“We’re not together,” she went on, in it now. “We’re not in a relationship. Rafe has kindly agreed to do this for me. It’s a...” What was it they were doing exactly? “It’s a transaction?”
If Rafe looked rock-like before, at Sable’s transaction comment, he now looked positively petrified.
“They want to have a baby together without the fun part?” Ed muttered, though loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Makes no sense.”
Janie’s, “I know, right,” just as clear.
Before Sable could dig herself deeper into a hole of too much information, Mercy pushed back her chair with such vehemence it wobbled, spun and crashed to the ground. Then she swept from the room, her skirt floating behind her.
“Excuse me,” Sable said, motioning to Bear to take over. Which he did, his voice following her down the hall, “Right, people. Anyone know if Mercy stocks soda water?”
Sable found her mother in her bedroom, a hand on the desk beneath the window, fingers splayed over a slew of early photos Sable had taken that she’d found in a box at the top of a cupboard. “Mum?”
Mercy looked up. Her face pinched. Pained. “What the hell are you thinking?”
Sable moved slowly into the room.
“You had it so good,” her mother muttered. “Away from here. Away from him.”
Sable shook her head. “Maybe I was too subtle before. Things were not good for most of the time I was over there. Most of the time I felt as if I couldn’t move, couldn’t smile, couldn’t breathe.”
“Then go somewhere else! Try something else!”
“I am trying something else. I’m trying listening to myself. Listening to my needs, to my voice. I’m trying what I want for once. I want a child, Mum. More than one, if the fates decide. I want a home, with a backyard, and a sprinkler my kids can play under. I want to put down roots. I want my local barista to know how I take my coffee because I go to his coffee shop every morning, not because he saw a picture on Instagram.”
The fact that the house that flashed into mind looked very much like the kind you’d find in the small snow towns of Victoria, rather than a Brooklyn brownstone, sent a little shiver through her.
Her mother sniffed. “So this is how you choose to rebel.”
Sadie threw her hands in the air. “Oh, damn it, Mum, this is not about you!”
“It’s always about the mother.”
“Did you get pregnant with me because of your mother?”
Her mother slanted her a look that said maybe she had.
“Then tell me so,” Sable said. As she knew less about her grandparents than she did about her father, which was saying something. “Throw me a bone here.”
Mercy turned, leaned against the desk, her long fingers gripping the top. “Fine. My mother was terribly conservative. All baking and aprons and gingham curtains. It was claustrophobic. I couldn’t wait to leave home. I had that scholarship to study agriculture at Melbourne Uni. I’d imagined myself a vintner. Then your father came along, all wilful and wild. I saw my way out.”
Sable’s heart clutched at the tragic note in her mother’s voice even while she tried so hard to appear unmoved by her own story. Her story, which did not end well, Mr Wilful and Wild leaving her when he found out she was pregnant.
Sable’s voice was raw as she said, “Funny. That I was so desperate to have a home, to stay in one place for any length of time, I’d have happily sewn my feet to the floor.”
Mercy’s right eye flickered. “Sable. Don’t do this. Don’t place your happiness in the hands of a man.”
“I’m not. I’m placing my happiness in my hands. I just need Rafe to help me. And he’s agreed. Because he’s that good a guy. Just because my father didn’t keep his bargains, doesn’t mean Rafe would do the same.”
Mercy finally looked her way, dismay etched into her features. “You love him, don’t you? You love him still.”
Sable didn’t answer that. She’d only just started wondering the same thing herself. It would mess things up terribly. And if it turned out to be true, that was a conversation to be had between Rafe and her. If she told him at all.
“A baby,” Mercy said, her eyes glazed. “How did they all know? While I was left in the dark?”
Sable went to her mother and took her by the hand to find the fingers cold, lean, rough. “It wasn’t deliberate, I promise. I actually have no idea who knows or how. For this is all very new for us too. And I didn’t talk to you about it, because I knew you wouldn’t approve.”
“Since when have you ever cared about my approval?”
“Since always! You just never wanted me to.”
Mercy gave her a look then, as if she’d only just realised how thoroughly she’d hobbled her own efforts.
“Do you know why I left? Why I chose to go to New York?”
“Well, the prize, which you totally deserved. And because I saw Rafe buying the ring and made it crystal clear you would not have my blessing.”
Sable shook her head. Then she crouched to the floor, lifted the corner of the rug, and unhooked the floorboard. Pulling out the small metal box, she found the postcard from Greece.
The look on Mercy’s face as she took the card in hand was one Sable had never seen before. Shock, heartache, and joy. “Where did you—”
“I took it out of the bin after you threw it away. You were so miserable that week. And I knew the signs. You were about to pack us up and leave again. But I knew how much you loved it here. That you’d put down roots in a way I’d never seen before. So I left instead.”
Mercy stared at her daughter.
“I’d seen them over the years, the postcards. No signature. I usually found them torn in half, in
