‘If you do come back,’ Zac said quietly, ‘I’d like to come with you.’

Jock raised his brows and nodded his head in acknowledgement. ‘Sure. Be glad of your company.’

Ava didn’t say anything, but Zac could tell by her face that she was relieved he’d offered.

Chapter Thirty-three

Ava

The next morning, Ava drove with Zac over to the local Indigenous community to talk to Jessamine. The community lay spread across the expanse of desert, a busy, dusty place, with the occasional motorbike or old car, and a group of shirtless young men playing footy on a patch of bare earth out to the side of the settlement.

A drop-in with Zac seemed a good opportunity to have a doctor cast his eye over the twins now that they were more than a week old. Zac carried the big first-aid kit Ava never left home without. Normally, Ava would check the babies herself, but she wanted to share her world with Zac and this was one of the best parts of it – reconnecting with mothers and babies in their own environments. The prospect of seeing Jessamine and her twins again made her wish she’d phoned Denise.

‘I should have asked Denise to come out and meet us there, but it’s too late now. We should have come yesterday, but the light was fading by the time we made it home after touring the boundary fences.’

‘And Stella had been adamant that I rest before tea,’ Zac said dryly.

Ava laughed. Last night, she’d seen Zac’s eyebrows rise at her mother’s bossy orders, which amused her, probably unkindly, but still. Zac wasn’t used to it. She couldn’t help if it tickled her sense of humour to see him take himself to his room with a frown. But this morning, even her mother couldn’t complain about how well he looked. It was a shame Ava’s heart didn’t feel so healthy.

She dragged her thoughts back to their task. Hopefully Jessamine, who’d been home for a few days now, would be able to see them unless she’d gone north to see relatives.

‘The birth was amazing,’ Ava was saying as she steered into the sprawling settlement.

Zac said, ‘It’d be nice to remember that I’ve seen a spontaneous twin birth. And breech!’

That’s not all you can’t remember, Ava thought wistfully. She wished there were a brain exercise she could offer him, but there was only the healing of time. All she said was, ‘We don’t have breeches every day. And no more babies until I get back to work, please. Did you want to tell Jessamine about your memory loss, or do you want to just wing it?’

He looked weary as he thought about explaining. ‘I’ll wing it.’