Exiles (Aaron Falk #3)(103)

After that, Kim stayed home for a while, carrying out half-hearted job searches at the granite table in the kitchen that had been paid for with Rohan’s engineer’s salary. She started to feel sick in the mornings and then she stopped looking for work.

She had to go back to the doctor again, because now she was pregnant.



* * *



The baby looked just like Kim.

She and Zoe had been home from the hospital for a week when she first caught Rohan staring at their daughter with an odd look on his face.

“Everything okay?” she’d asked, drained and fractious from another broken night.

“Her eyes are very dark,” Rohan had said simply, but in a way that sounded like things were not okay at all. Kim was too tired to try to work out what he meant.

“Yeah,” she said. Her caesarean wound was aching. “I suppose so. It’s nice, though. She’s so pretty.”

Rohan hadn’t said anything more.

A few weeks later, he’d gotten up in the night to give Zoe her formula, and Kim, grateful to him as her body struggled to recover in a way it never had with Zara, had staggered to the bathroom. On the way back, she’d paused at the lounge room door. Rohan was sitting on the couch, lit by the dim glow of the side lamp, his chin coarse with stubble and his T-shirt soft and wrinkled from sleep as he cradled their daughter in the crook of his arm.

Formula finished, he was gazing down at her, gently running tendrils of her baby hair between his finger and thumb. Zoe’s hair looked dark and fine in the low light. Over and over again, Rohan ran his thumb over the wispy strands. And even through the foggy cloud of her own exhaustion, Kim felt an uncomfortable realization coursing through her. Because all of a sudden, she could tell what he was thinking.



* * *



It was absolutely ridiculous. For so many reasons. Not least, Kim realized when she looked back, because Rohan always knew where she was, pretty much every minute of every day. He had access to her phone. They had sold her car after she’d stopped working, agreeing to hold off getting a new one until after the baby arrived, when they would invest in something bigger and more suitable. For more than a year, Kim had either been at work or she’d been at home or she’d been with Rohan. And when she’d stopped working, those options had narrowed neatly from three to two. What Kim had decidedly not been doing in that time was sleeping with Charlie.



* * *



Kim forced herself to wait it out. She waited and waited, but in the end she was the one who broke first.

“What is it you want, Rohan?” she demanded. Frustration and a fear of waking Zoe turned her voice tight and shrill in a way she hated. “Do you want to take a test or something?”

“Kim.” Her husband leaned against the lounge room doorway, arms folded, his gaze steady. “Why would you even suggest that?”

Jesus, he knew exactly why, Kim thought as she lowered herself carefully onto the sofa. It was so late in the evening and she was so tired. Zoe had been screaming all day and finally, after literal hours of rocking and cajoling, had cried herself to sleep on Kim’s chest. Kim held her now, barely daring to move.

Outside in the driveway, the car was partially packed up. They were due to drive to Marralee the next day. Rohan’s dad was ill, and his parents wanted to see the baby. Rohan had been worried about his dad’s recent tests, Kim knew that. And she wanted to be understanding. But seriously? Enough. Her energy was sapped, her baby was relentless, her husband was behaving as though she’d done something she simply would never do, and sitting there, shaking with exhaustion, Kim had suddenly had it with this shit.

“You’re right,” she snapped in a harsh whisper. “Why would I even suggest that?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

Kim looked at Rohan, and in that moment she hated him. His calm stillness—the very quality that she had once absolutely loved about him—had eroded since Zoe’s birth into something so brooding and distant. He would disappear into himself, thinking about—what? Kim couldn’t guess.

It hadn’t been like this with Charlie. When they fell out, it was robust, but it was fair. They made their points, tussled a little on the finer details, then they got on with things. It wasn’t ideal, granted, but it was a lot better than this hard, glinting silence.

She stared at Rohan, daring him to be honest with her.

“Rohan.” Kim gave in first. “I’m only going to say this once. Ever. Zoe is your daughter.”

His face flickered. A fresh cold thread slid straight down Kim’s spine. Oh my God. He didn’t believe her. This wasn’t silly troublemaking brought on by new-parent jealousy or fatigue. He truly did not believe her. Rohan actually thought this baby could be Charlie’s.

“Rohan—” Kim tried, with urgency this time. She hadn’t taken this anywhere near seriously enough, she was realizing too late.

“Why would you feel the need to say that, Kim?” He cut her off, outwardly unruffled in a way that instantly set her further on edge.

She shifted, and Zoe stirred. Kim froze and held her breath, letting it out in a whisper. “Because you—”

“I what? Kim?” Rohan’s own voice was oddly light. “Why are you saying this? I trust you. It’s not like you’re the type to get blackout drunk and go off with some bloke you can’t remember.”