Excerpt from The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She startles at the sound of a crow. The certainty—impossible— that the call is that of her child. The sound coming towards her as she moves further away, her own voice drifting back: Lucie? Is that you? No, of course not, it's just a bird, the baby asleep at home. Charlotte watches the crow swoop down, coast on a low current of air, and land further out. She can count on one hand the times she's left the house alone, without the baby. And every time it is the same—how she startles at every long, high note, thinking it is Lucie. She feels the strange phantom sense of the child's weight against her hip, the loose stone of her head lolling, asleep, on her shoulder. The crow calls again—she sees it call, the open black beak, the silky, lifted throat—and her skin prickles. A gust of wind disperses the cry; the sound rises up, then floats down over the field, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Her arms suddenly ache to hold her daughter. She looks back but can't see her bike. Where did she leave it? Perhaps it is over that way, behind the hedges. But the field appears the same from every direction. She finds her way to the fence and begins to trace a path back along the perimeter. Above her the clouds ripple and bend, moving herdlike towards a distant corner of the sky. Her stomach heaves. She stops, holds on to the fence, leans down towards the grass, and vomits a string of yellow bile. She stays that way a moment, hunched over, gripping the wood and dry retching, then wipes her mouth with the sleeve of her coat and rests her head against the railing. "It'll pass soon," the doctor said. "These things always do." She weeps then, at the memory of his words. "All for a good cause now," he'd said. "All for a good cause."

She remembers last night's dream, that the two of them, she and Henry, were looking at rainbow-colored paintings in Vienna. They stood before a very bright canvas, and Henry said to her, "It is the color of your soul forming." He looked at the painting as he spoke, and she knew he was not talking about her, about her soul, but about the soul of the child now growing inside her, the child she has not yet told him about, although it is his.

She pushes back out into the field, walking faster now, puffing a little, her breath white in the thin, cold air. Icy grass crunches underfoot, her toes numb in her wet shoes. She was supposed to ride into town and ride home again, not stop like this and disappear into the wilds. If only the doctor had given her a script and sent her home. Just something to settle her. Then a cup of tea and a lie-down. Further ahead a flock of birds lifts up from the grass, sways in the sky a moment, then swerves back down to earth. She doesn't know what she'll say to Henry. She doesn't want to have to tell him.

——

In the warmth of the living room, Lucie grunts—her arm jerking up into the air, then falling back down. Henry shuffles forwards in his chair to check on her. She is asleep in her pram and he rocks it a little with his foot, pushing the toe of his shoe against the lower rung. Has it really been seven months since she was born? It seems so much longer, that Sunday dawn when the midwife set him to work, boiling water and fetching cloths. The baby grunts again, kicks her legs, squirms. Henry holds his breath and checks his watch: eleven thirty. What's keeping her? Charlotte should be back by now, he thinks, running his palm along the armrest of his favorite wingback chair. The chair is covered in gold velveteen and he strokes the smooth grain of the fabric as if petting a calm animal. Lucie settles, then snuffles in her sleep, and Henry sits back and returns to his reading, examining the brochure that came through the letter box early that morning. Come Over to the Sunny Side! the brochure says. Beneath the curve of blue writing two blond women in red swimsuits skid over Sydney Harbour on water skis. Australia brings out the best in you. You could be on your way to a sunnier future in the New Year. Fine for your wife. Good for your children.

Excerpted from The Other Side of the World by Stephanie Bishop. Copyright © 2016 by Stephanie Bishop. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.