The Baby Snatchers (17 page)

“It must be difficult to lose a newborn. How
do you cope with that?”

“Yes, it’s difficult, all right. Thankfully,
it doesn’t happen too often.”

“How often?”

She gazed at him for a moment, as if trying
to work out where his interest lay and then answered. “I’ve worked
as a midwife for two years. During that time, to my knowledge,
three babies have died. That’s three too many as far as I’m
concerned and each and every one of them broke my heart… But I’ve
learned to accept that sometimes bad things happen for no good
reason. Is it really our job to question why?”

He stared at her and his heart began to
pound. The three deaths she referred to were well below the fifteen
the general manager had mentioned, and the GM’s figures had been
drawn from only the previous twelve months of the twenty-four
Georgie had worked there.
Was Georgie really unaware of the
others, or was she lying?

His mind snagged on something else she’d
said: ‘Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason. Is it really
our job to question why?’
What the hell did she mean? Was she
implying she knew more about them, but didn’t feel at liberty to
say?
Was she sending him some sort of cryptic message? Or
did she really approach the tragedies with such a fatalistic
attitude?

He groaned under his breath. So many
unanswered questions were doing his head in. He prided himself on
being able to read people well, and yet from Georgie, he could
ascertain nothing. He was still of the opinion that she was a good
person with the kindest of hearts, and yet she appeared to accept
the deaths of the babies with a sense of fatalism he found a little
cold. He had to know more.

“Do you really believe bad things just
happen and there’s nothing you can do about it?”

Her eyes widened. She stared at him for a
long moment and then blinked and looked away. She lifted her glass
and sipped at her port and then exhaled on a heavy sigh.

“The truth is,” she began quietly, “I
want
to believe those deaths just happened. I have no
choice. If I believe otherwise, I’ll drive myself mad with guilt. I
birthed each of those three babies. I should have noticed there was
something wrong, something that would cause them to stop breathing
before the next day was done.”

She shook her head and stared at the floor,
her voice a low monotone. “I did the usual checks. Not one of those
babies showed any signs there was something wrong.”

“And yet there was.”

She looked up at him and his breath caught
at the pain in her eyes. Slowly, she nodded.

“Yes, there was. There
had
to be.
Nothing else makes sense.”

Cameron’s heart thumped at the raw emotion
on her face. Any doubt he’d been harboring that she was involved in
wrongful deaths—if there even
were
wrongful deaths—was swept
away like the cool breeze that blew in from Bondi Beach.

“My mother’s tried to reassure me that it
wasn’t my fault, but even with all of her years’ experience on a
labor ward, it’s so difficult to believe her. They were
my
babies. I was responsible for ensuring they would be all right. How
can their deaths be anything but my fault?”

Her voice broke and tears welled up in her
eyes. Without hesitation, Cam pushed away from his chair and went
to her. His only thought was to ease the suffering in her eyes.
He’d never be able to believe she was capable of deliberately
ending a baby’s life. She simply cared too much.

Taking her hand, he gently pulled her
upright and enfolded her in his arms. She collapsed against him and
cried softly into his shirt. Cam stroked her hair and down her back
and murmured words of comfort in her ear. Her devastation tore at
him. He’d always shied away from emotion, keeping himself removed,
but listening to her forlorn weeping was a difficult thing to
do.

At last, her crying eased to the occasional
hiccup and sob and he set her gently away from him. Swiping at the
dampness on her cheeks with the pad of his thumb, he stared down at
her ravaged face. Even in the dimness of the evening, he could see
her eyes were swollen and red. Her nose dripped. Her lip still
wobbled.

To him, she was still beautiful.

Powerless to stop himself, he slowly dipped
his head and captured her lips. Barely touching, he grazed her
mouth and heard her indrawn breath. He pulled away and stared at
her, sure that the desire that pounded through his veins was clear
to see.

Her eyes grew round and then flared with an
answering need. She stepped into him, closing the distance between
them and her arms went around his neck. Needing no further
encouragement, Cameron pressed her to him and kissed her like there
was no tomorrow. And for that moment, it seemed the truth.

She tasted warm and sweet and heady, like
the port she’d recently consumed. With a groan, his tongue swept
over hers and danced inside her mouth. She matched his passion,
kiss for kiss, until his body raged with fire. Somewhere, in the
back of his mind, a tiny voice urged caution.

They were outside on his balcony. It was no
place to make love. Inside, his young sister slept in one of the
spare rooms. Now was not the time to have their passion get out of
control, no matter how much he wanted it to. Knowing it was the
only thing he could do, he eased away from her and loosened her
arms from around his neck.

“Hey, sweetheart, we need to stop. We need
to slow things down.”

She stared up at him, her eyes dark with
need and confusion. She blinked once and then blinked again.
Slowly, reason appeared in her eyes. Almost immediately, a blush
raced across her cheeks. She stepped away from him, like she’d been
burned.

“I’m sorry. Oh, my goodness! I don’t know
what came over me! I’m sorry, Cameron. My God, I barely know you. I
don’t normally do this; fall to pieces and then kiss men I barely
know. Please, can we just forget it ever happened?”

Cameron pressed a finger against her lips in
an effort to silence her increasingly frantic speech. “Georgie,
it’s okay. Stop apologizing. I was a willing participant. In fact,
I initiated it, remember?”

She blushed again and turned away. He almost
smiled at her discomfort, enjoying the thought that his kiss had
left her so frazzled, but he held himself back, knowing she
wouldn’t take kindly to his mirth.

“I-I should be going,” she stammered and
opened the sliding door.

He followed her inside, understanding her
need to flee. Things had moved fast. His head was spinning, too. It
was probably best for both of them that they call it a night.

She gathered her handbag from where she’d
left it on a small table by the front door and then turned to him.
“Thank you for dinner. It was lovely.”

“It’s the least I could do after what you
did for Cynthia. She had a fantastic time and I know the
excursion’s done wonders for her state of mind. She looks so much
better already. I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s fine. I was happy to do it for her. It
won’t go anywhere toward making up for the loss of her baby, but
it’s all I could think of to do.”

Cam frowned. “I hope you’re not blaming
yourself for what happened to Josephine?”

Georgie shrugged and turned away. “Of course
I’m blaming myself. What else would you expect me to do?”

Cam drew in a deep breath and exhaled
slowly. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m sure Cynthia doesn’t
blame you.”

“That might be so, but I… I can’t help
it.”

“Sometimes bad things just happen, right?
Isn’t that what you said? Get this: I’m adopted. My birth mother
didn’t care for me enough to want to keep me. She handed me over
for strangers to raise, and hell, they did a terrible job. But I
don’t blame myself.” He stared at her long and hard and then
shrugged. “Sometimes bad things just happen.”

She held his gaze. It gave him no
satisfaction to notice the color had leached from her cheeks. Her
eyes were huge in her pale face, wide and uncertain and clouded
with fear.

Fear?
What the hell did she have to
be afraid of? No, he must have been mistaken.

“I-I have to go,” she stammered, averting
her face.

He frowned in confusion, but silently turned
away. He undid the security lock and opened the front door. She
made a move to leave. Halfway through the doorway, she turned and
shot him a sad smile. “Thanks again for dinner. Cynthia’s right.
You do a mean barbeque.”

And with that, she was gone.

Dear Diary,

Every now and then, usually deep in the
night, I wonder if I’ve made the right decision; if I’ve chosen the
right path. It happens most often when one of the women stare at me
with their sad, haunted eyes, mourning the loss of their child. It
is then, I find it hard to sleep and I am plagued by
uncertainty.

Most of the time, of course, I’m content
with my choices and not even a thunderstorm raging outside my
window can wake me. So many mothers battling crippling addictions.
They have no place raising a child.

A child needs love and security, comforts
only money can bring. These women are destitute, living off the
streets, with no further thought but their next fix.

Yes, all things considered, I’ve made the
right decision. Of that, I’m…mostly certain…

* * *

Georgie pressed the stethoscope against the
chest of the tiny baby who lay in the hospital crib. She counted
his heartbeats. With his pulse still fast and erratic and his body
jerking spasmodically—even in his sleep—the poor little thing
continued to show signs he was suffering acute withdrawal from
methamphetamines. His mom was passed out in her bed, sleeping off
her own enforced meth withdrawal. She’d barely spent twenty minutes
with her son over the course of Georgie’s eight-hour shift.

Her heart broke at the thought of the baby
who was, as yet, oblivious to the hardships he’d be forced to
endure from the moment he and his mom left the safety and security
of the post-natal ward. The likelihood of developmental delays and
learning difficulties and the fact his mother lived on the streets
and seemed totally uninterested in seeking help or improving her
circumstances—for either her, or her son—all pointed to a bleak
future. Georgie had already put in a call to FACS, but as yet, she
hadn’t seen a staff member on the ward. It was the same old,
depressing story.

Usually, when she pondered the hopelessness
of it all, it got her down, but today, nothing could take the glow
off her memories of the evening she’d spent with Cam. Except the
part where he’d talked about his adoptive parents and birth
mother.

It was obvious from the anger and bitterness
in his voice that he had major issues regarding his adoption. The
knowledge unsettled her. He thought his birth mother didn’t care
enough about him to keep him. Is that how
her
son felt about
the mother he’d never met?

Until then, the night had been like
something out of a fairytale. Their conversation around the dinner
table had been warm and spontaneous, with none of the uncomfortable
silences she usually experienced when she dined with a man she
barely knew.

Granted, Cynthia had been present for most
of the time, but Cam’s little sister had seemed content to sit and
eat and listen to the conversation flow around her and had only
made the occasional contribution. It was Cam who made it easy. He
had a natural grace and charm that Georgie had initially mistaken
for arrogance. The fact that he was sinfully good-looking only
added to his appeal. He was solicitous of his sister and asked
questions about Georgie’s work. He appeared genuinely interested in
her responses. And afterwards, out on the balcony, they’d
kissed.

And what a kiss! At the memory of his lips
on hers, heat crept up Georgie’s neck. Never in her twenty-nine
years had she been kissed so…thoroughly. He kissed like a man who
knew what he was doing and who sought to give as much pleasure as
he received. It was only when he’d called a halt to their
increasingly heated embrace that she’d been embarrassed at her
uninhibited response.

Not that he seemed to mind. She was sure he
was as attracted to her as she was to him. If it weren’t for the
adoption issue, she’d be skipping over the clouds. She thought
again of how he’d spoken about the fact he was adopted and dread
settled heavily in her stomach.

Would the fact that she’d put her baby up
for adoption at seventeen be a deal breaker? Would he judge her as
harshly as he judged his birth mother? When he said he’d been put
up for adoption because his birth mother didn’t care, she’d wanted
to shout out in protest. It might not have been like that. It
hadn’t been that way for her.

She’d wanted her son like she wanted to keep
breathing. Signing the adoption papers had been like severing a
limb. She’d died a thousand deaths and her heart was always heavy.
There hadn’t been a day pass since when she didn’t think about him
and hope that he was safe and happy.

But her relationship with Cam—if she could
even call it that—was so fresh and new and fragile, she didn’t know
if it was strong enough to put to the test. She liked him. She
really liked him. And now she was terrified a decision she’d made
in her past would tear them apart, before they’d even had a
chance.

No, the best thing to do would be to stay
quiet. There was no need for him to know, at least, for now. Her
past was her past. The decision she’d made as a teenager could stay
hidden, deep inside her heart.

If her relationship with Cam deepened into
something more substantial, something more permanent, then perhaps
she’d take the risk and share it with him. If they cared enough
about each other for her to share her innermost secrets, then she
could only hope he would love her enough to understand.