Page 60 of A Home Among the Snow Gums
She dropped her head to snuffle at his hair and he gave her warm neck a scratch.
He wasn’t even aware of the tears running down his face until he heard the hum of an electric motor and theker-thunk ker-thunksound of wheels struggling over the cobbled floor of the stable.
‘Tom?’
It was Bruno. And he was holding out his lined, sun-damaged hand.
‘Son. You want to tell me what’s wrong?’
CHAPTER
20
A month of hard work and dodgy sleep and training in Kev’s freezing paddock flew by.
Yoga was no longer the long-running joke Hannah was trying to avoid, but something she looked forward to. She had a string of happy patients, she’d said hello to a tourist in the park and, what’s more,chattedwith them, and she’d paid off the camera lens debt that had been weighing down her credit card.
She’d even taken—with Kylie hovering nearby like a proud mumma bear—a selfie of her and Skipjack and had it printed in a frame to sit on her desk.
She’d decided an adult would go talk to their GP about a single woman with a depressive episode in her past wanting to have a baby on her own, so she’d booked herself in, talked herself ragged and then cried (again—she was blaming it on hormones) when the GP told her she was a competent young woman who could do anything she put her mind to.
She had a list of fertility clinics to try when she felt ready and there was even—seriously, who knew?—an app for choosing a donor! If she’d spent a ridiculous amount of time scrolling through for attributes liketall, brooding, looks good in an Akubra, dances like a tall Fred Astaire, so what? That was her little secret.
Hannah pulled the bridle over Skipjack’s wide head, rubbing his ears as she slid the leather straps into the correct position. Becoming a mother was doable. She just needed to decide if she was ready, and she needed to stop hiding her dream in the shadows and be up front about it with Josh and her parents and the rest of the Hanrahan locals who liked to look out for her.
Only … her dream had shifted.
She wasn’t sure how or when exactly the shift had occurred, but every time she allowed herself to think about what her future might look like, there was always another person in the hazy picture in her head.
Tom. With his arms around her.Withher.
‘I have a horrible suspicion, Skippy,’ she said to her horse and confidante, ‘that this might be the love thing Kylie is always going on about.’
Skipjack gently headbutted her in the shoulder.
‘I know, my handsome lad, it’s awful. I’m as freaked out by it as you are. Officially URSTed.’
She swung her leg over his broad back and clip-clopped out of the stables into the cold morning. Skipjack blew plumes of white mist. Autumn had arrived, and early snow lay in the hollows of the mountains shadowing the lake. She’d had to attack her windscreen with her brand-new Hanrahan Library membership card to scrape the frost off this morning.
Her phone chirruped in her jacket pocket and she sighed. Josh had been clucking about her like a mother hen for so long she was beginning to wish he and Vera would just announce they had a baby on the way so the attention would move off her and her idiocy and onto their good news.
She was fine, damn it. Fine!
To be truthful, she was the finest she’d been in a very long time. Maybe having that blowout after the wedding at Lake George had been cathartic. For her, at least. She doubted it had been fun for Tom, but he had broad shoulders. He’d get over her making a cake of herself in front of him. The bloke was like an emotionless rock.
‘You hear that, Skip? I’m in love with an emotionless rock.’
She contemplated ignoring the phone message. She wasn’t on call, after all. But still, for some dramas, four vet hands were better than two. She pulled her phone out and checked the screen.
Let’s talk.
Crap. Not Josh. Tom had taken to messaging her every few days, always the same two words.
Let’s talk.
Let’s talk.
Let’s talk.
