All The Little Moments (49 page)

A grin playing over her lips, Anna nodded
emphatically. “Very.”

Lane kissed her then, hands curling into Anna’s hair. She rested her forehead on Anna’s. “Sorry about the
minor freak-out.”

“You can be
crazy sometimes.”

With a light tap on Anna’s ass, Lane stepped away,
slightly flushed.

They finished getting dressed and parted ways in the driveway with a quick kiss, Lane headed for the hospital and Anna for her mother’s to get Toby and Ella. Anna drove with the radio off, enjoying her last few minutes of silence for
the day.

Her ex was not a bad person at all. But it did kind of make Anna amused to see Lane get jealous, if only because it was incredibly hot and gave her a warm feeling in her chest that Lane cared
so much.

Anna pulled up and got out of the car, smiling when she saw Ella pressed up against the window in the living room, hands to the glass. Toby, so much smaller, was kneeling next to her. They both waved. Toby got a tad too excited and smacked his open hand against the glass, his head turning as, Anna assumed, he was told off by
his grandmother.

When the door opened, Sandra warned her,
“Brace yourself.”

Even as she frowned, Ella tore around the corner, Toby hot on her heels, and they both collided with her knees. The force of the two children almost knocked her backwards. “Hey, guys!
Miss me?”

Ella shook her head. “Not till just now, then I remembered
I do!”

“Well, good, ’cause that means you had fun
with Grandma.”

Tiny fingers were gripping the material of her pants and tugging as Toby tried to scale her leg. “Cake, Na!
Gama cake.”

Anna acquiesced to the unsubtle request Toby was making and picked him up. “You made cake
with Grandma?!”

“Cake.” His little face looked troubled and he held his foot out.
“Owie foot.”

“What happened?”

All he did was point at
it. “Owie.”

“He had his first stubbed toe,” Sandra
informed her.

Anna grimaced and cupped his foot gently, giving it a soft squeeze. “Poor Toby. Did you get
a Band-Aid?”

“He did.” Gripping Anna’s hand, Ella puffed her chest out. “I put a Dora the Explorer one on his toe
for him.”

“
You
 
put it on! Ella, soon you can go to the hospital and work instead
of me.”

“No, don’t be silly, I have to go
to school.”

“Hm. True.” Anna slid Toby down to the floor. “Okay, you two go get your things. Ella, you help Toby, and we’ll go
meet Kym.”

“Zoo!”

Ella ran off and Toby followed her. Ella, obviously remembering what had been asked of her, stopped and held her hand out for Toby to take; the two headed up the stairs. Toby held the rail with one hand and Ella’s hand with the other, taking the steps one at a time, while Anna and Sandra watched
them go.

Toby’s blanket was down to bedtime again now, not being dragged everywhere unless he was having a tantrum day. And the most uplifting thing was, he no longer panicked if Anna was a few metres away
from him.

Ella was bouncing in her excitement. “We’re going to the zoo, Tobes. What sound does a
lion make?”

“Rar!”

Anna chortled and turned back to Sandra. “You guys had
fun then?”

Her mother nodded and started walking into the kitchen. Anna followed after closing the front door
behind her.

“We did. Ella ate more cake batter than went into it, and Toby smeared it on the bench, but we managed to make something out of it. You
want some?”

Anna shook her head. “No, thanks. We’re meeting Kym, and I need to stop by the
shops first.”

“Today
the day?”

“Yeah. One year since Simon died. I was going to get her a flower to give from us? Do you think that’s a
good idea?”

“It’s a really
good idea.”

“I was going to go with her, with the kids. I thought we could all put a flower down for Jake
and Sally.”

The glass her mother held out to Anna trembled slightly. “That’s a beautiful idea. I took Ella last month
after school.”

“It’s good for
them, right?”

“It is.”

“Did you want
to come?”

“No, thank you. This is more for Kym. I was going to go next week, at the six-month date for Jake
and Sally.”

Lips pale, Sandra gave a nod and tried
to smile.

Anna put her glass down, pulling her mother into a hug. She ran her hands up and down her back, but Sandra pulled away fairly quickly and swiped at her cheeks. As the kids came back in, Anna squeezed her arm and let her
hand fall.

“Ready!”

Distracting the kids while her mother took a moment, Anna said, “Great
job, guys.”

Just as she was about to tell them to cuddle Grandma and say
goodbye
and
thank you
, her father walked around the corner and into
the kitchen.

He stood awkwardly, looking at
them all.

Since the trial, after all he had said, he had been trying. He had come to the odd dinner with Sandra, and, when Anna picked up Ella after school, she’d often find them reading the paper together or in the garden. Occasionally, he picked up Toby, and he spoke to Anna now—basic conversations
and pleasantries.

Anna wasn’t sure whether to hope for more from him
or not.

He had finally met Lane at dinner the other night and had put his hand on Anna’s shoulder as he left, with just the words, “She
seems nice.”

Now, he smiled tightly at his grandchildren and looked to Anna. “Can I speak
with you?”

Anna hadn’t been alone with him since before
Jake’s death.

She looked to Ella and Toby. “You two smother Grandma in as many hugs and kisses as you can, and then we’ll go when I’m
back, okay?”

Ella moved quickly to Sandra, who had squatted down with her arms open; Toby barrelled in after
his sister.

Anna followed her father down the hallway, hating that feeling nervous with him was a habit stemming from long before
Jake died.

In his office, Andrew stopped beside his giant desk, standing straight with his arms by his sides. He looked at her for a minute, his head tilted slightly to the side, and, in the gesture, Anna saw how Jake would look at her when trying to make a point—how Ella and even Toby looked at
people sometimes.

A gesture she
herself did.

Anna met his eye
and waited.

He cleared his throat. “The kids are
doing well.”

“Yes—Toby is hitting a delightful point
of tantrums.”

Andrew managed a small smile. “He’s what,
twenty months?”

“Twenty-one now.”

“Same age that you and Jake
became nightmares.”

Anna laughed. “That’s what
Mum said.”

“Especially Jake. He threw a
good one.”

“That’s where Toby got it
from, then.”

Her father looked sad, his expression softening; it was strange to see on him. He was so good at schooling himself into a hard outer coating that Anna sometimes forgot that, buried underneath, he must
have feelings.

Her mother was right; they were so
very alike.

Jake had gotten their mother’s softer side. He had been a bit more sensitive, open to emotions; he had always been a touch more like their mother, while Anna had taken after their father and his tendency to bury
anything unpleasant.

Lately, though, Anna had started to realise she had a lot more of both of them than she had
originally thought.

“He’s got a lot of Jake in him.” His voice didn’t waver,
not once.

Anna nodded. She wasn’t sure why she was
in here.

Her father opened a drawer on his desk and pulled something out, holding it in his fist. Walking around the desk, he stood in front of her, and, Anna noticed,
 
he
 
was nervous being near her. She knew she reminded him so much
of Jake.

He held his hand out, and she held her palm under his fist; it didn’t open. Instead, he cleared his throat again. “I…I wanted you, to have this. Jake and you, you were close; I know that.” He looked her in the eye. “I know you lost him, too. And I know I’ve been absent. But I wanted you to
have this.”

When he finally opened his fist, Anna felt something warm hit her hand, and she looked down as he dropped his hand back to his side. Sitting in her open palm, the metal warm from his skin, were Jake’s
dog tags.

Anna’s fingers curled
around them.

Jake might have stepped down to an administrative role because of his worry about leaving the kids and his wife. But the Air Force had still been his life. His friends, his sense of duty—those dog tags symbolised what made her brother
 
her
 
brother
as much as those two kids in the
kitchen did.

The lump in her throat made it difficult to swallow. Anna
looked up.

Her father’s blue eyes were unchanged. He gave her a nod and she
returned it.

“Are
you sure?”

“You need something
of his.”

Smiling softly, Anna said, “I have Toby
and Ella.”

“You need something for
you, too.”

Anna managed to swallow, and Andrew gave another nod, walking around his desk and sitting down, opening up
his laptop.

She watched him for a minute, lifting the chain up to slip around her neck, the tags tinkling together as they fell to sit under her shirt, settling over
her sternum.

He was focussed on what was in front
of him.

“Bye, Dad.”

He looked
up. “Bye.”

Anna went to
walk out.

“Oh, Anna?”

She turned, hand on the door
handle. “Yeah?”

He kept his eyes on his laptop screen. “That woman’s
a keeper.”

Shaking her head in disbelief, Anna left. Her hand rested over her shirt, where she could feel the outline of the tags sitting. She hadn’t been
expecting that.

She found her mother sitting on the floor, leaning against the cupboard doors with Toby on her lap and Ella seated next to her. All three had giant pieces of cake in their hands. They all stopped mid bite and looked
at her.

Anna narrowed
her eyes.

Her mother leant over and whispered loudly in Ella’s ear, “We obviously didn’t eat fast enough. We were
caught out.”

Ella looked panicked.
“Quick! Scoff!”

They downed the last of
their cake.

Anna put her hands on her hips, looking at her mother, who looked back at her innocently as she licked frosting off her thumb. “So I get the
sugar rush?”

Sandra
winked. “Exactly.”

They got the already hyper kids into the car, and Anna hovered at the driver’s door, giving her mother an extra hug. “So, next week? We all go
on Saturday?”

“I’ll come by your place, and we’ll go with
the kids?”

“That sounds like a plan. Ella wants to take a painting
to leave.”

“They would
love that.”

“Would you
mind if—”

“If Lane didn’t come, I’d
be horrified.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“She offered, and I hadn’t realised I wanted her to
until then.”

Her mother squeezed her arm. “Sometimes it takes someone giving you a nudge to realise what
you want.”

Anna heard the door downstairs open and close and felt her pulse speed up, knowing Lane had just let herself in with the spare key she kept in a
fake rock.

A glance at the clock told her it was eleven
at night.

The afternoon had been draining, though not in the way it would have been months ago. Anna, Ella and Toby had sat between the two headstones. Ella, who had been before, liked to talk to them. The first time she had gone, Ella had been nervous and jittery. Now, she settled in, comfortable in a place where she felt closer to
her parents.