Page 30

Chapter Thirty

A bigail sat cross-legged on the rough ground, unperturbed about getting dirt on her now baggy shorts. As the sun began its push toward the centre of the sky and a pale-yellow hue filtered through the trees, she forgot where she was for a while, pleasantly lost in the moment.

A drop of dew slipped down a long leaf, collecting other drops along its way to the lowest point, until it released and fell onto the dry ground creating a symmetrical splatter pattern in the dirt.

In the distance, she heard the call of a bird she didn’t recognise. Not that she was surprised. Before a few weeks ago, she’d never been into the jungle, never even thought about what kinds of birds lived in it, let alone listened to their different noises.

A large black ant walked toward her, and she blocked it with a stick. It stopped for a second and then tried another direction but again she thrust the stick in its path.

For nearly fifteen years she’d been like the ant and the stick was Spencer, always blocking her path, refusing her freedom. The thought came from nowhere, tumbling into focus amidst the ruins of her life.

Taking pity on the ant, she let it go and it disappeared into the underbrush.

Tossing the stick into the bush, she turned to see Mackenzie by the fire, humming a tune as his bloody hands removed the skin from a quoll he’d just killed.

She marvelled at how proficient he’d become at catching animals with a slingshot he made from one of her bras.

Choosing the bra had caused a heated debate. He’d insisted her most expensive one had the best elastic. In the end, she reluctantly sacrificed it and had watched with detached amusement as he tore it apart.

He was so proud of the resulting slingshot. At first he missed everything he shot at, but he was persistent and within days he hit most targets and from a fair distance too. Abigail no longer yearned for the bra—in fact most days she didn’t even bother wearing one. Spencer would have been horrified.

A sudden thought occurred to her. “How many days is it now?”

Several days after the crash, Mackenzie had begun making notches in a large gum tree, a constant reminder of how many days it was since the crash. At first she’d found it frustrating, then it became fascinating but now she barely even glanced at it. What was the point?

Mackenzie counted the notches with his bloody finger. “Sixty-three.”

“Oh.” She traced her fingernail along one of the dirty cracks in her heel. Once upon a time, this would have mortified her. But now …

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just … what do you think the date is? My birthday’s the 25th of June.”

“Okay, well we left on the twenty-fourth of April. Add sixty-three days that’d make it …” He rolled his eyes skyward as he calculated. “It could be your birthday. That’s amazing. Your subconscious was telling you something.”

Her heart was torn. She’d begged Spencer to organise a party for her and now he lay in a shallow grave, only a few steps away. She had grand plans for her celebration with over four hundred people coming from all over the world.

Instead, she was sharing her birthday with a man she’d only known for two months. Shrugging off her sorrow, she walked to the fire. “We had a huge party planned. A lovely white marquee was to be set up in the back garden with a jazz band and we booked the best caterers over a year ago. ”

She studied the fire, admiring the beauty of the dancing flames. “I was so annoyed with my friend Maxine, she wanted me to have a barbeque for something different.”

Abigail began to laugh and between breaths she said, “Oh my God, Maxine would be hysterical if she could see me now. I am having a barbeque and to top that off, I’m eating an animal that looks like a giant rat.”

She ran her fingers through her hair but gave up when she caught a knot. “She wanted to cook prawns, Moreton Bay bugs and lobster. Oh my, this is so funny.” Another thought occurred to her, and she stopped laughing. “I wonder if anyone cancelled the caterers.”

“I’m sure they would have. Well, birthday girl, how about I prepare a special dish for you?”

She twisted her diamond ring around her finger. “Mmm, that would be nice.”

“So, madam … how old are you today?”

“Forty. Forty and a widow.” This was the first time she’d spoken those words aloud and it surprised her that she didn’t feel anything. Both labels should horrify her, but instead she was completely numb. Or maybe she’d finally accepted them. Abigail looked for Mackenzie’s reaction, but he didn’t offer one. She cast her futile analysing aside. “So, what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. It’s your birthday. Why don’t you make some notes in your diary? I haven’t seen you do that for a while.”

“I think I’ll do a little reading instead.” She strolled toward the plane.

Prior to the crash, Abigail had religiously written in her diary, every day scribbling mundane thoughts onto the gold trimmed pages. But not long after the crash, she realised just how pathetic her journal was. Issues that previously seemed so important were trivial and meaningless.

Reading back on some of her entries she admitted she’d lived a shallow existence. She was a fraud. Every entry was contrived.

She’d learned more about herself in the last two months than she had in her lifetime and vowed she would not return to her nightly writing ritual until she could be honest with herself. She wanted to write what she was feeling without worrying about what people would think .

Owning her thoughts and expressing them freely were her greatest desires.

But she wasn’t quite ready yet.