Chapter 1
RONNIE
TEN YEARS LATER
Right turn onto the Gillies Range Road leading uphill through the Gillies mountains. In her helmet headphones, she blasted “Edge of Seventeen,” by Stevie Nicks. Switchbacks without guardrails through eucalyptus forest were so familiar she barely saw them.
Up ahead, butcherbirds fought over a green tree snake, jumping on the pavement, tugging opposite ends of it in their beaks. Good day for the birds, bad day for the snake.
Most people have a moment from which there is no coming back—a moment that lives in infamy, if only in their mind. At twenty-six, she had one regret, but she was trying not to think about it.
In a rear-view mirror she eyed the highway patrol car before glancing down at the speedometer, a hair over the speed limit.
Lights flicked on a moment before the siren.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, pulling over to the edge of the cliff.
She took off her helmet, shaking out greasy black curls full of tangles before hanging the helmet from the handlebars. An officer she didn’t recognize approached the motorbike. Luckily her nine-year-old daughter wasn’t with her and wouldn’t witness this—that would have been a million times worse.
“Speeding. License and registration.”
Swearing inwardly, she turned off the engine, toed the kickstand, swung her leg off the bike and stood, resisting the urge to stretch out the tension in her neck and shoulders before reaching into the back pocket of her jeans for her wallet.
She tried not to make any moves that might intimidate the officer who frowned up at her through mirrored sunglasses.
When condoms in cellophane wrappers fell out, she resisted the urge to pick them up as she handed over the documents. Her hands shook.
The officer walked back to his patrol car.
Ronnie’s armpits prickled and she felt herself sweating through her shirt. She wanted to take off the leather jacket, but not in front of him.
The officer returned. “Walk on back with me.”
With a sinking feeling, Ronnie did. The butcherbirds bounced back and forth across the road playing tug-of-war with the snake.
A second officer waited in front of the patrol car; COLLINS embroidered on a patch on his chest. “Where are you coming from?”
“Townsville.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Surfing.”
“Where you headed?”
“Home. Lionheart.”
“Relax. You’re not in trouble. Hands behind your ears. You know the drill.” The cop patted her down. At six-two, she was taller than both officers. “Lift your shirt.”
She lifted her leather jacket and men’s XL tee, revealing washboard abs and tattoos that she knew they wouldn’t like. Cops hated slurs against prison guards.
“Turn slowly.”
She glanced over her shoulder.
He frowned, looking unimpressed by the “SAVE A NAIL, HAMMER A SCREW” tattoo on her lower back.
Shit… I should have that removed…
The cops stepped away to consult. When they returned, the Collins one stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Is there someone you can call to come get your bike?”
“Mate,” she said. “Can I pay a fine or something? What the hell?”
“Relax, we just have to ask you questions and this is not a safe place to do it. We’re not messing with you. We’re not charging you with nothing.”
She looked at the sky and bit her lip. A flock of Sulfur-crested cockatoos flew over.
She refused to glance down into the backseat of the squad car.
Don’t do this to me, mate. Give me a ticket, but don’t take me in.
If they put her in a box again, she’d have a panic attack.
Sweat dripping down her lower back tickled.
The officer walked away, lifting a cell phone to his ear. He didn’t use the police radio. When he returned, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get out of here, Madonna. Vamoose.”
She walked back to her bike, slid a long leg over it and turned on the engine.
“Stay out of trouble.”
Mute, she put her helmet on, skin crawling.
She couldn’t bring herself to thank them. She waited for a break in the cars before pulling out into traffic. In a side mirror she watched the patrol car pull out behind her and trail her from a distance.
She watched the speedometer.
After the patrol car disappeared, she felt a burning stab in the back of her neck—a knot in the muscles, her body holding onto stress. As predicted, she had sweat through her shirt. At the sign for Gordonvale she made an impulse decision and turned. A quickie on the way home would loosen her up.
On a shady residential street in Gordonvale lined with jacarandas she slowed before turning left into the open garage of a run-down white Queenslander with the world’s tiniest greenhouse in the garden. She parked her bike and took off her helmet.
She had outrun the storm for now.
Ronnie tied her hair up in a messy topknot, then tapped a knuckle against the side door.
Her ex answered in beach clothes. Maude looked like a model, bangs framing green eyes, and subtle make-up that had probably taken an hour to put on. Maude rolled her eyes when she saw her.
Ronnie pressed her finger to her lips, glancing behind her past the pile of tiny pink sandals into the house where cartoons played.
She stole a quick glimpse of the back of the nine-year-old girl’s head.
It wasn’t much, but it was proof of life.
The hot poker touched her between the shoulder-blades again. She swallowed.
Ronnie’s ex sighed, stepped down into the garage and locked the door so they wouldn’t be interrupted.
Maude was also heavily tattooed, but that was where all similarities ended.
The pale woman ran manicured nails through heat-straightened auburn hair, fluffed it, releasing the familiar scent of expensive perfume, then managed to look down at Ronnie despite being a foot shorter.
Maude reached up to press a soft palm against Ronnie’s T-shirt over her sports bra, fisted the cotton and pushed her against the garage wall.
Ronnie picked up the smaller woman, carrying her to the hood of Maude’s candy-colored Chevy truck.
Around Maude, Ronnie became fourteen again, hyped up on first-job money, cheap booze, and joyrides in the back of awful men’s cars. She always felt gross afterwards. Her footy teammates called it ‘the putangover.’
Mountain air became colder as she rode the retro black Kawasaki up the Gillies Range Road higher in elevation through eucalyptus mountains.
A sign, WELCOME TO THE ATHERTON TABLELANDS, preceded green hills.
Ronnie leaned into a bend in the road and then straightened.
Queensland’s Wet Tropics contained several wildly different climates between the coast and the Outback.
The sun came out, revealing a neon green plateau. Gently rolling hills appeared between low-hanging rainforest clouds, materializing out of the mist like that other Oz, the one in the book.
Near Boar Pocket Road, a group of steers blocked traffic. Ronnie hit the brakes and slowed to a stop, smiling. Johnson’s beef cattle had escaped again. Several cars in front of her sat parked in the road. Drivers had gotten out of their cars to watch the show.
She looked for and then found the familiar slender cowboy shape and Akubra hat.
Nev whistled, long and sharp. Gaia, a six-year-old collie, flew at the steers, who watched, unperturbed and enormous. Instead of veering off at the last moment, the dog hit the wall of cattle and began snapping and snarling.
“Get down!” Nev said, holding out the shepherd’s cane she used for herding. “Get down, Guy. Get down!”
Gaia was a sledgehammer.
The steers saw that the collie meant business and began to move, slowly at first, then trotting, back up Boar Pocket Road toward home. Turning with a hand in her pocket, Nev finally noticed Ronnie and raised her crook in greeting.
Ronnie waved back, cheeks warm, irrationally happy. Her boss’s attention sparked a warm feeling in her chest. She envied the dog.
She turned the key in the ignition. The bike’s engine roared to life.
In the center of town, Ronnie rode past the ancient Lionheart Hotel with Victorian wooden arches and wraparound second floor balcony, past rows of small, brightly-painted houses, and an athletic field where children in school uniforms played.
Coming back to her childhood home always felt like stepping back in time. The village of Lionheart was hay country, dairy country, and as her dad told fire department recruits when he toured them around, home of the Wadjanbarra Yidi and Bundabarra Yidi Traditional Land Owners.
On the edge of town, the purple Queenslander on Pademelon Road waited for her in run-down Victorian coziness, the nostalgia place that decayed but never fundamentally changed despite a maelstrom battering the outside world—a refuge in more ways than one.
An official-looking sign on the wooden railing read, “Licensed Wildlife Rehabilitation Facility.”
Ronnie parked her bike on the lawn beside her dad’s shiny new black Ford F-250, then climbed the staircase two steps at a time up to the wraparound veranda on the second floor and let herself in through the unlocked front door, through the screened-in sunroom with green plastic carpet to the inner front door, which had swollen from the humidity and was always ajar.
The old house smelled like a pet store: wood shavings, grain, and warm milk. Her dogs jumped on her, tails wagging. Matilda, a Jack Russell, snapped at Maya, the Blue Heeler. Ronnie picked Matilda up and carried her into the family room, which was full of wallabies.
Orphaned joeys peered out at her from large, clean cages. The smallest one sat on Ronnie’s dad’s lap, wrapped in a faded Little Mermaid towel.
Reg Madonna, chief of the volunteer fire department, sat in rugby shirt and cargo shorts watching the Matildas play the Black Ferns in soccer. Ronnie collapsed across from him.
“How was surfing with Mikey? Any waves this time?”
“Some cops pulled me over on the Gillies.”