Ella said, ‘We’ll all go, Sam. Jake said he’d come too.’
‘No,’ Sam said, lips tight, his feet planted and chin set. Now that Jake knew who Sam’s father was, he saw it in everything Sam did. ‘I don’t want Mum to come at all.’
Jake felt terrible for Ella, and he tried to fix it. ‘Your mum needs to be there, mate. She wants to make sure you’re okay. There’ll be forms to fill out—’
‘No, no. It’s okay,’ Ella said, face tired and drawn. Like his too, probably; he’d barely slept a wink once he’d had Ella in his arms. Even after she’d gone back to her own bed, he’d lain awake with the whole mess running through his head.
Ella, Erik, Sam, Marshall.
If he was Marshall Wentworth, how would he feel if he knew there’d been a boy on this earth for ten years, his son, and no one told him?
Put it this way: if Cassidy had their kid, Jake’s child, and never told him? If she let some other man bring up his kid? Jeez, he’d want to break something.
It was hard to think with Ella in his arms last night, but once she returned to her own bed, his brain could function.
He didn’t feel her breath puff against his neck. He wasn’t reduced to a man enjoying the smooth curve of her arm under his fingers as he stroked, back and forth, back and forth. Her hair didn’t tickle his chest and her hand on his ribs didn’t make his muscles quiver.
When she was there, over and above everything else, he wanted to punch Marshall Wentworth into the next postcode for being a prick.
Without her, his sympathy moved more to Sam.
Poor kid.
‘Let me get our Medicare card and give that to you,’ she said, turning to her handbag and rummaging through.
Jake could see the shake in her shoulders, but Sam wasn’t looking.
‘We can go once you’ve had breakfast, Sam. The sooner we get there, the sooner they can sort you out.’
Sam started shovelling cereal into his mouth.
‘Lucky you busted your left arm, not the right,’ Jake said.
Sam nodded.
Ella made Jake coffee and toast, and the two of them were out the door before nine. Ella stood in the doorway, watching them go.
Jake waved to her. Sam didn’t.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Jake asked Sam after they’d made ten miles and the rhythm of the car and the road seemed to knock some of the stiffness out of the boy on the seat.
‘Nope.’
‘Bit of a shock, finding all that out last night.’
‘I guess.’
‘Not sure you should have gone and broken your arm because of it, though,’ Jake said.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sam glance up. ‘You’re the one who told me when I was angry I should smash the trees, rather than smash up myself or anyone else.’
‘Yeah, I know. I’m proud of you for not smashing anyone else, but you did manage to do a bit of a job on yourself.’
‘I slipped.’
‘I know.’
Silence.
Paddocks were turning green after the rain; the season was off to a good start. Canola growers out this way would be happy.
‘I thought you might be my dad,’ Sam said.
Jake had to correct the steering wheel out of its sudden swerve. ‘What’s that, mate?’
‘Mum always said my real dad lived far away. “A long way away” was what she always said. I thought Chalk Hill might be far enough, but she said it wasn’t.’
‘Far away from where? From Perth?’
Sam’s shrug said he didn’t know, hadn’t thought about it. ‘Just far away from wherever we were. We were in Perth and my real dad was far away. We moved to Chalk Hill and he was still far away.’
Jake wasn’t ready for this. No way was he ready for this. What if he said the wrong thing? What if he wrecked Ella and Sam’s relationship completely? What about Erik?
‘So I thought he might be you. I mean, Mum liked you. You had a bird just like our birds. You taught me stuff, like the quad bike and picking up sticks. You even got Mum swimming again.’
‘He’s not me, Sam,’ Jake said, meeting the boy’s gaze before he returned his own eyes to the road. Or I’m not him. ‘But I can tell you that if I was your dad, I’d be the proudest dad you’d ever seen.’
Sam seemed to shrink in his seat.
‘I wanted it to be you,’ Sam said, every bit as stubborn as his mother. ‘I really, really thought when you came to the house last night before the dance … I thought you might have been far away for a while, but you were back.’
‘It’s not me, Sam.’ Jake’s gut clenched for the kid. ‘Doesn’t matter how much I might wanna be, I’m just not. You can’t make it that way, mate.’
Sam digested that and nodded once. ‘When we were all at the dam and you and Mum were swimming, Ollie said you loved each other. Ollie said you and Mum were gonna marry each other, because that’s what it means when you love each other. That’s what you do. Get married.’
He could have told the boy there was a bit more to it than that, because there was. Love was never that simple. But he didn’t, because Ollie’s wisdom wasn’t that far off the mark.
He’d been thinking the same way too.
* * *
Sam got a packet of stronger painkillers, a purple cast from his left wrist to his elbow and a nurse and a doctor to sign their names on it alongside Jake’s, and he seemed pretty happy with that as they climbed back into Jake’s car with an ice-cream each.
Then man and bashed-up boy hit the road back to Chalk Hill.
Sam spent the first part of the drive licking his ice-cream; the middle part of the drive admiring his cast; and the last
