heart in her hands almost as tightly as her mother did.
Their hospital stay was thus extended, but finally the jaundice resolved, and when Rose’s colour faded from golden back to pink it was Max who drove them both back to the farm.
And if he hugged Maggie as he helped her into the car, if he kissed her as he closed the car door, and if he drove down the coast road feeling all the smugness of a man with a new family, who could blame him?
Beside him Maggie smiled and smiled. She was happy to be going home, he thought, and there was another stab of disquiet. Home to the farm. How to make this work?
Angus was watching for their arrival from the back of an ancient Lanz Bulldog. Angus was a part of Maggie’s family. There were complications everywhere. How could he ask her to abandon Angus?
He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Maggie had attempted to raise the issue with him but he’d shushed her. ‘It’s not time,’ he’d said, and he wouldn’t be budged.
His wonderful idea was growing. There were still so many factors, though. Somehow Max had to figure a way around them.
Was three months long enough? It had to be. He had to figure out a way.
Focus on now, he told himself harshly. One step at a time. Angus was watching them and Maggie was smiling at him. Angus wasn’t smiling back. He was holding onto his tractor as if it was his refuge.
‘She needs headlights,’ Max called as they pulled up beside Angus’s tractor. ‘I might know a source where I can find some.’
‘Yeah?’ Angus said.
‘Leave it to me,’ Max said, and then, offhand, ‘You want to meet your niece?’
The elderly farmer stared at both of them in apprehension but Maggie didn’t move, didn’t speak, and Max didn’t either.
Slowly Angus ventured down from the tractor. Max flicked the switch of the sunroof so it slid back, exposing Rose in her cocoon in the back seat, swathed in pink, gazing in astonishment up at the sky.
Angus edged nearer. Neither Maggie or Max said a word.
Nearer.
He put a hand on the car-and then cautiously, cautiously put a finger out to touch.
Rose’s little hand was just there. He touched her fingers and they curved and held, and Angus stared down at her in incredulity.
No one spoke but Max felt a knot of emotion in his chest that had lots to do with the expression on Maggie’s face-but also something to do with Angus himself. With this farm. With the night of Betty and the calves in the haystack.
Family.
And the ideas that had been drifting since Rose’s birth became more than ideas. An ambition?
No, a certainty. If he could pull it off.
He must.
And then there was a whoop from the house and Sophie and Paula were tearing along the driveway to meet them. Angus backed away, but only as far as his tractor.
‘You’ve met her first, Angus, not fair,’ Sophie yelled, and then Margaret and John were outside, too, and Maggie and Rose were enveloped.
Max could go now.
Only Maggie clung to him, and he had no intention of leaving until he must. In truth, all he wanted was to bundle Maggie and Rose back into his car and take them back to Sydney. To leave them here seemed wrong-but there were plans to make. If he could do it in three months…He must. He needed to get back to Sydney and get things moving right now.
But still he stayed and had dinner with them, knowing he’d been a fool for not accepting dinner the night of the funeral. One dinner missed was one too many. Then Maggie walked him out to the car and it was entirely logical that he take her into his arms and kiss her and kiss her and kiss her.
‘I love you,’ he whispered into her hair, for it seemed impossible not to say it.
‘I love you right back,’ she whispered. ‘Max, three months is crazy.’
‘It is,’ he said ruefully. ‘But I need to sort stuff out. Can you bear to be patient?’
‘What do you need to sort out?’
‘A happy ever after,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘How can you doubt it?’
‘Then be patient,’ he said, and kissed her again-but then as Rose’s indignant wail sounded from inside the house he put her away from him.
‘I need to go and so do you. Go feed your daughter.’
‘You’ll come back?’
‘Soon.’
‘That’s not soon enough,’ she said, distressed. ‘Max…’
‘Hush,’ he told her. ‘Hush, my love. Let’s take this one day at a time. Let’s figure out where we go from here.’
She went back into the house to feed her baby, feeling bleak. Empty. Lost. That he was returning to Sydney without her…
He was giving her room to make her decisions. He was being honourable.
She didn’t want honourable. She wanted Max.
And why had she made those promises to Betty?
The promises were closing in on her now. Back in Sydney she’d thought she could break them. It had seemed possible. But here, with echoes of Betty all around her, it seemed less so. For her to walk away from Angus, and the farm, and the community…
Oh, but to walk away from Max…
Inside the house Margaret met her, holding Rose out for her to take. When she saw Maggie’s face she hugged her.
‘Oh, my dear, he’ll be back.’
‘Will he?’
‘Of course he will,’ Margaret said stoutly.
But for how long? Maggie thought, but she didn’t say it.
Max seemed to have faith in their future. Maybe she should, too.
He stayed away for almost a week and that was long enough. Then he made a mercy dash back, to give Angus his headlights, and bonnet badges he’d found for his 1949 Newman WD2. That was a good moment. Angus almost smiled. Maggie did.
Then he found someone to take over part of his role in Sydney so he could work reasonable hours. His car soon seemed to know the route back to the farm all by itself, and the more he visited, the more sure he was of what he felt. His thoughts were finding a centre, a purpose, but three months might not be long enough to finalise his plan.
Would she agree? Once the emotion of the birth had faded would she still feel the same? He daren’t ask, not yet, but he rang, twice a day, sometimes more, and the pleasure in her voice said she might, she must.
‘Your grin’s getting fixed,’ Anton told him. ‘It’s stretching your face.’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘Don’t do it,’ Anton said morosely. ‘Three kids and it’s the end of life as you know it.’
‘Would you want your old life?’
‘Hell, I can’t remember my old life,’ Anton said. ‘It’s in the bottom of my wardrobe with my blue suede shoes. Figuratively speaking, that is. I’m not quite that old. I just feel it.’
‘But for all the whinging…’
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t give it back.’ Anton said, smiling at his friend. ‘And if you take that final step, neither will you.’
She loved him, she loved him, she loved him. She wanted him here. That he wasn’t next to her, seeing Rose’s first smile, waking in the night next to her, loving her, felt wrong.
