Read Online Shallow Breath by Sara Foster - Free Book Online

out, a few of them had gone on to the Sari Club, the others to bed. The bomb went off, and two of the revellers never came home.
    Jackson had recently lost his own mother, and was busy trying to cope. He wasn’t prepared to deal with the extent of Carla’s grief. When she had ended their relationship, he had been so grateful. By the time he had got into his ute to head north he could hardly drive fast enough.
    He still felt like a bit of a bastard. He hadn’t let her down, he told himself again and again. They were young. It wouldn’t have lasted. She was better off with someone who could understand what she had been through. And that’s where she had ended up – she had married Travis, one of his mates at school. They had two or three kids now, and when he saw her there didn’t seem to be any hard feelings. They had just taken different paths, that’s all, but not until Kate had he speculated whether the end of that relationship had left him with a reluctance to commit to another. He wasn’t any good at the emotionally heavy stuff. He was a man of action, not words, and women always wanted the words. It was exhausting, trying and failing to figure out the right ones. While Kate didn’t seem like that at all, they hadn’t known each other for long. It would come at some point, he was certain of it, and when it did he would probably let her down, just like Carla, by not knowing the right thing to say.
    Sebastian sits next to him again, holding out a beer. Jacksontakes it gratefully, tries not to swig it all down in one go.
    ‘Tomorrow,’ Sebastian says, ‘after we have finished research, if there is time, we will do a hammerhead dive. Then you’ll see another wonder of the Galapagos.’
    Jackson cheers up immediately at the thought of it. Soon, they have half a dozen empty bottles beside them and are chatting like old friends. Out of the corner of his eye, Jackson sees that Ian is glancing at him regularly while talking to the other researchers. He jumps up quickly and begins to clear the debris. Then he decides to check his email, telling himself he only wants to make sure that Desi is all right, but hoping there might be something from Kate.

9
    Desi
    I n theory, Desi had always known how much she was missing, but only upon seeing Maya had she been confronted by the extent of it. As always, the sight of her stalled Desi’s breath, this girl she and Connor had made all those years ago, her eyes the same shape as her father’s, her pout all Desi, and in her body all those echoes of the little girl she had been at sixteen, at six, at six months old. All the tiny details that a mother could so easily find.
    But Maya is different, too. She seems rangy and strong, while her face has thinned and tilted into an adult’s. Her body has lengthened, while her eyes have hardened with scepticism. Desi left one girl and has returned to another, not being there to witness the transformation.
    If she had been present, would she have even noticed these changes? Probably not – seen daily they were too small to be perceptible. But Desi’s absence has severed this flowing connection between herself and her daughter, and she is the oneresponsible. Her actions have sliced into their relationship and removed a chunk of precious, irreplaceable time. Would they always be aware of that now?
    Maya’s lack of welcome had hurt, but it was to be expected. Desi knows she has a lot of making up to do, and she is not sure how to begin. Adrift in contemplation, she finds she has driven right away from Lovelock Bay, past all the turnings for Two Rocks, and reached the next small town of Yanchep. She heads to the lagoon, where she has swum so often. She always considers it a treat to come down here, where the water is usually so calm, but today the swimmers are getting tossed about in the restless water. She considers going for a swim anyway – fighting the current would give focus to this floppy day – but decides against it.
    As she