Chapter 46
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Ronnie tossed the phone into the passenger seat, shifted the truck back into gear, signaled with her blinker, then merged onto the empty road. Neighbors were all home watching the rugby final. Her phone continued vibrating as calls and texts poured in.
Bloody hell, she actually did it.
She wiped her face with her shirt, amazed that someone cared.
No one had ever defended her honor before. She hadn’t had any. That invisible thing that didn’t exist.
It should have felt silly, but didn’t. Nev took it seriously; it must be serious.
Why had no one been outraged before? They must have known. Lionheart wasn’t a large town—the half-sisters played soccer together—people looked the other way to protect his career.
The past was all around her. If she stayed here on the Tablelands, where each soft green place, swimming hole and tourist attraction reminded her of childhood—for better and worse—she would always live in that magical state of perpetual youth, simultaneously all the different ages she had been, carrying those girls around inside her, a family of little Ronnies.
That’s the best and worst part of staying in the small town where you grew up.
Saltwater, nature’s soap. Amazed, she cradled to her chest the lost thing Nev had found, picked up, brushed off, and returned. It felt soft and wobbly, fragile and precious.
At Stone House, she parked on the grass, cut the engine, and answered her phone. Nev’s collies tore barking across the lawn to greet Rainbow as she hopped down from the truck. Stadium noise in the background—Reg was in London at the Rugby World Cup. He shouted. “Brum! Where are you?!”
“Is Nev all right? Have you heard from your mates at the police station?” she asked.
“Where are you?”
“At the farm.”
Rainbow bent over to pet Gaia and Blair, whose tails wagged.
“Was she drunk?”
Ronnie hesitated. Information like that could be evidence. She might be called to testify. “I’m sure they’ll breathalyze her. Is he pressing charges?”
“Dunno. Nonna called me. Poor Peg. I thought Nev liked her. Why would she start a barney at Peg’s wedding reception? It’s not like her at all. Everything good between you and her? You’re two aren’t fighting, are you?”
“We’re good.” Best we’ve ever been. That’s my bezzie.
“What did Brad do?” Reg asked through the phone.
“Underage stuff.”
She heard her dad swear. “What? When? To who? How’d Nev find out?” The World Cup stadium was loud on his end. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he hadn’t known this whole time.
“We can talk about it when you get back. Focus on Mattie’s game. Enjoy it.”
“Wish I was there with you, Brum.”
“Grateful for you, Da. If I wanted to bail her out, who would I call?”
“Crikey, not Peg, eh?”
They chuckled. He screamed “Goal!!!” and hung up.
Next to her, Rainbow glanced up from scratching the dogs behind the ears. “The game started. Can you play it on your phone?”
“I don’t know how to do that,” she admitted.
“Can we watch it in the house?”
“Sure.”
“Here’s the plan,” Rainbow said. “We’ll order takeaway and watch the game on Nev’s telly. During commercial breaks you’ll tell me what happened. We’ll eat the choccies she keeps hidden in the dishwasher. Sound good?”
“Ripper.” Needless to say, Ronnie’s version of the story would be redacted for ten-year-old ears. Some things she could tell her now.
Stone House was locked.
“I have a better plan,” she said, improvising.
They made a bonfire, roasted snags and mallows, then watched stars come out.
Ronnie remembered she had drums in the truck. They drummed at the old ruins beside the wellhead where the barn would be. Mozzies buzzing. Spring night, cool damp air swirling in. Fireflies low along the bottom paddock, down in the scrub along the edge of the creek.
They howled at the moon with the dogs in the dark.
Gunni and Kazi materialized out of the mist, drawn to the fire like white-haired spirits. They drank and told stories and drummed late into the night. Time stood still in this other world, this world of fire and shadows.
In the morning Ronnie and Rainbow played tag in their pajamas, black T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, through their campsite down by the creek, passing time while they waited for news.
Already that morning a customer had called inquiring about hay, but no call from Nev.
Ronnie had that kicked ball feeling—she wouldn’t be able to think clearly again until she heard her friend’s voice and knew she was all right.
Rainbow started to roam further afield like a feral homeschooled child who had grown up off the grid. The girl showed her all the special places under the bushes where she would build forts and pens for the koalas, quolls and brush turkeys she thought she would catch.
The campsite must feel vast, mysterious, and full of potential to her. Ronnie let herself imagine she didn’t know where the fences were. She had chosen a nice spot. They could spend years exploring nooks and crannies, mossy rocks and shaded glens along the serpentine creek. Universe in a nutshell.
She loved that the creek was hers now, as much as anyone’s, and that it would be Rainbow’s. It felt like a safe place here. Rainbow would grow up with roots to the land, not homeless and drifting from sheep station to sheep station.
This was only temporary, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. It was good enough until she built a house on higher ground.
Wet from a dip in the creek and half-dressed, hair down, she nursed a cup of tea. As she returned her toothbrush to the truck, she noticed the manilla envelope from her mum sticking out of a bag of important papers she had rescued from the flooded donga. Impulsively, she ripped it open.
It was empty.
When she shook the manilla envelope a business card fell out.
Matilda-Jane Peterson
Battlers’ Rattler etc.
Ronnie hesitated for a moment, then typed the number into her phone. Her finger hovered over the call icon.
Talking to her mother always made her feel like shit, but it had been a long time, and people changed.
She could press call. Try again. Maybe it wouldn’t be disappointing.
What was the worst that could happen? Homophobic slurs? Ableist and racist language? Her decision became easier.
Not yet. Maybe after she finished building the barn, when things were more solid. She slid the phone back into her pocket.
That door would be open when she was ready.
At the moment, Rainbow wanted to watch cranes.
First, there was something they needed to do. They took a can of white paint up to the top of their drive, where they wrote brUM’S on the giant boulder.
In the horse barn at Upsend Downs, under the mops and brooms, they returned the half-empty can of white paint.
Rainbow perched on her shoulders, legs dangling.
Both of them silently stared through binoculars out past land covered in sheep, at enormous grey Sarus cranes.
The birds looked ancient and eternal—guardians of the lake—elephants of the avian family.
When they talked to each other they made a strange warbling rubber sound.
“I liked what you said last time about it sounding like the lake was laughing,” Ronnie said.
Rainbow was tall for her age, but her feet still fit comfortably in Ronnie’s armpits. Human backpack. Full-grown, she would tap out at Ronnie’s chin.
Through the binos Ronnie spotted a mother crane with chicks weaving around her feet. “Look, chicks!”
A long silence, calibration, like a game of battleship. Ronnie held the cranes in her line of sight. “Underneath the willow tree that looks like a lima bean, just in front of the patch of sunlight, two thumbs left of the dead tree stump…”
“Got it. Aww… They’re so cute!” Rainbow said.
Two little grey fluffballs pecked at the grass, looking for seeds. Wrong time of year for seeds. Ronnie wondered if they ate grass. What did chicks eat? Surely they didn’t drink milk?
“What do chicks eat, Gumball?”
Rainbow hummed. “Bugs and grain.”
“Their parents don’t feed them?”
“Not once they’ve left the nest.”
“Where do they nest?”
“Marshes. Their nests can be two metres in diameter and a metre high.”
“Did you read that in a book?”
“Encyclopedia.” So nonchalant.
“Proud of you, kid.”
“Love you, mum.”
“Love you, baby.”
The kid-sized motorbike helmet Ronnie ordered had arrived in the mail. She walked toward Rainbow with the helmet tucked behind her back.
When Ronnie held it out, Rainbow squealed, jumping up and down.
Ronnie crouched to show her how to put it on, teaching her how to widen the straps, pull it on over her head, then make sure it sat level two finger-widths above her eyebrows.
Satisfied, she patted the top of Rainbow’s helmet.
“What do you think, angel? Want to go for a ride?”
The Kawasaki sat in the machine shop at Upsend Downs where she had left it. She straddled it now and rode it out onto the lawn, then idled with the motor running, playing Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” over the bike’s speakers while Rainbow climbed on behind her.
“Let’s go to the lake and get ice cream!”
“Rock and roll. Hold on.”
Rainbow’s arms tightened around her waist.
“Don’t let go.”
Careful not to go too fast, Ronnie cruised down the gravel drive and out onto the country road. Far above, a V-formation of migrating Sarus cranes trailed them like a kite.
Pickup trucks lined either side of Ronnie’s drive.
Relatives had come for the barn raising, even Mattie, who flew in from London two days after winning the Rugby World Cup.
Ronnie’s footy teammates—half the South Cairns Cutters Womens and a handful of friends from the men’s team—helped volunteers from Lionheart assemble wooden arches flat on the ground.
Jack Collins, the boys primary school soccer coach, worked alongside his wife and kids.
Debbie Collins ran kegs off the back of a ute under a waratah with blossoms like bush fireworks. Blaise and Nonna blasted ABBA, keeping volunteers fed on bratwursts and burgers while two of Reg’s firefighter recruits ran the grills.
Rainbow and her friends picked wildflowers, then discovered a dirt pile to run down. Two-year-old Jesse followed Rainbow with wide eyes as she alternated between holding his hand and carrying him around on her hip.
Ronnie gave the signal to the crew to raise the first arch.
Sweaty volunteers pulled on long ropes and hauled the frame upright with her.
She pulled as hard as she could, rope biting into her hands through work gloves.
As giant beams rose magically off the ground, it looked like they were erecting an upside-down ship.
Still no sign of Nev. According to the grapevine, the police station had released her after twenty-four hours, but Peggy had kidnapped her for ‘Collins family bootcamp,’ deep cleaning the pub in exchange for Brad not pressing charges.
If Nev had been there, she would have shaken hands and chatted with everyone, drank too much coffee and whiskey, or played the fiddle.
Their houses would be close as the crow flies, but to drive there on roads they would have to trace the outline of two lungs or a mishappen heart.
At sunset, Mattie whistled from where he sat perched atop the timber roofline a few ribs away from the cross-joist Ronnie was hammering snug into a beam.
She turned to see what he was pointing at. Shading her eyes, she squinted against the sun. Up on the hill, silhouetted against the horizon, a figure on horseback wore an Akubra hat.
Relief.
Euphoria.
Her favorite feeling.
“The Night We Met” played on a radio below the unfinished barn, bringing her back to the night she played Russian Roulette with post box numbers.
She had replayed that scene in the broken room over and over, trying to get it right.
Each time she did something different. Each time Nev did something different.
It could have gone down so many ways. On the best nights Ronnie stayed.
On the best nights she didn’t drive off into the darkness alone. Rainbow was born on the farm.
One part of the dream never changed, a memory so deep it had become part of her. When Nev locked eyes with her above the shotgun’s mouth, Ronnie’s soul flew back into her body and every atom in her danced.
She looked around for the nearest extension ladder, spotting one at the end of the beam with an unfamiliar queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
The distance to the ground made her slightly dizzy, like a spin on a merry-go-round, as she calculated how to reach the ladder.
This new fear of heights would take getting used to.
She hadn’t been up this high since falling off the screen house.
On the next beam, Mattie waved his hands in the air before cupping them around his mouth. “Neville’s back!”
Ronnie scooted on her bottom down to where she could reach the framing below with her feet, then carefully slid the sole of one boot after the other down the rafter toward the extension ladder, all while hugging the beam.
“Don’t call her that.” That’s the woman I’m going to marry.
She froze, halfway to the ladder. The thought surprised her, but she knew it was true the same way she knew anything.
A laugh burst out of her, once, loud, then kept coming. Once she started, she couldn’t stop.
Oh, man. This will be fun.
New mission: convince Nev. She had no idea how she would do it.