Read an extract from Finding Joy in Oyster Bay by Susan Duncan.
Sam Scully woke in a panic and threw back the sheet. He strode across the short distance to his daughter’s crib and laid a finger on the downy softness of her cheek, listening for the rise and fall of her breath. He exhaled with relief.
I’ve had a nightmare, he thought, his pulse steadying again.
Not an uncommon syndrome among first-time parents, or so he’d been warned. He straightened the baby’s blanket and sat on the edge of the spare bed in the nursery, where he’d slept each night since offering to take on the midnight and four a.m. bottle-feeding shifts. He rested his arms on his knees and dropped his head in his hands, still uneasy.
A man who earned his living at the mercy of the sea, he knew to trust his instincts, so he rose quietly and padded down the hallway of Kate’s house, avoiding the squeaky floorboard he’d discovered when he and Kate, his ex— the mother of his child— still shared the same bed. Very carefully, he nudged open Kate’s door.
He sensed stillness. ‘Kate?’ he whispered. No answer, so he repeated her name, loudly now. He fumbled for the light switch. Stood at the foot of a bed that had been stripped bare and was unoccupied. Quickly, he checked the kitchen, the veranda. Spun around, groping to make sense of Kate’s absence. A note, he thought, there must be a note. He slapped his cheeks to bring himself back to his senses and checked his phone.
Four a.m. The witching hour, Kate had told him back in the days when they’d thought they might have a future together. ‘ “The very witching time of night”? From Hamlet,’ she’d said, adding ‘Shakespeare’ in an emphatic tone that was tart with condescension.
Sam had asked if she knew what a grown knee meant in boat building, hoping she’d get the point: one person’s measure of intelligence did not necessarily indicate another person’s ignorance.
Later, he’d looked up the meaning of witching hour and found a very murky history about devils, witches and full moons, all predating Shakespeare, but he’d kept his mouth shut. The woman he’d chosen to love above all others, for reasons he’d never be able to explain, could rip out his heart merely by pulling her lips into a thin straight line and turning her head slightly away, her dark hair half falling over her face to conceal her disapproval.
4.01 a.m. No message.
Sam returned to the nursery, took another moment to look in on his peacefully sleeping daughter and then went back to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Kate had done a runner. He was sure of it. She had a history of disappearing without the common sense or good manners to explain where she was going. After her mother, Emily, died, Kate vanished for a day or two. Soon after, without saying a word, she made a secret trip to England to chase down the truth of her mother’s deathbed revelation that she had a halfbrother.
At the time, he’d excused her behaviour as the result of grief and shock. It was the lack of communication, though, that left everyone confused and rushing to fill in holes. The question was: how long would she be gone this time? He filled the kettle, turned it on. Reached for the coffee. Instant. He needed a bigger hit than a cuppa, and anyway, Kate’s posh range of tea required too much finesse to brew in this hour of witches.
While the kettle hummed, he stepped outside and leaned on the veranda rails, trying to think through options. Smelled the briny tang of Oyster Bay at low tide, the rich fecundity of the mangroves on the far shore, and heard the swallowing sound of sea nudging sandbanks. Feeling cold in the early morning air, he rubbed his hands on his bare arms and went back inside. The first month of autumn, but if he’d read the signs right, winter would come early.
He found the only decently large mug in the back of a cupboard, where Kate must have shoved it after they’d gone their separate ways and before he’d returned to help care for their child.
He spooned in a serious amount of coffee granules and two sugars. Poured on boiling water and closed his eyes to inhale the aroma. Not bad for instant, he thought, but it would never replace the real deal. He added milk and returned to the open air where he did his best thinking. On the far side of the bay, the rough tops of the escarpment, rising and dipping, were dark cut-outs against the night sky. A shadowy grey gloom blanketed the smooth water.
In a couple of hours, the sun would strike the peak of the waterfall and in less time than an impatient sigh, the bay would catch fire, the sea pulse.
Sam thought about his situation. He was a single dad for the foreseeable future, with a six-month-old baby to care for. He was also a barge man who earned his living hauling cargo in the bays and waterways of Cook’s Basin, a quirky little offshore community where the only roads were waterways and if you didn’t have a boat, it was a long swim to get home. The job wasn’t an ideal fit for taking on child care as well, but he would make it work. Claire would be a barge baby. A kid who would learn to read the weather long before learning the ABC. A kid who would know how to spread her feet for balance when a stink boat passed at top speed, creating a head-high wake. A kid who would see the love in his eyes, sense the tenderness in his calloused seaman’s hands, understand she was cherished beyond all reason and that he, her father, would do everything in his power to keep her safe: lay down his life for her, if necessary.
He felt overwhelming sadness for Kate, a woman so splintered, fractured, emotionally damaged that she’d abandoned her baby and fled. Yet, God almighty, who wasn’t flawed? In Cook’s Basin, it was seen as a badge of honour, a sign of creative individuality, a trait handled with forgiveness (if necessary) and understanding (also known as patience), when required. He straightened up. Did he mean flawed (in a deeply human way) or emotionally unstable? He slumped. How could he know the truth? Kate embraced secrecy like a religion. If she ever felt she’d exposed a corner of her mind, she’d rush to use politeness and concern as a diversion. On the rare occasions he felt he was making headway in their communications and he felt confident enough to suggest talking through a problem or issue, he’d find himself isolated on the other side of a solid brick wall without even a window. Leaving Claire, though, was a decision— had he been forced to make it—that would have haunted him for life. Might have even killed him. He drained his coffee. Told himself not to think himself into a bottomless pit, and whistling quietly, went inside to prepare Claire’s food. A barge baby. It had a good, solid ring to it.
He tested the warmth of the milk on his wrist and went down the hallway without worrying about the squeaky floorboard. Claire was wide awake in her crib, kicking her legs, waving her arms then stuffing a fist in her mouth, gumming her knuckles. He lifted her high and caught the whiff of a dirty nappy.
‘It’s just you and I kid, or is it you and me? Your mother isn’t here to lay down the law right now, so let’s stick with whatever feels right.’ Soon, with her tummy full of milk again, Claire failed to fight off sleep, and he laid her back in the crib and tiptoed out to the veranda. He should let Kate know that he was more than fine about taking full responsibility for the baby for as long as she wanted him to, that she should be untroubled by her decision to take some time for herself. It would have been preferable if she’d told him her plans, but he’d keep that little nugget of reproach to himself. He punched in her number. Inside the house, a phone rang. He followed the sound to Kate’s bedroom, dragged a phone from under the pillow and was gripped with fear.
He tried to remember what they’d talked about last night, whether she’d thrown him hints she wasn’t coping and he’d failed to hear them, but came up blank. It had been a night like any other. He’d arrived after dinner, looked in on his sleeping child, and spent a few minutes discussing Claire’s progress. Was it her first smile or wind? Was the rash on her bottom minor, or did it require treatment during the night? Should she have an extra blanket now the weather had turned, or would it be better to switch on the heating? All of it so basic and ordinary, he couldn’t— for the life of him— find a clue to suggest what this latest disappearance was about. So he did what he always did in a crisis that involved Kate: he called Ettie Brookbank. Ettie, his closest friend and joint owner with Kate of the Briny Café, was a woman of infinite kindness and generosity, who also vehemently defended Kate against even the slightest hint of local criticism.
‘Kate’s done a runner,’ he said, jumping in before Ettie had time to say hello. ‘There’s no note and she’s left behind her phone, which is usually glued to the back pocket of her jeans. I’m trying not to worry, Ettie, but new mums don’t suddenly take off, do they?’
He caught a confused mumble and the rustle of bedding, then Ettie whispered, ‘Give me a minute.’ Sam heard her footsteps, the quiet closing of a door. ‘Marcus is asleep. I’m on the deck. God, it’s chilly. Hold on while I get a dressing gown.’ He heard her put the phone on the table where he and Kate had dined so splendidly so often but all too rarely in harmony. In a minute, she was back. ‘Start from the beginning and don’t leave out anything.’
Sam filled her in with a rising lump in his throat. When he had nothing more to say, silence stretched between them. ‘Ettie?’ Sam said.
‘Kate will be in touch when she’s ready, and remember, she’s a survivor. She’s made a choice to go off-grid for reasons only she knows. What matters now is Claire. What time is it?’
Sam checked his watch. ‘Almost five.’
‘Meet me at the café later. We’ll get sorted.’
Sam couldn’t drop the topic so quickly. ‘There’s something skew-whiff in her, Ettie. She hides it well behind a mask that most of the locals call snobbery or aloofness but you and I, we know it goes deeper than that.’ He waited for Ettie to make a comment. When she remained silent, he added, ‘Do you reckon having Claire has tipped her over some kind of edge or something?’
He heard Ettie’s warm laugh. ‘Oh love, there’ll be a reason behind all this. With Kate, there’s always a reason. And once she’s figured out how to handle whatever has driven her to this point, she’ll come good. She always does. There’s gold in the girl, you saw it long ago and so did I. Give her time.’
‘How much time, Ettie? And how much more time before we send out a search party? Leaving a defenceless baby . . .’
‘That baby will never be defenceless and Kate is fully aware of that. You, me, the reprobates we call a community— we’ll take care of her. You know that better than anyone.’ He heard her swap the phone to her other ear. ‘Let’s talk when the sun is up, love. Answers, even to some of the worst problems, can appear like magic in the clear light of day.’
After the call ended, Sam pulled on some warm clothes and returned to the veranda to catch sunrise and that brief, saturated moment of light when the landscape gleamed with a bright metallic aura and promise. In minutes, it flooded in like a tsunami. A shoal of bait fish set the water boiling noisily. A moment later, cormorants appeared like missiles from out of nowhere. The sunlight struck their white throats, turning them gold, like ingots. Two galahs winged past, their bellies throbbing deep pink, wings gilt-edged. A pair of magpies tuned up for their early morning serenade, the most beautiful of songs. He listened as they drifted from a tentative minor key, as if to confirm they’d survived the menaces of the night, into full-blown and triumphant major. I am here, I am strong.
Sam dropped his head into his hands. The wonder of it, he thought. It flew above, lingered below, struck at daybreak and slid in serenely at nightfall. Ever shifting, endlessly inspiring: the transformations were a sharp reminder that any tenure on life was fragile and could be revoked at any moment. Kept a man honest, that sort of knowledge.
Again, he asked himself if Kate’s sort of formal education led to ambivalence or, more worryingly, dissatisfaction. He gave himself a shake like a wet dog. ‘Using some fancy words here,’ he said. Light corkscrewed on the rippling water and yachts on their moorings conjoined with their wobbly reflections. It hit him then, that Kate’s commuter boat rocked mutely on the pontoon, along with the fancy new tinnie he’d bought after his ancient runabout had carked it in a storm that almost wiped out Cook’s Basin at the beginning of summer last year. He raced inside and opened her closet. Her jeans, shirts and T-shirts remained hanging with military precision. He opened a drawer. Her underwear was neatly folded and tucked into bamboo containers of perfectly matching dimensions. He reached to open the bottom drawer, where he knew she kept her most precious possessions: a photo of her father, a necklace given to her on her sixteenth birthday, and other bits and pieces of history she’d never shared. It was all undisturbed.
He felt nausea rise and twist his gut. He stepped outside the front door with his phone, ready to dial triple 0. That’s when he saw that her backpack was missing, along with her wet-weather jacket and heavy walking boots. At his feet, he saw an envelope halftucked under the coir floormat. He snatched it up and ripped it open.
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I’ll be back. I don’t know when. K
Sam dropped down on the top step and held the note to his chest. She’s alive, he thought. She’s breathing. Nothing else mattered.
Extracted from Finding Joy in Oyster Bay by Susan Duncan.
Finding Joy in Oyster Bay
by Susan Duncan
From the author of the bestselling Sleepless in Stringybark Bay, this new book celebrates life, love, courage and the power of forgiveness.
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