LITMIR.BIZ

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tilted his head to catch her words. ‘Did you say something, Piper?’

      ‘Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum.’

      Finn felt the tightness crunch his sternum as if someone had grabbed his shirt and dug their nails into his chest. Guilt. Because he hadn’t found her. He closed his eyes for a second. Nothing should be this hard. ‘Try Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad,’ he said past the tightness in his throat.

      Obediently Piper chanted in her musical little voice, ‘Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad.’

      ‘Clever girl.’ His mouth lifted this time and he felt a brief piercing of warmth from another beam of light in his cave-like existence.

      Which was why he’d moved here. To make himself shift into the light. For Piper. And it did seem to be working. Something about this place, this haven of ocean and sand and cliffs and smiling people like the morning midwife soothed his ragged nerves and restored his faith in finding a way into the future.

      A future he needed to create for Piper. Always the jolliest baby, now giggling toddler and all-round ray of puppy-like delight, Piper had kept him sane mainly because he had to greet each day to meet her needs.

      His sister had said Piper had begun to look sad. Suspected she wasn’t happy in the busy day care. Didn’t see enough of her dad when he worked long hours. And he’d lifted his head and seen what his sister had seen.

      Piper had been clingy. Harder to leave when he dropped her off at the busy centre. Drooping as he dressed her for ‘school’ in the morning. Quiet when he picked her up ten hours later.

      Of course he needed to get a life and smile for his daughter. So he’d listened when his sister suggested he take a break from the paediatric practice where he’d continued as if on autopilot. Maybe escape to a place one of her friends had visited recently, where he knew no one, and heal for a week or two, or even a month for his daughter’s sake. Maybe go back part-time for a while and spend more time with Piper. So he’d come. Here. To Lighthouse Bay.

      Even on the first day it had felt right, just a glimmer of a breakthrough in the darkness, and he’d known it had been a good move.

      The first morning in the guesthouse, when he’d walked the beach with Piper on his back, he’d felt a stirring of the peace he had found so elusive in his empty, echoing, accusing house. Saw the girl with the smile. Said, ‘Good morning.’

      After a few days he’d rented a cottage just above the beach for a week to avoid the other boisterous guests—happy families and young lovers he didn’t need to talk to at breakfast—and moved to a place more private and offering solitude, but the inactivity of a rented house had been the exact opposite to what he needed.

      Serendipitously, the cottage next door to that had come up for sale—Would suit handyman—which he’d never been. He was not even close to handy. Impulsively, after he’d discussed it with Piper, who had smiled and nodded and gurgled away his lack of handyman skills with great enthusiasm, he’d bought it. Then and there. The bonus of vacant possession meant an immediate move in even before the papers were signed.

      He had a holiday house at the very least and a home if he never moved back to his old life. Radical stuff for a single parent, escaped paediatrician, failed husband, and one who had been used to the conveniences of a large town.

      The first part of the one big room he’d clumsily beautified was Piper’s corner and she didn’t mind the smudges here and there and the chaos of spackle and paint tins and drip sheets and brushes.

      Finally, he’d stood back with his daughter in his arms and considered he might survive the next week and maybe even the one after that. The first truly positive achievement he’d accomplished since Clancy left.

      Clancy left.

      How many times had he tried to grasp that fact? His wife of less than a year had walked away. Run, really. Left him, left her day-old daughter, and disappeared. With another man, if the private investigator had been correct. But still a missing person. Someone who in almost twelve months had never turned up in a hospital, or a morgue, or on her credit card. He had even had the PI check if she was working somewhere but that answer had come back as a no. And his sister, who had introduced them, couldn’t find her either.

      Because of the note she’d given the midwives, the police had only been mildly interested. Hence the PI.

      Look after Piper. She’s yours. Don’t try to find me. I’m never coming back.

      That was what the note had said. The gossip had been less direct. He suspected what the questions had been. Imagined what the midwives had thought. Why did his wife leave him? What did he do to her? It must have been bad if she left her baby behind...

      The ones who knew him well shook their heads and said, She’d liked her freedom too much, that one.

      At first he’d been in deep shock. Then denial. She’d come back. A moment’s madness. She’d done it before. Left for days. With the reality of a demanding newborn and his worry making it hard for him to sleep at all, his work had suffered. But his largest concern had been the spectre of Clancy with an undiagnosed postnatal depression. Or, worse, the peril of a postnatal psychosis. What other reason could she have for leaving so suddenly so soon after the birth?

      Hence he’d paid the private investigator, because there were no forensic leads—the police were inundated with more important affairs than flighty wives. But still no word. All he could do was pray she was safe, at least.

      So life had gone on. One painful questioning new morning after another. Day after day with no relief. He hadn’t been able to do his job as well as he should have and he’d needed a break from it all.

      Buying the cottage had been a good move. Piper stood and cheered him on in her cot when he was doing something tricky, something that didn’t need to have a lively little octopus climb all over him while he did it, and she waved her fists and gurgled and encouraged him as he learnt to be a painter. Or a carpenter. Or a tiler.

      Or a cook. Or a cleaner. Or a dad.

      He was doing okay.

      He threw a last look out over the beach towards the grey sea and turned for home. ‘That’s our walk done for this morning, chicken. Let’s go in and have breakfast. Then you can have a sleep and Daddy will grout those tiles in the shower so we can stop having bird baths in the sink.’

      Piper loved the shower. Finn did too. When he held her soft, squirming satin baby skin against his chest, the water making her belly laugh as she ducked her head in and out of the stream always made him smile. Sometimes even made him laugh.

      So he’d spent extra time on the shower. Adding tiles with animals, starfish, moon shapes and flowers, things they could talk about and keep it a happy place for Piper. And he’d made a square-tiled base with a plug. Soon she could have a little bath. One she could splash in even though it was only the size of the shower.

      Doing things for Piper kept him sane. He didn’t need the psychologist his sister said he did, or the medication his brother-in-law recommended. Just until he’d climbed out of the hole he’d dug himself to hide in, he would stay here. In Lighthouse Bay. Where nobody pointed or pitied him and every corner didn’t hold a memory that scraped like fingernails on the chalkboard of his heavy heart.

      Except that around the next corner his heart froze for a millisecond to see the morning midwife crouched on the path in front of him.

      He quickened his pace. ‘Are you okay?’

      She turned to look up at him, cradling something brightly coloured against her chest, and with the shift of her shoulders he saw the bird cupped in her hands. ‘She flew into that window and knocked herself out.’

      The lorikeet, blue-headed with a red and yellow chest, lay limp with lime-green wings folded back in her hands. A most flaccid bird.

      Still, the red beak and chest shuddered gently so it wasn’t dead. ‘How do you know it’s a girl?’ He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. But he’d actually thought it was her that

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