DOCTOR ANGUS FIRTH’S house was stunning—an idyllic fantasy of what a true home should be? It was big, old and weathered into the landscape, a house that looked as if it had been there for a hundred years. French windows opened to wide verandas and then to the huge garden. Its age and beauty seemed almost a welcome in itself.
It was set on sloping bushland leading down to Melbourne’s iconic Yarra River. Misty climbed out of his car—an SUV with a bright red kayak on the roof rack—and was met by a chorus of evening birdsong. The smell of eucalyptus, the sight of the flowering gums, the massive crimson bougainvillea trailing along the cast-iron lacework of the veranda...it almost took her breath away.
You could almost imagine you were in the country in this place, she thought—the sounds of the city had simply disappeared.
Automatically she turned to lift Lily from the baby capsule she’d hired at the airport—and then she paused. This was no longer her role. Starting now?
She looked across to Angus and she didn’t move. Nor did she say a word. Their eyes locked.
‘You mean this, don’t you?’ he said at last.
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘Fine. We’ll sort it in the morning.’
‘You can sort it in the morning,’ she said, then she relaxed. ‘But I’ll help.’
‘That’s big of you.’
‘It’s the least I can do.’
There was a moment’s silence, then something in his face changed. ‘It seems you’re between a rock and a hard place,’ he said at last.
‘You’d better believe it.’
‘We’ll sort this mess somehow.’
But that made her eyes flash. ‘It’s not a mess. It’s a little girl called Lily. A little girl who’s your daughter.’
That made him wince, but Forrest was tugging Misty’s hand, demanding attention. ‘I see the swing. Misty, Misty, will you come and push me?’
‘Sure,’ Misty told him and then turned back to Angus. ‘Lily’s just woken and she’s due for a feed. There’s everything you need in this bag. Is it okay if Forrest and I explore the garden?’ She softened a little. ‘Please... Forrest desperately needs one-on-one time and there’s been so little...’
And he got it. The strain in her eyes. The exhaustion. The need. Something lurched inside and strangely it wasn’t just pity. She was a woman with her back to the wall and she was fighting with everything she had. Not just for herself, though, he thought with a flash of insight. For the little boy at her side. Maybe even for Lily?
She could have just handed Lily over to the authorities, he thought. Why hadn’t she?
Courage?
Where had that word come from? Wherever it had, when he spoke again he did so gently.
‘I can cope,’ he told her. ‘I’ll put the lasagne in the oven and figure out a bottle. Dinner in half an hour? Forrest, there’s a cubby house round the back of the house and strawberries in the vegetable patch. See you soon.’
He took a deep breath and reached in and lifted this little girl, who might or might not be his daughter, from her car seat. Surely he could block the resemblance. Misty had cared for this little one. Surely he could, too?
Or maybe he couldn’t.
Lily did more than wake when he lifted her from the car, she opened her small mouth and screamed. He took her inside and then fought panic as he tried to take stock.
He had a baby.
His baby?
When he’d first looked at her she’d been sleeping, and in repose the likeness to his baby brother had been remarkable. The piercing pain, the tug of immediate connection, had left him floundering. He hadn’t been able to refute fatherhood straight off.
Now though, with her entire being arched into howls, there was no resemblance at all, but weirdly the connection seemed to be growing. He looked down at her and he thought, what a mother she’d been gifted, a woman who’d conned him, who’d lied, who’d been in jail...for what? A woman whose drug use and lifestyle must have meant this little one was lucky to even be alive.
But at least she’d been blessed with an aunt who cared. Misty. Despite his shock, his bewilderment, his total confusion, he did sense the care.
What was her story?
And Forrest? He glanced out the window and saw Forrest was already on the swing. Misty was pushing him, but only a little. Very small swings for a little boy who seemed fearful of the world.
But as he swung, Misty had her face turned upwards towards the sinking sun. The last rays would be warm on her face and she seemed to be soaking them in almost greedily. He had the impression that she was a woman for whom such moments of peace, without responsibilities cramming in from all sides, were rare indeed.
Responsibilities. This little girl.
‘All right, sweetheart, let’s get you changed and fed,’ he told her, feeling strangely confident. Which he was. Sort of.
Not only had he been Forrest’s age when his little brother was born, old enough to help with the caring, he’d also done a stint as a neonatal intern. He knew the routine—you changed before you fed. Babies often dozed after a full feed and who wanted to wake and change them then?
Which meant he had to spread her change mat on the kitchen table, then wrangle a flailing baby—easier said than done—and figure out how to clean her. Sheesh, he should have prepared...
Then he had to wait an interminable thirty seconds while the pre-prepared bottle—thank you, Misty—heated in the microwave. While he managed to pour himself a much-needed beer. While she kept on screaming.
He needed another hand—or six—but somehow he succeeded in carrying Lily, bottle and beer out to the veranda.
‘Done,’ he told his...daughter? ‘Who’s a clever...?’
And then he hesitated. A clever what?
A clever daddy?
Some things were too hard to take in. Just do what comes next, he told himself, and manoeuvred the teat into the little girl’s mouth.
And then, mercifully, blessedly, there was silence.
She stood in the gorgeous garden with the sun’s sinking rays on her face, pushing Forrest gently back and forth and she thought: it’s done.
She’d listened to Lily’s wails of indignation that her demands hadn’t been instantly met. She’d been torn—what was she doing, leaving her niece to the mercy of someone she didn’t know? But then she’d heard the screen door slam above the wails, she’d glanced up and seen Angus settle himself with his bundle of noise—and then, blessedly, she’d heard silence.
He was feeding his daughter. His daughter. There’d obviously be DNA testing to be done, but the look she’d seen in his eyes...he knew she was his. And now he was sitting on his veranda feeding his little girl and she thought she just might have engineered an outcome that wouldn’t rack her with guilt for the rest of her life.
The thought of going down the adoption route had been doing her head in. Yes, there’d be great parents out there, but this little girl was her niece, she was Forrest’s half-sister, she was...family.
To Misty’s mother and sister, the concept of family had meant nothing. Or actually, it had. It meant they’d known they could depend on Misty, no matter how outrageous their demands had been. She recalled a midnight phone call from a police station the night before her final exams as a med student. ‘Misty, come and bail me out, will you? And bring my red dress and black stilettoes because there’s a party I’m missing...’ It had been her mother, but it could equally have been her sister.
The pair of them had been out for a good time, no matter what. The responsibility had been all Misty’s.
But now some of that responsibility might have shifted. She glanced again through the trees and saw man and baby, settled together. He looked almost like an expert, cradling Lily in the crook of his arm, bottle perfectly tilted, a beer in the other hand.
She could see why Jancie had chosen him, she thought. He was almost absurdly good looking, long and lean, superbly muscled and tanned from surf and sun. Jancie would have described him as hot, she thought, but right now his looks weren’t what she was focused on. He looked settled, as though all was right with his world.
And she thought, to be like this... To have a home, unencumbered by debt. To work only four days a week because you wanted to have fun the rest of the time... If she had that, how much difference could she make to Forrest’s life?
But strangely it wasn’t envy she was feeling but...what? Hunger?
She thought of the two weeks Jancie had spent with this man. Two weeks of abandonment to pleasure, with no thought except fun and sexual desire.
That wasn’t what she was hungry for, she thought, surely? She couldn’t even imagine what such a time would be like. But she could still see Angus. She could still sense the innate gentleness that had come through, despite his shock. She could sense the underlying warmth in his eyes, and she thought, someone to care...someone to sit on her veranda...
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Number one, the floorboards of her veranda were rotten—she’d rebuilt the stumps leading to the front door, but that was as far as she’d been able to manage.
What if she could stay here?
Where was her mind taking her? To a seduction scene? She wasn’t like Jancie. She almost managed a smile at that, thinking of Jancie’s gorgeous image, though produced at what cost? Even when they were small, any available funds left from her mother’s extravagance had been channelled Jancie’s way. Her mother had been fond—or as fond as she was capable—of the pretty Jancie. Misty had been an accident, unwanted from the start.
So what was she thinking? Seduction? Was there any way she could con this guy into taking not only Lily, but also herself and Forrest? What about Alice, her grandmother? And who was looking after the islanders while she was away? Martin was a competent nurse, but in an emergency...
Okay, forget the hunger, forget the stupid feelings the sight of this guy cradling his baby was creating. Just be grateful that, for now, things seemed to be working. She needed to tie up the threads and go home.
‘I like it here.’ Forrest’s small voice cut across her thoughts. He’d been swinging almost dreamily, as though this was time out for him, too.
Once this drama with Lily was over, she’d be able to spend time...
As long as Alice didn’t get worse.
As long as there were no dramas among the community of Kirra Island. The increasing number of tourists were creating a nightmare of a workload and it showed no signs of stopping.
As long as...
Oh, for heaven’s sake, she told herself, stop being Eeyore. Just soak up this moment and then sleep. From now on she needed to steel herself to step away. She’d checked Angus’s work commitments via his online booking system before she’d come. He worked Monday to Thursday only, therefore tomorrow there’d be no need to reschedule appointments, no excuse for him not to take over Lily’s care.
So please, tomorrow this nightmare would be over?
To say he had a bad night was an understatement.
As part of his training Angus had spent six months working with babies who were premature or ill, and he’d prided himself on his handling skills. ‘A baby wrangler,’ one of the nurses had labelled him when he’d managed to get a desperately ill premmie to settle. And when he’d seen tiny George Drakos carried home in his parents’ arms four weeks later, he’d felt a surge of pride. He’d felt he was good with babies ever since.
But he wasn’t good with Lily. He fed her, but she didn’t seem to appreciate it. She whimpered as he and Misty and Forrest ate their lasagne. She whimpered as Misty resolutely took Forrest’s hand and headed for the bedrooms he’d shown her to. ‘Goodnight and good luck,’ she said and an hour later, with Lily still complaining, he was starting to realise what she meant.
He changed her and fed her again. He walked the floor with her. He took her outside to show her the garden in the moonlight. She wasn’t impressed. He read the medical notes Misty had left for him and thought about clinical care of babies born to drug-affected mothers. With Lily in his arms he headed to his own books and read up on the symptoms, but they didn’t seem to fit. Nothing seemed overtly wrong—Lily seemed just plain pissed off with being in a world that...didn’t seem to want her?
His heart lurched a bit at that thought, but by then Lily’s wails had turned to screams, the noise was doing his head in and he had to walk a bit more.
All the time he was half expecting—certainly hoping—for Misty to appear and offer to help. She and Forrest were sleeping at the far end of the house. There was a dining room and living room dividing them from the kitchen where he paced, but surely she could hear? He knew she needed sleep, but at three in the morning, when feeding, crooning still failed, when nothing worked, it was hard not to feel anger.
What sort of woman could just hand a baby over and walk away?
But she hadn’t walked away. He could head to her bedroom right now and tell her to take her back.
His pride kicked in then, but the attachment...the tug he felt when he’d first seen...his daughter?...was growing very thin indeed.
Blessedly, as dawn rose over the bend in the river, finally she sank into an exhausted sleep. He laid her in her pram and thought about bed himself.
But he knew he wouldn’t sleep. So many thoughts, so much...responsibility?
He didn’t do responsibility. He’d let that go ten years back, the night his family’s car had slid on black ice and crashed.
The night the police had knocked on his university residence door. ‘We’re so sorry, sir, but we regret to tell you...’
He flinched at the memory of that moment and what had come after, of the enormity of the caring and the loss and the eventual resolution that he could never again expose himself to that sort of pain. He couldn’t exist with that possibility.
And now this. A daughter?
No. Muzzy from lack of sleep, his head was doing its best to find a way out of this mess. If Lily was indeed his daughter, there’d have to be a way to do it without...losing himself? The concept of loving as he’d loved his family made him feel physically ill.
But some time in the night he’d read Jancie’s documentation and realities were kicking in. If he really was Lily’s father—and he probably was—then what? Adoption? That was messing with his head. At least in the short term, until he could figure things out, maybe he could hire a nanny? He could set up the house so nanny and baby were basically at one end, with himself at the other. He could pay whatever it took.
But he couldn’t pay anyone right now.
It was six in the morning.
Six. Friday.
Swimming squad.
Every Friday, for as long as he remembered, he’d swum, with a group that varied from two to twenty. They swam in the ocean, almost a kilometre in either direction between two jetties, winter, summer, no matter what.
One of his mates—and he had lots of mates—had dragged him along in the weeks after his family had died, and fighting the surging tide and the cold water had somehow numbed the grief, the shock, the total, awful emptiness.
It was one of the reasons he never worked on Fridays. Like the kayak group on Thursdays, the swimming squad had become another pillar of his mental health. As were his mates, an assorted group of friends who seemed to have the same attitude to commitment that he did.
So now, with Lily finally sleeping, he had the urge to be with those friends. Maybe giving them a quick heads up about the baby before he hit the water, seeing their reactions—which he imagined would be just the same as his—might help. And then he’d be in the water again, blocking out the world.
Once he thought it, the need was overpowering. His whole overtired, shocked body seemed to be screaming for that release.
Could he?
Misty and Forrest had gone to bed at eight the night before and he’d heard not a sound since. He acknowledged that Misty had been exhausted, but she’d now slept for ten hours. He’d—nobly?—kept the dividing doors closed to block out the noise, but she hadn’t come out to check.
Lily would surely sleep for at least a couple of hours. If he rolled the pram to the other end of the house, opened Misty’s door and left the pram beside it, then he could head off for his longed-for swim. Lily shouldn’t wake before he returned, but even if she did, he’d leave a note in the pram.
Surely that was fair. He’d given Misty a good night’s sleep.
Don’t overthink it, he told himself. Misty’s been responsible for over a week. Surely one more morning won’t hurt.
Just do it.
‘Misty, Lily’s crying and the man’s not looking after her.’
She emerged from such a deep sleep that she felt almost as if she’d been drugged.
Forrest had slept with her, in the great king-sized bed. With Forrest cradled beside her, with a responsible adult—a doctor!—taking care of Lily, with no islanders about to plead for emergency medical aid, she’d slept like she hadn’t remembered sleeping since she’d learned that Jancie had died.
She could sleep still. She clung to the last vestiges of slumber, but Forrest was up, standing beside her, his voice anxious.
Well, what was new? Forrest was always anxious.
‘Misty, she’s crying and she’s all by herself.’
That brought her awake, fast. She sat up as though she’d been hit with a cattle prod.
How many times had she woken like this? To medical need from the islanders, or worse, from family drama. ‘Doctor Calvert, we have your nephew here. Your sister’s not capable of caring for him and he seems to be alone.’
Or... ‘Doctor Calvert, we’ve just arrested your sister and there seems to be a child...’
And that last appalling time... ‘Doctor Calvert, are you Jancie Calvert’s sister? I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we believe your sister died five weeks ago and there’s a baby...’
She’d gone to sleep the night before almost as soon as her head had hit the pillow, but she’d heard Lily as she’d drifted off, the plaintive whimpers of a baby who couldn’t figure what she needed, but knew there was something wrong in her world.
But Angus had closed the doors between the guest bedroom and the living areas. She’d hardly been able to hear the whimpers and she’d done enough research on this guy to know that she wasn’t any more capable of solving Lily’s problems than he was. Forrest had needed reassurance—these last weeks had almost shattered his fragile security. Priorities, she’d decided. She’d carefully, deliberately, closed her heart to the whimpers, hugged Forrest close and let them both sleep.
Now, though, Lily’s cries were closer. Much closer. She looked across to the door which she’d shut the night before. It was slightly open and the wails seemed as though they were right on the other side.
‘I peeped out and he’s not there,’ Forrest whispered. ‘The man.’
And Misty closed her eyes for a millisecond as responsibility swept back over her like a grey, fog-soaked rug. Last night she’d gone to sleep thinking maybe, just maybe, there could be a happy ending for baby Lily.
Who was she kidding?
But maybe Angus was just in the shower, she thought. She’d had to do that herself, let her cry while she did the urgent stuff.
But couldn’t a shower have waited?
By this time she was out of bed, padding over the thickly carpeted floor and tugging open the door. The door led to a passage, which led to the vast, gorgeous sitting room she’d been almost too tired to see properly the night before. But Lily wasn’t in the sitting room. Her pram was tucked right beside their door.
‘Was this door open?’ she asked Forrest and he nodded, looking scared. Was there something in his aunt’s voice that was scaring him?
The feeling sweeping over her was scaring her. She’d reached the pram. Lily was a ball of misery, red-faced and screaming, her entire being wailing for help Misty had started thinking she didn’t know how to give.
Instinctively she scooped her up and laid her against her shoulder.
‘Hey. Hey, it’s okay, little one. There.’
She cradled and rocked until the screams turned to whimpers and she was able to look into the pram. A note.
Six a.m. and all’s well. I swim with a squad for two hours every Friday morning. I’ll skip coffee with the guys, which means I should be home around nine. She’s just had a full bottle and is soundly asleep, so hoping you might not hear from her until I get back.’
‘Misty?’ Forrest’s hand was clutching her nightgown, his small face screwed tight with anxiety. ‘Misty, you look angry.’
‘Not angry,’ she said and closed her eyes, laying her cheek on Lily’s downy head. ‘Just...reassessing.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I thought Dr Firth might be...might be someone who could love Lily,’ she whispered. ‘But, Forrest, I think we might have to think of something else.’
‘I’d like to stay here longer,’ Forrest said plaintively.
‘I’m sorry, Forrest, but that’s not possible.’
‘But we can’t just leave Lily.’
‘We’re not leaving Lily,’ Misty told him, trying to keep the desolate acceptance she was feeling from her voice. ‘We’re taking her with us.’
The swim was great. With his head down, powering through the waves, feeling the surge of the sea, the chill of the ocean currents, this had been his time out ever since his family had died. The first half-hour or so he let his mind go blank. Slowly, though, as his body found its rhythm, thoughts of the future seeped in. And finally the future seemed doable.
When he’d first started swimming all those years ago, that future had simply seemed like the possibility of surviving, the prospect of being able to take one step after another without grief leaving him crushed and flailing. Then it had been the idea of getting back into his studies. Of somehow opening his books again.
And gradually his world had opened wider. The last Friday he’d swum he’d been looking forward to a weekend with Lisle.
He’d been seeing Lisle for a few weeks now—nothing serious, but she was fun. The last thing he needed—ever—was more emotional commitment, but Lisle understood. Any girl he dated had to.
As did the patients he treated. He gave good service, but with the first hint of emotional dependence his books were suddenly closed. There were other doctors in his clinic they could move to—for heaven’s sake, some of his colleagues even seemed to like the emotional stuff.
So this morning, while it took a while for the shock to ease, the ability to look forward finally emerged. To plan his future, but to also plan his boundaries.
It seemed he had a daughter.
Nothing was proven yet. This seemed like a giant con, yet he knew instinctively that there was nothing of the con woman about Misty.
Had he been conned by Jancie?
Obviously yes.
He needed space to sort it out, but Misty was giving him no time. He should feel anger, but if he believed her—and it seemed he did—she’d been given no time either. They were as shocked as each other.
As he swam, the idea of accepting responsibility seemed like the only option. If he was the father...well, fair enough.
His swimming mind was busy making plans. If Lily really was his, how would his life have to change? That created a groundswell of panic that almost had him faltering. But the swim was helping clear his head and he had an hour or so to sort something out of this mess.
A good nanny would be essential. Funding wouldn’t be a problem. With a nanny attached, she could even spend time with her aunt. School holidays? That sort of thing.
It all made sense and by the time he climbed from the water he was pretty much resigned.
He just had to go home and tell Misty how things would be.