Chapter 26
Troy
“I need a beer,” Billy groaned that night as we all staggered out of the ute.
Sparky wound his way between my feet, because he was still full of beans.
The dog was the only one, because after hours and hours of hard slog, the rest of us were exhausted.
My brother sniffed at his shirt, then blanched.
“And a bath. A bath full of beer, that way I can absorb the alcohol through every pore, because damn—”
“Hey.”
Charlie stepped outside and the way her hands went to her hips, her lips thinning, had me stiffening. What now? a small voice inside me wailed. I literally couldn’t deal with one more fucking emergency, but that’s not how farms worked.
“What’s up?” I peered past her, as if the answers could be found there. “What’s gone wrong now? Where’s Mackenzie?”
“In town, helping out at the triage centre this evening.” Charlie’s eyes glittered in the darkness in a way I hadn’t seen since the night she came home wearing a mark on her face Beau left. “Needed to make herself scarce for this.”
“Look, Charlie,” I said. “Can I just have a shower and a beer before you hit me with this next pressing emergency? I’m fucking exhausted and—”
“When were you going to tell us?”
There were so many things my sister could be talking about right now and my brain rifled through each one, trying to anticipate which particular secret she was focussed on.
“Tell us what?” Bronson glanced at me then Charlie. “Tell us—?”
“That Dad has been bleeding the farm dry.” Fuck… I could feel the weight of every stinking bale of hay I’d hoisted today in the burn of my shoulder muscles, but apparently I wasn’t done carrying shit. “That you’ve been sending him money, so much money.”
“What?” There were no smiles from Billy right now.
“This is a family matter,” Scotty said, taking a step backwards. “I’ll head to the bunkhouse.”
Because he didn’t want to witness the blood bath that was about to come, obviously.
“Thanks for all your hard work today, Scotty,” I said. “You did good.” Turning back to my siblings, I saw I had their entire attention for once. “Just…” What the hell did I say? I knew this day was coming. Just wished it wasn’t now. “Just let me have a shower—”
“Better be a quick one.” Bronson was the last one I expected to scowl at me. “We need to know what the fuck has been going on.”
“And I’ll tell you everything.”
Walking inside, the weight lightened somehow.
Taken off my shoulders without my permission, it left me light headed slightly, or was that just the loss of electrolytes from sweating all day?
I scrubbed myself clean, but it felt like the cubicle was haunted.
An invisible presence was in here with me, because Mackenzie and I had gotten into the habit of showering together to ‘save water.’ I could almost feel her beside me, see her steady gaze.
A curious mixture of empathy and iron will, it made clear there was no escaping what was coming.
“Dad wanted to sell the farm when he left,” I said, sitting down at the head of the table.
“When Mum was sick?” Charlie gasped, then looked around the table. “When we were still at school?”
My lips thinned, then I took a long sip of the beer in front of me. Billy clasped his tin tight, his face unnaturally pale.
“Yep. Told me he’d sell it. Said he would get a shit hot lawyer and ensure Mum got fuck all.
” I met their gaze head on, but it wasn’t my siblings I saw, but the man I thought was a hero up until then.
“Told me he wasn’t going to waste the rest of his life on this farm, working like a dog, then coming home to care for a sick wife. Said I’d understand one day.”
“Not sure how he came to that conclusion,” Bronson growled. “I still don’t fucking understand what he did.”
“Mum wanted to stay in the house,” I said. “You lot were still in school and someone needed to step up if Dad wouldn’t.”
“Troy…” Charlie said, her gaze softening, but I couldn’t bear that for long, not if I was going to get this out.
“So I did. I know…” Mackenzie’s words came back to me then. Probably because they’d replayed inside my head all day. “I know I’m a pain in the arse to be around.”
“Pain in the arse is probably too mild a term for it…” Billy muttered. “What?” Everyone was staring at him. “C’mon, you know it’s true. Troy tries to make out he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders and—”
“Up until now, he has been.” Bronson nodded. “So you did a deal with Dad?”
“Been sending him money every quarter.” Charlie pushed a print out into the centre of the table and that’s when I felt a white hot rush of shame.
All of my modelling, it was there, for everyone to see.
Every attempt to come up with a solution that kept the farm running, my family in their home, and Dad off my back was there in black and white. “A lot of money.”
Someone had tallied it all up. Every single payment made since Dad left the farm was listed on the page and I shook my head at the sight of it. I was the one to make the bank transfers, but somehow even that grand total shocked me. Probably because I couldn’t add it all up, not and keep going.
But someone else had.
Mackenzie.
She’d asked me about the spreadsheet, offered to help, and apparently in my absence, she had. My teeth ground together, an instinctive response, and while I expected to be pissed, I wasn’t. Jaw muscle releasing, I found myself smiling, even if it was a grim one.
It was all going to come out and the sweetest feeling of relief took me by surprise as it washed over me. Pulling my phone out, I unlocked it, then opened the messages my father and I had exchanged.
“I didn’t want Mum to die on her own in some fucking hospital, away from everyone she loved,” I said. “You guys were losing your mother—”
“You too,” Charlie said, her eyes starting to shine suspiciously.
“We were losing our mother,” I corrected.
“And I couldn’t let you lose your home as well.
I…” This was the moment when I lost them all.
I knew it back then when Dad slid the contract across the table for me to sign and I knew it now.
“I signed a contract. The farm would come to me… us, but in exchange for putting the deed in our name—”
“The prick milked the place for hundreds of thousands of dollars.” In some ways, Bronson was the brother I was closest to. That flare of white-hot anger in his eyes, it was a twin flame to my own. “The fucking arsehole.”
“Why not tell him to fuck off?” Billy said, then grabbed my phone. “I’ll do it.”
“And then he’ll force a sale of the farm,” I replied.
“Good.” Bronson stared into my eyes, not looking away for a second. “You know I love this place. We all do, but… you have to see that this situation can’t go on. The amount of money he’s pulling out? We’ll be broke in a few years and forced to sell.”
“Better to sell now.” The words were dragged out of Charlie. “While we can control the process. If we wait until spring, we’ll get the best price for the stock and the farm.”
“Dad’s not seeing a fucking cent of the sale money,” Billy snapped.
“That’s not—” I started to say.
“No, he’s not.” Charlie pushed another piece of paper my way and I recognised it immediately.
The contract of sale that I’d shoved deep into the back of the filing cabinet.
Apparently my sister had been very busy today.
“If anything, he owes us money. The contract outlines that he’s supposed to get 15% of all profits.
Profits.” That word was said with extra emphasis.
“Instead, he’s been getting 20, 30, 40% of all the revenue raised before expenses and taxes are paid out. ”
“That fucking—” Billy snapped, and that’s when my mother’s worst nightmare came true.
He was fit to be tied, and why not? I hated my own father with the heat of a thousand suns, but the fact I never wanted that for my siblings stopped me from feeling any kind of satisfaction.
With a grim set of his jaw, his fingers flew across my phone screen as he tapped out a reply to Dad’s increasingly threatening messages.
“Billy…”
Before I could stop him, he hit send, then threw the phone down.
“Fuck you and the skank you shacked up with.” Charlie nodded. “Not sure if Melinda is a skank.”
“It’s Lisa now,” I replied.
“You’d know.” Bronson looked tired, defeated. “Not as if he talks to any of us outside birthdays and Christmas, and usually only when he’s drunk. So, we’re doing this? Drysdales have lived on this farm for generations.”
“I don’t want to lose the farm,” Charlie said.
“The rescue… the animals…” Any relief I had felt seconds before evaporated in the face of a fresh wave of shame.
“But if I’m given some time, I can find other rescues to take the animals on.
” Her tiny smile gave me a little hope. “But I’m not Dad.
If I have to choose between the farm or my family, I choose my family every time.
” I watched her eyes narrow slightly. “And Troy, I need you to start doing the same.”
“All I do is choose this family.” My response was hot and immediate, but at their collective silence, I was forced to reflect. “It might not be the right choice—”
“Got that right,” Billy muttered.
“But all I’ve done since the moment Mum got sick was choose you lot.”
“We know.” Bronson’s tone had softened and he reached out, squeezing my arm for just a second. “Before you had to step into the shoes Dad left, but Troy. The man’s an arsehole. You don’t want to take on his role. You want to decide who you want to be on your own.”
“As our brother,” Charlie said, “not a surrogate father.”
“Because holy shit, if that’s the way you’ll act when you have kids, Mackenzie better run,” Billy added.
“Can you imagine him with a baby?” He drew himself up tall, putting out one arm to cradle an imaginary child.
“What do you think you’re doing, shitting your britches all the time?
And keeping your mother up at all hours? ”
“Get your act together and stop crying,” Bronson added in a mock stern voice.
“Nah.” Charlie stared at me steadily. “I think Troy will be a good dad, if he can get his head out of his arse. Especially if a certain American was the mother of his child.”
Just a few moments of pleasure, that’s all I got to enjoy, before reality came and bitch slapped me across the face. My fingers traced the slide of condensation down my beer can.
“Not Mackenzie.” The memory of her dressing me down yesterday was seared onto my brain. “I fucked things up, just like the farm. I—”
“Need to find a way to make that up to her.”
Why the hell did I think I needed to protect my family from anything? When I glanced around the room, all of them were sitting there, expectation clear on their faces. They were adults now, perfectly capable of dealing with their own shit.
And calling me on mine.
Later that night, lying in bed, as I was watching the hot northerly winds forcing the curtains to billow up into the air, I heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall.
Not Charlie. She’d gone to bed hours ago and would be dead asleep.
My ears could tell the slight difference in step, somehow having memorised Mackenzie’s gait.
I wasn’t convinced my siblings had it right.
To me the situation with my girl felt like the farm: fucked up and beyond repair, so why did I roll out of bed?
Pulling on a pair of shorts, heading towards a door, it didn’t happen in a dream this time, but I did it anyway.
Mackenzie turned around, a guilty look on her face as she caught me staring at her.
“You’ve been busy today,” I said.
“Look, I’m sorry, but—”
Make the necessary changes to ensure I stopped lashing out at everyone around me, that was the challenge.
Was selling the farm enough to make that happen?
I didn’t know, but what I did know is I’d spend my life trying to find what did.
My arm went around her waist, because I couldn’t take a full breath until I was touching her.
Couldn’t stop staring at her, because it was the only time the noise inside my head went quiet.
Her little gasp, the way her hands spread across my bare chest. Fuck, I loved every second of that.
“My family made clear that shit can’t continue the way it has,” I said.
“I… We’re making changes. Maybe it’ll be enough to have me pulling my head in.
” Her eyes widened. “Maybe it won’t, but I know I’ll keep trying.
” My head bent down, my lips almost touching hers, but I couldn’t kiss her until I said this.
“You make me want to become a better man, Mackenzie. Wanna stick around and see if that’s possible? ”
That tortured little sound had me bracing myself for rejection, but then her hand went to my hair and she tugged my head down.
“I want everything you’ve got, Troy Drysdale.”
That was all the encouragement I needed. My mouth crushed hers, breath forced to come whistling through my nose, because I couldn’t pull away from her for a second.