Page 15 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
At four o’clock on Saturday morning, the wind dropped. An omen? The leaves of the snow gum outside Hannah’s bedroom window, which could usually be counted on to murmur and chatter like old friends sharing gossip, were quiet.
The bustle of downtown Hanrahan, with its population a static 760 if the painted sign on the outskirts of town was to be believed, was likewise non-existent. One of the council’s fancy wrought-iron streetlights threw a golden glow onto the footpath below, but at this hideously sleepless hour, no other lights were visible.
Hannah leant into the deep windowsill and looked the other way, down Salt Creek Flats Road. No rattle of diesel engines. No scamper of possums along the powerlines. Even the summer cicadas had shut up, which would have been a blessing seven hours ago, but now she kind of missed them.
If she was asleep, of course, none of this eerie quiet would be a problem, but … yeah. She wasn’t.
Tiptoeing silently downstairs past the first floor flat where Josh was cosied up to Vera wasn’t easy in the heritage-listed, Federation-era building she and her brother had inherited from their grandparents. The creaks in the floorboards squabbled almost as much as the residents.
A bit of pre-dawn sneaking into the office down on the ground floor wasn’t a wise move either: it would stir up the cats (three), dogs (one snake-bite-recovery patient) and echidna (a roadside rescue) in the sleepover room. Breakfast and wee-wee time for the inmates of the Cody and Cody Vet Clinic started at six o’clock and not a second before. She’d written it on the whiteboard in large capitals, just to remind them—but, to be fair, none of the animals could read. If they heard her, they’d set up a cacophony that would wake the household.
She looked at her watch. Ten minutes had dragged themselves past since she’d last looked, which was ominous. The busy day ahead was still hours away, which sucked, because busy was good.
Busy kept the quiet at bay, and finding busywork was Hannah’s special skill. In the bath? Have a book handy. Driving out to an animal-in-labour emergency? Perfect time to catch up on that true crime podcast she loved. Day off? Skipjack needed his training session and grooming and to be assured of how handsome he was, and the glass-fronted cabinetry at The Billy Button Café needed to be inspected for new treats. Graeme or Kylie or the Joneses were usually on hand to chat with.
Usually.
Hunting for Sandy’s secret stash of chocolate biscuits was another excellent quiet-time-avoidance tactic, and lasted for ages, too, because the hiding spot had never yet been breached.
Hannah rested her head on the newly painted window frame and sighed. She’d known—for months now, ever since The Incident—that lurking in the quiet were questions that she was too chicken to answer.
Trouble was, the questions were starting to get louder, and every time she saw (and then avoided) Tom Krauss, she was having a harder and harder time ignoring them.
Emotional, messed-up, troublesome questions were part of it:Why am I never content? Why do I feel like I’ve sutured myself up but the scar has never stopped weeping? Why do I keep everyone at a distance?
Well, her resolution was going to fix all that.
Hannah Cody is going to have a baby.Oh yes, that dimmed the messed-up stuff, all right. This wasgoodemotion.Warmemotion.Wrap your arms about yourself and smileemotion. Concentrating on the good stuff had to be the right move. Making the good stuff happen had to be the right choice.
She reached over to the bedside table for her phone and called up the searches she’d bookmarked earlier. Of the fertility clinics that had popped up, three were in driving distance from Hanrahan: Albury (320 kilometres), Wagga Wagga (283 kilometres), and Canberra (120 kilometres). If she were to make a graph (which was an awesome idea and if it wasn’t 4.27 am she might’ve) and put two of her greatest anxiety triggers on the axes—distance to travel on the x, versus population of destination on the y—which place would come out the winner?
She did the maths in her head. Wagga Wagga won out over Albury, and it had the added benefit of being the same town as where she’d attended vet school. But it was a heck of a return day trip, and while she’d driven between there and home frequently as a student, her reluctance to leave Hanrahan hadn’t been as acute back then. It had grown over the years, like moss grew over stone, making all the hard bits a little more comfortable.
Canberra made the most sense, time wise.
But Canberra made the least sense, people wise.
Which was why, she thought, dropping her phone onto the bedside table, there was a lot more riding on her first draft than successfully cutting out a steer. In just a few hours from now, she’d be socialising in a strange place, with people she didn’t know and with no control over when she got to depart.
She shivered and burrowed back under the doona.
She could do it.
Shehadto do it.
Saturday morning clinic usually ran late and today was no exception. Hannah had finished with her last patient, a lanky kelpie with a lump on its tail which required a blood sample to send off to the pathologist in Cooma, and was setting up a tray of used scalpels and tweezers to run through the autoclave when her phone pinged.
Hmm. Her brother was literally two metres away through a plaster wall. She’d heard him fart from this distance, so why would—
911. Act cool.
She frowned at her phone screen for a second until it twigged. A dog had died. No, an owner was on the rampage about their vet bill. A medical mishap! Josh had cut his finger off or was being strangled by some kid’s pet python (and yet could still type out text messages) and Vera would have a conniption and—
On my way, she texted, wondering how on earthact coolwas relevant to a veterinary drama, then hit the corridor at a run. She flung the door open to the second treatment room, ready for blood spatter or trashed equipment or angry faces and found—
Josh standing on one side of the waist-high stainless steel bench that had cost the best half of a grand to install. On the other side was a gangly kid whose face she couldn’t quite see, but who looked vaguely familiar. Between them lay a cardboard box. A sneaker box, by the looks, in size ginormous. Holes had been gouged in its sides with a blunt object.
‘Um. Hey, guys,’ she said.
