse to say a certain male classmate’s name out loud.
“If Callan doesn’t like change, we’re probably imposing on you even more than I’d realized, with our visit,” she said after another moment of silence.
“I shouldn’t have said it. I’m not putting it the right way.” Another pause. “I’m thinking about Liz, not about you and Carly.” The words came out in a rush, as if Kerry might regret anything she said too slowly.
“Oh, okay.”
Kerry divided the ball of dough in two and began shaping each piece into a log, ready for the greased loaf tins she had waiting on the countertop. “You see, thinking about the future, about the boys, about how lonely Callan must sometimes feel—how lonely I know he feels—I worry that any woman who’s not Liz is going to scare him too much. He’s never been any good at asking for help. Which means he’s going to have to get past the fear on his own, and I’m not sure how he’ll do it. Or if he can.”
She opened the oven door and it squeaked. After putting the tins on a lower shelf, she spread a damp dish towel on the top shelf. Jacinda knew that in the moist, tepid space of the oven, the loaves would rise to a high dome shape over the next hour. Squeak went the oven door as Kerry closed it again. Neither she nor Jacinda had spoken.
It’s my turn, though.
Talking like this, in the middle of routine household chores, made it easier to tackle tough subjects, she decided. When you were silent as you gathered the right words, other activity was still going on and the silence didn’t seem so difficult.
“I think … I wonder if …” she tried after a moment. “I think he’s stronger than that, Kerry.” She thought about what he’d said yesterday about yelling and jumping to get rid of the fear. He had his own strategies. They might not be the ones suggested in the hospital leaflets—he didn’t want them to be the ones in the hospital leaflets—but they were strategies, all the same.
Kerry looked eager, as if she itched to talk about Callan, too. “Has he said something to you? Has he talked much about Liz?”
“Not much. A little. He’s said—”
“No, please!” She warded off Jac’s words with her hands. “Don’t tell me what he said. I’m not asking for that. But I do worry.”
“Of course you do.” Jacinda was a mother, just as Kerry was. She knew. “But I think Callan at least does know what he’s fighting in himself.” He’d talked about the fear, and this made more sense now. The fear of change. The fear, if Kerry was right, of there being no one in the whole world to match Liz. “And you know, Kerry, when you understand the enemy, that’s always an advantage.”
“True. He is a fighter. In his own way. Always in his own way!” She laughed, and ran water into the electric jug, which she then placed on the countertop and plugged in.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.”
“The boys do him a lot of good. Lockie, now that he’s getting older.”
“It’s funny,” Jac said. “Before I had Carly, I always assumed I’d be the big influence on her. That I’d make her who she was. And of course I am doing that. But I think she’s changed me more than I’ve changed her. I never realized that would happen, that kids had such, oh, influence. Kerry, does that make sense?”
“It does.”
They talked about it a little more—kids and change, Callan and Liz. Nothing earth-shattering. Some of it a little tentative, still. But nice.
“Are you having coffee?” Kerry asked. “It’ll only be instant.” The electric jug was about to boil.
“Instant is fine. I’d love a cup.” Jac got the coffee down from the shelf while Kerry found two mugs and poured the boiling water in, leaving plenty of room for Jacinda’s big dollop of milk. Kerry had filled the jug just an inch or two higher than she needed, and rather than waste the precious water, she poured it in to soak the mixing bowl she’d used for the bread dough. Jac made a mental note to take more care with saving water from now on. Her shower, this morning, for example …
“Is it a pain in the butt, doing that?” she asked suddenly.
Kerry looked surprised. “Doing what?”
“Thinking about saving water all the time. Every drop. Pouring the dregs from the electric jug into the dough bowl. Piping the shower and laundry water out to the garden so it gets used twice.”
“I guess I don’t think about it, it’s such second nature. It’s part of living here, and I love living here.”
“Teach me, won’t you? Don’t let me do the wrong thing, here, without thinking. Make sure you teach me.” All at once, for some reason, the words meant more. She wasn’t just talking about saving water. She was talking about Callan.
Teach me about Callan.
Don’t let me do the wrong thing with Callan.
If Kerry understood, she didn’t refer to the fact directly. Instead, she poured milk into the two mugs, gave Jacinda’s the extra zap in the microwave that she liked. Handing Jac the hot mug, she took a big breath.
“Callan and Liz were too alike,” she said, at the faster pace she seemed to use when she wasn’t quite comfortable with what she was saying. Her voice had dropped, too, in case there was any chance of Josh listening in the other room. “I don’t want to say that, because it sounds critical. I loved Liz. I was so happy that Callan had found someone like her, someone who belonged here and belonged in his life. If I could have, I would have gone in her place. People say that. But I really would have gone in her place.”
“I know you would.”
“They were the kind of couple that grows together. Like two trees, the way trees shape each other sometimes. They would even have looked alike, after fifty years. She was the kind of wife a man