Page 128 of Under Southern Stars
As I leave the study, my emotions are a violent storm—horror at Troy’s true nature, guilt over not protecting Madison better, fear for her future relationship with her father, and overwhelming gratitude toward Jack that threatens to drown out everything else.
The wealth deception is still real. The broken trust still needs repair. But Jack’s quiet protection of Madison without seeking credit or advantage reveals something essential about his character that I can’t ignore.
It is time to have an honest conversation—about everything.
CHAPTER FORTY
JACK
Dusk settles over the sanctuary, painting the dense native bush in shades of gold and amber. Silver ferns unfurl at the edges of the path, their undersides catching what little light remains. The air carries the earthy scent of damp soil and native herbs, a primordial fragrance unique to New Zealand’s ancient forests. I follow the familiar path deeper into the gully, away from the estate’s manicured grounds, seeking solitude in the one place that has always brought me peace.
My mind won’t stop replaying the scene from the boat—that tiny, still baby in my hands, skin bluish, umbilical cord having been wrapped around his neck. In all my years as a paramedic, few moments have terrified me more than that silent newborn, the mother’s panicked question hanging in the air: “Why isn’t he crying?”
I’d kept my face neutral, my hands steady, but inside I’d been screaming. The improvised bulb syringe had been pure desperation, muscle memory from similar situations, albeit with proper equipment. Those seconds between clearing the airway and hearing that first indignant cry had stretched into eternity.
We’d been lucky. So lucky.
I pause at the entrance to one of the observation hides, leaning against the wooden structure, allowing myself to feel the full weight of what could have happened.
It wasn’t the first time I’d stood at the edge of life and death like that. Unbidden, the memory surfaces—one of my first major trauma calls as a new medic in the city. A pregnant woman, thirty-four weeks along, involved in a high-speed rollover on the Beltway. When we get there, she is unresponsive, barely a pulse. Her husband had been driving—dazed but conscious, screaming her name through the cracked windshield.
We work her in the back of the rig, hands slick with blood, compressions bouncing both mother and baby with each desperate cycle. I remember shouting vitals to the hospital over the radio, begging for a trauma bay and OB team to be standing by. I remember the smell of diesel and adrenaline. I remember her eyes—open, but gone.
They do a postmortem C-section right there in the ER trauma bay. We keep compressions going while pulled her onto the table, trying to buy them seconds. Just seconds. But it was already too late.
They deliver the baby anyway, tiny, blue, and impossibly still. I stand there, chest heaving, still wearing the blood we’d fought through to get her there. And I watch as the OB team calls time.
I draw a shaky breath, the memory still raw despite the years. Today could have gone the same way. One small deviation—a slower response, a less effective makeshift suction, a more severe complication—and that baby might not have taken his first breath.
What strikes me most, thinking back on the emergency, is Sophia’s unshakable calm. She’d handled the precipitous delivery, the nuchal cord, everything with the same quiet competence she brings to the ER. Never once letting Hannahsee the danger, never breaking the fiction that everything was proceeding normally, protecting that new mother from the terror of how close they’d come to tragedy.
I’d known Sophia was extraordinary from the very first time I’d dropped a patient off at Metro General, and got to see her work. Seeing her in that crisis, maintaining her composure while literally holding lives in her hands…it had only confirmed what I already knew.
She was the strongest person I’d ever met.
And I’d betrayed her trust completely.
The sanctuary is quiet around me, the kiwis not yet emerging for their nightly foraging. I move to a fallen log and sit heavily, the weight of everything—the near miss on the boat, the situation with Sophia, my own deception—crushing down on me.
From this secluded spot, I can see a slice of the main house in the distance, lights glowing warmly against the darkening sky. Sophia and Madison are in there, probably enjoying dinner with my family, while I hide in the woods like a coward.
The sound of footsteps on the path startles me. No one comes to the sanctuary at this hour except—
“Jack?”
Sophia’s voice, soft in the gathering darkness. I turn to see her silhouetted against the fading light, her figure unmistakable even in shadow.
“Here,” I call, my voice rougher than intended.
She approaches cautiously, picking her way along the path with careful steps. As she draws closer, I can see she’d beencrying—her eyes puffy, her usually composed features drawn with emotion.
“Are you okay?” she asks, stopping a few feet away.
The simple question—her concern for me despite everything—breaks something inside me. A laugh that is more like a sob escapes my throat.
“No,” I admit, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Not really.”
She hesitates, then moves to sit beside me on the log, close but not touching. “What’s wrong?”
