A Special Kind Of Family

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THIS town was amazing. These people were amazing. The more Erin saw of them the more she wanted to be a part of this community.

Last night half the town had been up to a fire. Now they were turning out to search for one little boy.

She wasn’t allowed to help.

‘Your feet…you shouldn’t be walking on them at all, much less traipsing round the countryside looking for Nathan,’ Dom growled.

Search parties seemed to be organising themselves, men and women dividing the district into grids, acting methodically and fast. Dom was desperate to be gone as well-he organised himself to lead the first search party but Graham wanted him close. He had to physically hold him back while he made him see sense.

‘So we find him,’ Graham told him. ‘Or we think we know where he is. The kid’s terrified. You need to be on call to go wherever we need, to stop him running.’

‘I can do that,’ Tansy ventured.

‘You can’t.’ It was Charles, and once again Erin had that flash of something she hadn’t seen from Charles.

Charles had known Tansy for, what, four hours? Was there something in the water?

‘He knocked you out,’ Charles was saying. ‘You’re not doing anything until we get that head X-rayed.’

‘I can do the calling,’ Ruby said diffidently, but Dom shook his head. Grim but accepting.

‘No. Graham’s right,’ Dom said. ‘And so’s Charles. I’ll stay. Tansy needs an X-ray-if there’s a fracture and we miss it I’d never forgive myself and I want it done by someone more capable of reading results than me. Cracked ribs are one thing-neurology’s another. Can you take her to Campbelltown, Charles?’

‘Sure.’

‘And Martin and I will keep the home fires burning,’ Ruby said. It was a platitude, said so serenely that it sounded right, and Erin saw in that moment why Dom was so grateful for Ruby’s care that he’d taken on fostering himself. She saw Dom nod and knew that somehow he’d been unaccountably comforted by this elderly little woman with her prosaic attitude to life.

Strangely, inexplicably it hurt. She wanted to do the comforting. If he’d only let her.

But…‘Can you get one of the guys to drop Erin at her place?’ Dom asked Graham.

‘No!’ she said, startled.

‘Yes,’ he said, and suddenly Dom’s voice was steely. ‘You’re injured and I will not drag you into our lives even further.’

‘I don’t think she needs to be dragged,’ Ruby said placidly.

‘No matter,’ Dom said, still harsh. He met her gaze full on. ‘Erin, I can’t afford to be distracted. It causes…It’s caused…No. Just go. Please.’

It was hard to get her voice to work. They were all looking at her. She knew her distress was showing but she didn’t care. Dom’s expression was implacable. He really didn’t want her.

‘You’ll…you’ll let me know when you find him?’ she whispered.

‘Of course we will,’ Ruby said warmly but Dom had already turned away to talk to Graham.

So she went home. One of the searchers drove her-they were starting their search in the town and working their way back through the bush.

She was dropped off at her new home. It was growing dark. And cold. Or maybe that was just her.

She let herself into the house and Marilyn greeted her with joy. She knelt, she hugged her dog-and she burst into tears.

‘What will I do, Marilyn?’ she sobbed. ‘I love him to distraction. I love them all to distraction.’

In response the dog gave her a huge dog-kiss, from chin to nose. Erin hiccuped on a sob, it turned into a sort of laugh and she tried to haul herself together.

‘We’ll be okay,’ she whispered. ‘You and me. We’ll be fine. Oh, but Nathan…and Dom…’

Dom would be going out of his mind, pacing, waiting for news.

She ought to be there.

He wouldn’t let her.

‘How he expects me to calmly go to bed,’ she said savagely to Marilyn. ‘I can’t. Okay, my feet hurt, but they’re getting better. Socks and trainers would support them so they don’t hurt. I could search.

‘But you don’t know the area,’ she admitted to herself. She didn’t feel like she had any common sense left, but what there was surfaced for a moment. ‘You don’t know where to look. Your feet are sore and you’d hold searchers back. Or you’d get yourself lost.’

Lost. The word itself was frightening. The area around the town was thick bushland. If Nathan was hiding…

It was wild.

‘I wouldn’t go into the bush if I was Nathan,’ she told Marilyn, and Marilyn wagged her butt in agreement.

‘Neither would you,’ Erin said, hugging her tight for she had to hug someone. ‘Where would I go if I was Nathan?’

That was easy. ‘I’d go find Dom. Me and Nathan both,’ she said to Marilyn, giving her a shame-faced grin. ‘I have it bad.’

So if Nathan was looking for Dom…

‘He’d go out to the car crash,’ she decided. Really, this was quite a sensible conversation. Erin v. Erin.

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He’d think Dom was here.’ She was thinking it through and relaying her thoughts to Marilyn. ‘This afternoon Dom left home to bring me here. As far as Nathan knows, Dom is still here. I bet he knows where this place is. And it’s…’

She paused. Lightbulb moment. ‘It’s about three miles from Dom’s place, just around the headland,’ she breathed. ‘Nathan thinks his father is looking for him. Would he go by road?

‘I wouldn’t,’ she told Marilyn, answering herself. ‘I’d go by the beach. I couldn’t get lost that way. I’d get out of sight of the house and then I’d sneak back over to the beach. I could hide under the cliffs and I’d think no one would look for me there.’

So, ring Dom and tell him.

She lifted her phone from her pocket and paused.

They’d already have thought of it, she decided. And the way Dom had looked at her…like she’d distracted him and this was the result…

He didn’t need any more distraction.

And she didn’t actually know his phone number.

But…

But.

‘You reckon the puppies can do without you for a few minutes?’ she asked Marilyn. ‘I know this is a big ask, but it’s dark on the beach and I wouldn’t mind company.’

Dom was going nuts, pacing in the darkness, waiting for news. More than anything else, he wanted to join the searchers, to yell his lungs out as half the town was doing. But Graham was right. He had to be accessible if Nathan needed to be coaxed out of hiding.

The country west of the road was wild and mountainous. A little boy would lose himself quickly.

And stay lost?

The thought didn’t bear thinking, but it was with him and it wouldn’t go.

Nathan had been gone for two hours. Terrified, he could have travelled fast.

I’ll be crossed off the list of foster-parents after this, he thought grimly. Even if Nathan was found. He’d had to do a hard sell to be allowed to take these two boys. Both, it had been argued, would be safer in a secure facility.

And suddenly he thought, I wouldn’t mind keeping them.

The thought was like a sunbeam piercing through thick cloud. To keep these boys…To give emotional commitment, long term…

He’d been walking back and forth along the headland behind the house, watching the moonlit beach, desperate to see a small figure struggling home. But the tide was almost full. Nathan would have to be off the beach. There was nowhere to hide there.

The thought wasn’t fading. He wouldn’t mind keeping them.

Martin and Nathan.

He’d had Martin for six months now, and Nathan for only a little less. It was the longest he’d ever had kids.

They were great little boys, brimful of potential. Scarred by life, they were starting to emerge from that scarring and become great.

Every other child he’d cared for he’d said goodbye to with a sense of relief. His plan-what he did for all of them-was to care for them while there was a threat, then pass them on. Tansy did the warm and fuzzy stuff. She’d divorced early from a bad marriage. She loved the kids. He provided the house, the security. She did the rest.

But now…

He wanted more.

And he wanted Erin.

After two days?

Stupid.

Only maybe it wasn’t stupid. What if such a thing really existed? His mother had believed in it with her whole heart. Love at first sight.

What if Erin was…it?

She was messing with his head. Erin. Nathan. Erin.

Martin. Marilyn.

Erin.

His…family?

Okay, so she’d just walk slowly along the beach. Carefully, so her feet didn’t hurt. She wasn’t holding anyone up and she couldn’t get lost. She was her own personal little search party.

Marilyn strolled a couple of hundred yards with her, then looked apologetically up at her. I have my pups, her look said. But I’d rather be doing what you’re doing.

She turned and headed sedately back along the beach.

So it was dark and she was alone, with just a torch for company. She couldn’t go much further, anyway. Half a mile from her house the headland became rocky and hard to negotiate. She’d found the torch in the kitchen cupboard but she didn’t know how long the battery would last. The last thing she wanted was to become another person on the lost list.

Okay, she conceded finally. Dom was right. Her feet hurt. And she’d run out of beach. The cliffs loomed dark and dangerous. There was no way Nathan could get round here at high tide.

But a little voice was still whispering. If he’d tried and the tide had come in…

She should go home.

But first…

Crazy or not, she picked her way over the rocks, as far as she could before it got downright dangerous. Then she stared out into the night, waiting for there to be a pause in the crash of the surf.

Waiting.

Then, ‘Nathan!’ She yelled it with all the power she could muster.

She ached to hear. She wanted to hear so much that when she did she thought she was imagining it.

But no. It was a child’s thin voice, high and terrified.

‘Help me.’

Dammit, he’d ring her.

He’d rung every set of searchers. He’d paced so long he was practically paced out. He was going crazy.

Nathan. Nathan.

And along with it, like an echo, Erin. Erin.

Erin couldn’t help. But he could just…phone. He had her number to let her know when Nathan was found.

It wasn’t a real weakness. It wasn’t like he was admitting he needed her. He was just giving her an update.

Four rings. Five.

It switched to the message bank.

The phone would be inside and she’d be outside, pacing. He knew it as surely as he knew himself.

He knew her. And he’d hurt her.

She’d offered to be with him and he’d knocked her back-but it was more than offering to be with him. That was why he’d sent her away. They both knew what was happening between them.

Hell, his head was doing him in. He wanted Nathan to be found so he could concentrate on something else.

Like Erin.

‘She seems lovely.’ It was Ruby, coming up behind him.

He groaned.

‘Nathan’ll be safe,’ Ruby said with quiet confidence. ‘You kids used to run away all the time. The townspeople won’t give up till they find him.’ She tucked her arm into his. ‘You have a whole community of caring. Not bad for a loner.’

‘I’m not.’

‘A loner?’ She put her wrinkled hand into his and held hard. ‘I know. As I said, she seems lovely.’

‘Ruby, it’s way too soon. I’ve known her for less than three days.’

‘It’s never too soon,’ she said serenely. ‘You’ve been waiting all your life for this. Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘She’s not answering her phone.’

She picked her way gingerly over the rocky outcrop. The cliff face was sheer, but part of the cliff had caved in years before to form a sort of path between cliff and sea.

She climbed maybe two hundred yards, her torch playing out ahead, trying to see where the cry had come from.

Once she slipped. She fell, only a couple of feet but it scared her. She clambered back, vaguely aware her phone was ringing.

Nathan was screaming again and she forgot about her phone. For now it wasn’t a come-and-get-me scream. It was a scream of sheer terror. From the sea.

She steadied and shone her torch across the waves.

He was maybe twenty feet from the base of the cliff, forty or fifty yards from her, on what was a tiny rocky island. He must have been trying to reach the ledge where she was when the tide had beaten him.

The tide was still rising. While she watched, another wave smashed over his tiny island.

He was down on all fours, screaming and clinging. Erin sucked in her breath in horror. She had to wait for the wave to recede to see if he was still there.

He was-but only just. Once more wave would push him in.

Some things were just plain dumb. Like jumping into the sea, in the dark as the wind was rising.

But the wave was receding, giving her a moment’s calm. It was all the time she had-and she was all Nathan had.

She slid from her ledge and struck out for Nathan.

‘So why isn’t she answering the phone?’

‘I don’t know, dear,’ Ruby said. ‘Maybe she isn’t carrying it. Some people have been known to live to a ripe old age without ever owning a cellphone.’

He smiled but his smile was perfunctory. ‘The first time I rang, it rang out. Now it says the phone’s turned off or out of range. There’s no way she’ll have turned it off. She’s as worried as I am.’

‘Yet you sent her home.’

‘Okay. I’m a fool. But now…’

‘It’s probably out of battery,’ Ruby said wisely. ‘You young ones spend your lives looking for phone chargers or getting cross ’cos your battery’s flat.’

‘We recharged her battery last night.’

‘Maybe it got soot in it.’ She regarded him sideways. ‘You know what? You’re going to have to find out.’

‘I can’t leave here. You heard Graham.’

‘I heard Graham tell us you need to be available if any of the search parties need you. I suspect Erin’s made up her own search party. I suspect she needs you.’

‘You think?’

‘Hey, don’t ask me,’ Ruby said wryly. ‘I’m just an old lady who doesn’t own a cellphone. But I’m here and I can talk Nathan out of a hidey-hole at a hundred paces if need be. Martin’s asleep. I can go to Nathan if they need me. So you go look for Nathan yourself. Look for Erin, too.’ She smiled and reached up to kiss him on the cheek. ‘And while you’re about it, what about searching for your family at the same time?’

Nathan’s ‘island’ was eight feet wide at its widest. In the centre was a jagged knob. That’s why he hadn’t been swept off-he’d been able to cling to it.

Erin swam the few yards to the rock in record time. She hauled herself up onto the ledge then grabbed Nathan and the rocky knob as another breaker crashed over them.

It took all her strength to hold on. When the wave receded, Nathan was stuck to her like a limpet, holding on with hands and feet, and she was clutching the knob beyond him.

With the incoming tide this was only going to get worse. It was a miracle Nathan had held on this long.

‘Can you swim?’

‘N-no.’

‘Then you’ll have to float,’ she said, spitting water. ‘And let me hold you. But, Nathan, if you try and hold me, we’ll both drown.’

‘I’m scared.’

‘Me, too.’ So much for reassurance, but it seemed to work. Nathan seemed to steady. The bravery of him…All of five years old and he was a hero.

A smaller wave washed over them. They didn’t go under this time but another wave was bearing down.

‘After this next one,’ Erin said, urgently. ‘We’ll roll back into the water and let the wave push us toward the cliff. As soon as the wave’s past you lie on your back and I’ll tow you. If another wave comes you’re not to panic-just hold your nose and wait till it passes. I’ll hold you around your shoulders. You’re not to try and grab me ’cos I have to use all my energy to swim. Do you think you can do that?’

‘Is Dom coming?’ Nathan quavered.

‘Of course he is,’ Erin said. ‘Here’s the wave, Nathe. Ready, set, go.’

She wasn’t at the house but Marilyn was in the kitchen, pacing back and forth to the back door.

‘So where’s your mistress?’ Dom said, crouching down and fondling her ears. ‘What have you done with her?’

As if in answer, Marilyn crossed to the open back door and stared anxiously into the night.

Toward the beach.

‘I told her not to search,’ Dom said, so savagely that Marilyn looked up at him in surprise. He relented and crouched down to give her another pat. ‘I s’pose you think that’s dumb. Telling Erin to keep out of my life.’

Marilyn groaned in agreement-or maybe because she really liked what Dom was doing behind her ears.

But doggy massage wasn’t on the agenda. ‘Okay,’ he said, and straightened. ‘Let’s assume she’s gone along the beach. I’m guessing she’s heading toward my place.’

He should wait for help. For back-up. But…

‘Everyone’s looking for Nathan,’ he told Marilyn. ‘I don’t want them to stop just because one dumb, female doctor…’

Who you happen to love…

Where had that come from? No matter-it just had-and once thought couldn’t be retracted.

‘Okay, who I just happen to love,’ he said, resigned. ‘Regardless. She’s risking her neck and her feet walking along the beach at high tide in the dark. But who am I to query her motives? Okay, Marilyn, while we wait for the rest of the world to find Nathan, I need to find Erin.’

She had Nathan safe. For now. She was shoving him out of the water onto the rock ledge she’d set off from, but even as she did so she saw their escape route had been cut off.

Part of the ledge she’d clambered over was now awash.

At least the rocks they were on now were dry. She hauled herself up after Nathan, she hugged him tight and she tried to assess whether they could clamber back to the beach between waves.

The answer was no. The sea was building; the strengthening wind whipping up waves already swelling with the tide. It had been risky enough trying to get Nathan here. She daren’t move any further.

At least the rock they were on wasn’t slippery. Maybe it was higher than the high-water mark.

Please…

‘Will Dom come and find us?’ Nathan asked in a tiny voice, and she hugged him close and thought he was such a brave little kid. Brave beyond his years. To be allocated a father like Michael…

It wasn’t fair. She wanted…she wanted…

She knew what she wanted. Dom only took kids in peril. When the peril was past…if she could manoeuvre her way round the challenge of Nathan’s appalling father…if Dom didn’t want Nathan…if Dom didn’t want her…

‘I seem to be adding to my family,’ she told Nathan, hugging him close. ‘Me and Marilyn and three puppies. And now you, if I can find a way to wiggle you into my life. If we can figure what to do with your dad. They say the heart expands to fit all comers. I wonder how my mum and dad feel about becoming grandparents?’

‘Erin!’ Dom was shouting into the rising wind, starting to worry in earnest as he saw the sea building. Storms could arrive without warning, and this had all the signs of being a beauty.

Dear God, Nathan was out in it. And Erin…

What the hell was she playing at? ‘Erin!’

‘Cooee.’

He stopped dead.

‘Erin?’

‘Cooee.’ It was the Australian bush call, echoing over the waves.

Where…?

There was no way she could have got further than the ledge he’d reached. Where…?

‘Cooee?’

She must have reached further. Before the tide came in?

Dammit, was she trying to kill herself? Didn’t she know-?

‘Cooee.’

‘Alright, I’m coming,’ he said grimly. ‘Hold on.’

Their ledge was precarious. It might be safe for a little longer but the waves were already reaching just beneath the rock they were on.

Swimming out to Nathan, the sea had at least been clear. Here, though, the partial cliff collapse meant the sea was churning round jagged rocks. On her own she might have clambered back, knowing she’d probably be able to haul herself out if she was washed in. With Nathan, though…not.

He’d been extraordinarily brave. He’d lain limply in her grasp as she’d towed him here, and for a five-year-old to do that…

She was so proud of him she could cry, but she couldn’t take him further. Neither could she leave him to get help.

Her phone was dead-salt water wasn’t great for reception. All they could do was wait. And hope.

‘He’ll come, won’t he?’ Nathan asked again, through chattering teeth.

‘Of course he will,’ Erin said, but it sounded hollow even to her.

Stay or go? Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

Stay. There was no choice.

She held onto Nathan, she hugged him and she prayed. Dom, Dom, Dom.

‘Erin…’

When had her name ever sounded as good?

‘Cooee.’

She’d expected him to go for help. She’d never thought he’d clamber round the rocks.

He was ten yards away before she saw him in the moonlight. He’d been washed from a rock and had a handhold again, hauling himself out of the sea and up to safety.

She didn’t move. Nathan was hugged hard against her and it was Nathan who was directing traffic.

‘We’re up here. Dom, look out, there’s another wave, duck, hurry, we’re here.’

He’d reach them, she thought, mistily. Her kelpie. ‘I am a man upon the land, I am a kelpie upon the sea…’

She sang it with joy in her heart. Nathan stared at her like she’d lost her mind, and Dom hauled himself up the last rock and heard what she was singing. He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his eyes-and then he burst out laughing.

He gathered the pair of them into his arms.

And then he kissed her.