Page 92 of Bride Under Contract

He’d attempted to shout—‘No!’ But the sound of the word hadn’t carried, and his mother had suddenly plunged lower in the water, as if she’d stepped off a ledge.

He felt again his relief when she’d seemed to right herself, rising up in the water again.

Then he’d heard one desperate shout from his father, seen the whipping water his father had rushed towards.

And now, as he had all those years ago, Carter stood horror-struck and silent, watching, waiting for his father to sort this out, to save his mother, for she and Hugo to emerge.

Apart from that single shout from his father there had been no screams, no noise, when surely there should have been?

The thrashing, beating water had gone still.

Carter had gone in.

He felt again that blind panic. Holding his breath...searching the water...shouting to his father who lay face-down, urging him to help find Hugo...

‘Papa!’ He’d urged him to wake up. ‘Hugo... Ulat...’

His hand had closed on something, and he’d frantically pulled—but it had just been roots and leaves, and he’d screamed to his father again. ‘Find him!’

Even then there had been the first stirrings of anger at his father, who lay motionless and incapable of helping find his son. Anger at his impetuous mother, who had stepped out of the boat without thought or care for the precious infant in her arms.

At some level he’d known his mother was dead, but he’d told himself the baby would have slipped out of the sling, that Ulat would rise, smiling like he did when they played in the pool. Surely? After all, there was no blood in the water...no sign that anything had occurred.

Then he’d looked to his father, still face-down, his arms spread, and it had been then that Carter had realised he stood in infested water.

His own sense of survival, the lessons from long days spent in the jungle with Arif, had kicked in.

Mortal danger.

He’d waded out, still searching the water with his hands, scanning the muddy edges for Hugo, calling out to him, unable to fathom that he was gone.

All of them were gone.

Gone.

He’d never cried, or screamed, and he didn’t now. He just sat there feeling again the winter, and the emptiness, the finality. And that was the part of the nightmare he never wanted to get to.

No, he hadn’t run for help. He’d wandered, dazed, knowing they were gone for ever.

And he’d loved them—his floaty mother, his hapless father, their passion and their slight craziness...

He thought of his father, his brief eye-roll before he’d called out to stop his wife. But it would have been like trying to halt the wind. Her passion, her longing for adventure, had been impossible to contain.

Carter’s anger was misdirected. It wasn’t at his family, nor even the animals who had simply been being true to their nature.

It was at himself.

He hadn’t stopped them, hadn’t called out, and he’d failed to protect his baby brother. Little Hugo, who had brought so much delight into the world, who in the chaos of a somewhat nomadic existence had, for Carter, been like a little beacon. Hugo’s routine had been a welcome dose of normality in a disorderly existence.

His heart thumped in his chest. And now there was nothing to show for his existence.

One thing.

Carter pulled the silver teething ring from his pocket and opened the pouch. His intention was to somehow return Hugo’s beloved teething ring, his comfort, to him. He saw the little teeth marks...and now he ran a finger over them and cried the tears he never had before.

It was the teething ring that had caused this. This place had been calling to him the night he’d been with Grace...

And now Carter knew why he was here.

---