Free Sunlit Shadow Dance by Graham Wilson

watched.
    Now he had a
family and it felt like it was his own; his Janie, his Annie and
his Davie; he had given them all pet names of affection. Janie was
his wife in all but name. Apart from that full sexual union, they
did everything together, talked, shared, worked side by side, held
each other in the night. He felt so comfortable with her and knew
it went both ways. And he loved their children. Even though they
were really hers not his, he felt the same level of ownership and
protectiveness he would have if he was the biological father. At
first they mostly called him Bic, now he was just Daddy; he had
filled up their memories in this space. He rarely disciplined them,
though a couple times he had given Annie a small slap when she was
mean to other kids at the playground, and a couple times something
similar to Davie when he did something dangerous that could injure
him. He had told Janie and she had said, “Of course, you are their
father now, like I am their mother.”
    As he walked off to work this morning he rolled through the
events of the months in his mind; that
long drive across the Cape to find her again, her uncertainty in
the doorway and then, as they touched each other, their bodies and
minds had connected in a safe place.
    So he had
committed himself to care for Jane and her children; she had
trusted him to do so in whatever form it took. It was this sense of
total trust that was so compelling; it drove him to be better than
he could otherwise have been. In a way he felt he was minding three
children not one, except that one had the body of an adult. He
sensed he was entrusted to carefully and gently rediscover this
adult beneath the child in Jane. This trust was the best thing his
life had required of him at any time.
    He believed
that, in giving her this space and safety, she would slowly
rediscover herself; an adult made anew from the child he now held.
He felt and thought she could never be the Susan of before again;
too much had been broken inside her, parts which could not be
remade. But instead she had the chance to create a new self, one
who could become his Janie, the one he knew and loved and who loved
him in return.
    So he must
hasten slowly, let her rebuild her life piece by piece. He knew he
could take and love her body at any time he chose; she would trust
him with this too. But to do so now would be to take a part of her
innocence, to make the choice for her before she could make the
conscious choice for herself. He most wanted her to regain her
sense of womanhood and choose him, not for him to seduce the
trusting child who would then be his bonded woman in an unchosen
way.
    He did not
know why this seemed so important but it was. So he must just push
away his sexual desire for her, at least for now. He must pretend,
when she cuddled her body into him and pressed her thighs against
his maleness, that he was doing no more than cuddling a sleeping
child.
    His mind
stepped through the weeks that had passed. Week One - they had
crossed the peninsula to the east coast and followed it south to a
small town south of Townsville, where they had found a caravan park
with an empty van and stayed there for five nights. Days were spent
watching their children play on the beach and going for walks
through the sand dunes. Nights were simple meals and storytelling;
she seemed to have no interest in watching television and he
preferred it this way, lest stories of the missing Susan appear, or
stories of Mark, Anne or the other Lost Girls.
    While he was
not sure what was the best way for her to regain her past
knowledge, his sense was that any memories or desire for knowledge
of the old had to come from inside her not be pushed onto her
through the telling of others.
    So instead
they both told stories, first for the children, then stories of her
life in the mission since her babies came and also stories of his
helicopter mustering and the people and places he had been. As they
talked they linked their eyes