Zoe watched her nieces and nephew run up the steps and across the lawn towards where she and Lachlan were waiting. Grinning, she stood up and opened her arms out wide to give them a hug. ‘Hi! It’s so good to see you all! Have you been having fun with Louise?’
As Charlotte told her about the tree house that Eddie had been building for them, Zoe kept glancing at the path, watching Nadia and Eddie slowly walking towards them, both focused on Louise in Nadia’s arms. Zoe’s stomach was in knots. She and Nadia had barely spoken since that day at the court, except to make arrangements for this visit. How could they ever renew their relationship after everything that had happened? But she knew that for this to work, for Louise to have a sense of a normal life, they had to try. She never wanted Louise to think that she was the cause of the breakdown of her family, or to hear them fighting over her like a toy. Louise was a child; they were adults. It was up to them to make this work.
As Nadia and Eddie came closer, Zoe saw that Nadia was crying. She bit her lip. Couldn’t Nadia hold it together? The time for crying was over; they had to move on, for everyone’s sake.
Zoe walked towards them, leaving Lachlan playing with the children. Seeing her, Eddie nodded and smiled, then walked past her, leaving the two sisters facing each other, about a metre apart. They were at the top of the hill, in the shade of the mature trees, surrounded by rose bushes. Nadia glanced up at Zoe, then looked back to Louise. Zoe felt as she had on the day Louise was born: she wanted to grab her and run away, but she also knew that Nadia needed time. But how much time? It had been decided, Zoe was Louise’s mother in every sense of the word, except for the one link that could never be broken. And that was the link that kept Zoe tiptoeing around her sister, because she knew Nadia wasn’t just a surrogate. She was Louise’s mother too.
Zoe cleared her throat. ‘How has she been?’
Nadia smiled sadly. ‘Good as gold.’ She blinked away some tears then looked up. ‘She missed you.’
Zoe wanted to smile in relief but stopped herself. She took a step closer, and Louise began to squirm in Nadia’s arms. Just as she had done that day in the hospital when Louise was born, Nadia closed her eyes and held the baby out in front of her, and Zoe lifted Louise into her own arms. She held her child close to her and breathed in the scent of unfamiliar shampoo, and the body that seemed to have grown so much in only one night.
‘You OK?’ she said quietly to Nadia.
‘It was hard, harder than I thought. Hard for Louise, for the big kids …’ Nadia gazed at the three older children, who were chasing each other around the picnic benches and barbecues.
Zoe looked over at them too. ‘They seem happy.’
‘They are. They were. I didn’t sleep last night.’ Nadia looked at Zoe. ‘I thought I had what I wanted, Louise asleep in the house with all of us, waking up with us, and it is, it is what I want, but I think somewhere along the way I forgot that it isn’t about me. It’s about Louise. It’s not fair on her, this confusion.’
Zoe frowned, her heart hammering.
Nadia wiped her eyes, looking drawn and defeated. ‘Eddie was offered a job in the Singapore office. We weren’t going to go – of course. It’s too far from Louise. But we spoke this morning. He’s going to take it. We’re all going to go.’
Zoe’s eyes widened. Did she want to take Louise with her to Singapore? ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘I’ll talk to my lawyer again, explain it all, and get them to change the family court orders. She’s your child, yours and Lachlan’s. I’ll still be her aunt, but we’ll be gone for at least a couple of years. It’ll be good for us, for the kids, to get away.’
‘I don’t understand. Nadia, you don’t have to —’
Nadia held up her hand and looked Zoe in the eye. ‘I’ll be an aunt to her. No more.’
Zoe nodded, not sure whether to thank Nadia or pity her. She glanced at Lachlan, saw him watching them, and she wanted to grin, to run to him with Louise. But she also saw her sister, standing across from her, her world shattered. She took a step forward and hugged Nadia with her free arm, Louise between them, then turned and walked over to Lachlan and Eddie. She could tell from his sombre face that Eddie understood that Nadia had told her. His hand trembled when he reached out to give Louise a goodbye hug.
Zoe took Lachlan’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Let’s go,’ she whispered. ‘We won’t stay for the picnic.’ They said goodbye to Charlotte, Violet and Harry, then Zoe looked back at Nadia one last time. She was staring up at the sky with wide, wild eyes, with her hand over her mouth; she looked broken. Just then, a kookaburra cackled, a sad, mocking laugh. Zoe resisted the urge to run to Nadia; she picked up Louise’s bag, then walked back along the dam wall, listening to the echoes of their footsteps.