“You are her type.”
Nev hung up, then blocked Maude’s number.
Heart racing, face hot, hands cold, she wondered if she was having a heart attack.Get yourself under control…
Not good.She recognized the feeling of being caught. Dull panic. The game was up. She could deny it, but no one would believe her. She rubbed her jaw. She turned and walked uphill toward Stone House, lawn dead from the drought.
36
TOWNSVILLE
Two days until the hearing. Five o’clock alarm. Ronnie emerged from her tent down by the creek, ran around the perimeter trail, then lifted weights behind the barn for an hour. The blue quandong sapling hadn’t died from neglect yet. Someone must water it. She still felt tight beneath the incision scar. Exercise cleared her mind.
She drove up the hill past brown grass and sun-scorched orange clay to Stone House as the sun rose. Barefoot, she pressed the gas pedal and rolled up the gravel drive. A few hundred ewes looked up from grazing.
She left her dogs at Nev’s, filling her water bottle from the sink on her way out. Maya and Matilda darted about the house like kids in a bouncy house. Nev was still asleep, but Gaia and Blair wagged their tails hopefully. Nev’s black collies looked eagerly between Ronnie and the metal bin that held their food.
On the Bruce Highway south, radio news personalities chatted about the sugar harvest. Cane harvesting season, what locals called “the crush,” had begun.
She arrived in Townsville by noon. She parked at the beach, eager to get on the swell now that she could see it. It was a bigger day. The Great Barrier Reef made this part of the coast bollocksfor surfing, but she was in luck; rough weather here yesterday made the waves larger. From the car park she could already see surfers riding two-meter swells. Good intervals today, not too close together.
The sun was out. Blue skies, turquoise water, couldn’t ask for better weather. She wrestled into her wetsuit, waxed her longboard. She loved the smell.
Hot sand underfoot, then wet sand along the waterline. Water was colder than air, a shock to her bare feet and ankles, then felt nice.
Holding her board under her arm, she jogged out past the first wave, then paddled out to where the other surfers were. She had been worried about the paddle out, but it wasn’t bad. The wetsuit insulated her core and kept her warm.
Surfers out on a good day with clean break. She spotted Mikey, paddled over, then sat next to her, boards side by side. They rode sets while their other friends arrived.
They took a break in the early-afternoon to eat falafel from a food truck on the beach, hit the public toilets, then went back out on the water again.
Ride a perfect set in, paddle out, spot another set on the horizon.
The golden hour before sunset, sky on fire. Saturation dialed up all the way.
Orange and pink clouds, rainbow sherbet.
Sea on fire, burning waves.
The board bobbed up and down beneath her on the waves like Dreadnought walking. She let it carry her toward land, toward the dark shore.
Mikey bobbed next to her, straddling her own board. “Nervous about the hearing? It’s so soon.”
Her back hurt. “A little, yeah. Thanks for volunteering to come to the courthouse for moral support. You know I haven’t been in a courtroom in ages. I’m glad we’re hanging out today. I won’t be able to talk much the day of the hearing. I’ll be disassociating and trying not to poop my pants.”
“No worries, mate, I’ve got your back. Least I can do, as her fairy godmother.” Mikey had been by Ronnie’s side every day in juvie before Rainbow was born and had been with her the following day, when she didn’t have a baby anymore, and the day after when her milk came in. Mikey had been with her through the mastitis. Worst two years of her life.
The sunset was pretty, but they should probably start paddling in before dark. “I’m thinking of buying land in Lionheart, or maybe a little further out where land’s cheaper. If I build a house and start my own farm, you two should come live with us. It would be fun for the kids. Rainbow would love that. She’s been after me for a little brother.”
“Aw, really? That’s so sweet. Jesse would love that. Sure, maybe. I don’t see why not. If you’re serious, ask me again.”
“Totally.”
After sunset, they paddled to shore in the dark.
She imagined sharks watching them from below. Surfers ignored sharks the way farmers ignored fires and floods. You could be a smarty pants and plan, but in the end the elements controlled your fate. Danger was the price of admission.
She moved her truck to a different parking spot on the Strand, then lay down in her sleeping bag in the bed. She loved how soft and warm nights were here as opposed to up on the Tablelands in the mountains. Her lower back kept her awake. She stretched until the painkillers kicked in, then drifted off to the sound ofwaves, nose and lungs full of sticky salt air, sand between her toes.
