Sarah's Baby Read Online Free Page A

she’d been made pregnant by the great love of her life, the only love, and she was into her thirty-first year now, with all her friends either married or getting married. But she couldn’t forget Kyall and the wonder of loving him. His spirit, like their baby’s, was locked up inside her. Internalized. She carried Kyall within her, and his presence in her life sometimes seemed so real it was as if he was there, melting her spine with love of him. Other times she hated him with a shocking intensity, lowering herself to curse him to hell. How could he have abandoned her? Kyall McQueen, her soul mate. They’d each shadowed the other, despite the opposition of the all-powerful Ruth McQueen, his grandmother, and his mother, Enid. Even her own mother had found their unique bond a source of great worry.
    â€œYou can’t be so daft, Sarah, as to think anything good can come of this. They’re the McQueens! God almighty, they’re royalty to the rest of us. We’re nothing, nobodies. It takes all my time to put clothes on your back and shoes on your feet. With your father gone…” Here her mother used to choke on her tears.
    In the end, her dear sweet mother had been right. A few secret hours spent together one starry night, one single glorious starry night cocooned in the bush, and she’d gotten pregnant when she was little more than a child. So much for Miss Crompton’s pleasure and pride in her! Her whole future ruined. Kyall’s splendid future already mapped out. Master of Wunnamurra, one of the country’s most historic sheep stations. Kyall had been born not with a silver spoon in his mouth but the whole goddamn service.
    Ruth McQueen had snatched her away from the town. Snatched her away from Kyall. Forced her devastated mother to keep her mouth shut about Sarah’s baby. But theterrible hurt… How many times had Sarah gone to the phone during those long months of waiting, wanting to scream that she had to speak to Kyall. Of course they’d never have let her. Finally she believed what Ruth McQueen kept telling her. She would destroy Kyall’s young life. She would ruin her own chances, having a baby so young.
    â€œMy dear, what you need is an abortion,” Ruth had told her, voice very calm, very firm. “I can arrange it. Afterward I’ll see to it that you have a good education. A private school in Brisbane. You would board. Harriet Crompton keeps telling me ad nauseam that you’re a very clever girl, although you haven’t been terribly clever about this, have you, my dear?”
    She had been shocked at Ruth McQueen’s utter callousness, especially when the baby in her womb was Ruth’s great-grandchild. She had told the woman what she thought of her murderous suggestion, her own voice every bit as determined as that tyrant’s. She believed that abortion was wrong, and she wasn’t about to cower before Ruth McQueen. When she first knew she was pregnant, she was wild with panic like some trapped animal, but it didn’t take all that long for her to settle down. She felt almost calm. Full of wonder. She would have the most beautiful child ever known to woman. Her child. Kyall’s child. Her baby would have turquoise eyes like his, olive skin, blue-black curls. Her next baby would look like her. A brown-eyed blonde with a little dimple in her chin.
    But she had lost her baby. She only remembered its little body lying on hers, its darling little head pressed into her shoulder while she crooned words of love. She’d felt that rush of maternal love, even exhausted and foggy from all the medication they’d given her. How her baby had hurt her coming out! The pain. Agony, really. She awoke sometimes at night crying out with that remembered pain. It was like being on the rack. The tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. And for what?
    She learned the next morning from Ruth. Believing but never quite believing,