‘Skye was pregnant. Pregnant with my child. Do you understand?’

‘Dad, you’ve told us that,’ she says. ‘And we do care.’

‘She has a son.’

‘No,’ Abby whispers.

‘That’s the “him” you were talking about? The guy?’ I say.

‘She has a child?’ Mark says. ‘You do mean a living boy, not that she was pregnant with –’

Dad nods brusquely. ‘Yes, a living boy. Beau, five years old.’

Mark folds his arms on the table. ‘Where is he, John?’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Saturday 14 December 1974

Abby

I wake early, again. My brain has spent hours with the same wild and raggedy thoughts, like a greyhound chasing a track rabbit. I wake terrified.

As quietly as I can, I leave the bedroom and pad through the house, moving couch cushions back to where they should be, straightening the tea towel that hangs from the oven door, rearranging the photos on the kitchen sideboard.

I check on the twins then go to Sarah’s room, lift the mosquito netting that drapes her bed and sit inside her little cocoon, cross-legged near the footboard. I smile at her uninhibited sprawl, her parted lips, her halo of hair, the Holly Hobbie bedspread she so badly wanted.

Skye had a son. I wonder if the boy knows his mother is dead. I wonder, like Mark does, where he is. Dad stormed off to his room after dropping his bombshell, unwilling to offer any more information.

There’d been no sign that any child other than my own had ever been at the farm – no drawings, no toys. Perhaps she’d put him up for adoption as a baby. Or into an institution. Is that what Dad wanted to tell us that weekend – that he was engaged to a pregnant woman with a damaged son? Perhaps the woman drove off the road intentionally, because she couldn’t stand the grief of it. Maybe Charlie didn’t cause the accident at all. I can almost see my thoughts bouncing off the walls. I really need sleep.

Sarah rolls over, further twisting her nightie around her, as though she’s wringing herself out. I tug the fabric, to smooth it, where it stretches across her hip. I catch myself thinking it might not be bad were she to wake up and steal me from my thoughts.

A warm wind pushes between the pink cotton curtains. They lift and drop, as graceful as a dancer taking a bow. Through the gap, softened by a veil of netting, I see a full moon. Frogs croak beneath the window.

I walk back to my own bed then lie on my side, close to Mark, and silently chant, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

Before sunrise, I slide out of bed as quietly as I can, find shorts, a t-shirt, sandals. I need to be out of the house, to think and also to not think. I leave Mark a note on the kitchen bench saying that Woof was whining for a walk and I’ll be back soon. In the living room, I pat Woof to wake him, try to coax him off the couch using increasingly dramatic expressions and gestures to indicate to him how exciting it will be to leave his comfy spot and come outside. He lifts his eyebrows, then lets his lids drop closed again. ‘Come on,’ I whisper. I push him close enough to the edge that gravity does the rest of my job. He jumps back up on the couch. I push him down again, more easily this time, and he gives in.