The Cattleman, The Baby and Me. Michelle Douglas
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roused himself. ‘Is Harry an orphan?’
It took her a moment to realise what he was asking. She stiffened. ‘No!’
‘Then where is his mother? Why isn’t she here with the child?’
She wasn’t quite ready to tell him that. ‘She’s…indisposed at the moment.’
He surveyed her for a long moment. ‘What does she want? Why are you here, Sapphie?’
Sapphie’s mouth went dry. She wanted to pick Harry up and cuddle him close. ‘Emmy wanted Harry’s father to take over full custody of him.’ But that was an impossible dream now.
Liam’s head shot up. ‘Why?’
The single word reverberated around the room. That wasn’t a question she was prepared to answer yet either, so she just shook her head.
Liam shot to his feet. ‘I need to water the horses.’ The words left him abrupt and hard. ‘I’ll see you at dinner.’ He started for the door.
‘Liam?’
He stopped. Turned.
She swallowed at the grim cast of his mouth. ‘What happened to Lucas?’
His face shuttered closed. ‘He died.’ Without another word he disappeared through the door at the far end of the room.
Sapphie closed her eyes. She opened them a moment later to stare down at the child sleeping beside her. Nausea rose through her. She’d just run out of options for this innocent child and there was nothing she could do about it. She pressed a hand to her mouth. Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.
Sapphie surged out of bed and into the nursery the moment Harry’s wails broke through the sleep fog of her brain.
‘Oh, Harry!’
She picked him up and tried to cuddle him, but he wouldn’t let her. Any momentary sense of connection or trust he’d felt towards her earlier was gone.
She bounced him in her arms, rubbed his back and tried to soothe him, but he refused to be soothed. ‘Did you have a nightmare, beautiful boy?’
She had to gulp then because his waking, daytime world must seem the real nightmare to him—missing his mum, in the care of a virtual stranger, with any routine he’d had tossed out of the proverbial window.
She changed his nappy—no easy feat when he kept trying to twist away. Especially when she was no expert at nappy-changing. She checked his temperature, checked him over for rashes…for anything that might be causing him pain or discomfort.
She came up with a blank. Just as she had last night. Just as she had the night before that.
He could be teething…
She glanced at the clock—eleven p.m.
She tried playing silly games with Horsie to distract him, singing nursery rhymes, walking to and fro with him in her arms and rubbing his back.
He screamed through all of it.
Finally Sapphie sat him in the middle of the queen-sized bed and dragged her hands through her hair. Think! She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to help him, how to comfort him. A mother would know what to do.
She swung away to wring her hands. She didn’t deserve to be a mother. She’d known that for the last seven years. If there were anyone else…
How did she make amends for what she’d done?
It suddenly hit her. That was exactly what she was trying to do now. She hadn’t done right by her own child, the child she’d aborted, but she’d make sure she did right by Emmy’s. It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough, but it was something.
She stared at Harry. His cheeks were hot and red with crying, misery and bewilderment were leaking down his face, and her throat thickened. She deserved all this. But Harry—he didn’t!
Food. The thought slammed into her and her back straightened. He’d had a bottle this evening, but he hadn’t kept much else down throughout the rest of the day. Could that be it? ‘Are you hungry, Harry?’
She picked him up and raced down the hallway to the kitchen. She heated his bottle. She grabbed a tin of chocolate custard.
He refused both.
She even tried giving him his bottle on the same sofa he’d curled up on earlier in the day, hoping it would hold some familiarity or positive association for him.
Nothing doing.
Fighting back tears of her own, she walked him up and down the length of the living room. ‘Oh, Harry, Auntie Sapphie wishes she could make things right for you. She’d do anything to make it right for you.’
He kept right on crying. His screams tore at her. If she were a different kind of person, a better person, he wouldn’t have to go through this. She was inadequate, pathetic, worse than useless—all she could do was stay awake and bear witness to his distress.
‘What’s wrong with him?’
The voice from the doorway didn’t even make her jump, which was testament to her exhaustion and her growing sense of desperation. But when she cast a glance back over her shoulder her host’s bulk, outlined by the light of the lamp, made her swallow. She automatically checked the neckline of her shirt.
Stop it! She didn’t own anything with a plunging neckline. This shirt, teamed with a pair of baggy tracksuit pants, could hardly be called beguiling in anyone’s language.
‘Is he ill?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘He doesn’t have a temperature or a rash or…or anything that I can see.’
Liam took a step into the room, then another. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He obviously hadn’t gone to bed yet.
‘How long has he been crying?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Just gone midnight.’
She stifled a sigh. ‘About an hour.’
‘An hour!’ Liam jerked and stiffened to his full height. It made her aware of just how tall he was…how broad. ‘Something must be wrong with him.’ He started for the door at the far end of the room. ‘I’ll radio the flying doctor service.’
‘No.’ Sapphie shook her head. It felt unutterably heavy on her shoulders.
He swung back. ‘But an hour. It’s—’
‘It’s nothing. We did this for four hours last night. Then we had a three-hour break before doing it all over again for another two hours.’
He stared at her, visibly appalled. ‘But…Have you tried giving him his bottle?’
Frustration hit her, low and hard. ‘What do you think?’ she all but growled. ‘I’ve tried everything!’ She held Harry out towards him. ‘You want to give it a go?’
Liam backed up, raised his hands. ‘He doesn’t know me. I’ll frighten him.’
‘So? He’s only known me for two days!’
As if to prove Liam’s point, Harry screamed louder. Sapphie pulled him back in close. ‘Oh, Harry, Auntie Sapphie’s sorry. She didn’t mean to scare you.’
Harry did his best to twist away from her. She swallowed down a lump. It bruised her throat and lodged as a dead weight in her chest. He didn’t want her touching him. He knew what she was. What further proof did she need that as a mother substitute she was the worst?
She tried to fight the blackness that threatened to descend around her, the tears that clogged her throat. And then, amazingly, Liam moved forward and lifted Harry from her arms. And suddenly she could breathe again.