One Small Miracle. Melissa James

written permission to look after her for a few weeks.’

      ‘Will you just tell me how the kid got here?’ He spoke with a frown, with an exaggerated kind of patience that made her flush—and stop beating around the bush. She answered him in a crisp, cool voice that hid her defensiveness.

      ‘Rosie came to me last night. She’s been struggling to cope since she had the baby. But she’s just been diagnosed with postnatal depression. She wants me to mind Melanie for a few weeks while she gets help.’

      ‘Hasn’t she got any family?’ Now the tone was leashed; she felt the impatience straining from him. Wanting to know why—and what it had to do with him—but he must have picked up on her reluctance to tell the story all at once. Felt her longing to run, hard and fast, at the same time she yearned to look after a baby, even if it would never be her own.

      ‘Her ex-boyfriend disappeared when she began showing, told her he had a wife and kids he’d already left. He didn’t like being a father. He’d hooked up with her because she was a medical student, and wouldn’t want kids for years. And her mother—remember Maggie?’ she repeated with emphasis.

      ‘Yes. What about her?’

      Anna gritted her teeth, hearing that exaggerated patience again, the reluctance in listening, wanting her to get to the point. To Jared a story was just a vehicle to him finding the solution, and drawing it out with unnecessary hesitation or embellishment was useless.

      Just as well I didn’t want to become a writer, she thought wryly, before she answered. ‘Rosie doesn’t remember her father, and you know how Maggie was so intensely proud of Rosie being at university and becoming a doctor. She hates that Rosie chose to give up her medical studies and come home to have the baby. She threw her out and though she only lives an hour from here, she hasn’t even seen Melanie. If Rosie leaves Melanie with Maggie, she’s afraid the mother will use her depression as an excuse to get Child Services involved, or try to put the baby up for adoption.’

      ‘Nice woman,’ was his only comment, with a world of dryness. Hiding what they were both thinking. Some people would give anything to have a beautiful, healthy baby, and she only sees it as a hindrance…

      ‘The train leaves in forty minutes. I need to wake Rosie right now if she’s going to make it. The point is, Rosie wants me to take the baby to Jarndirri for the few weeks she’s gone—away from her mother’s influence, and interference by the ex if he knew,’ she said in a rush. ‘We don’t have much time. Will you do it?’

      He looked at her for a long time, and Anna wanted to squirm. After all these months of him coming here, demanding she return home or seducing her into it, she’d thought—hoped—

      ‘Go wake her. I’ll meet her and make up my mind,’ was all he said. His face was expressionless as always, and she wished for the hundredth time that she could see or feel anything from him—anything at all. That he could actually talk to her and say anything so she’d know this enigma she’d lived beside for half her life, the husband she still didn’t know.

      Squelching the hurt for the hundredth time, she turned and walked to the spare room.

      And she ran back into the kitchen a minute later, panting, ‘She’s gone. Everything’s gone!’

      ‘What?’

      ‘She’s done a runner,’ Anna said helplessly. ‘She’s left the baby, given her to me.’